First time posting on this subreddit (or, well, Reddit at all) but this really hasn’t sat right with me and I haven’t been able to get it all out yet. I thought somewhere like here would be able to reach people who might understand my apparently irrational fear.
I apologise preemptively for the long preface to come, there’s a good level of context I need to get through first from a personal standpoint; if only so that you can understand my thought process at the time.
So I’m the frontman for a band in York. We’re not particularly ‘big’ by any means, but we’re known and heard quite respectably throughout the city, with an admittedly small but committed following (outside of personal friends that sometimes find themselves able to our gigs). Most of said gigs have been at one particular venue who’ve seemed to taken a liking to us, so I’ve gotten used to the regular faces in the audience and - given how small and ambitious we are as a band - I’m always keen to see new faces.
Our most recent gig started with being asked to support one of my favourite local bands who are a lot more popular. Realising the level of notoriety we we performing under, I was ready to see a lot of new faces in the crowd waiting for them; not a deterrent to me at all, it’s a godsend to have a large and unfamiliar group to try impress. Given all this, seeing someone I hadn’t seen before was expected and not nearly unwelcome.
Here’s where I’ll properly get into the hangup. There was a man standing next to the sound tech who initially seemed off. Just.. off. Appearance-wise, there was nothing strange or eye-catching — mid-30s, Widow’s peak with curly black hair, t-shirt and slim jeans. He showed up right as our act began, and left the minute we closed up (before the headline band).
Anyone who’s performed music at small venues can understand that the stage lights are blinding; it’s near impossible to see the crowd clearly. Even so, you can barely make out the focused eyes of the front row whenever the moving spotlights dip away from you.
It’s an impossible feeling to properly describe, but there’s between people watching your performance, and people watching YOU; this was never even a thought to me before I felt how this man stared.
Every flicker of clarity from the moving lights revealed him to me, no change in pose or expression, staring blankly from across the bar. I stayed professional for the most part but I’d honestly never been shook so much by someone’s presence alone. His pint of beer didn’t even change in level.
After our set, I talked with our sound tech and eventually brought him up, assuming that he was an acquaintance of either himself or the venue. The man had disappeared. Our tech said he hadn’t realised anyone next to him during the set, and if they were known around the venue he would’ve recognised them.
Only then did I start trusting my own intuition. My mind, as adrenaline-ridden as it may have been, could still put the two pieces together; he wasn’t here to see the headline with every other unfamiliar person, and he wasn’t known by the venue.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen people show up for our shows who I’ve never seen before - as is show biz. The only difference is that there’s been some level of readable interest in either the performance and/or the music. There are people attracted by my theatric between-song banter, who laugh or cringe in accordance to my respectively theatric and cringy front-manning. There’s another specific crowd of listeners to the more expressive and technical music playing around me. I can tell easily who falls closer to which camp, and this man just gave… nothing. He was a ghost amongst them.
I’m aware that nothing described is scary or strange in the slightest, but there was something indescribably haunting about him. I lack the skill to properly convey it, but he gave a knowing look to me specifically. The type of look that a friend gives you in the street when they’re waiting for you to notice them.
Two of my band members brushed it off as me being too focused on people’s reactions to me (a fair point in most situations) but my bassist’s reaction, or their active refusal to react, is what’s kept me on edge still.
We have another gig tomorrow at the same venue so I’ll update if anything happens