N e e d h a m   B o w l a w a y

There have been many strange unexplainable happenings at The Needham Bowlaway, so many in fact we thought we should share a few here. We do not know if these occurances are ghostly activity, however we don't know how else to explain them...

The Lock One of the first occurances was in the summer of 2000. We were considering putting in Cosmic Bowling. One of the arguments we kept hearing against it, was that Cosmic Bowling would ruin the traditions of the game. Many of the older patrons didn't like the idea of bowling in the dark to loud music and flashing lights. A lot of people found the concept very threatening to the sport. It was during one of these types of conversations about the new idea after hours that we noticed something strange. We were right at the part of the discussion where we were trying to figure out if Cosmic Bowling would drive away the older patrons of the Bowlaway, that we heard something making a rattling noise at the top of the front stairs....When we looked up to the doorway we saw the lock turning and rattling as though someone was on the other side of the door with a key turning it. The door is made of glass; we could see there was no one on the other side. And on that note one of the 3 employees in our discussion stated,"OK I have to go home now!" and looked a little freaked out! We decided to change the subject...maybe the thought of Cosmic Bowling upset the ghost of the old Bowlaway owner????

Smokey Lane 8 Since the spring of 2000, we have noticed on occasion a very strong smell of ciggarettes at the machine on lane 8. At first we thought maybe someone upstairs in one of the offices or office bathrooms was smoking, then we found out that the building is so old, that part of it actually extends below the sidewalk outside. Lane 8's machine is actually undernieth the sidewalk in the back of the building. After that when we smelled the smoke again we went outside at the back of the building to see if someone was smoking, there wasn't anyone in sight let alone anyone smoking. It was around that time that the old owner of the Bowlaway, Al Wallace, told us about the man who owned the Lanes before him, Jerry. Jerry had passed away in the 80's. According to Al, Jerry used to take ciggarette breaks above lane 8 rigt on the machine! After he told us this, we told him about how we had been smelling smoke down there and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. He looked at us in shock, His look spoke 1000 words that day.

helping hands Every now and then when we go to work on a bowling machine we find something like a belt that disintigrates as soon as we touch it, or a drive shaft completely severed in half, but for some reason, The machine was still working fine as though nothing was wrong with it. It shouldn't have been working at all, so why did it hold together for all that time? Maybe someone's giving us a helping hand?

Footsteps Since the spring of 2000 when Scott first took over the Bowlaway and to this day he has distinctly heard the footsteps of someone walking up and down the lanes. The sound of someone walking on the lanes is very distinct since they are a hard wood surface. He usually hears this after hours when all of the customers have left and The Bowlaway is empty. When he turns to look, there is no one there.

The Breathing When Liz first began repairing the bowling machines, and she was fixing them down back all alone, she would occasionally feel someone breathing on the back of her neck. When she would turn with a start, no one would be there at all. Perhaps someone was checking up on her work...

The Voice While the Bowlaway was having a machine overhaul in the the summer of 2003, one of the workmen, Mike, went into the men's room to wash his hands before his lunch break. While he was in there the other workmen who were sitting having their lunch could hear him talking out loud to somebody. They all thought it was really funny, they began joking that he was talking to himself. When he finally emerged, they asked him who he was talking to, he said,"you guys." They told him that they were all out there eating their lunch and none of them had been talking to him. Mike was in disbelief, he said, "but somebody was talking to me in there!" Again the workmen all disagreed, and said they had all been eating their lunch the whole time. Mike even went back into the bathroom to check if anyone was joking around and hiding in there, but there was no one. He insisted he was having a very clear conversation with someone about the work on the bowling machines, and began to wonder if he had been talking to a ghost. He said that day, "I can't believe this place is haunted! I'm never coming back here! No Way!" and he's never been back since.

Crawling Figure One evening Scott was staying late repairing one of the bowling machines so it would be ready for the next day of business, and he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. When he looked, he saw a glimpse of a figure crawling out from the bowling machine to the lanes. He was startled, and immediatly jumped down from the machine, and crawled out to the lanes himself, looking for the mysterious person. He was thinking it may have been a burgler or something. When he emerged from the machines he saw no one, he proceeded to check every corner of the Bowlaway, the Bathrooms, closets, behind doors, under counters. He was sure he saw someone. When he checked the front and back doors they were both locked up tight. To this day he can not understand or explain what he saw.

Bowling Cans? During the fall of 2006, Liz was cleaning up after a league had just finished bowling. After locking up the doors, she collected all of the soda cans from the score tables that the league had left behind and brought them up to the front counter. She had a large amount of cans scattered randomly around the front counter and picked up two full ones to empty out into the sink in the ladies room. When she returned from the ladies room she found all of the cans on the counter were evenly spaced and arranged into a trangle formation just like Bowling Pins! After noticing this and getting really freaked out, she checked the men's room and the closets just to make sure no one was hiding in there and playing a practical joke on her. There was no one to be found anywhere. After that she decided to finish her cleaning the next day and got out of there! Creepy!

Vanishing Ball On a busy Saturday in January 2007, one of our League bowlers brought his son in to bowl. They bowled a couple of games, but when it was time to go he discovered one of his personal bowling balls that he brought with him was missing. He came up to the front desk and informed Liz about his missing ball. Liz went down back to the bowling machines and looked everywhere. She checked in the pit of the machine, in the small spaces where a ball usually gets stuck, she checked the places where balls don't usually get stuck too. Then she checked up top where the pins are waiting to be set up. She checked the ball ramp where all of the balls have to roll down in order to return to the ball rack. No ball anywhere. She decided to check the other machines, figuring maybe someone had picked up his ball by accident and began bowling with it on another lane when it got stuck. No ball there either. Liz went back up to talk to the customer, to tell him she hadn't found his ball and that if it turned up later she'd give him a call. That's when Scott overheard what was going on, he decided to look too just in case Liz had missed anything. He searched everywhere that Liz searched, and found nothing. When Scott emerged from undernieth the machines the customer down the other end of the lanes yelled to him, "Thank you!" Scott walked up to him and said, "thank you for what?" and the man told him that just as he was crawling out of the machine, his ball came rolling up the ball return. Scott said, "that's strange, I didn't find anything down there, and as I came out of the machine, I was right next to the ball return and I didn't see or hear a ball go by me at all!"

Roll back ball? Starting in the fall of 2007, Some of the League bowlers began complaining about a ball on lane 1 rolling towards them from the pins. They complained that it would happen every so often but not every time they bowled. Scott was skeptical, thinking maybe they didn't notice a ball someone dropped on another lane or something like that, until one day he was bowling on Lane 1, and sure enough a ball came rolling right up the gutter towards him, and pretty fast too! The strange thing is, the ball return is located on the left-hand side of the lane, but the ball came rolling up the right-hand side of the lane, so it's not even as though it just fell off the ball run, and no one saw it roll across the lane from the ball run, it just sort of appeared in the right hand gutter! Maybe it's the ghost of a pinboy having fun with us? Who knows...I can't think of an explanation for it can you? (This is one of the most common occurances that customers are witness to here at the Bowlaway)