| “ | So let me tell you that she is tough as nails. She doesn't frighten easily. In fifty years of local theater she's seen too many crazy actors and elaborate productions to be troubled by nonsense. So when she told me she was frightened, I was worried, but now she's panicked and I'm frantic. | ” |
— Hans Mann, File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents, "Troublesome Ghost"
|
Old Lady Mann is a minor character who appears in File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents in the twelfth incident, "Troublesome Ghost."
Biography[]
Early Life[]
"Old Lady" Mann was married to her husband for thirty-seven years before his death, and they had two children, Hans Mann and a daughter who later joined the air force. The family lived in the Mann Mansion, with seventeen bedrooms and fish scale mosaics crafted by her husband, which she wanted to remain in her home until the day she no longer lived there.The family used to house visiting theater troupes when they came through town.
She ran the box office for the Stain'd Playhouse for fifty years, and saw "too many crazy actors and elaborate productions" to prevent her from being troubled by nonsense or scaring easily.
After the closure of the Playhouse, Old Lady Mann moved permanently into her mansion, while her son left town to work at a staple gun factory. Due to her age, she hardly ever left, and her legs ached; she spent her time reading, playing the harmonica, and maintaining the fish scale mosaics.[1]
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents[]
Troublesome Ghost/Train Wreck[]
Old Lady Mann awoke in the mansion to a loud noise coming from the East Wing. She put on her slippers and walked downstairs to see what the clanking and rattling was, but when she got there, the noise halted and nothing was amiss. She returned to her room, but was kept up all night by sinister muttering under the bed, and squeaks and scrapes with no discernible source. The next morning, she had tea in the tearoom, and returned to her room to find that the chest at the end of her bed had been opened, and the heavy blankets inside had been thrown around the room.
The same thing happened every night for a few weeks, no matter what room Old Lady Mann moved to. Finally, one night, she saw what she believed to be the ghost of her husband floating outside her bedroom window, on the fifth floor.
Afraid of the ghost stories his mother was telling him, Hans temporarily returned to town to convince his mother to move into a spare room in his apartment, while his staple gun factory agreed to let her work part-time in the Costumer Complaints Department. He stopped by Hungry's first, and told Jake Hix and Lemony Snicket about the situation.
Lemony took the group back to the mansion, where he revealed that Billy Becker had snuck into a laundry room and was using various theater props to simulate a haunting in an attempt to scare Old Lady Mann out of the mansion so he could live there, instead of a shack in the Anchovy District. Old Lady Mann took pity on her former coworker and agreed to let him stay in the East Wing. The two of them would perform old Playhouse musical songs together, with her on the harmonica and him singing.
Family[]
| Unnamed Father † | Old Lady Mann | ||||||||||||||||||
| Hans Mann | Sister | ||||||||||||||||||
Appearances[]
Gallery[]
