Click here for photos from ‘The Return of the One Party’
Cheshire Cat writes: I attended that memorable Oscar night party in the Legion building, Hollywood courtesy of TheOneRing.net on the night that Return of the King won all it’s Oscars and I was therefore very interested to see a programme on UK TV last week that was all about the building where the party took place.
It is a fascinating programme that I love to watch called ‘Most Haunted’, a real-life documentary type thing whereby a group of individuals go and visit the most haunted houses in the UK. They take with them a couple of psychic mediums who pick up on names from the past that were associated with the building and do so with startling accuracy much of the time. A woman introduces the programme and along with the producer, cameramen, soundmen and even make-up girls they spend time in various rooms of the house waiting for any ghostly activity to occur. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, this makes for excellent viewing as the middle of the night vigils are done in the pitch black with only night vision cameras to see or the occasional torch light and needless to say, these people are scared witless half the time!!!
Anyhow, in last weeks episode of Most Haunted this excellent team of ghost hunters travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to the USA in order to investigate the ghostly goings-on at the Legion building in Hollywood!!! It was so interesting to see the place again and in the course of the programme they visited the the legion building’s library, offices, main auditorium, pool room and bar!!! Yes! The very bar where myself and a group of TORn Discussion Room friends all sat and watched the Oscar ceremony on the TV!!! One of the mediums entered the building and was immediately drawn to the staircase (which I think was the one that had the big Shelob model on it on Oscar night). He said that someone called Marshall had died on this staircase and that it had very recently around 4 or 5 years ago. He was absolutely spot-on with this information because the current caretaker/manager of the building confirmed that a chap called Marshall was the previous caretaker and had looked after the building for decades before tragically falling on this staircase in the year 2000 and he died within minutes before any medical help could get to him. The current manager had been a good friend of Marshall’s and was there during his dying moments. He was not at all surprised to hear the psychic say that Marshall was still ‘inhabiting’ the building and he said that he’d always felt that Marshall was still around keeping an eye on the place.
Anyhow, a number of the team decided to spend some of the night in the bar area and the pool room next door as these were two of Marshall’s favourite spots during his many long years in the Legion. The results were really quite astounding and the team, who after five series of the fascinating programme, were completely over-the-moon about the reactions they got from this friendly and playful ghost.
They sat at around a table and tried to make contact with Marshall and the TV (the one on which we had watched the Oscar’s that hung to the right of the bar) was switched on but not tuned into any channel, but you could screen was flickering. Three times they asked Marshall if he was able to switch off the TV and three times he did it!!! They couldn’t believe it when each time they made the request the TV just flickered and clicked off! The remote control was right over the other side of the room beneath the television and no one had gone anywhere near it! *goosebumps* Lots of other noises were heard around the bar area and at one point the ice machine behind the bar went bonkers and started making a loud noise until they were forced to unplug it!
The final thing they did was to spend time in the Pool Room next to the bar. They laid five pool balls on the table and again called out asking Marshall to move the balls. The camera was fixed on the five balls, but then suddenly they heard a dull thud from the far end of the table (several feet away from where all the people in the room were sitting) and when they went round to investigate, one of the pool balls had dropped out of the roll-down area where the balls are dispensed and was sitting there on the floor!!! It was such a shame that the camera hadn’t been pointing at it and was focused on the top of the table, but the team were amazed and couldn’t believe what had happened!
Other ghosts are said to inhabit this building too including a dark figure who walks across the back row of the auditorium from time to time.
So anyhow, I wondered if TORn were aware of the fact they had chosen such a haunted location to hold their auspicious party of partys!
‘Lost’, featuring 
Peter Jackson’s restored version of the only film taken of the Anzacs at Gallipoli in 1915 will have its New Zealand premiere at a documentary film festival in Wellington today. The film Heroes of Gallipoli screens at the DOCNZ Documentary Film Festival. Jackson, a World War I buff, approached the Australian War Memorial two years ago to see if technology developed by Weta Digital could be used to restore archival film. The 20-minute film included Wellington Battalion soldiers. The original nitrate film was destroyed in 1967, and prints were scratched, fuzzy and low in contrast. [
Viggo Mortensen will be on Comedy Centrals’s ‘The Daily Show with John Stewart’ tonight (September 27th). He is there to promote his latest film ‘A History of Violence’ which opens wide this Friday. Although expect topics to range from ducks to politics and back again.