Way back when I was in college, a bunch of us would put on plays just for the fun of it. Any money we made, after expenses, would be donated to charity. We would secure the use of a gymnasium with a huge, almost fully equipped stage in a local parochial school. And we would construct the sets ourselves, along with borrowing furniture for props and such, and hit up the Good Will for stuff that could be transformed into costumes. One play we had a blast doing was Arsenic and Old Lace (I got to play the Boris Karloff character).
And we also did the stage play version of The Innocents. We researched the play (upon which the Deborah Kerr film was based) and it emphasized more the angle of is this really a haunting, or the imagination of the governess caused by her suppressed Victorian sexual frustrations? To that end, one had the option of casting the ghosts, or not casting them. We decided to go ahead and do it for the creep effect, but directed and blocked it so that they did not manifest unless the governess first noticed (or thought she noticed) them. In other words, they would not pop up behind her. She would react, and then they would become visible within the shadows or behind a window. That still allowed one to ponder whether they were real, or just the product of her imagination. Further, we wanted to capture the atmosphere of the film, so everything was done - sets and costumes - with color schemes of black, white, gray, and if any colors were used, they were very dark, such as a rusty red. Two high school kids, rather small for their age and very talented, played the two children. I got to play the ghost of Quint. Even though I had no lines, it was the most difficult part I ever did. I had to use facial expressions and body postures, mostly hidden in shadows or behind foggy glass, to emote menace, and well enough for the people in the very last row of folding chairs to see it. The whole experience was an absolute blast, and we did a very fine job of spooking the audience with our simplistic special effects (disembodied voices of the children echoing throughout the darkened gymnasium, taunting the governess by having the performers speak into a microphone off-stage in a stairwell; wind billowing out the drapes, done by some of us standing on the sides waving huge sheets of cardboard; etc.). When the horrific climax came, the governess holding the dead body of the boy, crying out in anguish: "Miles!", the lights fading to black and the curtains closing, the audience just sat there, stunned, unable to applaud until someone finally started to clap.
Oh, those were the fun days!
Gerard