Haunted Theaters: The Ghostly Hand That Closes the Curtain

Behind every door, behind every red curtain, there is a secret. Sometimes it is a secret of hidden romance, but sometimes it is a darker secret...a secret of death.

In the United States today, there are thousands of theaters with actors and actresses that have given their entire lives to the stage and to the art of drama...but sometimes their passions and obsessions end fatally. Some of those poor lost souls are stuck in the very place where they felt most alive, in the theater.

The Tampa Theater was built in 1926 in the heart of Tampa, Florida. It is to this day one of the city's pride and joy historic landmarks. But there is more than one ghost that lurks behind the projector and sometimes behind the red stage curtain. Ghosts that have been haunting the Tampa Theater for years...probably decades.

The most notorious and locally well-known of the haunted tales of Tampa Theater is the story of the dedicated projectionist. A man named Foster Finley, who most knew as "Fink", worked at the Tampa Theater as the projectionist for thirty five years. He passed in the year of 1965, due to heart complications and since then...people have seen and heard some very eerie things in the Tampa Theater that they connect to "Fink". Personal items of employees will go missing and then return after asking "Fink" for help. "Pranks" are pulled, as far as running water being turned on and off with no one in the room, and also doors being open and closed randomly. Directly following Fink's death in 1965, clients of the Tampa Theater reported seeing a ghostly figure cross or dart in front of the screen on different occasions. Sounds of keys jingling and the projector rolling when no one is in the building have also been witnessed by different employees throughout the years. Could Fink's soul be dedicated to his job as projectionist, even in death?

In addition to Fink's ghost at the Tampa Theater, it is also thought that a woman in white haunts the second level of the theater, forever fated to wait for her fiance. The story of this ghostly woman in white is believed to have started before the Tampa Theater was even established. It is speculated (and has been noted by psychics) that the woman died in the dirt road many years before the opening of the theater. Apparently she is waiting for her fiance to return to her, though he never will.

Other ghosts and ghostly experiences occur at the Tampa Theater almost every year, but the Tampa Theater is still one of Tampa's crown jewels and probably always will be...despite the spooky hauntings.

The Amargosa Opera House's building has been standing in the Death Valley since the 1920's, but was made into the Amargosa Opera House & Hotel in the 1960's by an artistic woman by the name of Martha Becket. Martha loved the building upon first glance and decided to buy it and make it into her home and place of innate artistic expression. A place where she could entertain and also be free to express herself through her art - both paintings and performance art.

The Amargosa Opera House & Hotel have been featured on many paranormal investigation shows, including Ghost Adventures. You can watch that video to the right.

Martha Becket has painted murals throughout the hotel and opera house, including a whole painted audience in the opera house. The murals are beautiful and serene, and yet sometimes bone-chillingly creepy and too life-like. The employees at Amargosa Opera House and Hotel confirm the questions from visitors and ghost hunters that the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel are indeed haunted.

The most eerie spot on the Amargosa Opera House & Hotel property is known as "spooky hollow" and is an old area where miners were hospitalized during the Pacific Borax days. It has also been reported that a little girl had drowned in that building, though the actual date is unknown. People have seen apparitions in this part of the Amargosa Hotel and hear noises at all hours of the night emanating from the empty hallways and rooms.

The Amargosa Opera House is said to be just as haunted as the rest of the hotel. The audience mural seems to "wake up" to those who have been on stage alone on some nights, spooky disembodied voices and ghosts have been sighted in the Amargosa Opera House on many occasions.

The Amargosa Opera House & Hotel is said to be one of the most haunted hotels in the United States today. Is it the miners' souls who are haunting the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel? Or is it something darker altogether?

Ford's Theater is located in Washington DC and has been there since the 1800's, since before President Abraham Lincoln led our country out of a Civil War and into a new era of freedom. In fact, Ford's Theater is the location where President Abraham Lincoln was shot, in an attempt to assassinate him...that later proved successful.

John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in the back of the head, while Lincoln and his wife were sitting on a balcony, enjoying a performance. After John Wilkes Booth had shot President Lincoln, it is said that he jumped from the balcony and made his getaway. To this day, visitors and employees at Ford's Theater experience strange sounds, some even sounding like gun shots and loud thumps (as if John Wilkes Booth is shooting Lincoln again and then jumping, just as he did that day). Cold spots are felt and other disembodied voices can be heard. Some even say that they've seen President Lincoln's ghost, as well as his wife's ghost haunting Ford's Theater. It is as if they have returned to Ford's Theater to enjoy a drama performance, hoping that the outcome would be different...hoping that it wouldn't involve Lincoln's untimely death.

One person even claims that the apparition of Mrs. Lincoln can be seen from the balcony, pointing downwards as if pointing to John Wilkes Booth and saying "he shot the President". Does President Lincoln and his wife haunt the old Ford's Theater to this day? Or is it merely a traumatic imprint of time that will continually play out as long as the Ford Theater is in existence?