I’m sure most of you heard about this 2001 film called, “Monsters Inc”. It was really popular when it was released on November 2nd 2001. Well, I like that film too. Most notably, it was about Sulley and Mike Wasowski finding a human child named Boo inside “Monsters Inc”.
Well, speaking of theaters and cinemas, I used to work at an AMC theater in Northern California up until March of 2019, before the Coronavirus hit. The work itself wasn’t exactly all that remarkable, up until February 2020. Here’s what happened.
On this particular day, I was cleaning up Cinema Hall 9, which had just shown, “Toy Story 4”. I swept the uneaten snacks on the chairs, floor, and little crevices in the walls. I sprayed the popcorn and soda filled air with some air freshening spray, and cleaned up all the soda spills. I was leaving the cinema hall, until I saw what looked to be a yellow, “Do Not Cross” tape. The tape you would see in a crime scene. The tape was on the door that led to cinema hall 5, which previously just had a lock on the door handles.

I went over and felt the small indentation and, to my amazement, it felt like a doorknob. Not just any doorknob – the same type of doorknob on the doors to the other five theaters. I pulled back the poster to look behind it and, sure enough, there was a door.

Tons of questions raced through my mind, but I eventually concluded that neglecting to use the theater was probably just an economic-based decision. As I had figured, the door was locked, so I didn’t get to see the inside.

Still, my curiosity wouldn’t go away. Why had I never heard of this? Why was the door covered with a poster? Did the door even lead to a fifth cinema hall?

I asked my fellow colleagues if they knew anything about this cinema hall 5, and they gave me looks of confusion. Sometimes, I would get responses like, “What Are You Talking About?” or, “I Don’t Know What Your Talking About Dude”.

As my curiosity kept rising more and more, I asked my co-manager of the cinema if he knew anything about this cinema hall. “Uh, Do You Know Anything About This, Cinema Hall 5?” I asked. “WHAT?” He responded. It was like he didn’t know it existed and that I was the only one who knew. Stressed, I lead my co-manager to the door of Cinema Hall 5 and he followed me. I showed him the door of the cinema hall, and he became as pale as a ghost! He told me to follow him into his office, and told me to sit down upon arriving to his office.

I sat down and he told me the entire story. He said that, back in 2001, Monsters Inc premiered on that cinema hall, and a hacker somehow managed to show a disturbing version of the film. Reports say that the moviegoers in Cinema Hall 5 were terrified , and one of them was immediately escorted to the hospital, due to an underlying medical condition triggered into effect by the footage. It’s said that one of the moviegoers told about this horrific experience. He said that the moviegoer told a local news reporter about the movie.

He proceeded to tell me of one particular night the weekend before Thanksgiving when he was a senior in high school, Monsters Inc. had come out a few weeks earlier and it was being shown in Cinema Hall 5 that night.

Oddly enough, I had never seen Monsters Inc. I was five, almost six, when it came out and I’m pretty sure I’m the only person from my generation who never went to go see it. I was supposed to go one night with a group of friends from kindergarten and their parents, but I was sick with the flu and my parents wouldn’t let me go.

Anyway, something apparently went wrong that night. The co-manager told me about how he remembered the faces of the kids when they came out of the theater, saying they appeared to be in somewhat of a “trance-like state” and were all “white as ghosts.”

He also said that he overheard some of the parents making comments like, “I thought this was supposed to be a kids movie,” and saying other things along those lines.

It was the last showing of the night in Cinema Hall 5, and good thing it was. Some of the kids and parents had torn all the cotton out of some of the seats and thrown things at the screen, damaging it.

The co-manager then opened up his TV, and played what looked to be a recording (keep in mind that this was an older location, and the office still had one of those 2000’s TV’s with a VCR embedded in it).

The co-manager’s TV played a recording of what looked to be a news report. The moviegoer then appeared on camera, and said that he and the audience were shown the most scariest thing known to man kind.

He said that, in the scene where Sulley And Boo were running away when Sulley was trying to save Boo from Mr. Waternoose. Instead of Sulley And Boo escaping from Mr Waternoose, Sulley And Boo didn’t escape from Mr. Waternoose at all. Instead, a disgusting blood splat sound was heard, and a black background showed.

Scary music began to play as the camera showed Sulley And Boo’s dead bodies. However, the music sounded like the game over theme from the North American version of “Sonic CD” for the SEGA CD, but it was playing backwards, and it had a haunting filter applied to it. The strange part was, the bodies looked like Sulley And Boo’s voice actor and voice actress, John Goodman and Mary Gibbs respectively.

After showing ten minutes of Sulley And Boo’s corpses, it cuts to the end credits, exept, there was no music, like the "If I Didn't Have You" song, and it didn’t show The bloopers or The “Walt Disney” or “Pixar” logos like they did in the original version of the film. Then the film ended.

After it ended, A pair of hands emerged from the bottom of the screen. A Mike Wasowski figure with red eyes appeared, and screamed so loud that the now frightened audience fled the cinema hall. Other moviegoers reported that the moviegoers in Cinema Hall 5 told them not to watch the film that was shown in that movie hall, as they ran out of the theater with their crying children. The co-manager turned off his TV, and concluded the story. He said that, after the incident, no one went to Cinema Hall 5, even when it showed the original, non-hacked version of Monsters Inc.

One of the parents even tried suing AMC, but the case was settled, with the court finding in favor of AMC, and the company issued a public apology on it’s official Twitter, And Facebook account. The cinema I was working in was forced to close that Cinema Hall for the next few days since there were a lot of repairs to be done for it to be suitable for another showing any time soon, due to low attendance, and also to prevent future incidents from happening again. I left the office, and that was it.

Over the next couple of weeks, The co-manager told me, there was a rash of child disappearances throughout the area.

“Their names and pictures were in the paper, and I just about lost my lunch when I saw who they were,” explained the co-manager.

“I recognized pretty much every kid’s face,” he said. “They were the ones to come out of the theater that night.”

According to the co-manager, none of the kids were ever found, dead or alive.

“Nice story, bro,” I chuckled. “Now tell me what really happened.”

“Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you,” said the co-manager. “But come take a look at this.”

He proceeded to take me to his office and pull up a webpage on his computer. He showed me a picture of a young blonde girl with dark brown eyes, about upper-elementary age.

Under the picture, the page read:

Olivia Wilson

Born: June 11, 1989

Hometown: North English, Iowa

Last seen: November 29, 2001

Status: Still missing

“This is a database I found online that tracks missing kids,” the co-manager told me as he showed me how he filtered the results on the site: North English for the town, 2001 for the year.

He clicked the “next” button to reveal a picture of another blonde-haired girl, this one a little bit younger.

Darla Lopez

Born: February 1, 1992

Hometown: North English, Iowa

Last seen: November 30, 2001

Status: Still missing

When the co-manager clicked the “next” button again, I froze. This face, I recognized.

Max Anderson

Born: March 18, 1996

Hometown: North English, Iowa

Last seen: November 30, 2001

Status: Still missing

Max was one of the friends I was planning on seeing Monsters Inc. with. My parents told me he had to move schools and, as a kindergartner at the time, I never second-guessed anything they said.

Then, my stomach dropped. It finally hit me.

George, Austin, and Jeffery – the other three kids who went to see Monsters Inc. that night – had also “moved away”.

As the co-manager scrolled through the other missing kids – twelve in total – there they were.

George Bates

Born: October 5, 1997

Hometown: North English, Iowa

Last seen: December 2, 2001

Status: Still missing

Austin Bush

Born: June 13, 1995

Hometown: North English, Iowa

Last seen: December 7, 2001

Status: Still missing

Jeffery McPhee

Born: April 3, 1996

Hometown: North English, Iowa

Last seen: December 8, 2001

Status: Still missing

Panic set in. Everything inside me felt cold, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I ran to the bathroom certain that I was about to get sick.

I ended up being able to calm myself down, but I didn’t sleep much the next few nights.

About a week later, I still couldn’t get it out of my mind. It was a busy night at work as it was the opening weekend for Shrek, and I decided that I was going to do it.

The next day, I felt prepared to go into that cinema hall and clean it. I was just cleaning Cinema Hall 4, where it was showing, Shrek. I made sure no one was around, and unlocked the door via the key I had in my pocket, which I had gotten rather secretly by sneaking into the manager’s office when he went to go to the bathroom.

Once I finished cleaning up Cinema Hall 4, where Shrek was being shown, I headed over toward the North Hallway and stared down the Pepsi poster.

After checking to make sure nobody else was in sight, I reached into my pocket to grab the paperclip I brought to pick the lock.

Picking locks wasn’t anything new to me. When you grow up in a small town like North English, you and your buddies are always looking to something to do and, well, I guess that’s a story for a different time.

After some finagling around, it worked. I took a deep breath, turned the knob, and opened the door.

Other than getting hit with a gust of cold air, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Instead of smelling like a weird mixture of popcorn and lemon-scented cleaner like the other theaters, this one had, as you would expect, a damp, musty smell.

When the door opened, there was so much dust, that I coughed a bit. I opened my flashlight, and sure enough, it was empty. I could see leftover popcorn and soda cups on the chairs. I looked into one of the soda cups on the chairs, and I gagged and almost vomited, but was somehow able to hold it in. The cup was filled with soda, but on top of it, it was some disgusting mold, and I swore, I saw a plant growing on it!

I looked at the popcorn, and it was mushy, so mushy that it actually began to melt onto one of the seats!

Mice and rats had clearly been in the theater based on the smell, which kind of grossed me out since people just across the hall watched movies, ate popcorn, and drank soda every night…and I was one of the people in charge of keeping the place clean.

I turned on my flashlight and, sure enough, the theater was a mess. The screen was still cracked from having assorted objects thrown at it that night, just like my co-manager had told me.

As far as the seats, they were still torn up; however, I couldn’t tell if the majority of them were destroyed by those moviegoers or by the mice and rats.

I still had goosebumps and was a little freaked out, but after some inspection of the theater, I didn’t find anything overly terrifying.

I decided to walk up to the top of the steps and check out the control booth. It looked just like the other five control booths; clearly we hadn’t made any renovations to any of them since the mid-90’s or before. I always thought the technology seemed a little outdated in the theater and this pretty much confirmed it.

After looking around the cobweb-riddled sound and light controls, I noticed, to my horror, a roll of film labeled “Monsters Inc.”.

Another roll of film, this one unmarked, was also on the same reel....

Anyways, I decided to clean the cinema hall, but it was so dark, that I had to hold my flashlight in my mouth to clean the seats. As I was cleaning, I heard the door slowly open, and I ducked behind the seats to make sure no one knows I was trespassing in this hall.

The figure then left the hall, and as I stood up from my hiding spot. Then I went to the projector room of Cinema Hall 5. As I went up there, I found something horrifying. It was a body of someone. The body was un-recognizable, and when I shined my flashlight onto the person in question, I noticed it was the local AMC projector guy. But, it appeared as if he had partially been eaten by rodents. Then, I heard someone’s voice say, “HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” Then, I turned around, and saw someone holding a knife. Horrified, I ran towards the door, which was opened a crack, and left in a hurry. I locked the door of Cinema Hall 5, and never told anyone about my experience. I didn’t know if that was the hacker from 19 years ago, or it was a deranged psycho. I guess I’ll never know.

If you ever find this cinema hall in this branch of AMC, don’t go in there! Seriously! I’m begging you!

But there is this one question I do have that still lingers in the back of my mind...

"What The Actual Fuck Was On That Monsters Inc. Tape That Made Everyone Go Insane Like That??"