MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Capitol Theatre Haunting | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Welcome back to the Campfire! I have a great story to tell. It's a classic ghost story – and not only are the elements in the story quite unnerving, but it also has a high degree of believability. There are quite a few people in this story who, independently, witnessed and experienced these events.   Be sure to WATCH this episode on my YouTube channel on Friday, August 21st! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to the campfire where it is raining. And also a minute ago, I was situated much closer to the fire. And it was excruciatingly hot, so we had to stop everything and move me back. So I was just pouring sweat. But we're all set up now, and I have a great story to tell. So it is a classic ghost story. But what really makes it stand out is that not only are the elements in the story really quite unnerving, but also it's got a high degree of believability.

There are quite a few people in the story who independently witnessed and experienced the events of the story that I'm about to share with you right now. But before we get into tonight's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do

and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the follow button is at work, go ahead and sneak into their house and fill all their clean socks with beach sand. Also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into tonight's story. In 2006, there was a brand new police officer named Dave Murphy, who was living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and his first role was as a protective service officer,

which meant he was responsible for physical security at several county facilities. And his first post was the capital city theater, which is this this landmark, you know, icon in Salt Lake City. It's this beautiful theater. It was built in the early 1900s and, you know, around the clock it required physical protection because it was, you know, a historic landmark. And so on his first day of work in early August of that same year, Dave goes to the theater and when he gets there, he's met by Officer Morgan Matthews, who is also a police officer who had been up to that point the most recent security guard at the theater. Basically, Dave was going to be taking over for Morgan,

and Morgan was going to move on and do something else. But there was going to be a period of time where Morgan needed to train Dave on how to go about being security at this theater. And so Dave, he's a pretty friendly guy. He knows he's new. He knows he's green. And he shows up to the theater ready to not only learn the job, but also get to know Morgan, who was older than him.

You know, he's his boss, but he's also more senior than him. And so he meets Morgan, and pretty much right away, Dave picked up that Morgan was really not interested in getting to know Dave. In fact, really, as soon as Dave walked through the doors of this theater, Morgan was like straight to business. There was no small talk. It was like, all right, let's go. I'm going to show you around, and I'm going to teach you how to do this job. And, you know, Dave doesn't know Morgan. And again, he's the new guy, and he's not going to protest.

And so he said, okay, like, show me how to do this. So the theater was three floors. And then in addition to the three floors, there was also a basement level down below. And the actual theater was on the first floor, but there was also some offices in the first floor. And then the second floor and the third floor as well had some offices and administrative rooms. And then down in the basement was storage. There was some rehearsal rooms. and some other things like that down there.

And so generally speaking, Dave's role, or really like the role of a security guard at this theater, was you get to the theater, and the first thing you do is you secure it. You literally check every single space. You start in the basement, you secure that. You check every room, lock every door, turn off every light.

You go to the first floor, you do the same thing. Second floor, same thing. Third floor, same thing. And then when you've secured every room, everything is locked, all lights are off. You know, the whole place is locked down. Presumably this is the beginning of your shift. you go back to the first floor where the control room is, which is just a small room for security,

and inside there's all these monitors that show the different cameras that are all around the inside and the outside of the theater. And you just basically sit there and watch the cameras. You pretty much just wait and make sure nobody breaks in or any other sort of emergency, like a fire or whatever. And then at the end of your shift, somebody else will relieve you and you go through the same process with them of go to the basement, secure every floor up to the third, and then you would depart and the new person takes over. And so basically, Dave goes in and Morgan explains this to him, and then they go about securing the whole theater.

And when they're done doing that, they just go to this control room, which is, again, just this small room with cameras, or I should say monitors that are attached to the cameras. And like there's no small talk. There's nothing. It's just two dudes just sitting there for hours, just watching these silent screens. And so Dave is thinking like, this is weird.

I get it that maybe this guy's not very, you know, into small talk or whatever, but it's just odd that you wouldn't even talk to me at all. And so he just sensed there was something going on with Morgan. But, you know, hey, he's new. He's not going to question it. So that was day one. It was day one on the job. At the end of it, you know, Dave leaves.

And that's that. The next day, Dave comes back. Same routine. Again, he does the opening and closing. sort of rounds of the theater with Morgan. So when they're securing the theater, they're doing it together. They barely talk during the second day as well. Dave leaves that night and he's like, okay, you know, I kind of got the hang of it. This is going to be an awkward couple of weeks, hanging out with Morgan here who just does not appear in any way interested in interacting with me

at all beyond just professionally. So on the third day, this is the third day on the job, Dave, when he gets to the theater, he just really doesn't feel like doing the rounds with Morgan. I mean, it's already just so awful sitting there with Morgan because Morgan just, again, does not seem interested in talking to him.

And also, remember, Dave is here to learn and sort of, you know, take the torch from Morgan and take over the security of the theater. And so when Dave went in on this third day, he goes to Morgan and he's like, hey, I'm going to do the security rounds on my own. You can just stay here in the control room I'll do it. Like, I'll go do it for the first time I know what I'm doing. And Morgan kind of looked at him and he's like, all right, yeah, go ahead. You know, when you're done, come back here and just let me know what happened. And so Dave is like, great. I get like, you know, 20, 30 minutes away from Morgan. And so he goes to the basement. And the basement, it was really creepy. It's like this huge space. In fact, I'm pretty sure the basement extended beyond the width and the depth of the theater. It's like the sprawling basement with all these different, like, tons of.

It almost seemed like. It was the sprawling layout in the basement. And many of the rooms were just not really in use. So they're like these abandoned dark rooms. There's no windows or anything that leads outside. It's like a cave down there. And also in the hallway, when you'd go down, there was two sets of stairs that went down into the basement. There was the west and the east stairs on either side of the theater. And you'd go down and they'd be on the side of the building. And there's this main central hallway in the basement that spans. the length of the theater. And in the middle of that hallway was this old grand piano that didn't get used at all. And so when you'd be patrolling in the basement, it's dark and dingy, and you'd have to walk this hall with this creepy piano down there. And so that's the basement. And Dave goes down there,

and he's sort of like a little creeped out down there. But he goes in all the rooms. You know, he's done this for a couple of days now. And, you know, nothing happens. There's nobody there. Also, it's worth noting that despite the fact that they had this security for this theater to prevent break-ins, break-ins were not common. This is not like we have security because there are lots of break-ins. Like nothing ever happened at this theater. So, you know, Dave, he's doing the check of the basement. Nothing's here. Nothing's going on.

Secures the basement, which means everything's shut. All lights are off. He goes up to the first floor because that was the basement. It does the same thing. Shuts off all the lights. Everything's locked. It goes up to the second floor. Same thing.

Everything's locked. All lights are off. It goes up to the third floor. And he checks everywhere. All the rooms have been secured. All the lights are off. There's only one room left. And it's at the end of the hallway. And it's the rehearsal room. And it's the only room on the third floor that didn't have a door. It was just an open doorway. And basically you'd poke your head in and you would just see mirrors against the wall. And it's like a pretty big room. And so Dave, this is his last room. He just needs to check this one room. make sure no one's in there and then he's done. And so he walks to the doorway and he pokes his head into this rehearsal room. He's looking around and he doesn't see anything. And as he steps out of the room, so his back is to the hallway where he's just been. As he steps back into the hall, he hears this loud slam right behind him. It's the bathroom door that's right behind him. He whips around and he looks at the bathroom door and right away like a series of thoughts.

run through his mind. Number one, he's thinking, break in. Like there's no way that sound just happened on its own. Someone's here. Someone has either slammed the door and gone in the bathroom or they have slammed the bathroom door and they're running down the hallway. Like they're making an exit, they're making a run for it.

And so right away, you know, with this first thought, Dave, he's looking at the door, he's looking down the hallway, he doesn't see anyone. He is armed, but he's like, I gotta tell Morgan. I gotta tell him there's a potential break in. And so he pulls out his race. He calls to Morgan who's down on the first floor in the control room and he tells him, I suspect a break in. Like I just heard a door slamming up here and get up here. And so Morgan

down in the control room, he quickly scans the cameras, which it's worth pointing out these cameras. They didn't really work that well unless a light was on in the room it was watching, at least for the cameras that were like inside the theater. They only worked if the room was well lit. So he's looking at the cameras and really he can't see anything at all. And so he just abandons the camera and he starts running upstairs to go meet with Dave and figure out what's going on. And so Dave, he draws his gun. He's holding it in front of him, just sort of waiting. He's standing in the hallway. He's looking at the bathroom door. He's just like waiting because he doesn't really know what to do. He's going to wait for backup. And the second thought runs through his mind

about the slamming of the door. On the outside of the door was this pretty pronounced hydraulic hinge on the bathroom door. So this bathroom door was a pretty heavy door. You could open it, but if you tried to slam it, there's that last bit of it closing where the hydraulic hinge catches, and it goes like as the air comes out of it, and it slows the shutting of the door. It's like you can't slam this door. There's literally a hydraulic hinge that prevents the slamming of this door. And Dave's thinking, like, the door slammed so loud, he practically jumped. You know, it was right there. Like, he didn't mishear it.

How could that door have slammed? And so he's thinking about that. And Morgan, he comes charging up the stairs. He sees Dave, and Dave sort of fills him in. And Morgan's like, we got to go in the bathroom. Like, that's where this intruder must be. And so the two of them, guns drawn, they open up the bathroom door, they go inside. They flip the light on because it was dark in there.

And there's nobody in there. I mean, they searched the whole bathroom. There's nobody there. They check all the stalls because for a second they thought maybe somebody's standing on one of the toilet seats and we can't see them. So they open up all the stalls. Nobody's in this bathroom. But they're like, okay, whoever it was, they must have made a run for it. Like, Dave, you must not have seen where they went.

Maybe they're hiding in one of the rooms upstairs. Or maybe they ran down like the east stairwell or something. And so the two officers, they leave the bathroom and they make their way down the hall, poking their heads in each of the rooms as they go, like looking for this. potential intruder, there's nobody on the third floor. And so they begin making their way down that east stairwell. And as they're going down, their plan is just to go to the second floor and sort of, we're going to search the building in reverse, second first basement and see where this person is, assuming they're still here. And as they're making their way down that set of stairs,

Dave and Morgan, they just stop. Like they're in between the third floor and the second floor. They stop because they can now see the entire second floor is completely lit up. I mean, all they can see is just the entryway to the hallway that sort of feeds out into the second floor. But already, just from where they're standing, there's tons of light coming down the hallway. Everything's on. And remember, Dave, on his way up to the third floor, had systematically shut every door, locked everything, and turned off all the lights. And so Morgan and Dave, they're looking at that. And Dave says to Morgan, like, I turned everything off.

Like, everything was off down here. So clearly, whoever just broke in has done this. I mean, what other explanation can there be? And so the two of them now, like, really ready to potentially come face to face with someone who's broken into the theater, they turn the corner on the second floor and they begin clearing the second floor. And there's no one there. They check all these rooms, all every room. Every room is lit up. All the doors are not just unlocked, but they're wide open.

And think about this. Like they were just on the third floor. They didn't hear anything downstairs. All they heard was the slamming of that door. And what? Like in the space of a couple of minutes, this person silently ran to the second floor and opened everything, turned on every light, and they never heard any of it. And like, they're thinking that. And so they're searching this whole second floor and they don't find anything. And as they're going, they're turning off the lights. They're shutting everything. And they're sort of like looking at each other. like, what's going on here? And they finish searching the second floor. Nobody there.

They make their way to the first floor. That's where the control room is. They search the first floor. Nobody there. And then they go down into the basement, the creepy basement. And they search down there and there's nobody down there. And so after securing the theater, Dave and Morgan, I mean, they're stumped. They really don't know what to make of this.

And so they go back up to the control room. And Dave, admittedly, at this point, even though there's now been some pretty obvious physical signs that someone had to have been here. Dave is starting to feel a little bit self-conscious that he has sort of led them on a wild goose chase here, right? Like he's new, and, you know, maybe he didn't hear a slamming sound. Maybe that was in his head, and maybe he did forget to turn off the lights and shut all the doors on the second floor. I mean, that sounds ridiculous, but maybe. And he can see in his partner Morgan's body language and just his tone, which was already cold, he was sort of feeling like maybe Dave had overreacted here.

Like maybe Dave, you know, was wrong. And this is his fault. And so Dave, like, he feels bad and he wants to tell Morgan he feels bad. But at the same time, like, he knows what he experienced. And Morgan is like, this is weird, but I basically think it was your fault. And so, you know, these two still not getting along. The tension between them basically meant they couldn't really talk about it. And so at the end of this shift, it was like they both just turned over with the next

people and went home. And they just chalked it up to like, boy, that was weird. And so about a week later, on September 4th, Dave arrived early to the theater for a shift. And when he got there, some of the staff that worked during the day at the theater, like the administrative people and the accountants, they were just still there closing up for the day. And Dave, who was someone who sort of enjoyed small talk, he went inside and he began doing the initial scan of the entire theater, go to the basement, secure it, make your way upstairs. But on the first floor, he couldn't actually secure it because there are these staff members that are still here. They have to leave before he can officially secure the first floor. And so again, because Dave is a pretty extroverted guy,

he just found himself going to the first floor where all these staff still were. And he introduced himself as the new security guard. And then he just sort of milled about on the first floor as they wrapped up. And as Dave was in their space, he overheard them talking. And specifically, he overheard the senior accountant of the theater, a guy named Blair Fuller, talking to two other employees about this ghost story. And clearly, this ghost story had happened to Blair, the way he was telling it. And, you know, Dave, he was overhearing bits and pieces, so he couldn't really hear all the details. But clearly, whatever happened to Blair, scared him and happened inside of this theater. And remember, Dave, he's had this really

spooky experience just a couple of days ago with Morgan, the slamming in the door and never finding that intruder. I mean, they ultimately chalked it up to, I guess somebody had broken in and we just didn't catch them. But Dave, inside, he's thinking, I don't know, that was off. That was not normal what happened, but he didn't have an explanation. And so feeling sort of inspired, he walked over to Blair right as he was getting ready to leave. And he said, hey, excuse me, I overheard you talking about like a ghost story that happened here. Would you mind like telling me about it? And Blair was sort of caught off guard by this request.

Like he's getting ready to leave. And here's the security guard asking him to regale him in this ghost story. But Blair was like, actually, yeah, all right, yeah, come on, come into my office. And I'll tell you the story. And so the other employees, they all leave. And Blair and Dave, they make their way into Blair's office. and Blair, he tells Dave, like, you know, I've worked here for a long time, but I will not work nights here anymore because of this story. I'm going to tell you the story.

And he's like, a couple years ago, this is Blair now, a couple years ago, I was working late. I had some work to do, and my office was actually up on the third floor, and it overlooked the elevator bank. So from his desk, there was a window right on the outside of his office that looked out to the two elevator doors. When the elevators were on, the elevator's motor was really loud. Like when it would kick on, it was just very noticeable. And at night, when nobody else was there, there's no reason the elevator should be turning on. And so Blair was like, you know, I work nights a fair amount by this point, and I'm sitting at my desk, and I'm just sort of locked into my work.

And at some point, I hear one of the elevator motors kick on. And it's distinctive. And so he's like, I stopped, put my stuff down, and I looked out the glass. window of his office out to the hallway and to the elevator bank. And he saw one of the elevators, the arrow that showed what floor the elevator was on was on the basement level, but it was lit up, like the car was moving. And so slowly he watched as the little arrow moved from basement to first to second to third floor. So now it's reached his level. And Blair's like, I'm the only one here. Like this is so weird. Like who's here? And they're obviously coming to see me, right?

And so third floor, and he's like, the doors open up. And Blair's, he doesn't even know what to expect. He's assuming it's going to be another employee or something. But he's like, it was empty. And like right away, Blair's like, I felt so uneasy. Like, how creepy is that? It's late at night and this elevator's randomly arrived on my floor and nobody's in it. But Blair's like, it gets worse.

I'm sitting there staring at this empty elevator car and the doors don't shut. They just stay open. And like 30, 40 seconds goes by, and Blair's like, it's silent. I'm just like staring at this empty car. And then suddenly the alarm kicks on. And it's this constant sound that indicates there's an obstruction keeping the doors from shutting. Like something is keeping the doors open. But Blair's like, there is nothing out there.

Like there is no one nothing. Like how in the world is it being obstructed? And so for almost a minute, he's just sitting there and this alarm is it's really loud. and it's constant until the obstruction clears, and at some point it will override it. But it's like, he can't do his work here. And so he gets up from his desk, and he admits he was scared. And he walks into the hallway, and he's looking around. He's calling out in case, you know, somehow there had been someone here, and he missed them.

Like, impossible, but he's calling out. Nobody's calling back. And so he walks through the open door into the elevator, and as soon as he does, the alarm stops and he turns around and he sees that the basement button, like the button you would hit to go down to the basement, is now highlighted. Like, as if he had pressed it, but he didn't. And he's, like, shocked because he didn't press it and the alarm has also gone off. And he's standing in the elevator car and then the doors, they just shut. And he didn't get off.

He just is now in the elevator. And it starts going down. And Blair is like, I was so scared. Like, what am I doing on this elevator car? Why did I get in? And he's going down. It's the second floor, the first floor, and it goes all the way to the basement. And Blair's like, I expected there to be somebody outside waiting.

You know, somebody must have hit the basement call button, and that's why it's going down there. Like, how else could it be being called down there? But the doors opened up, and again, there was nothing out there. And so Blair, at this point, he said he stepped out now into the very creepy basement I was telling you about before. That's like the sprawling maze. There's no natural light down there. there's that creepy piano that's down there. He steps out in the hallway, and he said right away,

it was like just goosebumps all over his body. It's like the hairs are standing up on his arms. He doesn't see anything, doesn't hear anything, but he said he couldn't help but feel like there was something watching him, something down there that just didn't feel right. And so almost like a child, he said he panicked and ran back into the elevator car and began hitting the door close button. So he got the doors finally to close,

and he's jamming the third floor to go back up to his upper. office just to get out of here. And so slowly the car goes back up, gets to the third floor, it opens up. And he makes his way into his office. He goes through the door and then he stops. Because his desk is right here. And next to his desk is this huge old filing cabinet. And all the drawers have been pulled out. And he didn't do that. And again, he's alone. There's nobody else here at the theater. And he just stops and he stares at the filing cabinet. He looks around the room, nobody's there, and then one by one, the cabinet starts slamming shut, one after the other until they've all shut. And so Blair's like completely horrified. After just being frozen in

fear for a second, he runs over to the filing cabinet and he begins pulling them out to see if they'll like shut on their own, but none of them were angled. Like they wouldn't shut on their own. Something caused them to shut. And so he just grabbed all his stuff and he left and he promised himself he would never, ever work there at night. And he told Dave that from that point to now, he hadn't come back at night. And he was like, actually, right now, I'm getting out of here as quick as I can.

I can't believe you have to stay here. And Dave, you know, at this point, he's heard the story and he can't help but feel like, oh boy, like whatever I experienced feels similar to this. And so Dave, he opens up to Blair and he says, you know, it wasn't just because I was interested in your story. He's like, I've only been here for like a week or so. And already I've had an experience.

that I can't explain. And so he would tell Blair about the slamming of the door and all the stuff that he and Morgan experienced, which they couldn't explain. And Blair's like, yeah, there's something off about this place. You're not alone. Other people have shared their own experiences and it's like this place is haunted.

And so Blair, ultimately he leaves, and now Dave's like, great, like I gotta have a shift here, a nice overnight shift at this haunted theater. And so not long after Blair had gone, Morgan, Dave's partner, the cold partner who they really haven't opened up to each other at all at this point. Morgan shows up and Dave's like, you know what, screw it. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to tell Morgan what I think's going on here. I'm going to tell him the story I just heard and tell him that like, is this place haunted?

Like, what's going on? So Morgan comes in and Dave immediately is like, hey, dude, I just spoke to Blair, the accountant and here's his story. And he tells him the story of, you know, the elevator and the slamming filing cabinets. And afterwards, Dave is sort of like gauging Morgan's reaction to this because he doesn't really know what Morgan even thinks. I mean, the guy has been a closed book the whole time. But Dave notices at the end of this story that he's told, Blair's story, that he's just retold, that Morgan, it looks like something's on his mind. Like he does want to say something to Dave. And it's not like, oh, that's silly.

That's not real. It's like he's got something he wants to share. And so at this point, Dave, he's watching Morgan and Morgan hasn't said anything yet. And then Dave's like, Morgan, I can't explain what happened with that slamming door. Like, that wasn't me. I didn't mishear that. Something happened here. And then I didn't turn those lights on or I didn't forget to shut the doors on the second four.

That wasn't me either. And you know it. Like, what happened? Like, what's going on here? And so at this point, Morgan, he looks at Dave. And like, Morgan, it's clear he wants to preserve his credibility as the senior guy, the boss. You know, maybe that's why he's being so hard. He's like, you know, I've got a confession to make.

I have never felt good in this building. I've always felt uneasy. In fact, just the other day. I was here alone. You know, you weren't here. And I heard whispers, you know, right behind me when I was in the control room. And it was really just creepy. You know, there's nobody else there.

It sounded like someone was right in my ear. And I got up and I sort of followed the whispers and they led me to the basement. And when I got down there, I could have sworn. and I smelled smoke to the point where I was about I was about to call the fire department. I literally thought there was a fire. But I searched the whole basement and there was nothing. And so between that and obviously what happened to us and just honestly, my general unease of being in this building, I'm convinced there's something going on here and it's not natural. And so finally, Dave and Morgan have like found common ground.

They're suddenly able to share their theories and what they think about this and that about this theater. they're connecting over this. And quickly, they realize, like, even though it seems like, considering, you know, the senior accountant Blair has his story and he's a credible guy, it seems like maybe there are others that have sort of spooky stories about this place that might validate our stories and our feelings. But, like, we're police officers. Like, we don't want to go to our higher command and be like, hey, guess what?

We found some ghosts inside of this theater. And so they're like, we got to find some other way to sort of test our theory that something really is wrong here. And so they both come to this conclusion that what they should do is just invite a neutral third party to just come visit them. They're like, why don't we grab one of our friends and just have them come here and just sort of bill it as like a chance to explore this historic, you know, theater after hours, like make it seem like it's just a cool thing they get to do because they're friends with us, like the police officers. And so Dave is like, great idea. And he's like, I got just the guy, his buddy Greg. It's his best friend. It's his best

friend Greg, he's in town. He's like, let me call Greg. He won't suspect anything. He will come here. He will love the tour. And I tell you, if there's anything weird, he'll call it out. But if there isn't, he won't call it out. He's a perfect, neutral third party. And so they end up calling old Greg. And I think it was like the next day when both Morgan and Dave were on ship at this point. They've locked down the theater. And Greg, you know, he shows up and he's really excited for this like after hours tour of this theater. He'd grown up and saw a lot of Lake City. This is like a landmark. This is cool. And so Greg, he comes in. And again, he has no idea that really he's sort of a guinea pig. He's being led into a potentially haunted building

to see if he believes it's haunted without any prompting. And so they tell Greg like, hey, so what we're going to do is we're just going to take you through basically what we do on our security rounds. We'll just take you to every room, starting with the basement, we'll work our way to the top. Normally what we would do is we would systematically shut every door, lock every door, and turn off every light during these rounds, but we've already done that. So you'll basically just see a whole bunch of locked doors, you know, we'll poke our heads in a few, and then you'll see the theater and so on and so forth. And so Greg's like, cool, let's go.

And so they leave the main lobby where they've met him, and they make their way downstairs to the basement. And even though, again, they're sort of following their protocol of, you know, walking down the theater, basement first, first, or second, third, they've already done it once. Everything's shut, everything's locked. And they make their way into that big hallway that runs the entire stretch of the theater in the basement. And they're walking. And up ahead is that creepy piano.

And Greg is like, oh, it's so cool. Like, I've never been down here. And at some point, Dave and Morgan, who are ahead of Greg, they notice up ahead one of the doors in the basement is not just unlocked. It's wide open. And again, everything has been locked. Everything has been shut at this point. So, like, right away. they, Dave and Morgan, are like, we're dealing with whatever's going on in this place.

Like, in some ways, this is perfect because Greg is here. And so without telling Greg what's going on, they just say, hey, Greg, like, stay back for a second. And Greg's like, what? What's going on? And Dave and Morgan, they draw their guns. And Greg's like, what is happening here? So Dave and Morgan, they draw their guns. And they start walking towards this open door.

And they're in the hallway walking towards the door that's on their left. So they can't see into it yet. They need to turn and look into the door to see. what's in there. And they're walking up, and as they're getting closer and closer to this door, which is just wide open, it's a small, like, storage room or something. As they're getting closer and closer, the door just suddenly slam shut, like super loud. And the instant it's shut, the doorknob begins to rattle, like someone's in the room, yanking the doorknob up and down. And so Dave and Morgan, they're like, oh my God, someone's in here. Greg is about to run out of here,

but he's so scared, he just kind of gets up behind the two officers and doesn't even know what to do. And so Dave and Morgan, they move up on the door, one's covering the other. They try the door, they try to open it, but it's getting shook all around. They can't open it. And finally, one of them kicks the door in. It slams open. Nothing there. There's no one there.

There's no way anyone could have been right there a millisecond ago, shaking the doorknop, and then vanish as quickly as they had. There was nowhere to go. There's nothing in this room. It's a vacant, small room. And so Dave and Morgan, they're seeing this. Clearly they have their flashlights out. And Greg, the neutral third party,

who was brought here basically for this reason, he is just beyond terrified. He has seen exactly what, in essence, they were hoping he would see. And he starts saying, this place is haunted. Like, there's no two ways about it. Like, I've never seen that before. This place is haunted.

And Dave and Morgan, they're like, I don't know. Like, let's just make sure no one's in here. And they go in, They do a little sweep just to make sure no one's in there, and there's nothing. But while they're in there, Greg, the friend, who's, you know, he's on edge. He's frantic. He's sort of standing in the room behind them.

And at some point, he's like, oh, what's that in the corner? And they all turn and they shine their light into the corner, the corner of the small room, and there's nothing there. But Greg's like, I just saw, like, a figure sitting there with a hood over their head. They were right there. And so David Morgan are like, all right, dude, we'll tell you why you're here. Yeah, we think this place is haunted. and you pretty much just proved it. Let's get out of here. And so the three of them, they leave the

basement. They go to the control room. Greg is like, yeah, bye, he bails and Dave and Morgan. I mean, they are, they're shook. I mean, they didn't really think something that big was going to happen, but now it's like undeniable. I mean, they both now have seen and with a third party. Like, they'd seen something happen that is not explainable. And they just don't know what to do. However, even though Dave and Morgan didn't know how to handle this, they had sort of started a chain of events that the city was now going to respond to. And so over these past couple of weeks, as these strange things were happening in the theater, Dave and Morgan were, they were documenting them. But they weren't really saying what actually happened. They were just indicating that, you know, these strange things they saw, they would chalk it up as like a potential break in.

But then no person was ever caught. And so the city, they're seeing all these reports come in, or at least a higher number of reports that suggest the theater keeps getting broken into. And so they decide, like, we're going to install a higher level of security in the theater. And what they did is they decided to replace all of the cameras that were old and, again, only really worked if there was a light on in the room. They replaced them with infrared cameras that would be able to see what was in a room, even if the lights were off. And so on installation day, which was September 15th, so this is, you know, a month and a half after Dave has first begun working at this theater. And now, you know, several strange things have happened in the theater that both Dave and Morgan have witnessed on this day, installation day. The new cameras are put in.

And Morgan, he was actually working alone that day. And so he gets to work. He does his typical check of basement first, second, third floor. He locks the place down. And then he goes to the control room and he just watches the camera monitors. But now it's different because the camera monitors, despite, you know, showing all these rooms that are dark and locked off, because the cameras were infrared, he could now see the rooms. It was like they were all lit up. It was like he had night vision for all these rooms. And so Morgan, he's just sitting there, just scanning the different cameras.

and at a certain point, as he was doing a sort of mental loop of looking at each camera, he got to the monitor that showed the inside of the theater, which was on the first floor not far from the control room, and the camera was looking from behind the stage out towards the seats. It basically was a fish eye of all the seats. And he saw what looked very clearly to be like a person, or what appeared to be a person sitting in the theater. And, you know, the camera was kind of zoomed back out,

and Morgan's primed for weird things to be happening in this theater. And so he sees this, and right away, he begins to zoom in, like, on this figure in the middle of the theater. And so he zooms in and he zooms in until he can get as close as he can get. And it is very clearly, like what appears to be a man who's wearing this hood that's covering his head, and he's sitting there looking down. And Morgan, he's staring at this figure, and he's already scared. I mean, he's alone in the theater. he's seen all sorts of horrible things, and he's just locked on this monitor.

Not even sure what he should do. I mean, protocol would be you go investigate, because this is somebody who's broken in, but Morgan's not thinking that. He's thinking, ghost. And so he's staring at this figure, and suddenly this figure looks up, and it looks right at the camera, right at Morgan. It's got these dark sunken eyes, like red glowing through its eyes. And it's looking at Morgan, and Morgan, he's horrified,

and then inexplicably this figure rises up out of its seat and disappears into the ceiling. And Morgan, as soon as he saw that, he quit. He said, enough is enough. I'm not doing this anymore. He literally packed up his stuff and left. That was it for him. Two weeks later, Dave is at the theater. He's obviously heard this tale from Morgan directly. He told him what happened and why he quit. And so two weeks later, you know, Dave, he's working at the theater. Now he's working alone too because he doesn't have a partner. And he didn't begrudge Morgan for it. He sort of got it himself.

He was on the fritz of quitting himself. Like this was just too much being in this theater. But he's working alone. And, you know, he did the typical get to work. You know, you check all the floors. You secure everything. And he's sitting in the control room. And he's watching the cameras.

And at a certain point, he thinks he hears music, like piano music. and he can't really tell where it's coming from. And, you know, even though he's been in this theater and seen all these strange things, like he didn't immediately think, oh, this is like paranormal. This is a ghost. This is a haunting?

He actually thought, oh, is there like music playing outside? That's like leaking into the theater or something. And so he just gets up and begins to walk around and explore, figure out where this music is coming from. And at first, he thinks it's sort of coming from somewhere near the actual auditorium. And so he gets into the auditorium, but, you know, at that point, the music is getting quieter. And so he turns around and he walks back towards the control room.

And as he's getting closer to the control room, he realizes the music is definitely coming from the basement. And again, it's, it's piano music. Like, it's clearly a piano and it's like ragtime, upbeat music. And, you know, Dave is thinking there's a piano downstairs, right in the middle of that hallway. And he's like, this is horrifying. But I got to go down there. I got to go down there and see what this is. Like, this is my job.

I'm supposed to be, you know, security. And so he draws his gun, and he makes his way over to the top of the east stairwell that goes down into the basement. And as he's going down these dark steps, the basement's pitch black down there. You can't turn the light on until you're all the way down there. He's going down the stairs. He's got his flashlight. So he's got a little bit of a light at the bottom. And with each step on the way down, the music, the loud, upbeat, ragtime music is getting louder and louder and louder.

It's like unbelievably loud as he's reached the bottom of the stairs. And he reaches right at that point where he needs to break the corner and look down the hallway to actually see the piano. And now he knows that that's where the music has to be coming from. Someone's playing the piano. And so he's got his gun. He's got his flashlight. And all at once, he turns and breaks the corner and looks down the hallway and shines his light on the piano. And the second his light lands on the piano, all he sees is the covering for the keys,

slam shut over the keys. And then it's just deathly silent in the hall. There was no one there. There's no one in the hallway. It's just silent. And for Dave, this was sort of like his moment, like Morgan had two weeks earlier. He goes up to the control room and he calls a supervisor and he's like, do not ever put me back in this theater.

Like, I'll work here tonight. But after this, never put me back here or I will quit. And so his supervisor in, you know, hearing how serious Dave, was. He's like, okay, I'll find somebody else. And that was Dave's last shift at the theater. And after that, for the next two months, there was like

intermittent coverage of the theater. Other police officers would go and they'd fill in, but nobody was full-time manning the theater. Until, two months later, this is now in November of that year, a veteran cop, whose name was Josh Thomas, who actually happened to be a friend

of Dave's, he was assigned to be the new full-time security guard for the Capitol Theater. And so Dave knew that. Sort of felt bad for the guy, but he didn't have a chance to talk to Josh about his experience or Morgan's experience. He just found out that Josh was going to be the guy that was going to be the new security guard. And so on Josh's first day, when he was there by himself, actually, he didn't have the opportunity to train with anybody else. He's by himself at the Capitol Theater. It's his first day. On that day, Dave, who, you know, he doesn't do that job anymore. He was still a cop. He was on patrol,

just generally near the Capitol Theater. And as he's driving around, he suddenly hears this frantic call come over the radio asking for backup at the Capitol Theater. And he knew that Josh's friend had been assigned there. You know, that's definitely him. And as it happened, he was closest of all the other police in the area to the theater. And so Dave, despite, you know, not really wanting to go back in the theater. It's his buddy. It's his job. And so he flies over to the theater. And when he gets there, he finds Josh. And Josh is, he's outside of the theater. And he's, he's wide-eyed. He's clearly terrified. Remember, Josh, at least from Dave and Morgan, they didn't share any details with him about their experience. They kind of intentionally kept it to themselves.

They didn't want anybody to know really what had happened. And they sort of were trying to keep it discreet. And so Josh is sort of like an independent guy who's just wound up at this theater and he looks just terrified. And Dave, he walks over to Josh and he's like, hey, what's going on? Like, you called for backup. Like, what's happening here? And Josh, he's like, I don't even know what to tell you is going on inside the theater. He's like, I was in there doing my rounds and I was in the basement and I was standing in front of the elevator bank and, you know, I'm alone in the theater. And suddenly the motor for the elevator kicked on. And I didn't press the button.

I didn't call for it. And I'm just like stumped. I'm looking at the arrow as the, you know, the ticker is going from the third floor and it's making its way down to the basement. And he said, I thought maybe, you know, somebody else, another officer had come to work with me or something. But he's like, the elevator car, it came down. The doors opened and there was nobody there. And like right away, just something felt off. I'm standing there.

I got goosebumps. Like, I just felt like something was off. And then the alarm sounded on the doors, like basically something was obstructing it. Like it wasn't shutting because something was in the way, but there was nothing there. And honestly, I just panicked. Like, I had already felt from the time I got there that, like, something was weird about this place. But it just felt like someone's, like, playing a prank on me or something. And I just, I called in for backup.

And Dave, you know, he's thinking that had it not been for his own experience in this theater, this story, like the idea that that was enough to, warrant an officer to call for backup was pretty ridiculous. Like this is, you have not described a break in at all. You've described an elevator car opening up in front of you sort of unannounced. But Dave, he knows the history of this place and he's like, all right, hey, I'll go in there with you. We'll check the place out.

Like, we'll make sure, you know, it's safe. So the two of them, they go back in the side door. They go down to the basement. They search the whole basement. There's nothing there. They secure it. They go to the first floor and they search the sort of periphery of the first floor and they start by walking down the runway towards the actual stage and they're looking in all the seats,

there's nobody there. They get up onto the stage and Dave, he sort of breaks off to the left, search the left-hand side on the stage, and Josh, he starts going over to the right-hand side and they'd split up for the first time since being inside. And it's tense, right? Like, they both know this is just sort of weird what's happening, but they're not actually talking about it. They've just broken up and it's quiet in the theater. And at some point, Dave, who's over on the left side of the stage, he's, you know, 30, 40 feet away from Josh. He hears Josh say something like, hey, dude, knock it off. I get it. It's creepy. And Dave looks over him. He's like, what? Like, what are you talking about? And Josh, he whips his head around and he's like, oh, he's like,

I just heard whispers in my ear. I thought you would come up behind me and were trying to scare me. So the two, they come together. And so Dave, he's standing on the stage looking towards the back at the stage and Josh is facing Dave and the seats. He's basically, he's looking in the direction of the seats. And the two of them are looking at each other like, wait, what did you hear? Like Dave's like, what did you? You heard whispers? And Josh is like, yeah, like right in my ear. And like they're talking for a minute about it. And then suddenly Josh, who again is looking past Dave basically into the empty theater, he just freezes. And he's like, Dave, there's something behind you. and Dave, he turns around, and at first he doesn't see anything, but then he notices in the back of the theater, there is this hooded figure that's standing in the very back row and its head is down.

And both Josh and Dave are staring at this figure, and the figure suddenly looks up and looks right at the two men. It's got those sunken eyes, the red eyes piercing through, and it just turns and bolts out of the theater. Now, even though this was immediately terrifying for both of them, you know, David for obvious reasons and really Josh too, like he doesn't know what to make of this, they both instinctively treat this like a break-in. A person's here. They've broken in. And so they chase after this person and they're looking everywhere and they search the entire theater and wouldn't you know it, they don't find anything. And so after, you know, officially locking down the theater after this strange encounter, Dave doesn't leave. He goes with Josh back to the control room and Josh has really shaken up. And, you know, Dave, he's sort of seen this before. He doesn't want to be here, but he's been through this before. And he just sits down with Josh and he tells him the truth. He's like, you know, here's why I asked to be reassigned. Here's why Morgan quit. Here's the story that Blair, the accountant, told me. And oh, by the way, I've heard rumor that this place has loads of stories about it. That lots of people over the years have encountered effectively ghosts.

And actually, after this experience with Josh, Dave, who really had decided that this chapter in his life was just kind of over. Like, after getting reassigned, he had sort of just moved on from the theater. Like, I'm never going back there. I'm not going to think about it. But after what happened with Josh, Dave decided to take sort of the opposite approach. He decided to do a little digging and sort of see what is the real history of this theater. See if there's, you know, maybe a reason behind why there is, you know, apparently this haunting here. He did some digging and he discovered in the 1940s, so many, many years ago, there was this horrible fire at the theater.

And although of the 600 plus people who were in the theater at the time, even though virtually everybody got out, there was one person, a young man who was an usher who worked at the theater who actually had been trying to save people. He had gotten out and kept going back into the theater to try to get more people out. and at some point he got trapped in the basement, and that's where the fire was, and he ultimately died. He was the one fatality in this fire. And so Dave and many others believe that the ghost that haunts that theater is, in fact, this usher's ghost, and that the reason they smell smoke and the reason that, like, doors are slamming and things to do with doors are involved, is because, like, this boy died, this young man died because he was trapped in the basement.

But ultimately it's just a theory, but I'll say in addition to the four perspectives that I just gave you in the story, the four people that all had encounters with something, Blair, Morgan, Dave, and Josh inside of this theater, like they are not alone. You know, since 2006, when these events happened, there have been dozens of other people that have gone into that theater, and they have left with stories of things that don't add up, stories that sound like they were inside of a haunted building. And so whether or not you believe that, it's up to you. But the stories are out there, the accounts are out there, and it's a fascinating place. So you've got to go check it out for yourself.

A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone, and, and Cole Lacosio. This episode was written by Karras Pash Cooper. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasiano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by

Whitel and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song, Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts

or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you.