Actor couldn’t understand why computer didn’t work when the curtain came down

When tech support collides with Halloween, the results are scary

On Call Happy Halloween, dear reader! The Register wishes you a wonderfully scary day. To kick things off, we’ve twisted On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column about keeping computers alive despite the best efforts of zombie coworkers and demonic bosses, to bring tales of times tech support turned spooky.

Our first story comes from a reader we’ll Regomize as “Vlad,” who told us that he once worked on the audio-visual team at a large theme park.

“Every year we had a Halloween event that involved opening temporary attractions that featured a lot of special effects run by actors,” he told On Call, before explaining that “For us in the AV world, the term ‘Performer’ or ‘Actor’ conjures the same emotions our brothers in arms in IT think about when they hear ‘End User’.”

One Halloween, Vlad got the job of supporting one of these attractions, which was made up of a series of themed rooms with connecting corridors.

Actors in each room put on a little Halloween-themed performance, and guests were expected to move from room to room in sequence to experience the full horror of the attraction.

As guests left each room, the actors were supposed to use a small touch screen – powered by a Raspberry Pi – to reset the special effects for the next set of victims.

“One day, a few hours into operation, I received a frantic radio call from the actors saying the touchscreen in the final room wasn't working,” Vlad told On Call. “I abandoned my cup of tea and sprinted to the room, hoping to find a dislodged power or HDMI cable for an easy fix so that I wouldn't have to close the attraction for remedial work.”

When he arrived, he looked at the touch screen “and burst out laughing.”

“We mounted this touchscreen rather conspicuously, and the issue turned out to be the piece of blackout cloth draped over it to conceal its presence did its job so well, it completely blocked the glow from the screen,” Vlad told On Call. “The actor therefore thought the screen was dead."

“In fairness to them, it was a dark room, but it doesn't take away from the fact this actor had already done several shows in the room,” Vlad wrote.

The mainframe connected to God

A reader we’ll Regomize as “Victor” sent us another spooky story.

“I was responsible for the computers of a business school that had just started offering computer courses the previous year,” he told On Call.

Just before Halloween, some slightly embarrassed students showed him some core dumps – printed records of whatever was in the mainframe’s memory when it crashed – and wanted to know why passages from the Bible appeared among the code.

Victor interrogated the students and learned that this problem had manifested before – almost always on Mondays. The students knew their theory was silly, but couldn’t help but wonder if the holy spirit was entering the mainframe on Sundays, leading to Bible passages appearing in memory come Monday.

Victor asked some of the school’s teachers if they knew who used the machine on weekends, and one of them admitted that they were using the mainframe to make a database of Bible scriptures.

Mainframe memory of this era was non-volatile, so some of the database remained in memory by the time the students started using the machine on Monday.

“As different people ran their programs over the week, more and more of the scriptures would be overwritten until nothing remained … only to come back the next Monday,” Victor explained.

Fear the reaper

Our last story comes from a reader we’ll Regomize as “Hannibal”, who once worked for a small semiconductor company that encouraged staff to dress up for Halloween.

“On went my classic grim reaper costume with a very large fake scythe and veiled face covering,” he told On Call, and said he enjoyed watching his coworkers react when he approached and foretold their demise.

“Finally, one of them became so discombobulated that they demanded I take off the veil so they could see who I was,” he wrote.

“Little did they know I had been waiting all day for that request as I was wearing a Dick Cheney mask underneath for the full scare!”

This story took place not long after Cheney, then vice-president of the USA, accidentally shot a friend.

“I was allowed to go about my business undisturbed the rest of the day,” Hannibal told On Call.

Big holidays are on the horizon – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve are all frighteningly close – and On Call would love to know if you’ve ever been called out to fix things at these supposedly relaxing times of year. Share your stories of ruined holidays by clicking here to send On Call a festive missive so we can use it to keep The Register fun during the slow news days to come. ®