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The Ghostly Shadow
Kathryn Keats awoke in a panic, convinced she'd heard the curtains in front of her bedroom's French doors swaying. In the dim glow from a bathroom night-light, she made out a ghostly shadow on the wall and froze, terrified. The suburban wife and mother had spent much of her adult life eluding a man bent on killing her, and now she was certain he had finally found her. I am going to die, she thought.The figure lunged toward her. But instead of the assault of a murderous stalker, Keats, 43, felt her seven-year-old son wrapping his arms around her. Frightened by a bad dream, he'd come to his parents' room for comfort. "All I could think was, If I'd had a gun, I would have shot him," Keats says today. "No one could understand how scared I was."
No one could understand because not even her closest friends knew that Keats's true name was Ellen Christian Munger, and that for 21 years, she'd been in hiding from a man who had worked with her, loved her and ultimately become bent on destroying her.
Munger grew up in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest of three and "the star" of the family. By her late teens, she was an accomplished singer and musician who had performed at the Grand Ole Opry. In 1978, at age 18, she moved to New York to pursue a career in theater and was soon called to audition for the successful off-Broadway show Let My People Come.
At the audition, she watched a man play the piano with impressive virtuosity. He was Ken Ford, the show's 32-year-old musical director, a compelling presence with long black hair and piercing green eyes. "I thought he was not only beautiful," Munger recalls, "but also the most mysterious and talented person I had ever met." That day, the two began a musical collaboration that would continue for years.
Munger joined the show's Philadelphia company, and soon she and Ford were living together. Raised in Philadelphia, Ford had served in Vietnam and, upon his return in the early 1970s, had immersed himself in the world of musical theater, composing and writing shows that gained little notice until a producer brought him in to direct Let My People Come. When Ford and Munger weren't working on the production, which played to packed houses in both New York and Philadelphia, they successfully teamed up on other musical compositions and performed at cabarets.
But in the couple's second year together, Munger noticed a troubling shift in Ford's personality. He was distracted and moody and increasingly seemed to mutter to himself. Back in their apartment one rainy night after the show, Ford hurled Munger against a wall, shouting that he didn't like the way other male cast members were looking at her. He then grabbed her by the shoulders and repeatedly slammed her head against the wall. Breaking free, Munger tried to calm him, but he cornered her and threw her to the floor. She felt him rip off her jeans, and the man who had been her partner, confidant and lover brutally raped her.
When it was over, Munger retreated to the bedroom, where she spent the night huddled in a corner trying to make sense of what had happened, while Ford paced in the living room. When morning finally arrived, Ford went to her and begged forgiveness. "You're the only one I love, the only one who can help me," he said. "This will never happen again."
"I was young and in love," she says, "and I believed him."
The pair continued to tour with the show and enjoyed weeks of tenderness and creativity together. But Ford eventually admitted to Munger that he was hearing voices whispering stories about her and other men, and outlining elaborate conspiracies being set to trap him. When the voices came, episodes of beatings and sexual abuse followed.
"I didn't know anything about mental illness," says Munger. "I did know that you're supposed to take care of people you love, so when the voices came, I tried to calm Ken by taking him on long walks and talking. Sometimes it worked. We'd start working on a song. As long as we had the sanity of our work, I could stay."
Munger covered her bruises with makeup and long sleeves and told no one about her plight. In 1981, Ford finally saw a psychiatrist, who prescribed medication for schizophrenia, and for a while, the pills seemed to work. Then Ford stopped taking them.
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