Maybe there are ghosts messing around with...

Maybe there are ghosts messing around with things inside the Bitter Truth Theatre. Something has mucked up the works of Gene Franklin Smith’s “Life Beneath the Roses,” and whatever the cause, the results are about as silly as a haunted-house play can get.

Smith explains in a program note that a visit to a supposedly haunted Cape Cod house inspired his play, which offers us two choices: There may be the ghost of an 18th century woman who murdered her little boy haunting the place, or late-20th century parents, Catherine (Tammy Kaitz) and Peter (Eric Zivot), are imagining things out of, well, guilt.

The latter explanation, though, is flimsy stuff, because the “guilt” stems from busy architect Peter not spending enough quality time with son Josh (George Gonzales, alternating with Brandon Kaplan). Peter could improve his parenting skills, but he means well, and doesn’t deserve the treatment he gets from the haunted house.

So much time, in fact, is spent ineptly establishing this psychological back story that the ghost stuff is a sideshow until extremely late in the play. Smith is really going after an “X-Files” formula, in which skeptics and believers can both have some ground to stand on. But his labor gets in the way of good, fun thrills, as if theater is above all that.

With a curiously skittish and sloppy cast--still flubbing lines after a few weeks’ run of the show--director Hope Alexander-Willis fails to cook up even one frightening moment, despite a lot of wide-eyed looks from Wendy Axelrod as the ghost.

* “Life Beneath the Roses” at Bitter Truth Theatre, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 7 p.m. Sun. Ends March 30. (818) 755-7900.