Sexy Ghosts & NDAs

...because I promised y'all some tea

Once in a blue moon, you’ll end up catering for a major celebrity. So major that you have to sign a NDA. The way I came to cater for said A-lister was that I happened to be catering a film on location at their remote vacation property. Their personal assistant was there checking up on things and preparing for an upcoming event when they saw I had a special skill: the ability to feed a large group of people in the middle of nowhere.

Most of the films I’ve catered have been shot on location in some degree of middle-of-nowhere-ness. That’s kind of my deal. It never made much sense to hire someone like me to cater in LA proper with a multitude of options, catering trucks, and crew going to their own homes at the end of every day. I’m the destination-shoot caterer. Give me a budget and I will find all the grocery stores, the health food store, the local butcher, and a few hidden gems to work into the mix. It’s what I do!

The assistant saw the scope of the meals I was making for a crew of 50 (my personal nightmare scenario), and she contracted me to come back a week after production wrapped to cater a private event. It was incredibly surreal the way it all went down, but it did come to fruition. I took this photo to commemorate the first meal I cooked for the celeb: pork loin two ways (bacon-maple glazed & rosemary-garlic), mashed cauliflower, simple arugula salad with lemon and parm, sautéed zucchini & summer squash with dill.

When the celeb walked into the kitchen, he said, “You must be the famous Lydia!” To which I replied, “And you must be the famous [redacted]!” We hit it off, and it was smooth sailing from there, despite me being quite nervous because how in the hell was I in this celeb’s kitchen cooking meals for him?!

We got to be friendly, and he especially took a liking to my beautiful friend, Jessica, whom I had brought along as my second. He would chat us up and invited us to hang out (lite) after our work was done. Pretty early on in our getting-to-know-you small talk, we shared with him a theory that a ghost lived on his property. Not just any ghost—a sexy ghost. What is a sexy ghost? Well, let me backtrack a bit.

One of the reasons destination film shoots work so well, and one reason they necessitate hiring someone like me to feed everyone, is that you’re in a remote area where the entire cast and crew are working and living either on set or close by. In this instance, a ton of the crew was staying in an old hunting lodge on the property. It had modern amenities and, most importantly, ample beds with a large, open kitchen. There was that one time when we lost power from a flash thunderstorm (summer in the South!), tried to cook in the dark with no running water, and ended up driving to the closest Wendy’s 45 minutes away to literally buy them out of all their burgers and frosties in a last ditch effort to appease the hot, wet, and starving cast and crew. I never said catering was glamorous! Save for a few incidents, it was a dream location.

Naturally, when you go out of town for a month-long shoot with a crew comprised of mostly folks in their 20s & 30s, there’s gonna be some day-off shenanigans. But never have I ever seen it like this. By the end of that month, a few of us were certain that there must be a playful, trickster of a ghost inhabiting the lodge who was informing some of these sexual escapades. I mean, the debauchery was next level. I saw people hooking up with one another, multiple love triangles, and more than a few folks cheating on their partners back home. This sexy ghost had an insatiable appetite. I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since.

When Jessica and I returned to cater for the celeb, we spent our first night in the same lodge before we moved to a nearby bed & breakfast. We slept in bunk beds in the corner room overlooking the scenic, albeit haunted, island. It was strange to be back in the lodge, and nerves of the pending task at hand made it difficult to sleep. Halfway through the night, I awakened with a strange and specific feeling that was hard to place until I placed it: I was being spooned by the sexy ghost.

I felt a chill come over me, and it was almost as if I were paralyzed; at the same time, I wasn’t afraid. It was a bit out of body, but I somehow knew it was the sexy ghost. I remember pushing it away, rolling over, and refusing to let it spoon me. I may have even told it “no,” either aloud or in my mind; it’s hard to be certain, but I do recall the feeling of physically having to shrug it off. The next morning, I told Jessica what had happened—imagine my surprise when she said she’d had the same experience! I’m telling y’all, this ghost was thirsty and going from bunk to bunk looking for its little spoon.

So the celeb was chatting us up, asking how the shoot went. Small talk, getting to know us vibes. We didn’t hold back; it was time to tell him that a sexy ghost inhabited his property. He was genuinely fascinated and wanted all the details, so we told him about all the hook-ups from the shoot and the midnight spooning we had both experienced as recent as the night before. The look on his face was priceless, and Jessica and I both stand by the sexy ghost theory to this day.

We made it through the week-long gig of catering for this celeb unscathed and unbothered by the ghost (thankfully, we only had to spend one night in the lodge). The celeb was truly a kind person, and we took away so many wild memories, the kind of stuff you can’t make up. Legally, I can’t talk about it, but I can share this photo that the A-list celeb took of me, Jessica, and a favorite local chef. This was our A-game evening lewk.

And now for our F-game morning lewk, having survived half a summer catering in the swampiest heat of Southern bumfuck, waking before dawn most days to work and partying well into the night because, after all, YOLO on a haunted island with celebs and sexy ghosts. All I can say is we survived—barely!