New Castle Playhouse Investigation

New Castle Playhouse

In 1987 the New Castle Playhouse purchased the Old State
Movie Theater building and turned it into a permanent home
for their theater group. More recently, the Playhouse
developed the old garage located behind the main building
into a smaller Annex Theater. There have been other
renovations made to the old theater building, such as new
seating in the auditorium and an atrium added to the lobby.
However, our Case Manager, Bryan, came across some of the
more haunted history of this location. This investigation was
made possible thanks to Bryan's contacts.

We couldn't help but wonder if some of the reports of activity
could be from the past deaths of employees of the theater?
While researching the history, Bryan discovered that when the
building was being constructed in 1924 a worker fell from the
3rd floor to his death in the auditorium. Later, in the 1990's, a
music director was in a car accident, as told by a veteran
actress who was a close friend. To this day she hears the
sound of him laughing on the 3rd floor. Other reports of
activity have included shadow figures on the 2nd and 3rd
floors, along with other various noises on the 3rd floor. People
there refer to "him" as the noisy spirit. Many people with the
theater will not venture onto the 3rd floor alone.

We went to investigate in October 2009. Bryan led his team
which included Scott, Paula, Maureen, and Denise. They
began with the initial walk through of the theater, along with
their contact and a reporter friend from the Ellwood City
Ledger, to learn more about the history and activity reported
there. Once that was complete, and all of the equipment had
been set up for the night, we split up into smaller teams to
begin our investigation.

Scott and Denise began on the upper floors of the theater,
while Bryan, Paula, and Maureen took the audiotorium/stage.
One of the first things we noticed was that EMF readings were
quite high, pretty much rendering any EMF or K-II meters
unreliable for the investigation here. Perhaps the high EMF
was due to the older electrical wiring in the building. Of
course, as the night went on, we switched locations and made
sure we covered all of the areas with reported activity.

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The New Castle Playhouse

Denise and Bryan getting the K-II
meters ready to go

We were finally able to get Paula back
out on an investigation!

Keep your day jobs! The Rockettes is
out of the question!

Maureen,Paula and Bryan during an
EVP session on the 3rd floor of the
costume room

A few team members ended up having some personal
experience during the night. While Scott and Denise were
sitting on the stage, facing the auditorium, they heard what
sounded like one of the audience seats move. Like most
theaters, the seats are spring loaded and require weight put on
them in order to be lowered into the down position. They made
some attempts to recreate the sound that they heard, and
determined that it did sound as if a seat was sprung back to the
upward position.

Scott and Denise had one other experience here, too. There
was a K-II meter set in one of the aisles of the auditorium and
they saw a shadow pass over in front of the meter bocking out
the one solid green light that is always lit on the unit. It wasn't
caught on video, so it can't be counted as evidence.

The New Castle Playhouse is now the second theater that CPSI
has investigated, and as far as we learned from the theater, we
are the first paranormal group to investigate this great
location. Other than a few personal experiences, we did not
capture any evidence with our equipment.

Could the personal experiences we encountered have been
those spirits of the former workers? At this time we don't
know. We would like to thank our contacts and the New Castle
Playhouse for this opportunity and we look forward to a return
investigation in hopes to be able to validate the activity
reported here.

Entering the auditorium before lights
out

CLICK HERE to read the article that
appeared in the Ellwood City Ledger:
New Castle Playhouse Hosts
Paranormal Investigators

New Castle Playhouse ~ Revisited: The Follow-up Investigation
(Page Coming Soon!)