Wednesday, January 03, 2007



One of the more consistently creepy things I run across in my travels is any sort of forgotten or converted dance hall on the edge of a beautiful lake in Wisconsin. Its usually more than 50 years old at the least and though it probably has been converted to a beach house or restaurant a long time earlier, you can still see the structure of a large, open room looking onto a clear lake. You can still hear the music and picture the flappers dancing away on some long past New Years Eve overlooking a frozen lake. Its all so charming and sweet, but it really brings back The Shining for me. I can still see Jack Nicholson in that Black and White photo, transported back to 1921 for the July 4th Ball. I always felt this at the beach house at Devils Lake, but I recently had dinner at the Silvercryst and they had a photograph of a 100 year old dance hall on the lake that sat on the location the large restaurant currently does. It went right under my skin. The building and structure may be gone or changed, but those flappers dance on, eternally young and careless.






2 comments:

Anonymous said...

our friend owns one in st. helens... it's one of two on the same street-- "st. Helens Home of the Dueling Dance Halls". It's crazy huge and just creepy enough. We'll have to take a visit next time.

Scott said...

I joined NetFlix a couple of weeks ago. The Shining was the first movie I ordered... but it never showed up!!! Aaaaaahhhhh!!!!! (These are screams of horror)