About This Location
A historic theater in the heart of Martinsburg, built in 1913 and now serving as a community performance venue. The building is steeped in over a century of history and is a stop on the West Virginia Paranormal Trail.
The Ghost Story
The Apollo Civic Theatre in Martinsburg opened on January 19, 1914, designed by Reginald Geare, the same architect who created the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C. Originally a vaudeville house and movie theater, the Apollo hosted performers including Will Rogers and Tex Ritter during its golden years. But the building's most dramatic chapter came not from entertainment but from emergency: during the devastating 1918 influenza epidemic, the Apollo was repurposed as a hospital to care for the flood of flu patients that overwhelmed Martinsburg's medical facilities. The dead and dying lay in a building designed for laughter, and the theater has never fully recovered from that transformation.
The oldest ghost stories at the Apollo date to the mid-1970s, but the paranormal activity has only intensified in the decades since. The theater harbors at least two identified spirits, both of whom have been seen by multiple witnesses over a period of more than forty years.
Charlie is believed to have been a former caretaker of the theater, and he remains on duty. His ghost has been spotted outside the building, dressed in a fedora with his collar turned up, looking exactly like a man heading to work on a cold night. Charlie appears most frequently near the theater's entrances, as though still arriving for his shift, and those who encounter him describe a figure that looks entirely solid and real until the moment he vanishes.
George was first seen during a curtain call in the early 1980s by a former board member who looked into the audience and noticed an old man in a plaid shirt sitting in the seats, smoking a cigar. George watches performances with apparent attention and enjoyment, and the sharp scent of cigar smoke often accompanies his appearances -- a smell that lingers in sections of the auditorium where no smoking has occurred for decades.
Beyond these named ghosts, the Apollo produces a steady stream of unexplained phenomena. In the dressing rooms, hangers have been seen flying off shelves with a force that cannot be attributed to gravity or vibration. Heavy footsteps sound across the ballroom when it is confirmed empty, the deliberate tread of someone crossing the room with purpose. Perhaps most unsettling are the sounds of laughter, conversation, and the clinking of dishes and glasses that emanate from the building when it is locked and unoccupied -- the residual sounds of a party or reception that no living person is hosting.
The theater's use as an influenza hospital in 1918 may explain much of the activity. The Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 Americans, and field hospitals set up in theaters, churches, and public buildings became sites of concentrated suffering and death. The Apollo's transformation from a place of entertainment to a place of dying created a collision of energies -- joy and grief, performance and agony -- that paranormal researchers believe can imprint on a physical space.
The Apollo Civic Theatre is now part of West Virginia's official Paranormal Trail and hosts its own paranormal investigation events throughout October as part of its annual Apolloween celebration. The theater offers investigators access to the building's most active areas, and the results have been consistently productive. Dark Whimsical Art, a paranormal investigation team, has conducted multiple investigations at the Apollo and documented findings that they describe as among the most compelling they have encountered.
Today the Apollo operates as Martinsburg's community theater, producing plays, musicals, and concerts in a building that is never quite empty, even when every seat is vacant.