West Virginia, Berkeley County

Martinsburg. The historic Apollo Civic Theater (ACT) at 128 East Martin Street, which opened in January 1914, is one of the many theaters with ghost stories attached. “No place is darker,” stage veterans often say, “than a dark theater.” When empty, theaters are vast, shadowy, echoing spaces full of trap doors, hidden passageways, and the looming relics of past productions; when occupied, they bustle with frenetic activity among high-strung people with active imaginations who are consciously channeling the work of long-dead colleagues. Accidents happen, stories are told, and the whole edifice, over generations, gets charged like a communal battery, through what Rosemary Ellen Guiley calls “the intense emotions generated night after night by both performers and audiences.” 

According to Guiley, the Apollo, again like many theaters, is believed to be haunted by a former manager: 

One of the ghosts is believed to be Charlie, a manager who worked there during the 1920s. Charlie was fond of cigars, and visitors and performers have smelled strong cigar aroma just before performances … . Charlie also has been seen outside the theater, wearing a fedora and a jacket with the collar pulled up. A resident of a nearby apartment once saw him on the street and assumed him to be an actor, but then he vanished before her eyes. 

Charlie is only one of the phenomena, however, according to a 2002 interview with ACT Board President Michael L. “Mike” Noll, who had his own 1975 ghost story to tell: 

Noll was alone in the theater one night when he saw shadows moving across the back balcony and heard footsteps creaking up and down the stairs. Spooked, he quickly closed the theater and left. 

Noll since has heard many corroborating accounts from others about ghostly activities, including reports of a man with facial hair wearing a brown-checked shirt and bib overalls; a woman in a long, white dress; a couple trying to strangle one another in the ballroom; a ghost backstage that pushed people from behind; and a mysterious phenomenon that caused an outbreak of hives. 

Costume-shop veterans reading this may know many non-supernatural causes for that “outbreak of hives.” The extensive history at the Apollo website (https://apollocivictheatre.org/front-page-features/about-the-apollo/) doesn’t mention ghosts, but the theater website offers overnights year-round via Martinsburg’s own Mid-Atlantic Paranormal Investigations group, https://callmapi.com/. These are especially popular each October, when the theater also offers a Haunted Theatre Maze and an interactive screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

Non-paranormal points of Apollo interest include: 

  • The husband-and-wife founders, Harry Peter Thorn and Mary Elizabeth Livers Thorn, launched the building project as a welcome distraction from grief over their 20-year-old first-born, Edgar, who died after gall-bladder surgery in 1913. 
  • A member of the original design team, Reginald Geare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Geare), killed himself five years after the fatal 1922 collapse of one of his later designs, the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C., a disaster that ended his career. A record two-day snowfall was the immediate cause, but a coroner’s jury blamed the 98 deaths in part on a faulty flat-roofed design, and Geare was indicted on manslaughter charges. He also designed the long-gone Strand Theatre in Cumberland, Maryland, 80 miles away. 
  • One of the many touring performers who graced the Apollo’s stage was violinist David Rubinoff, a.k.a. The Great Rubinoff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rubinoff), who became a Depression-era radio star via Eddie Cantor’s Chase and Sanborn Hour. “A news item in the local paper tells of Rubinoff arriving late in Martinsburg and having to sleep in the hotel lobby with his Stradivarius nestled under his arm.” 
  • “One of the Apollo’s most loyal patrons” in the old days was attorney P.O. Faulkner, namesake of a county park (https://www.mbcparks-rec.org/p-o-faulkner-park/). He “would leave his law offices every time there was a change in the movies and would come down to the Apollo and spend the afternoon.” 
  • The Apollo was a rehearsal space during the three-and-a-half weeks that the Patsy Cline period biopic Sweet Dreams, starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris, filmed here in 1984. Martinsburg stood in for Cline’s native Winchester, Virginia, 25 miles to the south, because “it looked more like Winchester did twenty years before.” The Apollo also was a filming location for the controversial 2003 Ted Turner movie Gods and Generals, in which it stands in for Ford’s Theatre. 
  • Every October, the Apollo sees the coronation of Queen Pomona, a highlight of the Mountain State Apple Harvest Festival. Pomona was the Roman fruit goddess. 

See Noll, Michael L. “About the Apollo.” https://apollocivictheatre.org/front-page-features/about-the-apollo/. See also Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Big Book of West Virginia Ghost Stories. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2014. Pages 42-43. Sweet Dreams info via the American Film Institute Catalog, https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/58382.