Witch Dance
and Lyric Theater:
Elvis’s Hometown Haunts
Tupelo, Mississippi, is known to country music fans as the birthplace of Elvis Presley. But long before being known as the birthplace of a superstar, it was known as the center for the supernatural.
Not too far from the city is an area called Witch Dance. A legend has been passed down from generation to generation that the forests in that section just south of town were haunted. Witches supposedly gathered in the woods and whipped themselves into a frenzy. They began to dance in a circle and as they did, they began to fly. Each time a witch touched the ground, she burned the grass. People familiar with this legend said that you can still find fresh patches of burnt ground that indicate witches still gather there for their nefarious midnight dances.
One doubter of the legend was Big Harpe, an outlaw who, along with his brothers, terrorized the region in the late 1700s. An American Indian guide was leading Big Harpe through northeast Mississippi. Harpe was being chased through the wilderness around Witch Dance by a posse bent on revenge. Big Harpe noticed the strange burned grass patches and asked his guide about the odd markings. When the guide began to tell him about the witches sabbaths that were held in the section of the forest, Big Harpe just scoffed and began to dance himself, hopping from one burned patch to the next. He beseeched the forces to come meet him.
When nothing happened, he laughed even more, figuring that he just uncovered a hoax. But he may have spoken too soon. The witches didn’t need to appear to the arrogant criminal to get even. Legend says they used their magical powers to allow the posse to find Big Harpe. The posse chopped off his head and nailed his skull to a tree. Now, people say, if you’re quiet, you can hear Big Harpe’s scoffing laugh echoing in the forest.
As Big Harpe found out, Tupelo is surrounded by terrain that can be at turns mystically serene and darkly disturbing. It’s history is similar: the region can seem peaceful, but its legacy of violence and disaster is unavoidable. Battles with American Indians had no sooner ended than Confederate and Union armies were pitted against each other. It is said that those ghosts—the spirits of native warriors and Civil War soldiers—are still present in the small Mississippi city.
In addition to contending with man’s inhumanity to man, the residents of Tupelo have also endured the power—and in some cases, brutality—of Mother Nature. In 1936, a tornado, estimated to be a monster F5 on the Fujita Scale, ripped through the city and destroyed homes, businesses, and houses of worship. In one macabre display of ruthlessness, the twister lifted a group of victims from the ground and deposited their lifeless bodies in a pond.
There were survivors. One of those who lived through the destruction was Elvis Presley, who was just an infant during the disaster. Another survivor was one of the town’s most treasured paranormal properties—the Lyric Theater.
Elvis, no doubt, may have heard tales as he grew up about how the Lyric Theater, the town’s main movie theater situated on Broadway Street, was used as a makeshift hospital during the aftermath of the tornado. Ingenious surgeons used the popcorn popping machine to sterilize their equipment, according to area historians.
Elvis, too, must have heard about the ghost—perhaps a ghost of one of the tornado’s victims—that haunted the theater which some Elvisologists say became the scene of the King of Rock and Roll’s first make-out session. Most folks refer to the ghost as Antoine. Legend has it that Antoine makes himself known through a series of pesky, mischievous, but not malevolent interactions. For instance, he likes to steal keys. Employees will flop a set of keys on a table or a counter for a few seconds and when they look back again, the keys are gone. Vanished into thin air. They usually turn up somewhere else in the theater, which only compounds the mystery.
The ghost also likes to hum. Customers and people who work at the theater say they hear a strange hum emanating from different spaces in the theater. People who have had the task of cleaning up the theater or doing repairs there late at night claim to hear spirit footsteps tromping around the building and have heard things dragging across the floor. Antoine, it seems, likes to remodel.
In Elvis’s time, the theater was used almost exclusively as a movie theater, but it’s now been renovated to include stages for theatrical presentations and concerts. It plays a key part in Tupelo’s various Elvis celebrations, too.
While legends about Antoine have been circulating around Tupelo for decades, the renovations have apparently increased the number of run-ins with the spirit. One community theater volunteer said that the legend is not fiction; he has returned to the theater early in the morning after a rehearsal or production only to find “everything moved.”
The volunteer, along with dozens of other Lyric Theater believers, think that, unlike Elvis, Antoine has not left the building.