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Showcase Cinemas
Along Canfield Road in Bridgeport can be found the very
popular movie theatre, Showcase Cinemas. Built in 1993, the building has hosted the debut of many of the biggest blockbuster
movies of all time. Within the last ten years, it has also hosted the arrival of one or more tempestuous spirits who
insist on disrupting the daily lives of the theatre crew with their own brand of dramatic arts.
The History
Showcase Cinemas was not heralded when plans of its construction first
appeared before the citizens of Bridgeport in the early 1990s. The residents had many worries, not the least of which
was the increased strain of traffic that would be put on these tiny residential side streets. However, the town council
members prevailed and the corporation was given the go-ahead to build its shrine to modern filmmaking.
After its completion, Showcase Cinemas opened to a slew of good reviews
and its theatres were sold out nightly. Against conventional wisdom, the corporation had hit cinematic paydirt.
When the building settled in and management and staff had turned over
after several years, a strange assortment of troubles began; nuisances dealing with power outages, flickering lights, malfunctioning
equipment, active doors and furniture, as well as fixed objects becoming somewhat un-fixed. A particular projection
room seemed to experience most of this activity, although the activity was not isolated to only that room. In fact,
there were reports that other rooms in the building appeared to have problems not associated with construction. Former
staff and management complained of equipment going on and off by itself, voices in the building when no one else was present,
and items falling off shelves which were otherwise undisturbed.
In order for us to find the source of the problem, we made
our plans to visit the theatre during the early morning in order to speak with some of the staff before the crowds would be
showing up in the afternoon. When we arrived at the theatre, as luck would have it, a UPS truck driver was delivering
a package to the front door and a manager happened to have accepted the delivery. Upon seeing this, we seized the opportunity
to have a quick word with him.
The manager appeared quite confused about the so-called haunting and
even told us that he had never heard of it as he ushered us from the area. At that point, he stopped and faced us and
began to speak in a hushed tone on the subject. He told us that the stories about the strange occurrences were indeed
real and that he had only worked in the theatre for a short time, but had on a few occasions experienced the activity.
Within a few minutes, we were given a short run-down of the activity
he had experienced and it wasn't long before a car pulled up into the parking lot. He motioned toward the car and explained
that the woman in the car was one of their employees and had actually worked on this exact site many decades earlier, long
before the site was ever a movie theatre.
The woman was kind and very enthusiastic and served up a lot of information
regarding the industrial company that once graced this site from the late 1800s throughout the early and mid-1900s.
The Bullard Company was a machine tool corporation established in 1880.
It was incorporated on September 4, 1894 as the Bullard Machine Tool Company and manufactured machine tools of various kinds.
From "Steamtown"
"Over the next century it continued to manufacture ever-new generations
of machine tools, many of which were intended for use by the railroad industry in manufacturing and repairing locomotives
and railroad cars."
As the company grew, so too did its output. The site had its
own train depot where railroad cars were filled with tools, ready for the locomotives to pick them up and whisk them off to
some other distant location. The company continued to grow, "maintaining a prestigious list of customers including Carnegie
Steel, American Locomotive, National Cash Register, Elgin Watch, and Westinghouse. The company's sales break-through
came in 1913, when after months of collaboration between Bullard's son and engineers at the Ford Motor Company, they produced
a multi-spindle drilling machine capable of machining an automobile flywheel in under two minutes, something that took eighteen
minutes on conventional machines. (Robinson, 1955)"
During World War I and II, the Bullard Company supplied equipment and
machine tools to the government and maintained a nearly constant export schedule throughout those time frames.
As the supply and demand for these items diminished in the area due
to technological advances, the company pulled up its roots and left Connecticut. In the aftermath, Bullard Square (as
it had come to be known) was divided up into parcels where other retail outlets set up shop. By and by, these companies
came and went. Finally, in 1993, the Showcase Cinemas was built.
The woman explained that the Bullard office in which she was a receptionist
many years before was now the area to the right of the front lobby in the parking garage. Now she worked in nearly the
same spot as she did many decades before and waxed fondly about her time there.
We naturally asked her if she had ever experienced any
of the occurrences that others spoke of, but she said that she had not; although she had heard many stories from other employees
about supernatural activity. We also inquired about any industrial accidents on the site while she worked in the company
during the 1940s and '50s in which a fatality may have occurred, but she could not remember a specific incident.
The manager went on to say that he wanted to allow us to do some sort
of preliminary investigation on site, but that he would have to get permission from the corporate office first and that was
probably not going to happen. He mentioned that publicity like this was something that the corporate headquarters would
most likely want to stay away from and, therefore, we would have to try another means of investigation.
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