The Final Showing

My manager found an unlabeled film reel in the basement… and the movie showed our theater burning down.

Hey everyone. This isn’t my story exactly — it’s my manager’s — but I was there for the aftermath, and it messed me up enough that I need to write it out.

Our theater is old. Like, built-in-the-40s old. Half the basement looks like a fallout shelter, the other half looks like a museum of broken equipment and forgotten promo cutouts. Managers sometimes rummage down there looking for things corporate insists we “still have,” even though 90% of it should be condemned and thrown out.

Last week, my manager Liam (fake name) was down there doing an inventory check when he found a metal film canister shoved behind a stack of water-damaged cardboard boxes. The canister was rusted but still sealed, and written on the lid in shaky Sharpie was:

FINAL SHOWING

No date. No label. No studio. Just those two words.

Liam thought it was weird, maybe some archival footage or an old training reel, but he brought it upstairs anyway. After closing, he decided to run it on our smallest projector — the only one old enough to still handle physical film.

He told me later that the first thing he noticed was how cold the film felt. Not cold like “stored in a basement.” Cold like it came out of a freezer.

Anyway, he threads the reel, turns off the house lights, and starts it up.

The film opens with static. No audio. Then the static slowly pulls back and he realizes it’s not noise — it’s ash. The camera is slowly drifting through a cloud of ash.

The picture stabilizes.

It’s the theater.

Our theater.

Same layout. Same carpet. Same warped exit signs.

Except everything is charred black. The walls are cracked open. Seats are melted into warped shapes. The concession stand in the lobby is nothing but metal framing and soot.

Like someone filmed the aftermath of a massive fire.

Liam swears he paused it and double-checked the security feeds just to make sure he wasn’t looking at a live image. Everything was fine. Normal.

He keeps watching.

The film moves through the aisles like someone walking with a handheld camera. Shaky, slow, deliberate. As it moves, the audio crackles in. Not music. Not ambient noise.

Screaming.

Dozens of voices. Some close. Some distant. Like the theater was full of people when it burned.

He told me the audio didn’t sound recorded — it sounded alive. Like the screams were happening in the room with him. Like they were bouncing off the theater walls.

He almost shut it off there, but he couldn’t look away.

The camera goes row by row, passing seat after seat, all burned, twisted, unrecognizable. But then it slows down. Stops. Focuses on one seat near the middle.

Seat D12.

The seat he was sitting in.

He didn’t realize this until the film zoomed in closer, framing the chair perfectly on screen. The audio went dead silent. The screaming cut off mid-cry, like someone muted reality.

And then the frame stayed.

Held.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t cut.

Didn’t fade.

Just that burned, melted seat.

His seat.

He tried to stop the projector. The controls didn’t respond. He tried pulling the film reel out — it wouldn’t budge. He said the air around him suddenly smelled like smoke. Not faintly. Thick. Choking. Like standing inside a burning house.

He looked back at the screen.

The seat was empty. But he had the overwhelming feeling someone was supposed to be sitting in it.

Then the screen flickered.

Just once.

And the burned version of the seat was suddenly occupied.

By a shape.

Human-sized.

Blackened and slumped forward, like the body had been burned until it fused with the frame of the chair.

He bolted.

By the time he pulled the power, the reel had unspooled itself across the floor. The film was blank — no images, no audio, nothing but clear plastic.

Like it had never been developed.

When I came in the next morning, the projector room still smelled like burned fabric. Liam’s eyes were bloodshot. He told me he didn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw seat D12 glowing orange, melting, warping.

The weirdest part?

I checked the seating chart yesterday.

Seat D12 is the only one in that row that’s been replaced in the past 20 years. All the others are original.

Someone burned that seat before.

Someone burned in that seat.

And whatever was on that reel…

it wanted Liam to know it’s going to happen again.