Hagerstown Theater Believed Haunted

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Hagerstown Theater Believed Haunted
August 31, 2009
Claudia Coffey
myfox.com

NOTE: Article online includes video.

HAGERSTOWN, Md. - A Hagerstown Maryland theater has a show that's getting plenty of attention not for what you can see, but for what you can hear well after the final curtain call.

Theater employees believed it was haunted but now they say they have proof.
Paranormal investigators recently visited the theater and they found more than a few bumps in the night.

If the opera has a phantom then every theater should have a ghost
"I feel a presence. I feel like I am not alone," says Lea Ann Hudson the Maryland Theatre's production director.

She always believed there was spiritual presence here. She says there have been stories.
Like the cleaning lady hearing a voice in the balcony.
"She heard Sharon. She stopped working and looked around and there was nobody here," says Hudson.

Or a crew member seeing something in boiler room.

"We said Jason what's wrong? He said he saw something down there. It was kind of cloudy and transparent and had pink eyes."

In July those paranormal thoughts were validated. The Mason Dixon Paranormal Society contacted the theater about claims it had received that the theater was haunted. They wanted to investigate with video and audio equipment.

On the night of the ghost hunting, The Maryland Theater folks along with the paranormal investigators gathered here for 6 hours, in the dark, just waiting and watching for something to happen.

They didn't see anything but they heard several things caught on EVP-- or electronic voice phenomena, sounds not audible to humans.
In one recording in the boiler room, Mickey O' Brien was one of four men present when the recording picks up a woman's voice

"That's when we heard the lady or the child's voice says can I have pillow," says O'Brien.

In another recording also in the boiler room, the paranormal investigator asks do you like working here. A voice-- not in the room --whispers no.

The theater dates back to 1915 and has hosted countless performers and vaudeville acts. A fire in 1974 destroyed the front of the building killing one man. As far as anything else happening here, no one knows. Regardless, it's made a believer out of Mickey O'Brien.
"When I heard the results I had goose bumps," says O'Brien.

The Paranormal Society says the audio activity indicates that there is paranormal activity in the theater; possibly residual haunting which involve spirits trapped in time that repeat the same actions over and over. The investigators do plan to return for a follow-up.