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It's koo. My friends make that face when I mention POTO.

Aah my rommate makes the face too ( stare ) especially when i play songs in different languages...and i can sing along

I actually first heard of Phantom when I was about...5 years old. My mom told me it as a bed-time story! Part of the story, the way my mom told me it, was that he used to hide under the theatre andplay haunting chords on his organ. At the time we had a electric piano in our 'now computer room' with a 'Pipe Organ' setting and I used to attempt to make phantom-like noises on it. Being five...that didn't really work.

Then 8 years later I invite my two friends over for a movie night and my one friend brings the King and I and the 2004 version of The Phantom of the Opera. I didn't remember anything from when I was five until after the movie so I said, 'Let's watch Phantom! I've never heard of it.' After we watch it I imediatly go on a hunt for the DVD as my friend taped it off of HBO and she missed the final lair scene! Once I had the DVD I watched it over again and imediatly fell in love with Erik. My heart went out to him.

I finally read the book and went to see the play. I loved them both! I of course bugged my friends so much about Phantom that one of my friends asked me, "Why the hell do you love Phantom of the Opera so much!?" And I couldn't answer. I found out later...as in around now...that Erik and I are much the same. We both don't have many friends, I don't live underground or wear a mask, but I am actually the most made-fun-of person in school and everyone thinks it's easy to make rumors about me so...that's my Phantom-Obsession/Life Story!

If you actually read this far I give you tons of praise for lsitening to my rant!

I got introduced to PotO when I was about oh I'd say somewhere between 8 and 10. I grew up in the sticks. Cable to us was the basic channels. We had five or six. Anyway back then there was a channel 44 all the way from San Francisco/Bay area and they had this thing on Fridays called Creature Feature. Well they would play those movies on Sundays too. I would come home from church and watch 44. Especially if we were snowed in...anywhoo they would play all black and white movies or radio serials in the morning and afternoon and movies at night....okay so this one Sunday is all horror films . That afternoon I saw Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf man, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Phantom, but a black and white version of it and a silent film at that...It creeped me out the music and the reading the cards..well not really creeped out but it stuck with me. It wasn't until I was a little older that I watched the 1930's version still black and white but not silent anymore..that one creeped me out...still it stuck there...The music did I loved the music ..the opening organ ...WOW it stirs my insides...anyways When I got married i actually caught a colorized version of the 1930's movie now updated to the 1940's (can you tell I love the silver screen and musicals yet?) anyway on a side note I kinda knew growing up that it was a Broadway hit but it didn't register the movie and the opera on Broadway's seemed back then to me anyway mutually exclusive that and maybe because I was obsessed with the Broadway hit Cats. I cried when it was closed. Anyway I was disappointed with the colorized version I don't know something was lost to me after I saw it and when ever it came on cable my hubby knowing my obessesion would ask me if I wanted to watch it I'd say is it black and white or color? he'd say color and I'd say NO! and that ended conversations...so when the movie came out and yes i have the dvd...I was like okay I'll see it but, I won't like it because having seen the 20's and 30's versions they were the only true versions for me....Well what a shock I was in for...I like the movie for it's artistic and musical value and appreciate it as such....how ever I have to say that it deviated not only from the bradway opera but also from the Leroux book and the actual true story. It was after the movie that I went online and actually researched my obsession why is it that it affects me so....So I have to say that i am into the macabre..the more macabre the better...enter my obsessions with Jack the Ripper. True life inventing fiction TADA there was the key and the fact that it took place in Victorian Paris near near the turn of the century...I love Sherlock Holmes and there is something about the Victorians they were sooo macabre...well that did it i was a phan from then on....Soo now the Broadway show is in town and I have convinced hubby to take the family I just have to save the money for the tickets..It plays in my area from May 21st to June 14th so hopefully I get to go... sorry so long but that is the story of my obsession that has now sparked an obsession in my daughter. She's 16 and is into PotO.

My Grandpa gave the movie to my sister for her birthday. I watched it, LOVED IT. Read the book, put the original broadway cast's soundtrack on my Ipod, and am intent on getting Susan Kay's novel and a mask.

My sister watched it and hated it. Go figure.

I started out by hating it.

When I was around four years old, my mother got the musical soundtrack and the book about the musical. She started playing it all the time and extremely loud. I hated it because of the places where they screamed, and then my mom showed me a picture of what he looked like under the mask. That terrified me, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Years later (age 12 or so) we had a substitute in band class, and she made us watch a movie that the teacher had apparently left behind. I couldn't hear it very well because of how loudly everyone was talking, but I recognized it as being like that musical that my mom always listened to when I was little. I wondered if it had really been as good as she'd made it out to be, and so I discretely stole her copy of the soundtrack.

That's where it started. I've read the original and a few other Phantom novels (with varying degrees of enjoyment or dislike) and seen both the Lon Chaney version and the more recent movie version. I also dressed as Erik one year for Halloween and scared the crap out of a few people because I used make-up to really make myself lok deformed under the mask.