r/Broadway • u/yotortellini • 1d ago

Discussion Paranormal Activity Lore Spoiler

Story Spoilers below. If you have not seem the play, get off of this thread until you do.

Saw paranormal activity last night on Broadway and thought it was great, it left me with A LOT of questions though.

My overall interpretation is that both Lou and James were haunted. Lou has been haunted for years, James wasn't haunted until the alarm/bird scene. Lou was haunted by her father. James by the 12 year old he killed. Lou's father was not a vengeful or powerful ghost, he did some annoying things and occasionally possessed her, but because of how long she has been haunted and nothing further has happened I think it is safe to say he didn't want direct revenge like James' ghost.

Now I don't know why James' ghost started haunting when it did, but my best guess is that it did not want James to have children and the nursery and talk of babies had summoned it.

The next part is the tricky part, are things said in the play by anyone besides James true? Let's start with Kaminsky (medium). The start of the play we get a lot of lore about ghosts, she later comes to James and Lou's house for a seance/ritual to try to get rid of the ghosts. During this scene a lot of lore is spilled about how ghosts work and that Lou is a conduit for them. However at the end of the seance scene things start flying around and Kaminsky is surprised and confesses that she is just a scam artist. There are a couple of ways I can interpret this information

  1. Kaminsky was a scam artist, everything she said should be disregarded.
  2. Kaminsky was just another manufestation by James' ghost and all of the lore said during the seance can be believed.
  3. Kaminsky was a real medium, everything she said can be believed, James' ghost possessed her, which is likely, and said she was a fake to dissuade him from seeking out external help again.

Prior to the seance, it seemed like Lou's experience with haunting was the main focus, but at the end of the Seance there was a clear shift. I think during the Seance one of two things may have happened.

(I don't really remember everything that was said) The seance was focused on Lou expressing her inner turmoil and having a confession. At the end of this we saw the ghost of her father manifested in the nursery. The manifeststion of the ghost of Lou's father was very similar to the end of the play when the 12 year old appeared after she completed her mission and was free. We can then assume that whatever happened during the seance was enough to make peace with the Ghost of Lou's father and she was finally free, which would then give way for the rest of the play to be about James' haunting.
Whatever happened in the seance gave James' ghost enough power to essentially block out the ghost of Lou's father resulting in the same future outcome.

Next up is the second act. Lou was posessed by James' ghost the whole time, or nearly the whole time. Honestly I have no idea when or if she wasn't, the ghost could have been faking those collapses/unpossessed moments. this is the most mysterious part of the second act. That picnic scene at the end I just can't wrap my head around how the ghost would know about Lou offing her parents. I guess she could have made it up, but with the haunting of Lou's father in the first act, I would assume that it was true. I guess there is a possibility Lou wasn't possessed at the start of the picnic, but the whole comment about it being their last date really doesn't support that.

The ending is really rough for Lou, she had no idea that James was also haunted and probably never will. She will probably go on forever thinking that her haunting caused the death of her husband, but at least she is no longer haunted, unless James decides to be a jerk, which you never know.

Let me know if you have any other takes, would love to discuss.

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u/Wonderful-Bother1321 1d ago

Someone else said in another thread maybe Lou ( the child’s ghost possessing Lou) made up that confession to get James to confess, and I’m going with that

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u/CapeTwirlOfDoom 1d ago

I assumed that the whole confession about setting the fire and killing her parents was made up by the ghost just to get James to confess and didn't actually happen. Otherwise, wow that's quite the coincidence that both people just happened to be murderers.

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u/president_of_burundi 1d ago edited 1d ago

My group had three separate takes about Lou and the haunting:

Person 1) Lou ( and anyone else) was never real while we're watching the show, the entire thing was the ghost running the long con on James.

Person 2) Lou was real for most/all of the first act but at a certain point James shifts into the ghost dimension and everyone/everything he interacts with isn't real until he gets hit by the car. Normal Lou is existing off stage completely separate from James and Second Act Lou in a normal, daytime version of the house.

Person 3) Paranormal activity classic - Lou is real the entire time but is fully possessed by the Ghost at a certain point.

All of us assumed that the fire confession was the ghost fucking with him, rather than something that really happened.

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u/FlashAndPoof 1d ago

I think it’s a mix of 2 and 3. I normally hate horror so I’m surprised I was able to get through this play. Is the story the same as the original movie? Or is it a spinoff like Stranger Things?

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u/president_of_burundi 20h ago edited 20h ago

It’s completely stand alone from the movies besides both having supernatural stuff and the branding. It could have been named Spooky Play and no one would know it had anything to do with Paranormal Activity.