Lore - Lore 281: The Silver Scream

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

We look to the theater for entertainment, distraction, and inspiration. But like so many other areas of popular culture, that glitz and glamour hides a darker past. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Warby Parker: Visit one of over 270 stores to find your next pair of glasses, or go to WarbyParker.com/LORE to try on any pair virtually! Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

In 1975, Gregory Peck's son was found dead by apparent suicide. It was only a month before the famed actor was due to begin shooting a new film, and although wracked by grief, the show must go on, so he boarded a plane and headed for the set, which is when his plane was struck by lightning. Miraculously, Peck landed unharmed, but shortly after, the film's producer, Mace Newfield's plane was also struck by lightning on the way to the set. Newfield too survived, only to nearly perish a second time when the hotel where he was staying was bombed by the IRA. Next the film's crew hired a small plane for some aerial shots, but much to their chagrin

it was given to another group at the last minute. It turns out that was the luckiest thing that could have ever happened to them, because that plane crashed, killing everyone on board. It sounds like a sequence out of Final Destination, and it doesn't end there. Next came the animal handler brought on for a day to help calm some particularly unruly baboons featured in a zoo scene. All went fine until the following day when the handler left set only to be mauled to death by a tiger.

And even the editing process was difficult. Some of the scenes were quite tricky by 1975 standards, by the way, like the one in which a character had to appear to be decapitated by a sheet of glass. Don't worry, that process went fine. At least they thought it did, because just like the ending of a horror movie, the devastating climax would arrive right when everyone thought they were safe. Only nine weeks after the film opened, special effects supervisor John Richardson was driving

with his assistant when their car crashed. Richardson survived, but his assistant was not so lucky. And if you're wondering how she died, I have to tell you, she was decapitated. It's the kind of story that makes you wonder if maybe the devil really does come for you when you speak his name. You see, the cursed movie in question just so happened to be a little film about the Antichrist called The Omen. We love movies for their ability to take us into other lives and other lands, before depositing us back safely in the cinema seats of the real world.

But sometimes, the most frightening ghosts of the silver screen aren't on the screen at all. Instead, they're sitting right beside you. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore. Let me offer you a riddle. On a dark night, a single swimmer drowns in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the Antarctic Ocean all at once.

But how can this be? Well, it may seem impossible, but for the guests of California's Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in the year 1950, this was a very real risk, and it was all due to a celebration. You see, the hotel had just opened a brand new rooftop pool and bar, and so to honor the addition, the proprietors invited airline hostesses to come visit the pool with a special gift in tow. Water. That is, each hostess arrived with a small container of salt water collected from oceans all over the world, which they all poured into the shiny, lavish new swimming pool. Luckily, no one did drown that night, but it's an extravagant idea, right? What a way to go.

But the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel wasn't new to being over the top. Located on the Los Angeles Hollywood Boulevard, the establishment had been the brainchild of a number of jazz-age cinema bigwigs, including Douglas Fairbanks, his movie star wife Mary Pickford, producer Louis B. Mayer, and more. And let's just say, these weren't people of moderation, and their hotel wouldn't be either. It first opened its doors in May of 1927, and if you thought the pool party was an affair

to remember, then you should have seen the hotel's grand opening. Movie stars wafted through the 300 guest rooms, dripping in silk and pearls. Celebrities like Clara Boe and Will Rogers and Gloria Swanson mingled and drank. Flashbulbs popped, leaving a smoky pall hanging in the air. I can only imagine the splendor of those 12 stories, festooned with wrought iron balconies and arched windows, still unsullied by time. All in all, the hotel took $2.5 million to build, the equivalent of about $40 million today. And from the day it opened, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was a place to see and be seen,

a hot spot for cinema elite. Everyone from Clark Gable and Greta Garbo to Charlie Chaplin stayed there, writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway as well. And according to legend, a young Shirley Temple even took her first tap dancing lessons from Bill Bojangles Robinson on the hotel's Spanish Tiled Steps. And if the stories are true,

some of those famous guests never left. The Trouble seems to have begun two years after its grand opening in May of 1929. That you see was when the hotel hosted the first ever Academy Awards right in its very own Art Deco banquet hall called the Blossom Room. It was a private black tie event attended by 270 Academy members and they pulled out all the stops, which seems a little odd given that the ceremony lasted only 15 minutes.

At least it lasted only 15 minutes for the living, because you see, some Academy members might still be there, waiting anxiously for an award nearly a century later. Modern visitors have seen a gentleman wandering through the Blossom Room at odd hours, which they might have mistaken for a bellboy or a fellow hotel guest, if not for the fact that he was wearing a 1920s style tuxedo. Psychics have tried to make contact with the spirit, and some even claim to have succeeded, insisting that the ghost was an Oscar nominee who didn't win, doomed to endlessly relive

his disappointment. But hey, at least he has some company, because a second tuxedo-clad spectator seems to stalk the Blossom Room as well. Unlike the sore loser, this man's tuxedo is bone white and he's been spotted playing the ballroom piano before vanishing into thin air. Now, the hotel may have been a hotspot for the rich and famous, but it also features a cold spot for the rich and famous, but it also features a cold spot. That is a mysterious 30-inch circle in the Blossom Ballroom, which is inextricably 10

degrees colder than the rest of the space. It dissipates if the room is busy, but as soon as the living visitors leave, it grows cold again. And then there are what can only be described as the bad vibes. Several psychics have felt a great deal of anxiety in the ballroom, residue from those tense moments at the first Oscars perhaps, or maybe it has a little something to do

with the Academy itself. You see, the Academy Awards weren't started out of a wholesome love for entertainment. No, Louis B. Mayer, one of the Ms in MGM and investor in the Roosevelt Hotel, founded the academy in an effort to prevent film industry members from unionizing. That's right, all that glitz and glam began as a way to suppress workers' rights. And really, what's spookier than a union buster?

Of course, the ballroom isn't the only part of the hotel that's haunted. Remember that fancy pool added in the 1950s? Well, maybe the unnatural mix of ocean water unleashed a sort of ancient spell, because that pool appears to be an absolute magnet for supernatural events. Security guards monitoring the CCTV footage have spotted figures swimming at hours when the pool is closed to guests. When the guards go down to investigate, they not only find it empty, but the doors are still locked from the outside.

On one occasion, a guard checking on the pool waved his hands at the camera to indicate to his watching colleague that the place was empty, only for the footage to reveal the guard's hand passing through a human figure's head. But the most frequently seen specter at the Roosevelt is a five-year-old girl named Caroline.

She's been seen around the hotel, clothed in either a blue dress or jeans and a pink jacket, depending on whose stories you believe. According to one tale, both Caroline and her brother drowned in the pool while their father was out running errands. Now, to be fair, our researchers found no evidence of this story in the actual historical record. But even so, if the drowning legend were true, it certainly didn't affect Caroline's love of water, because she's been seen splashing merrily in the hotel's jacuzzi.

In some Caroline legends, she approaches guests claiming to be looking for her father. In others, she's worried about her mother. But no matter the details, one thing stays the same with each retelling. She doesn't look like a ghost. On the contrary, she looks like a living girl, so much so that receptionists and guests alike have mistaken her for a normal kid,

skipping around the lobby and singing. Of course, it's not only nameless tuxedoed men and dancing little girls who haunt a place like the Roosevelt. This is Hollywood, after all, a place of glamour and stardom. No, if the Roosevelt was going to be haunted, then it would be haunted by the best. And by that I mean by the ghosts of movie stars. Montgomery Clift died slowly.

In the words of one of his teachers, the actor's demise was, and I quote, the longest suicide in Hollywood's history. In all, Clift's downfall would play out over a painful 10-year span. But every ending begins somewhere, and for Montgomery, it all started one fateful night in 1956. The dinner party had surely been a shimmering, memorable affair. Hosted by Elizabeth Taylor, it was a who's who of Hollywood's golden age, and as they laughed and drank and feasted, they remained blissfully unaware that the night was destined to end in tragedy.

Eventually the chatter dwindled, the guests filtered out, and then as Clift drove down the lonesome road, he lost control of his car, colliding with a telephone pole. According to legend, fellow actor Rock Hudson pulled Clift from the wreck. Elizabeth Taylor herself held him in her arms, her friend's blood pooling on her mink coat. As Clift began to choke, the horrified onlookers realized that he was in fact choking on his own teeth. Taylor pried open his mouth, stuffed her hand down his throat and yanked the teeth free. Montgomery Clift was one of the most successful movie stars of his generation. With swoon-worthy good looks and a fierce dedication to his acting craft, he gained

worldwide fans from his work on stage and screen alike. His sexuality was an accepted open secret in Hollywood at the time, and in the words of his partner Lorenzo James, being with Clift was like standing in front of a fireplace in the dead of winter. In other words, this guy was beloved. And now he was broken in the middle of the road. And yet somehow Clift survived. But barely. His movie star good looks were destroyed. His jaw broken in four places, his cheekbones fractured, his nose split in half. Months of reconstructive surgery led the actor down a path of drug and alcohol addiction. And that was that.

In a very real sense, death waited for Montgomery Cliff in the bottom of a liquor bottle. A decade later, at only 45 years old, he would be gone. Well, at least gone from the mortal realm. But if the legends are true, he is said to walk the halls of none other than the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. He had a connection to the place too. You see, in 1953, he lived there for three months while filming Best Picture Winner From Here to Eternity. Apparently, while in residence,

he was infamous for wandering around the halls, reciting his lines out loud, and even playing the bugle like his character did in the film, whichiting his lines out loud, and even playing the bugle like his character did in the film. Which was honestly totally unnecessary, as he knew full well that a professional would be dubbing over the music in the movie anyway. But that didn't stop the guy from tooting away on the thing day and night in the halls

of the Roosevelt. Yeah, suffice to say, he wasn't super popular with his fellow guests. And he appears to have continued these habits in death because to this day, angry guests will call the front desk begging that something be done about the incessant bugling wafting through their rooms. Bugling, of course, with no human player attached. Montgomery Cliff's ghost hasn't only been heard, but also seen walking the corridors like he did in life.

Some people have even felt him brush up against them. But the most intense interactions take place in room 928, Cliff's former room, from all those years ago. Guests there insist that he's turning up the heat and flipping on the radio, opened and shut the windows, even move luggage around the room. One woman staying in 928 awoke in the dead of night to see a man in a top hat sitting on her suitcase gazing out the window. Montgomery Clift may have checked out of the mortal realm, but it seems he forgot to check out of the Roosevelt Hotel. And he isn't the only lingering presence there. No, it seems that one of

Clift's co-stars stuck around as well. And you might've heard of her. Her name is Marilyn Monroe. Now, when I say tragic Hollywood starlet, she is surely the blonde bombshell that comes to mind. And most of us are familiar with her tale of woe, her humble beginnings as Norma Jean, her rise to stardom,

her iconic roles in films such as Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and of course, who could forget that sultry rendition of Happy Birthday crooned at JFK. And you probably also know that she led a difficult life, riddled with mental illness, physical hardship, and drug abuse, ultimately culminating in a fatal deliberate overdose on sleeping pills at the young age of 36. But what you may not know about Marilyn is that she spent a full two years living in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It was back in the very beginning of her career. In fact, her very first professional magazine

shoot as a model took place at none other than that infamous Roosevelt swimming pool. Today, her former room is known as the Marilyn Suite, and many believe that, like Montgomery Clift, a little something of Marilyn clings to the space, refusing to move on. One story that stands out dates to mid-December of 1985, just before the hotel reopened after extensive renovations.

Now, that detail is important, because apparently many of the Roosevelt's ghost stories come from around the same time. It's believed that the construction sort of, well, stirred up the spirits and caused a bit of an otherworldly rampage. But let's start at the beginning. When Marilyn Monroe had lived at the hotel, she had requested a full-length mirror

framed with dark wood to be placed in her room. She was a model, after all, a good mirror was a tool of the hotel. She had requested a full-length mirror framed with dark wood to be placed in her room. She was a model, after all, a good mirror was a tool of the trade. Well, after her death, the mirror was moved to the hotel manager's office, and there it sat, gathering dust. Too much dust, apparently, because on one fateful day in 1985, a hotel employee named Suzanne took it upon herself to clean the glass. As she swept a cloth across the mirror's face, Suzanne froze. There, right where her hand was dusting, hovered the reflection of a woman. A woman whose hair, I might add, was unmistakably

blonde. Whipping around, Suzanne turned to speak to the girl, but no one was there. She turned back to her work, and there she was again, trapped in the shimmering silver glass. Now, okay, there might be a reasonable explanation for all of this. According to skeptic Joe Nickel, the cleaner probably experienced a moment of pareidolia, which is the brain's tendency to see recognizable patterns, such as faces where there are none. Our brains hate randomness and will do anything to replace chaos with good sense. If you've ever lain in a meadow and picked images out of the clouds, then you know what I mean.

So could Suzanne have mistaken a swirl of cleaning fluid for a dead movie star? Maybe. But maybe not. I guess we'll never know. Oh, and by the way, Marilyn and Montgomery Clift didn't just frequent the same haunts in death, but in life as well. They actually appeared in a movie together. Just one.

Supposedly, Clift was brought onto the project not just for his acting chops, but to be a soothing companion to Marilyn. Maybe it was because they were going through similar addiction battles. Maybe it was just because Clift was a really nice guy. But whatever the case, the scheme didn't work. Little did they know, but the film, called The Misfits, would be Marilyn Monroe's final movie. And in Marilyn's own words, Clift was, and I quote, the only person I know who was in even worse shape than I am. And honestly, there's something poignant about imagining

Maryland and Montgomery together eternal companions in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel Two tragic figures with similar downfalls Clift may have failed to save Monroe in life, but perhaps now they're saving each other in death. It happened twice in the exact same way, first to a painter and then to an electrician. Both were restoring a former Hollywood movie palace which had long since fallen into disrepair. As the painter swept his brush across the auditorium ceiling, a man in a hat joined him on the scaffold. The painter hadn't seen the man before, but he must have been a higher up at the theater

because the man in the hat took it upon himself to inspect the painter's work. He stood close to the painter, perhaps close enough for the painter to feel the painter's work. He stood close to the painter, perhaps close enough for the painter to feel the visitor's breath, if he had breath, that is, because when the painter turned to look, the man in the hat had vanished without a trace. The scene repeated itself shortly after,

this time with the electrician. Once again, the worker was up on that same scaffold, and once again, a man in a hat climbed up beside him to inspect his work. Just as the painter had reported, when the electrician turned to look at the man, he had disappeared. Now, if you're waiting for the rule of threes to bring the ghost back one last time and solve this mystery, you will be disappointed.

The workers would never see the man again, in part because after the encounters, both immediately quit their jobs. And look, there are obvious holes in this story. If the man in the hat disappeared when looked at, then how did the witness know he was wearing a hat to begin with? How did they know that it was a man? Did they merely hear the scaffold creaking and mistake it for footsteps, letting their mind fill in the rest?

Heck, did the painter and electrician even exist to begin with, or is the whole thing just a tall tale? And this is the thing with ghost stories. Sometimes you have to dig and dig until you hit the bottom, landing on solid ground. Something true. And with the story of the man in the hat, well, there's only one element of the tale that is undeniably, irrefutably real, the theater in which the tale is set. It's called the Pantages Theater, and it's no stranger to ghost stories. Since its founding nearly a century ago, the Pantages has collected countless rumors of spooks and specters haunting its stage.

Located about a mile down Hollywood Boulevard from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the theater was built by and named for Alexander Pantages, a major player in the 1920s vaudeville scene. Now, I highly recommend looking up a photo of the place because its opulence truly needs to be seen to be believed, but I'll do my best to describe it to you now anyway. Open on June 4th of 1930, the movie palace looked like, well, a palace. Designed to be a cinema and live vaudeville theater alike, it is a stunning two-story art deco building with an elaborately carved stone facade and shining marquee. The interior is lit with massive chandeliers, dripping like stalactites from the vaulted

arch ceiling. Two grand staircases flank the lobby, featuring Egyptian and Assyrian Babylonian-style statues. One statue even depicts a film crew in action, gleaming like gods. And then of course there is the stage itself, a massive proscenium of dazzling lights and pooling velvet curtains all encased in an intricate gold and bronze geometric frame. The Pantages isn't just a theater, it's a cathedral, worshiping the art of cinema. And its loyal congregation? That would be practically every movie star in the Golden Age of Hollywood, who all showed

up on its opening night to take in the splendor. Alexander Pantages himself owned the theater for only a couple of years before financial troubles forced him to sell it to Fox in 1932. It changed hands again in 1949 when inventor and producer Howard Hughes purchased the building. And he ruled Pantages, now renamed the RKO Pantages, with an iron fist, firing many employees in an anti-communist purge. Maintaining an apartment, office, and private screening room of his own on the second floor, Hughes was king of the castle until 1955.

And he was quite a character, to say the least. In addition to owning RKO Pictures, one of the biggest film production studios of the Golden Age, he was also an avid contributor to aviation science. He spent much of the 30s and 40s, beating all sorts of airspeed records as one of the richest people in the world, and he used his wealth to design and build innovative aircrafts the likes of which science had never seen before. And he was also famously reclusive. Debilitating OCD cursed him with a terror of contagion and germs so strong that he retreated into

complete seclusion. And midway through his tenure at the Pantages, he sealed himself away from the outside world forever. Time went on. The theater changed hands again. From vaudeville to talkies to color and touring Broadway shows, entertainment transformed and then the Pantages transformed with it.

But then again, some elements seem to become frozen forever in time, like for example a certain ghostly man in a hat, because the figure reported by the painter and the electrician is said to be none other than Alexander Pantages or Howard Hughes, keeping an eye on their beloved theater. And Howard Hughes popped up in other ghost stories as well. In 1992, an executive assistant working on the second floor was said to have seen an apparition in a men's suit walking down the hall and around the corner

toward where Hughes kept his office. Others have spotted him sitting in the back row of the balcony, watching actors rehearse on stage before live shows. In the 1980s, construction workers doing renovations reported feeling an eerie presence, accompanied by a cold breeze and the scent of cigarette smoke, while in the 1990s, bangs and thumps reverberated

throughout the second floor. This, by the way, was shortly after a break-in, which some say upset the spirits. But it's not just theater owners who haunt the place. Take the story of the helpful ghost who, when the power went out, gently led a disoriented wardrobe assistant by the elbow until she safely reached an exit. Or the tale of a woman who died in the theater's mezzanine while watching a movie in 1932. In some versions of the legend, she died of natural causes.

In others, she took her own life. Whatever the case, she was said to have been an aspiring singer, evidenced by the ethereal voice rising from the empty mezzanine. Some say she is still trying to audition for a production, hoping for her big break. And apparently, ghosts can even learn something new, because she seems to be an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan, often singing tunes from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Phantom of the Opera,

both of which were written far after 1932. Although, then again, maybe the logic of dates doesn't matter. Because, you see, there is no historical record of any woman ever dying on that mezzanine floor. Which obviously leaves us with one single burning question. Who, then, is up there singing? When it comes to ghost stories, it can be hard to parse fact from fiction. But in the end, maybe the veracity isn't what matters. Perhaps what matters is why they're told.

By 1916, there were more than 21,000 movie palaces across America. So out of all that bounty, what made the Pantages so special? Why do people still see ghosts there over the rest? Well, to answer that, we have to broaden the lens and look into what came next. The Golden Age of cinema coincided with one of the most economically lavish decades in American history, the Jazz Age. It was a time of glamour and wealth, effervescent parties and beaded gowns. But just as the Pantages prepared to lay its foundation, the stock market crashed. What followed, of course, was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Here was a building embodying absolute opulence. Opulence that continued to gleam through the Depression and the Dust Bowl, throughout the ravages of World War II, through the Cold War, Vietnam, and beyond.

Into the age of the VHS, the DVD, the Internet, it outlived the very movie stars who graced its silver screens. In other words, this building represented a bygone world, and the Pantages Theater wasn't just any old building or any old cinema. Of all 21,000, it was the very last of Hollywood's opulent movie palaces, the final death throes of that glittering past. And I can't help but notice how many of these ghost stories seem to have cropped up in the 1980s and 90s, right when those final 1920s movie stars would be passing away.

With their deaths, the roaring 20s slipped into the realm of myth, and with that myth came a longing for all that it represented, the carefree Glitz and Grandeur. In the end, one might say that these ghost stories don't reflect what the dead want at all, but the desires of the living. The lights in the cinema may be dim, but the silver screen is bright, dancing with players who have long since crossed to the other side. They sing and dance and kiss, just as they did in life. Today to wander through the Pantages is to catch a glimpse of a vanished world.

Not just on screen, but in the very walls, the chandeliers, and stairwells, the moonlit marquee. Miraculously, the chandeliers, and stairwells, the moonlit marquee, miraculously the past is resurrected. In other words, what is the Pantages Theatre itself? But a ghost. I hope today's trip to the cinema gave you the entertainment you were looking for. It never ceases to amaze me how many of the normal, seemingly mundane parts of our lives actually have shadows in every corner. The Pantages may have been the last haunted theater, but it certainly wasn't the only

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Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5GB plan required, equivalent to $15 per month. It was intended to be the world's most beautiful cinema. The theater sat right between the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the Pantages Theater, on the very same street, in fact. Seriously, if you want to experience this entire episode in person, simply walk about 10 blocks down Hollywood Boulevard from North Orange Drive to Argyle Ave. It's all there. Built by the Warner Brothers, the Warner Pacific Theater, also known as the Hollywood Pacific, was the absolute picture of 1920s opulence.

With 2,756 seats, the massive four-story building was equipped with every possible convenience that its patrons might want. And I'm talking far beyond a popcorn machine here. The building contained a toy-filled nursery for children and even an emergency medical clinic in case patrons fell ill during a show. The auditorium was decorated to look like a Spanish garden. Murals bloomed on the walls depicting Spanish castles and picturesque countrysides. Bar reliefs of Spanish lords and ladies overlooked the audience from on high while the ceiling

was painted and lit to resemble an open sky. And yet, despite its bounty and its beauty, the Warner Pacific Theater may have been doomed before it even opened, cursed by the very man who created it. You see, the Warner Brothers, specifically Sam Warner, wanted the theater to serve as the opening location for 1927's film The Jazz Singer. The Jazz Singer was the world's first talkie, so everyone knew it would be a huge moment for cinema, and whatever theater had the privilege to host its premiere would undoubtedly go down in history.

Now, Sam Warner was involved with the sound production of the film and even personally oversaw the installation of the sound system in his theater to accommodate it. In short, he was dead set on hosting the Jazz Singers premiere. But alas, as construction crews raced to complete the theater in time for the movie's release, it became clear that they weren't going to make it. According to legend, when Sam realized this, he stood in the lobby and cursed at the theater. Little did he know, in cursing the theater, he also cursed himself. The premiere of The Jazz Singer was moved to New York City, and Sam didn't attend. Not out of spite, mind you.

No, the very day before The Jazz Singer opened, 40-year-old Sam Warner suffered a freak brain hemorrhage and died. Of course, this meant that he would never see his own theater open its doors either, which it did on April 26th of 1928. Al Jolson, the jazz singer's lead man, served as master of ceremonies on opening night, and a plaque memorializing Sam was hung in the lobby. Naturally, the rumors began almost immediately. Visitors whispered of an apparition flickering through the lavish building, of the elevator moving between floors all on its own, chairs being shuffled and someone or

something scratching on doors. And it's no surprise that these happenings were all attributed to Sam Warner. Sam would be seen puttering studiously in the upstairs offices and pacing the lobby near the plaque in his honor. One staff member even reported seeing Sam cross the lobby, press the elevator button, and ride it up to the second floor. Sadly these days, Sam has been joined by another ghost. That of the theater itself. First came the extensive renovations that destroyed

many of the interior's lavish touches, then interference from subway construction in the 1990s, followed by an earthquake in 1994 that caused further damage. In the end, all that remained of the once grand cinema was a mere shadow of the Warner Pacific's former glory. Today, it hosts occasional film screenings and spent some time being rented by a church for Sunday services, but otherwise it sits abandoned, at least mostly, because some believe that Sam still wanders his creation,

eagerly preparing for the premiere of The Jazz Singer. ["The Jazz Singer. This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra Dayalba, and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There is a paid version of lore on Apple podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad free. Plus subscribers there also get weekly mini episodes that we call Lore Bites.

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