Row 18, Seat 1 chapter 2

By early 1949, a colonel in the local militia, perhaps elated after a small victory, was so cocky that he ignored everyone’s advice and insisted on sitting in Seat 18 of the first row. That day, the play was also “Fight in the Dark”. When the two actors on stage were pretending to be blind, a bullet came out of nowhere and hit the colonel right in the forehead, killing him on the spot.

Right after the town was pacified, a local man who had been away for many years returned in glory. On his first night back, he excitedly went to the Grand Opera House to watch a show. Seeing Seat 18 empty, he didn’t hesitate and sat right down. After a while, he suddenly fell ill for no apparent reason and never got up again.

A few years later, the theater was reorganized, and they removed that seat, leaving an empty space between Seat 16 and Seat 20 in the first row. The locals knew that this seat was haunted, so no one cared. During the period of social unrest in the 1960s, the Grand Opera House was renamed the Starlight Cinema. A deputy director of the local council in Elmwood Town said they should break superstitions. He forced people to place a soft – cushioned chair with a backrest in the position of the former Seat 18, but no one dared to sit on it. This deputy director had cracked down on all the “undesirables” in the town. What did he have to fear? He plopped down on the chair. That night, the performance was the play “The Red Lantern”. As the deputy director was watching with great enjoyment, suddenly, a large hanging lamp above the seat fell and hit him right on the head. The deputy director died on the spot.

From then on, the seat has always been empty. Unless the theater is extremely crowded, audiences won’t even sit in Seat 16 or 20. If someone buys tickets for these seats, they will immediately ask for a refund or exchange for other seats. All the successive managers of the cinema know about this, so every time they sell tickets, they deliberately tear out the ticket for Seat 18 in the first row, and set aside the tickets for Seat 16 and 20. When there are few audiences, they simply don’t sell these tickets.