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A terrifying and strange incident occurred at Lennox AMC 24 on Sunday should have moviegoers double-checking the floors.

In what is nearly a horror-movie scenario, the three women were there watching a matinee in a nearly empty theater when they felt something move underneath their row of seats.

A man.

A man who’d had been there for at least 90 minutes. When they screamed, he claimed he was looking for a missing cell, and vanished.

This is not the first incident, shockingly. AMC Lennox called the police but did not file an official report.

As far as the women know, the motive for man underneath the seats is unclear.

“We were very creeped out. You kind of feel vulnerable or violated. Either he was stealing or waiting for someone to put their purse on the ground and he could take their credit cards or their wallets.” said Berkes to FOX28.

Berkes offered some advice to other women at the theater, to keep their purses on their laps and to always check under the seats.

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quote: Frank Cox

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I'm wondering how this guy got under the seats in the first place? Standard theatre seats have side pieces that go right to the floor. There's no place under the seat to be; anyone under the seat would be laying in/stretched across the aisle of the next row back, clearly visible and likely to get stepped on or tripped over.

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I was wondering the same thing.

There is no way to get "under" the seats in a stadium style theater and the stanchions would prevent a person from crawling directly under the seats in a standard theater. The only way I can think of would be to crawl on hands and knees in the row directly behind in a standard theater.

If there was anybody else in the theater except the victims and the perpetrator, it's probably a sure thing that a person would get noticed. The perpetrator would have to be very sneaky, indeed, to avoid detection.

Bottom line is that I don't think we're getting the whole story. Something else must have been happening that didn't get reported. But, then, again... that's what most mainstream news agencies are all about... NOT telling the whole story, only covering the most dramatic and superficial parts of the story.

Anything to make a buck while doing the least amount of work possible.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 08-09-2016, 04:03 PM:
 
There is a guy who is locally known as "worm" by theatre managers who basically does this--crawls along the floor in movie theatres to steal ladies' purses and such. He is banned from entering most theatres, and pretty much every theatre manager knows him or knows of him. (I have not seen him, personally.)
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-09-2016, 06:40 PM:
 
Maybe the guy was in the row behind the ladies. (Do we know for sure it is a stadium auditorium?)
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 08-09-2016, 06:46 PM:
 
I don't know how common it is, some theatres have seats mounted on the face of the stadium step, rather than on the floor. We've talked about doing this when we convert our theatres to stadium at some yet to be determined date in the future.
 

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Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 08-09-2016, 07:30 PM:
 
That's how all the AMC Theatres near me are set-up, the seats attached to the concrete at the rear. My understanding is that it facilitates clean-up when no part of the seat touches the floor, easier to sweep.

The AMC Empire 25 near Times Square has this kind of stuff going on all the time, sleepers and vagrants hanging out, not to mention the occasional bedbug infestation. The place is filthy as well. When it first opened I was in it all the time, especially because they had strong alternative programming on a few of their screens. Now you couldn't get me in it at gunpoint.
 

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 08-11-2016, 07:40 PM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

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At a midnight show once, we had a guy fold up four armrests and stretch out across five seats and conk out for a snooze. Lucky I did a walkaround after the movie or I'd have never seen

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