Theaters hold a special place in the hearts of many. They are unique venues where anything can, and just might, happen.
With its fanciful Art Deco marquee and façade, Georgetown’s historic Strand Theatre was designed long ago to transport movie audiences past the realm of the expected. Sometimes, however, the actors are the recipients of the unexpected.
Movie theaters have been a tradition in Georgetown’s downtown historic district for the past century, beginning in 1909 with the Air Dome Theatre, a platform covered in iron at 718 Front Street. A roof was added to the Air Dome in 1910 to protect audiences from the elements.
The same gentleman who owned the Air Dome opened the Electric Theatre at 810 Front Street. The Electric Theatre is believed to have closed by 1913.
In May 1914, the Princess Theatre opened at 628 Front Street and showed movies until it burned down two and a half years later.
In June 1914, the Peerless Theatre opened on what is now the site of the Strand Theatre at 710 Front Street. The Peerless soon closed but was reopened under the name Princess Theatre after the original Princess burned in October 1916. When the theater was sold around 1929, its name was changed back to the Peerless Theatre.
Around 1920, the Palmetto Theatre opened on nearby King Street for African-American patrons. King Oliver and Band, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet, played a dance there in May 1936 with the balcony kept open for white spectators. The Palmetto Theatre operated until around 1936.
In 1941, the Strand Theatre opened with Blossoms in the Dust, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. It closed at the end of October 1963 and reopened in January 1964. During the 1970s, the Strand was closed as a movie theater.
In 1971, the Swamp Fox Players theater group organized. They began holding performances in a variety of venues, beginning with the old Winyah High School auditorium.
“We were a wandering troupe at first—hotels, high schools, then the old armory upstairs until it burned down,” said Inge Ebert, who has been a member of the Swamp Fox Players for over thirty years.
For a decade, the Swamp Fox Players held performances in a variety of borrowed venues. In June 1982, they bought the Strand Theatre and began its renovation and restoration.
“It had been closed for quite a while. It was moldy and mildewy,” said Ebert.
The presences in the old theater were noticeable early on. Footsteps were sometimes heard, but mostly it was just the unmistakable sound of something there. Unexplainable sounds came from the balcony and behind the stage.
“We could hear it backstage,” Ebert said, “weird noises that were completely inexplicable. When we were backstage, it was really spooky.”
The balcony was closed, and the Swamp Fox Players left it that way in the beginning while they concentrated on the ground-floor main theater. Yet they could hear something in the balcony when they knew no one was up there. Later, when they began to open the balcony, the sound continued.
Swamp Fox Player Jo Camlin described the phenomenon: “If we were backstage, we could hear it in the balcony. If we were in the balcony, we could hear it backstage.”
“When you were downstairs, you could hear someone going up there and walking up there,” said Ebert.
No one knew of any ghost associated with the theater, so the presence was a mystery.
“It was an old movie theater,” said Ebert. “I’m sure we disturbed whoever was there.”
After the Swamp Fox Players completed the restoration of the theater’s original marquee, the Strand looked much as it had on opening night in 1941. This effect was heightened by the 1940s-style box office built into the lobby for the movie Made in Heaven. The presences that haunt the Strand, however, are from much farther back in Georgetown’s past.
One night in 1989, the presences were more strongly felt than ever and demanded to be noticed.
It was in the evening following a performance of the Swamp Fox Players’ highly popular production of Ghosts of the Coast that the nature of the presences became vividly apparent. During Ghosts of the Coast, the actors portrayed people who lived in the area long ago and died very passionate deaths that resulted in the ghostly history for which Georgetown is famous.
One of the actors—who asked that his name not be used—related the following experience.
“On a July evening in 1989, we four cast members had another well-attended performance. Our play enacting Georgetown ghost legends was performed twice a week at the Strand and had become a big summertime tourist attraction, pulling standing-room-only crowds from vacationing families from as far away as Myrtle Beach.
“Part of the play’s appeal was its authenticity. We opened on a dark stage with the audio of a recent CBS Evening News story that identified Georgetown as ‘the ghost capital of the South.’ In our script, we had used authentic Gullah language for the narration and had held close to the version of each legend that Julian Stevenson Bolick had included in his marvelous little book, Ghosts from the Coast. We had grown up with the stories Mr. Bolick collected and considered it good, spooky fun to reenact them on stage for tolerant parents and delightedly frightened youngsters. We had even included a segment on Dr. Buzzard, a real-life practitioner of root magic who had lived in the Beaufort, South Carolina, area in the early part of the century.
“In our version, a grief-stricken woman came to Dr. Buzzard to reverse a curse which had resulted in her sister’s death. She explained that she had found a ‘conjure jar’ under her sister’s bed after her death. As she explained this, the actress lifted into the light a Mason jar containing a black chicken’s foot and some herbs floating in a reddish liquid. As the actor portraying Dr. Buzzard took the conjure jar from her, the woman fell to her knees and plunged her hands into an oblong box of earth representing the grave. She raised her hands and let the grave dirt flow through the spotlight’s beam and onto the stage, shrieking in grief as she did so. The actress’s agony was so real that it was easy to forget that this was just a play. It was always a chillingly fun moment in our little production.
“On this particular evening, the last three of us in the building were preparing to leave when I knelt down by the mock grave to retrieve a prop dropped there. Part of the routine after each show was to smooth out the earth in the box, erasing the deep indentations made by the actress’s hands as she dug into it, to make the prop ready for the next performance. But as I put my hands into the dirt to do so, I felt something strange.
“Streams of cool air seemed to be wafting up from the hand prints in the grave. I passed my hands over the rest of the earth but felt nothing. The cool air was coming directly from the marks the hands had made in the dirt, and nowhere else. Thinking that surely it was the result of the Strand’s air-conditioning system, I asked one of our group to turn off the AC unit, which they did. Turning off the air conditioner had no effect on the jets of air, which now felt colder than before, rushing out of the hand prints on the mock grave. I asked the others if they felt it. We all did. Then one of the actors stopped dead in their tracks in the audience aisle.
“ ‘Hey, come feel this. There’s a cold spot right here!’
“We rushed over and, sure enough, there was a distinct cold spot in precisely that spot and that spot only. We could all walk through it and tell exactly where it began and where it ended. The air in the building was otherwise deadly still and already getting muggy on this hot night without the AC. Now we were all getting spooked, and not in the fun way either.
“That evening, the performance had been attended by three ghost hunters, or paranormal investigators, from North Carolina. The trio had visited Georgetown many times before and declared it to be a hot spot for ghostly investigation.
“Now, with cold air still pouring up from the on-stage grave and emanating from nowhere in a specific spot in the aisle, we instantly had the same thought. Remembering the line from the movie Ghostbusters, someone nervously cracked, ‘Who ya gonna call?’ We dialed the motel and found the leader of the group, Jayne Ware—sometimes called ‘Granny Ghostbuster’ in the press—preparing for bed.
“ ‘You’ve gotta come back to the theater—something’s happening!’ we told her in what must have sounded like a symphony of chipmunks on her end of the phone.
“ ‘I’ll be right there,’ she said.
“No sooner had we hung up the phone in the Strand’s office than things got a lot stranger. On stage, from behind the set, there were whispers—quiet, insistent whispers. We all heard them. And it was clear that they were coming from backstage. We were, of course, the only ones in the building.
“One of our group went out onto the sidewalk to await the arrival of Granny Ghostbuster. I resolved to go backstage. The whispers were not in and of themselves frightening. It sounded like many people talking quietly at once. The only frightening part was that there was no one backstage!
“Our backdrop was simple and inexpensive—wood frames over which were stretched dark blue sheets. The sheets acted as the back wall of the set. As I stepped on stage, my heart was pounding. It was like being on a roller coaster just before the big drop. The whispers were still there as I walked across the stage, put out my hands, and tentatively pushed against the dark blue sheets. I have never been so scared in my life, but I was about to be absolutely terrified. Something on the other side of the sheets pushed back. I withdrew my hands and could hardly speak.
“ ‘Something is on the other side!’ I said weakly.
“I did manage the courage to reach out toward the sheet again, but this time, when I felt the pressure of whatever was on the other side against my palms, I broke into a run across the stage and jumped down, passing the still-present streams of cold air from the grave on my way.
“We had never been more happy to see another living soul than we were when Granny Ghostbuster herself walked in a few moments later. Jayne was calm and very interested in what we had to say. She let us speak our frantic piece, then she walked down the aisle toward the cold spot.
“ ‘Do you feel it?’ we all asked.
“She turned, her face completely peaceful, and nodded.
“ ‘I feel it. It’s here. It’s here.’
“We told her about the cold air from the grave, which she confirmed by passing her hands over it, and about the whispering, which had now ceased.
“In the silence, she smiled and said, ‘Let’s go back up front.’
“In the lobby, Jayne calmed us all down with the air of calm she carried always about with her. She said she wasn’t at all surprised at the evening’s events.
“ ‘You’re dealing with real people’s lives and real people’s passions,’ she told us. ‘All of these old stories, no matter how embellished they may be, are based on a real person’s life, and usually on their pain. Dr. Buzzard was real, the conjure you used was real, wasn’t it?’
“One of us interrupted, ‘It’s a rubber chicken’s foot that I spray-painted black!’
“Jayne laughed. ‘But it represents something people felt passionately about. That’s what I think the experiences we call ghosts are—representations of the past, impressions or images flash-burnt onto the atmosphere by the strength of the emotion.’
“We had heard this explanation before, but after being scared out of our wits, we wanted a bit more from her.
“ ‘Why tonight?’ asked one of us. ‘We do it twice a week. What’s so special about tonight?’
“Jayne shrugged. ‘A combination of things, probably. A passionate performance. The emotions of the audience. The right temperature. The right amount of humidity in the air. The perfect combination of all of it. You just got a little closer than you expected to, that’s all.’
“ ‘Will it happen again?’ someone asked. ‘Because if it does, I quit.’
“ ‘Probably not like this again, no. But you’ll always know they’re there.’
“No one dared ask her opinion as to who or what they were.
“Jayne concluded, ‘Think of it as a compliment, like a standing ovation.’
“And with that, Granny Ghostbuster rose and walked back into the theater, where everything was normal again. No cold spot. No cold air. No whispers. I even had the courage to join the others in walking around the rickety backstage and into the dirt pit where the foundation of the old movie screen had rested. There was, of course, no one there.
“Many years have passed since that night. The show went on for a few more summers past that one. The events of the evening were never repeated. The Strand has a new stage, beneath which rests the dirt pit we used as our dressing room. We in the cast went our separate ways. We grew older. Jayne Ware passed on.
“Sometimes, when passing by the Strand Theatre or attending a performance there, I wonder, did it happen at all? Did our fertile actors’ minds, supercharged by the night’s performance, create all of it in our heads as a shared delusion? But then that would require one to believe that Granny Ghostbuster had played along.
“If it was real, who were the whisperers? The essence of everyone who had ever been entertained in the old Strand? The essence of the long-ago people we portrayed in our show? And so, before writing this account down, I called on an old friend—one of my fellow cast members.
“ ‘I’ve been asked to write about the Strand for a ghoststory book, and I wanted to ask you—’
“His response cut me off sharply and perhaps told me what I needed to know.
“He said, ‘I don’t want to talk about that night. Ever.’ ”
The ghostly presences have not disappeared over the years.
The Swamp Fox Players have continued to improve the theater. When the lobby and balcony were renovated in 2001, seats for the balcony were brought in from the old Palace Theater. In 2005, a greenroom, dressing rooms, a rehearsal room, and a workshop were added to the rear of the theater.
The presences are still there. When are their sounds most prevalent?
“Mostly, when you are alone in the theater,” said Inge Ebert. “There are times when you absolutely have to be alone. Rehearsals are mostly at night. When you get in early and the rest of the people are not there yet, it’s like you are disturbing someone. It’s like someone is in there. It is not like wood creaking. It’s very brief, then it stops, but it gets your attention.”
The ghostly presences in the historic Strand Theatre—traces of energy from passionate lives and deaths long ago—may date back many years before the advent of movies. Similar to a film that runs over and over again, the vitality ingrained on the atmosphere here is destined, like history, to repeat itself.