Georgia’s theatrical haunts

Where ‘stage presence’ means more than drama

BY KATHY WITT

While the Phantom is busy rattling chains at the Opera, more spirits than you can shake a divining rod at are haunting Georgia’s theaters.

The story of a Confederate soldier peering through the windows at the Fox Theatre (www.foxtheatre.org) in Atlanta is legendary. At the HiFi Buys Amphitheatre (www.atlanta.net) in Atlanta, the spirit of a musician, shot onstage in 2002, haunts the seating area—and quite a few audience members have purportedly felt his hands on their necks. The ghost of an actor named Joe bedevils the balcony and backstage at the Crystal Pistol Music Hall at Six Flags Over Georgia (www.sixflags.com/overGeorgia/index.aspx) in Austell.

Of course, these spectral sightings pale in comparison to the spooky goings-on at the New American Shakespeare Tavern (www.shakespearetavern.com) in Atlanta where an entire cast of mostly benign beings can be seen (and heard).

According to Jeanette Meierhofer, marketing manager and night box office manager, during a 1990s production of “Henry IV Part I,” actor Tony Brown playing Falstaff burst onto stage left, shaken at the appearance of a boy garbed in a Victorian-era velvet suit standing beside his dressing table.

Other actors have seen drifting images and odd lights, and heard voices when the theater was supposedly deserted. A room at the top of the building, where the ghost of an old man has been spotted, feels clammy. A female presence upsets things in the women’s dressing room and once, according to legend, warned an actor of a fire, and a shadowy figure has been spotted on the catwalk.

“Because theaters attract large and distinguished crowds, they’ve often been sites for tragedies,” says Beth Dedrick, founder of the Georgia Paranormal Society (www.georgiaparanormalsociety.com) in Thomson. The group has investigated more than a dozen locations in Georgia, including the old Thomson Theatre in McDuffie County.

“The theater is well known for its mischievous ghost named Boo,” she says. “We were asked to investigate it and, upon our review of evidence, we came across startling evidence of electronic voice phenomenon—or, voices from beyond the grave.”

It seems fitting that one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, would have haunted theaters, three right in its historic downtown: the restored Lucas Theatre (www.scad.edu/venues/lucas), the historic Savannah Theatre (www.savannahtheatre.com)—the nation’s oldest continually operating theater—and York Lane Theatre, which was built above an old cemetery. According to Jean Soderlind, who co-owns Ghost Talk Ghost Walk (www.savannahgeorgia.com/ghosttalk) with daughter Wendy Moynihan, strange noises, cold spots, apparitions and a host of ghostly activity have been experienced, investigated, verified and included on several of the city’s ghost tours.

There are so many ghosts at the Holly Theatre Community Center (www.hollytheatre.com) in Dahlonega that author Amy Blackmarr described the spectral crowd as standing-room-only in her 2006 book “Dahlonega Haunts.” The former movie house, on the National Register of Historic Places, has kept its resident company of ghosts even in the midst of a recent refurbishment that included the installation of high-back seats, a renovated balcony, relocated restroom, and an expanded and redesigned lobby that sports Art Deco verve.

Now that the dust has settled, Executive Director Colleen Green expects more activity from the spirited inhabitants along the lines of lights going off and on and things going bump backstage.

Green recalls one eerie episode: “During a rehearsal for ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ an actress and I were standing onstage when we looked up at the same time to see who was standing in the back of the theater. There was no one there—but both of us saw someone standing between the rows of seats.”

The Springer Opera House in Columbus (www.springeroperahouse.org), a National Historic Landmark that was featured several years ago on The Travel Channel in a segment called “The World’s Top 10 Ghostly Destinations,” is rife with spirits. A beloved actor named Art Lane, an assistant to the theater’s costume designers, is a presence described as a “milky mist” who hangs out near the catwalk, and another known as Mocking Man are just a few of the ghosts described by Paul Pierce in his 2003 book, “The Springer Ghost Book.”

Pierce, producing director at the Springer, wrote this about his first impression of the theater: “I could not see the ghosts. But I could smell them. Taste them. Feel them.” He calls the opera house an “elegant warehouse for generations of ambitions, passions, heartbreaks, jealousies, dreams and dastardly plots gone awry.”

Says Marketing Director Scooter MacMillan, “Whenever I’m in the theater alone, day or night, there are noises that can’t be explained. People always ask if it’s scary, but we’ve just come to accept the fact that there are ghosts here. No one who’s had an encounter has felt menaced; these are friendly spirits.”

“As an actor, if you had a successful run, a wonderful experience with the audience, the theater is where you want to come back to, to relive it, over and over,” says Soderlind. She believes that ghosts—particularly Savannah spirits—are a friendly lot.

“Savannah doesn’t have many malevolent ghosts. We are a gentle, Southern city, and our ghosts are that way, too. Like the people, our ghosts have good manners.”

—Kathy Witt is an award-winning travel writer from Kentucky.