As we enter the holiday season, you might have left spooky things behind unless you’re watching Tim Burton’s “Nightmare before Christmas,” but holiday traditions like the Charles Dickens’ classic tale of Scrooge includes ghosts of the past, present and future. “Paranormal Activity” is also about the past and the present. If the seasonal good cheer is so sweet your teeth hurt, this might serve as a welcome contrast because this ghost story doesn’t end with a big family feast, but rather a family fail.

Currently playing at the Ahmanson, this production which continues until 7 December 2025, is a co-production with the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Shakespeare Theatre Company and the American Conservatory Theater. You don’t have to have seen any of Paramount Pictures’ “Paranormal Activity” franchise films to understand it.  Lighting, set and sound designers, practitioners of magic and illusions and fans of a tale well-told won’t want to miss this.

Get to the theater on time and don’t  dally during the intermission. This particular play requires a lot of tricky lighting and the audience will be squinting to follow each detail to understand the story. You might not be let in because the lighting is key to much of the mystery.

If you’re familiar with the “Paranormal Activity” franchise, you’ll know someone is hiding something and at end it will be revealed. The first film in the series was released in 2007 and given a wider release in 2009 and focused on a young couple who feel their house is haunted. To document the paranormal activity, they set up cameras to document what is happening.

As audience members, we get to see most of what’s happening on Fly Davis’ two-level set. On the ground level, is the entry which leads to the kitchen and living room. A Stairway leads upstairs where above the kitchen is the couple’s bedroom. On the other side of the second level, above the living room, is the bathroom. In the middle of the second level, is the end of the stairs, but here we can only see a door. Behind that door, some of the mystery lies.

Directed by Felix Barrett and restaged by Levi Holloway, the couple has just moved to present-day London because of Lou’s troubled experiences (Cher Álvarez). She seems things. Lou asks her husband James (Patrick Heusinger), “How do you support me if you don’t believe me?”

Away from friends and family, James makes trans-Atlantic phone and video calls to his mother, Carolanne (Shannon Cochran). Carolanne seems a bit skeptical of Lou and Lou’s experiences. “In my day, the only solution for the blues was prayer.”  We learn that Lou wasn’t totally honest with James at first, but do we ever really know anyone? Lou and James bring in an “expert,” Ethylene Cotgrave but that won’t help them in the end.

Yet you’ll notice in the program that there’s a person in charge of illusions: Chris Fisher whose credits include “Back to the Future: The Musical” at the Wintergarden Theater, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” at the Lyric Theater and “The Illusionist” in Tokyo. Fisher was given a Special Tony Award in 2025 for Illusions and Technical Effects for “Stranger Things: The First Shadow.”

You might want to quibble with Levi Holloway’s script, but this play is really about perception and the possibility of things that can’t be explained and even vengeance and justice. For me, I was swept away by the total effect of the set, lighting, sound and video design that culminate in some wonderfully creepy illusions under Chris Fisher and director Felix Barrett.

This production is brought to us by special arrangement with Paramount Pictures and the independent theater and film production company Melting Pot. Just remember the tagline for the original film was ”

“Paranormal” is well-worth the price of a ticket. If you’re sitting in the cheap seats, you’ll probably want some binoculars or opera glasses. Keep your eyes open because some of the visual story telling moves so swiftly, you’ll question your own memory. For tickets and more information visit CenterTheatreGroup.org.