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Kentucky Theatre
Lexington, Fayette County
For two years Jeff Waldridge, one of my GCI members, Chuck Starr, my husband, and I planned the future of ScareFest, a horror and paranormal convention to be held in Lexington, Kentucky. Since the historic Kentucky Theatre was going to show the movies that featured the ScareFest horror stars, we thought the theater would be a good place for the fans to have a ghost investigation.
I met with Fred Mills, the manager of the Kentucky Theatre, to talk to him about the history and hauntings of the theater. The theater was in pristine form the day I entered the ornate Italian Renaissance lobby. Its rich, golden colors and magnificent marble floor were stunning. I had never before seen such a luxurious movie theater. While talking with Fred, I learned that he had been with the theater since 1963. He told me that the theater opened in October 1922, with a special feature that made the Kentucky Theatre stand out from all the other theaters in Lexington: a house orchestra and a Wurlitzer symphonic organ that played before every movie. Could you imagine being seated in such a luxurious and elegant theater as the curtains opened to a musical overture played on the Wurlitzer organ? As you looked forward you saw lyrics flashed upon the huge white screen as everyone joined in to sing “My Old Kentucky Home” before the movie started. As they say, “Those were the good ol’ days.”
“Over the years the theater became one of the most popular places to go in the evening for entertainment,” Fred said, “since there were no cable TVs, VCRs, Internet, Netflix, and so on. Back in the 1970s we started to offer the midnight movies hosted by WKQQ radio. We called it the “Double Q Midnight Movies,” and it became a popular social event. Later we brought in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which became a cult movie with a huge following. Even today it still brings a good crowd.”
“In all the years that you have worked here have you had any experiences with ghosts?” I asked. Fred thought a moment and then said, “I have heard stories from some of the employees, and they seemed to think the theater is haunted. The most-often-talked-about experience among the staff is the apparition of a man sitting by himself in the lower seating area of the old theater. The ones who saw him said that he always sat in the number-two chair. One day, when one of the guys was telling this story, RT Baxter, the projectionist at the time, laughed and told us that he knew who the ghost was. He was a former projectionist who worked at the theater for many years. One evening he died of a heart attack while running a movie up in the projection room. RT told us that after this guy started the movie he would go down into the seating area and sit in seat number two to make sure the sound was good. He didn’t want anyone to complain about the sound being too loud or too low. After a few minutes he would get up and go back to the projection room. RT told everyone not to be afraid of him and to go on about their jobs.”
Fred agreed to allow our group to do an investigation after the midnight movie on Friday and Saturday night during our ScareFest event. I was planning on being the lead investigator, but as things became far too hectic for me at ScareFest, I asked Serena Gordon, a member of GCI, if she would take my position of lead investigator for this event. She agreed and reported back to me some amazing results from the investigation. Serena told me that they went upstairs into the projection room. She knew that back in the 1940s, the projectionist had died in this room. Previous employees had reported cold spots in the room and the feeling of being watched. Serena, a psychic/medium, felt a heaviness in her chest while walking around in the room. Even though she knew that someone had died in this room, she didn’t know he had died of a heart attack until later.
When the investigators started to leave the room, a man in the group stepped in front of Serena to open the door. As soon as the door swung open, both Serena and the man saw a full apparition, male, dressed in a tan jacket white shirt and black pants. The man holding the door slammed the door shut and jumped back, bumping into Serena. She asked him what he had seen. He didn’t respond to her question and she thought that maybe he was in shock. She asked him again and this time he said, “I think I saw a ghost.” She asked him to describe what he saw, and it was the same description that Serena gave me when she reported the sighting.
They opened the door again and there was no one there, so they proceeded down the stairs to go back into the old theater, a second, smaller auditorium that used to be the State Theater but is now incorporated into the Kentucky Theatre as one theater with two seating areas. Serena led the group down the aisle to the stage. Some of the theater employees had seen a male apparition walking across the stage while they were standing at the top of the aisle during clean up. The apparition was reported to be wearing a jacket and baseball cap. Of course, when the group went down to the stage to see who was there, they couldn’t find anyone else.
The group joined Serena on stage for an EVP session to see if she could get the ghost to respond to a question and capture it on her digital audio recorder. She started out with, “Who are you?” No response. She asked, “Did you die here?” Again, no response, but on the next question she asked, “Can you tell me the street where you lived?” A male voice coming through the recorder answered, “Tenth Street.”
Continuing the investigation, Serena led the group behind the stage where the lights were off. There was enough light coming from the door of the stage to walk around without bumping into each other. Serena asked, “Can you make a sound to let us know you are with us?” Just at that moment a piece of ceiling tile that was stacked on the floor lifted up and flew across to the other side of the room, startling everyone. When they examined the ceiling tile they could find no evidence to explain why it went flying across the room.
By 4:00 a.m. everyone was ready to call it quits, so Serena concluded the investigation. She contacted me later and gave me a full report on the evidence they had captured. I was thrilled to know that the investigation was successful in getting such good evidence of a haunting at the theater.
Over the years my name and business have become so synonymous with ghosts that I get a lot of requests to be featured for Halloween specials. When I got a call from Greg Stotelmyer, a reporter for ABC’s local affiliate channel 36 TV, I wasn’t surprised when he asked me if he could follow me on a ghost investigation for his show called, Kentucky’s Back Roads. The first place that came to mind was the historic Kentucky Theatre. It had good history, good ghost stories, and good ghost investigation results. I called Fred again and he agreed to allow the TV crew to film me doing a ghost investigation at the theater.
When Chuck and I arrived at the theater, we were joined by Fred and Greg with the film crew. Raymond Mitchell, the projectionist, and Bill McCray, the security guard, along with his wife, Sylvia, were also there to join us. Bill and Raymond had stayed late one night and had captured some strange anomalies and a couple of EVPs that Bill had burned to a CD to share with me. Since Raymond had been with the theater since 1962, I felt he could share even more ghostly experiences from the theater.
Once I had my microphone in place we were ready to start our investigation. We went down into the basement where Raymond led me into a small room that used to house the boiler. He said that many years before he joined the theater it was rumored that a man was murdered here. I was hoping to get some strong evidence that might reveal a ghost haunting this dark, secluded room. My meters were not accurate indicators of activity because the ceiling of this small room was lined with electrical wiring. The energy from the wires interfered with the meters and they beeped constantly, so I had to turn them off. When I used my infrared thermometer, I noticed a quick drop of twelve degrees. I turned on my audio recorder to see if I could pick up an EVP. During the session Bill turned to me and said, “The last time I was down here with my recorder I got a clear EVP.” I asked him what it said. Bill told me that it said, “Help me. He’s got me.”
We left the basement and went back upstairs to the auditorium. As we walked down the aisle to the stage, Raymond said, “The old projectionist used to come down and sit in chair number two at the beginning of the movie to make sure that the sound was perfect. Sometimes at night I have come into the auditorium and seen a human form sitting in the number-two chair. Then it will disappear. I believe it is the old projectionist still checking to make sure the sound is good.”
After hearing that story, I stood on stage myself and looked down at the seating area by the number-two chair. I said, “If the spirit of the projectionist is here and you would like to show yourself, could you create enough energy to appear in my photo?” Then I took a shot with my camera while pointing it in the direction of the chair. I was excited to see a perfect spirit orb stationed beside the number-two chair. This was a great shot for the TV camera man, and they used it in the show.
I wanted to go up into the projectionist’s room to see what we could get there. I pulled out the Ovilus to see what words might come through. I was surprised when it said “death” since this was the room where the projectionist had died. At that moment Raymond told Greg of an incident that had happened to him one night before closing. “I was getting ready to leave the projection room,” Raymond said “and when I went to open the door, a dark shadow was looking back at me. It reached for me and gave me a push. My first reaction was to slam the door shut.” “What did you do next?” Greg asked. Raymond said, “I threw the door open and slid down the banister without my feet touching a step. When I got to the bottom, I ran out of the theater.” Raymond’s story validated what Serena had told me about her experience with the same door. The ghost did not touch her, but she and the other ghosthunter had seen a full apparition when they opened the same door during their investigation.
Our last place to investigate was the balcony. We walked around and at one point my EMF meter started to beep. It was a slow and irregular beep, which is a good indication of spirit energy trying to come through. I asked if it was male and got a positive beep. I asked if it died there and got another positive beep. I continued with another question but noticed that the meter was not responding and the short session was over. I asked Chuck to stand in the area where I was picking up the EMF disturbance and took out my camera. I asked the spirit, if he was still with us, to please appear near Chuck’s left hand. When I get this specific, and then I actually get something in the area I asked for, I think this is good evidence that the spirit is communicating with me. Just as I snapped my camera, a spirit orb appeared over Chuck’s left hand as I had instructed it to do.
Our time was running out, and I figured this would be a perfect time to end our investigation. I was pleased with all the readings and data that I had collected during our investigation. Greg was also pleased and was sure that the investigation would make a super story for his TV show. The clip of us at the Kentucky Theatre can be viewed on www.youtube.com. In the search box enter “Ghastly Ghosts” and scroll down to find the video with Greg Stotelmyer.
The historic Kentucky Theatre is a grand old building that has survived a flood, fire, and changing times. In all these years it has continued to serve the community with popular movies, indie films, concerts, galas, and midnight shows. The historic Kentucky Theatre has become a beloved landmark to generations of people living in Lexington and is sure to carry on in its glorious tradition.
