Kata Pierce-Morgan always said her Les Girls Theater had ghosts. So when Jon Schnitzer was looking for a haunted venue in San Diego to perform his "Something Spooky" show, Pierce-Morgan suggested the world-famous strip club. The three of us met earlier this month to check for paranormal activity at the nearly 60-year-old landmark.
Schnitzer is the creator of the one-man show "Something Spooky," a paranormal comedy show that had an award-winning, sold-out run at Hollywood Fringe and will make its off-Broadway premiere at SoHo Playhouse NYC on Saturday, Oct. 24. Schnitzer's grandmother had an imaginary friend who turned out to be not so imaginary, which led him to create a show that he calls "a supernatural comedy show that gives you goosebumps."
I caught his show at Hollywood Fringe and fell in love with its spooky vibes, wicked sense of fun and masterful storytelling. Plus, Schnitzer has eyes tailored for expressing fear and punctuating lines with a comic exclamation point.
When he said he wanted a haunted venue, I knew Les Girls would fit the bill.
Pierce-Morgan is the owner of Les Girls Theater, and on Oct. 5, Schnitzer drove down from Los Angeles with a spirit box, pendulum and dowsing rods — the tools of his paranormal trade — to find out if the venue is indeed haunted.
"Dowsing rods can be used to find water, lost objects, and communicate with the dead," Schnitzer explained.
You can be a skeptic and dismiss all this as nonsense but Albert Einstein did say this: “The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the uncanny reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time.”
Schnitzer identified a dancer spirit on the strip club's stage. Using the dowsing rods to ask yes-or-no questions, he determined that there could be around 30 spirits inhabiting Les Girls.
Pierce-Morgan was pleased that there were dancers haunting her theater.
"I was totally comfortable with what was happening, and it felt very accurate, a lot of integrity to it, a lot of truth to it. I wasn't like shocked," Pierce-Morgan told Schnitzer after he spoke with the dancer's spirit.
But Schnitzer also encountered what appeared to be unwanted spirits of cops and stalkers. If you watched the "Stripper Energy: Fighting Back from the Fringes" video podcast I did on Pierce-Morgan, then you will recall that vice cops frequently harassed the dancers at Les Girls in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
So Pierce-Morgan was not surprised by their unwelcome presence, but it did piss her off.
"I wish they were alive so I could knee them right in the balls," Pierce-Morgan said.
The three of us spent two and half hours at Les Girls, and Schnitzer concluded, "It is very haunted. It gave me the chills, and I could feel it. But there were also some spirits in here that don't want to leave, that need to leave."
Schnitzer seemed a little shaken by his encounter with creepy stalker cops in the women's bathroom, a dancer who revealed she was murdered, and a warning that we needed protection oil. He also seemed excited that Les Girls qualified as a venue for his show.
Pierce-Morgan took it all in stride.
"I've been here since 1970," Pierce-Morgan said at the end of the ghost-hunting night. "And I'm telling you, I'm not afraid in here at all. Even with the bad renegade cops, I dealt with them in real life. Them being dead doesn't bother me at all."
Schnitzer is definitely coming back to Les Girls to do his show and to bring a witch to cleanse the theater of the unwanted spirits. Then you can come decide for yourself if Les Girls is truly haunted.
Dates for Schnitzer's San Diego performances have not yet been set. He is focused on Saturday's performance at SoHo Playhouse in New York City. And yes, that theater is haunted!
