There’s something about the energy in old theaters that brings people back, time after time.  The emotion of the performers, the communal feeling of a packed house, the sheer architectural beauty of the archaic auditoriums all coalesce to create an atmosphere where imaginations can flourish. But in many Northeast Ohio theaters, something else seems to flourish in the drafty majestic buildings.  Something dark and creepy, perhaps otherworldly.  Reports of hauntings and paranormal activities have been cropping up more frequently than many would believe at these spooky “hot-spots” of energy.  These theaters tend to be old, built in the early 20th century.  There is as much history as there is mystery, from deaths to fires to backstage affairs, all the ingredients for breeding restless spirits. Local author, Kent State University professor and expert on all things scary Mark Dawidziak knows how common these stories are. “I hardly ever have been in a theater where someone didn’t say ‘this place is haunted,’” he says.  “No self-respecting theater would be without a resident ghost or two.” While many view these stories of hocus-pocus as hokey-pokey, Dawidziak believes theaters have an uncanny ability to attract paranormal activity. “There are a lot of theories about what ghosts are and, in each case, it fits a theater,” he says.  If they are trapped spirits that are attracted to places where there are strong emotions, the theater is perfect.  “Manufactured strong emotion is what a theater is all about.  It’s an atmosphere charged with emotion,” he says.  If they are, as some believe, imprinted images left behind as electric impulses caused by serious emotional trauma that play like a loop, once again, the channeling of emotions comes into play. “And finally,” he says, “if you think spirits are nothing more than a figment of imagination, what better place for people to see ghosts than a place where they are invited and encouraged to use their imaginations?” Kent Stage The Kent Stage was originally called The Kent Theater when it first opened in 1927, presenting vaudeville acts and silent movies.  It remained that way until 1962, when it became a two-screen movie theater.  But it wasn’t until 2002, when the Western Reserve Fine Arts Association converted it back into a live music venue, that the first reports of odd happenings began to arise. Co-owner Richele Charlton is convinced that the building is haunted.  Among the many stories- clocks jumping off the walls, a light fixture shattering leaving the bulb intact, or a lone note escaping from the old Kimball piano by the bar when no one is around to play it- Charlton has had instances where she can actually feel a presence pushing her.  Once she was pushed all the way from the stage, up the aisle and through the double doors to the concession area. “I was leaning back, but I couldn’t stop going forward and I couldn’t really get myself turned around to see what was going on behind me,” she says.  She has also noticed strange white shapes out of the corner of her eye that quickly vanish, as well as a silhouette of a flowing gown gliding through the building, from the projection booth, through the balcony, down the stairs and vanish into the concession area. Some believe it is the ghost of a woman named Amelia Shively, sister of Marvin Kent, whom the city was named after.  They were the children of Zenas Kent, who built a mansion where the Kent Stage now stands and where Amelia used to live. Another spirit that is said to haunt The Stage is a little boy, spotted most often by crews in the early hours of the morning. He is said to appear in the aisle, slowly approach the stage, and then disappear completely. A much more menacing character is said to haunt the tunnel underneath the stage that connects the Kent Stage to the old abandoned hotel across the street.  Sometimes called “the grumpy old man of the theater,” this spirit is said to be connected to that of a homeless man who died in the tunnel.  In the room where he died, a large reddish-brown stain appeared, which has been impossible to get rid of to this day. And then there’s Woody.  That was the nickname of Albert DeVos, a resident maintenance man who ushered at The Kent Stage as a teenager and lived upstairs for many years.  He also had a cot off stage left and even called himself “the guardian of the theater.”  He died there on Christmas Day, 1990 at the age of 55. Richele and many others believe it’s his playful spirit who’s responsible for many of the weird occurrences. Two years ago when blues artist Leon Redbone played at the Stage, his trademark cane went missing.  While everyone searched for it, Redbone went onstage and performed his set.  When he had finished, the cane was still nowhere to be found.  It wasn’t until many weeks later when Richele was cleaning upstairs that she found the cane pushed up against a wall. Woody, she says, must have been the prankster. The Agora Agora employee Steve Neal is a rocker in his 30s with a backwards hat, shoulder-length hair and thin-framed glasses with a prescription that makes his eyes look about twice their size. He’s energetic and excitable, and has a certain fascination with the paranormal. “I believe in the stuff, not that I’ve personally seen it, but I’d like to,” he says. “I’ll take a flashlight and walk around in the dark, or go I’ll go to the top of the balcony, shut everything off and just sit there.  I’m hopin’ to see something, I mean, I welcome it.” His energy level appears amplified when contrasted with Hank LoConti, the 84-year-old owner of the theater. “I get a chill sometimes, but I think it’s just the knowledge in my head.  I don’t believe in ghosts.  They might be there.  But I ain’t got time to believe in ghosts,” he says. Regardless, Neal and LoConti go on to explain what they can about the theater’s resident ghost, known simply as The Man in the Yellow Raincoat, seen carrying an old-fashioned lantern.  If he’s there, he’s very elusive and rarely seen. “There’s been times where the hair just stood up on my arms.  I didn’t see nothin’ but somethin’s definitely goin’ on because whole body is just like… electric,” Neal says.  However, apart from hair-raising feelings and electric vibes, their encounters with the spirit have been minimal. They refer me to Psychic Sonya, who does tours of the building and tries to connect with the spirits present there.  She explains that right by the Agora there used to be a train station for many years.  Since it was before the age of walkie-talkies or cell phones, workers on the line used to communicate by flashing lanterns. “This spirit has been seen carrying one of these lanterns, so I think he was probably an employee of the railroad,” she says. He’s reportedly been spotted by the catwalk above the stage manager’s office, one of the theater’s hottest spots for ghost sightings.  Another good ghost hunting spot is Neal’s favorite hangout, the balcony, where employees have often reported doors unlocking and opening on their own. But perhaps one of the creepiest areas in the Agora is the basement room where Marilyn Manson used to stay.  With an ancient-looking brick corridor leading up to a large metal door, the room that once used to house one of the darkest performers of our time is now a storage room filled with extra tables and chairs and other furniture.  For years it’s been reported that Manson left behind a single black trunk, which no one had ever opened.  LoConti leads us down there to do just that, to find out once and for all what Manson kept in the trunk.  But when we get there, the trunk has disappeared, and neither LoConti nor Neal have any idea what happened to it. “Well, it’s probably getting sold on eBay right now,” Neal remarks, suspecting one of the other employees may have taken it.  But could it have been the Man in the Yellow Raincoat, hiding the legendary trunk from nosy reporters?  Probably not.  But still, weird, right?  It’s one more unanswered question for the already mysterious theater. Akron Civic Built in 1929, The Akron Civic Theater has had some of the most convincing ghost stories in Northeast Ohio.  The auditorium was architecturally designed to look like a Moorish palace, adding to the oldfangled atmosphere.  And in the large, 2,500-seat room, there seems to be plenty of space for ghosts to dwell. Executive Director Howard Parr is no stranger to these inhabitants and has had personal experience with unexplainable phenomena.  The clearest example, he says, happened when he tried to turn the lights on in the auditorium one day.  On either side of the room, the walls are lined with candelabras.  On this particular day, none of the lights in the candelabras would turn on. “I remember thinking how strange it was that they’d all go out at the same time.  We started checking the wiring, going around and checking the breakers, nothing worked,” he said. So he got a ladder and climbed up to the bulbs to see what was wrong with them.  “Every one of these candelabra light bulbs in the entire room had been turned so that it was out of the socket, but there were no fingerprints and the dust was not disturbed,” he explains with a perplexed look on his face. The other stage hands were equally baffled, but these occurrences are much more frequent for them. “There are stage-hands who just won’t talk about the ghosts if you ask them,” Parr says.  “They’ll say ‘I’m not answering that question,’ and just walk away.” Last year, the Munroe Falls Paranormal Society (MFPS) did an investigation of the theater that turned up some pretty spooky results.  Eric Haney, lead investigator for MFPS describes their investigation at Akron Civic as one of his favorites. “We got some very convincing evidence.  We actually got footage of an apparition on the balcony as well as a few Class A EVPs,” he says.  Apparition is ghost-hunter lingo for an entity manifested visually, and EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon, most often recorded on standard digital voice recorders, and these recordings are divided into classes by how well one can hear what the voice is saying.  Class A is the best, and the recordings they got are not only audible, but seriously weird as well. As one investigator was doing an EVP session, she began to feel somewhat dizzy.  “The energy used for an EVP can be pulled from the investigator, leaving them feeling drained.  We went back and listened to the recording and at that same time, you can hear a voice say ‘Where are you?’” Haney says. The second EVP came when an investigator asked someone to turn on the light near the concession stand. “You can hear the phrase ‘Light, light, cuts the night,’ being whispered clear as day.  We did some research and we think it’s a theatrical term.” But some truly eerie evidence was uncovered when one investigator was doing what ghost hunters call “minor provoking.” “You’re basically calling them out on stuff,” Haney explains.  “You’re saying ‘I think you’re weak,’ like a bully would pick on someone to kinda get them agitated.  When someone gets agitated, they tend to make a move.  We don’t think it’s any different for ghosts.”  Just picture Bill Murray in Ghostbusters.  It’s a real practice that Haney says gets serious results.  In this case, the investigator left a small mess for the ghost of the janitor, known as Fred, and began to feel a burning sensation on her back.  When a fellow investigator looked at the area she was pointing to, she had what Haney terms a “psychokinetic impression,” or a large red scratch across her lower back. Including Fred the janitor, there are four ghosts who are said to haunt the Civic.  Another is Paul Steig, an engineer whom many believe hangs around due to his love of the theater.  There is also a female, believed to have drowned in the canal nearby, before the theater was even built.  And a well-dressed man who is thought to be an actor or perhaps a wealthy patron has been spotted on various occasions. Paul Steig is said to be a friendly, somewhat playful spirit, while the others are described as more solemn.  Most who have seen the female ghost describe her exiting a dressing room located on stage right, now more of a storage room, and slowly walking down the long hallway.  Could these be trapped souls, somehow caught in limbo?  Are their movements just electric impulses, skipping periodically through time like a spinning record?  Haney has a few theories. “I believe that quantum physics can best describe paranormal experiences,” he says.  “We all know that matter cannot be destroyed but only tranferred, and the same is true with energy.  However, that energy gets trapped or moves; it starts getting into a quantum level.” He has devoted much of his time to studying the relationship between the two and believes it has more to do with multi-dimensional universe theory than spirits or the afterlife. “Is it really a ghost?  Or is it an alternate dimension where someone is hunting us and perceiving us as ghosts?  This gets deep, man,” he chuckles.  “Right now we refer to them as ghosts and spirits, but who really knows what those definitions are until we find out more?” At least in our time, science puts ghosts into the same category as Loch Ness, Bigfoot and UFOs.  Stories are easily written off by cynics, yet remain eternally interesting to those looking for answers.  For MFPS, it’s important to look at them from a scientific standpoint. And for Dawidziak and other fans of good storytelling, it’s important to remain skeptical. “A lot of people say they’re skeptics when they’re not,” says Dawidziak.  “They’ve made up their minds that they don’t believe in something.  That’s not being a skeptic.  A real skeptic says I’m ready for the truth either way.  Show me the proof.”