Julian Browning was an usher at the Universal Palace Theater, a popular movie house that had been converted from a playhouse during the 1920s. Browning truly enjoyed working at the theater and loved the movies, especially horror movies, becoming something of an expert. However, Browning was also very strict about enforcing the rules, and hated rude patrons who disrupted the movie experienced for others. During a 1940 re-release of his all-time favorite horror film, The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney Senior, Browning engaged in a scuffle with a rude theatergoer. During the fight, Browning's flashlight was seized by the boorish patron who tossed it through the new screen, tearing it. As the furious usher went backstage to retrieve it, he was somehow entangled in one of the old playhouse's sandbag's ropes, causing him to die a slow, painful death of strangulation with his feet mere inches above the floor. It is also revealed that this was the first horrible event of many in the theater's history, meaning that either the Universal Palace itself is evil, or Julian's "revenge" has been to destroy other rule breaking patrons with classic movie monsters (almost in the same way the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera would do by causing incidents in the opera house).