Jay Mohr, the Comedy Store Ghostbuster
Illustration by Dennis Hyland.
Last Friday when comedians Jay Mohr and Louie Anderson were guests on SiriusXM’s Ron and Fez Show, Jay told a great story about the time he got a visit from the legendary “Comedy Store Ghost” while he was on stage, and how Louie helped him.
Jay and Louie used to do sets every Sunday night at the Comedy Store comedy club, and Jay had always heard that the club was haunted. Jay explained that when he performed, strange things would happen on stage like a cold feeling or a disconnect from the audience. “Every time I go onstage,” he said, “I would feel really cold on the right side of my neck and face.” Then one night, he had the sudden realization that he had been on stage for eight minutes, but nobody was laughing.
It was like I was literally looking at a portrait of an audience. Like they were frozen. I’m doing standup as this is going on in my mind and I go ‘Oh it’s haunted.’
But wait, it gets stranger. Jay went on to explain why he blamed a ghost for his audience’s lack of reaction. It occurred to him that the ghost couldn’t get to him for some reason, and so this ghost decided to go after the audience instead. But not the entire audience. “What they did was they picked the one weak link at a table, and they affected that person to not laugh,” he said. Basically, Mohr reasoned, the ghost found the alpha dog in the audience, knowing that if that one person froze and didn’t laugh, it would start a chain reaction that would stop everyone else from laughing.
Once Jay realized this he had enough and yelled, out loud, during his set, “fucking enough of this shit, get the fuck out of here ghost.” The audience reacted immediately, he said.
Crazy bizarre inappropriate laughter, like as if I had done my closing bit! All I said was, ‘get the fuck away from me ghost.’ It was like a valve had been released. And then I came back stage, and Louie goes, ‘you know what, it is haunted, but they like you – the ghosts’. And I go ‘really?’ And Louie goes, ‘they like you.’
And that’s how Louie Anderson made Jay Mohr feel safe from the Comedy Store ghost.
Jay Mohr is one of the funniest quickest performers in comedy today. Check him out at JayMohr.com, follow him on Twitter @JayMohr37, check out his podcast, Mohr Stories at fakemustache.com and listen to Jay Mohr Sports every week day on Fox Sports Radio . If you already do all that, go watch one of the 25+ movies he’s been in.
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