Raising the curtain on ghostly encounters at the Howard Theatre
The storied Howard Theatre downtown, with a planned reopening next year, comes with its share of ghostly tales, locals say.
Halloween is just around the corner, which only adds to the theater’s air of mystery. Here is one such spooky account: “In 2006, a solitary manager stalks down the aisles to make sure there are no teens stowing away in the seats of his movie theater before he locks the doors and heads home for the night. He passes his flashlight from side to side until he gets to the front row, then wheels around and trudges back towards the entrance. To his surprise, he sees a figure sitting in the corner seat of the nextto- last row.
“He hadn’t noticed him when he entered the theater to do his security sweep. It is an elderly man, dignified in appearance. The manager calls out to him but gets no response. The old man quietly rises and walks toward the door. The manager aims his flashlight in his direction. To his astonishment the figure disappears as the light hits him.” This is the little-known legend of the ghost of the Howard Theatre, 308 N. Main St.
The iconic, century-old movie house, dormant since the COVID-19 pandemic, has been rescued and could soon be ready for business again.
Purchased in January by Channing C. Kingery-Boles, who used a crowdfunding campaign to finance the project, the downtown mainstay is being refurbished with the goal of once again providing feature film entertainment for patrons.
“The legend says that a ghost haunts the movie house,” said Kingery-Boles, owner of The Taylor Soap Bar directly across the street from the Howard. “It is said to be the ghost of a janitor, named James, who worked here for many years and who is said to have loved his job. He used to clean the aisles and was said to have removed his shoes and socks after cleaning, and he would walk the aisles in his bare feet to make sure it was clean. The story goes that he was found dead in the building one morning and people believe that he haunts the theater to this day.”
While some might suspect Kingery-Boles is looking to “scare” up some publicity for her grand renovation, she doesn’t believe in the legend.
“I haven’t witnessed anything since I’ve taken over the theater. Neither has my partner, Clint Morgan,” she said. “I’ve learned about the legend, but I just haven’t seen or heard anything yet. I mean, there have been times when you hear something fall down, but this is a 100-year-old theater. Things are going to fall.”
Whether Kingery-Boles has experienced anything or not, there is no shortage of witnesses who report having very ghostly experiences in the theater.
One of them is Taylor native Terrence Scott, who began working at the movie house as a high school student in 2010 and stayed there, off and on, until 2020.
“When I was working there, I had several experiences where I clearly heard footsteps,” Scott said. “It almost always seemed to come from the upstairs area, specifically, the stairwell leading to the upstairs auditorium. When I started working there, we still had the 35 mm film. My routine was that I would go to the film room and work on the reels, spooling the film, testing it before showing the next day. I’d be there by myself, and I would always hear stuff.
“I remember one day I was there using a leaf blower to blast trash out from under the seats in the aisles, and I was wearing noise-canceling headphones. But even with that, I could still hear the thudding sounds, like footsteps coming from that area. It freaked me out so much that I sent out a group text asking fellow employees if there was anyone there with me. Nobody else was there working that night. I was alone,” he said.
Scott said he is not the only one to have had terrifying experiences at the Howard Theatre.
“There was a general manager who worked there a while back, and he claimed to have seen an apparition,” Scott said. “He described it as almost spectral in appearance. I have brought my girlfriends into the theater to watch movies, and I can remember one of them being very spooked by the general feeling she was getting there. She wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.”
He added, “The story that has been passed on by some of the older employees that worked there for a long time is that there was an older man named James, I think, who used to clean up the theater after hours. It was like something he did to keep busy, but he really loved the work. The story goes that he died during his shift either from a fall or a stroke or a heart attack … his body was found the next morning near those stairs.”
The death of the mysterious “Mr. James” was reported, but not verified, as having occurred in 1970.
Constructed in 1924 as the Rita Theatre during the era of silent films, the building was purchased in 1959 by the owners of the original Howard Theatre, located across the street, Howard and Augusta Bland. The new owners expanded the facility to add more than 100 seats.
In 2019, the online paranormal investigation group, Truly Haunted Inc., staged an overnight investigation of the site. Accompanied by former Mayor Brandt Rydell, the group managed to capture a disembodied voice recording.
After finishing their investigation, the team left a plaque at the theater certifying the Howard as “truly haunted.”
Kingery-Boles hopes to reopen the Howard Theatre in 2025. Restoration is a slow process but also a true labor of love, she said.
As to the prospect concerning the tales of the barefoot janitor’s ghost haunting the property, Kingery-Boles remains unafraid.
“I have yet to have an experience as some others have claimed to have,” she said. “I like to think that if the former janitor is haunting this building, he knows that we are taking care of it with love. Maybe that is why he hasn’t seen the need to appear to us.”
