This Week's Story is Not a Ghost Story

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “This Week's Story is Not a Ghost Story.” Listen to this episode.

Hello and welcome to My True Ghost Stories. This month, especially this last week or so, I am just as busy as the rest of the country with holiday events and shopping and all of the stuff that comes with this holiday season. And I, to be honest, have been too busy to notice any paranormal activity that might have been going on around me. So I haven't seen a ghost or thought about a ghost or anything in the last week or so. So what I'm going to do for this week's episode is I'm going to give you one of my Patreon episodes, which is not a ghost story.

It is a New York City story and I hope you enjoy it. Here goes. Today I'm going to tell you a story about a nightclub that I used to hang out in when I was still in high school, which at that time was possible. They didn't card anybody in New York City when I was in high school so you could pretty much go in any place if you were tall enough, sort of like the rides at an amusement park. So the name of the nightclub that I used to hang out in is going to be very familiar to you, but it was called Studio 54.

Now I wasn't hanging out in Studio 54 in its heyday. I was not tall enough then and my mother would not have let me. But when I was in high school, Studio 54 was past its heyday. The whole thing had happened where the owners got arrested for tax evasion and drugs and gone to jail and it had closed down and then had reopened. And after it reopened, it was full of high school kids from New Jersey and the boroughs.

And there were still oddly enough a few lingering celebrities. Not a lot like it used to be in its heyday, but there were still some celebrities in there. I remember many many years later as an adult way past high school. I was telling a friend about how I used to hang out in Studio 54 when I was in high school. And at the time, I was considering whether or not to go to my high school reunion.

And my friend said, oh my god, you have to go to your high school reunion. Think of how impressed they'll be that you used to hang out in Studio 54. And I was like, please, my whole high school class was in Studio 54 with me. So this story takes place right after the song Rock, the Cosba had come out. And me and my friend Trisha, we loved that song Rock, the Cosba.

And we loved to dance to that song and we knew all the words. So this was very early in the evening at Studio 54 and you could actually get in for like for nothing or a couple dollars if you came in before 10 p.m. Which since we were in high school, we didn't have any money. So we would take advantage of this early bird special at Studio 54. And before the party really started and the dance floor was packed, they used to show music videos of the day because music videos were all the rage at that time.

MTV had kind of just come out. And so they would show music videos that were popular at that time up on this big screen that would come down. And that big screen as far as I remember was not there for the whole night, but it was there in the beginning of the evening. And so Trisha and I were, you know, hanging out because it really wasn't cool to dance before 10 p.m. It was sort of mildly cool to hang out on the perimeters of the dance floor or in the little lounge areas before 10 p.m.

I mean, really it wasn't cool at all to be there that early, but you know, we had to take advantage of the early bird special. So we were hanging out on the sides of the dance floor and we were watching the music videos that were up there on the screen and listening to the music and all of a sudden to our delight rock the Cosba came on and we saw the video and we heard the sounds. And as uncool as it was to be dancing before 10 p.m., we had no choice but to dance to this song. And so we started screaming, it's rock the Cosba, it's rock the Cosba probably holding heads and jumping up and down, you know, because we were like 17 years old. So we ran out into the middle of that empty dance floor, well not the middle, you know, towards the side of that empty dance floor and started dancing wildly to our favorite song.

And as we were dancing, we saw this guy come running up to us and he was sort of mocking us, the screaming, he was waving his arms and screeching and he came over and he had some friends that were still on the side of the dance floor, but this guy was deciding to join us and he came running over, waving his arms, pretending to scream, you know, basically mocking us, but it was in a friendly kind of way that he was mocking us. And so we kind of opened up our little circle there to allow this guy who obviously wanted to dance with us to come into our circle. And then we looked up at his face and he had these long like braids and it was Rick James. And so Trisha and I said, you know, oh my God, it's Rick James. And he, you know, obviously has heard this before because he knows he's Rick James.

So he just kept dancing and we danced with him the whole time for the whole song, not the whole time. I don't even know if he made it to the end of the song, but I know that he did want to join us at least for the beginning so he could mock us. And then when that song was over, Rick James disappeared kind of back into his group of friends who was on the side of the floor and then that whole group disappeared. So maybe Studio 54 was just some sort of like stopping off point before you actually go out for the night. And that was that.

And growing up in New York City, this sort of thing used to happen quite often that you would run into celebrities here and there and have little encounters with celebrities. This was kind of before Paparazzi. So celebrities used to be a little more free about walking around. But anyway, he disappeared. We danced the rest of the night and we both tell this story to this day about that time that we danced with Rick James to rock the Cosbaugh.

Thank you for listening to this special Patreon episode. If you enjoyed this episode, you can get more of these if you subscribe to the Patreon. And the link to the Patreon is in the show notes and I will be back with a ghost story very soon. Until next time.