Dock Street Theatre

Originally opened in 1736 as the first theater in America built specifically for theatrical performances, the Dock Street Theatre has been rebuilt and renovated multiple times over the centuries and remains one of Charleston's most haunted landmarks.

The Dock Street Theatre at 135 Church Street in Charleston traces its origins to February 12, 1736, when the original building opened with a production of The Recruiting Officer -- making it the first structure in America built exclusively for theatrical performances. A fire destroyed the original theater around 1740, and the current building was constructed in 1809 as the Planters' Hotel, one of the most luxurious establishments in antebellum Charleston. The hotel attracted the wealthiest members of Charleston society for evenings of drinking, gambling, and less respectable entertainments. In 1937, the building was reconstructed as a theater and has operated as the Dock Street Theatre ever since.

The most frequently seen ghost at the Dock Street Theatre is a woman known as Nettie, believed by many to be Nettie Dickerson. According to the legend, Nettie was a twenty-five-year-old woman from the South Carolina upcountry who came to Charleston around 1840, drawn by the excitement and sophistication of city life. In an era when twenty-five was considered well past the marrying age, the wealthy men of Charleston had no interest in a woman they regarded as a spinster. Nettie found work as a clerk at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, but grew tired of trying to get ahead. Despite the priest's pleas not to lose heart, she quit and is believed to have become a prostitute entertaining the patrons of the Planters' Hotel. The accounts of her death vary. In the most dramatic version, Nettie made her way to the second-floor balcony of the hotel, shouting that no one could save her, when a bolt of lightning struck her dead on the spot. Other accounts say she died from a botched medical procedure. Whatever the truth, Nettie never left.

Visitors and staff report seeing a red-haired woman in a flowing red dress on the second floor of the theater, descending the hallways and stairways in semi-transparent form. Some say she appears zombie-like, her features distorted by time or suffering. A telling detail connects her apparition to the building's architectural history: during the reconstruction of the hotel into a theater, the second floor was raised by one foot. Nettie's ghost is consistently seen from the knees up, as if she is walking on the original flooring of the Planters' Hotel that no longer exists -- a floor only she can feel beneath her feet.

The theater's second ghost is the specter of Junius Brutus Booth, the famous English stage actor and father of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Junius performed at the Planters' Hotel with his theater company during the 1830s and 1840s. Witnesses describe his ghost as a man of about five foot seven inches, sporting a frock coat, top hat, and knee-high boots. He has been spotted walking the stage during rehearsals and performances, and actors and staff maintain that he has come so close they have felt his breath on the backs of their necks.

Beyond the two named ghosts, the theater generates a steady stream of unexplained phenomena. Cold spots drift through the auditorium. Lights flicker without electrical cause. Doors open and close on their own in the backstage areas. Actors performing on stage have reported the sensation of being watched from the empty balcony, and some have glimpsed figures in period clothing sitting in seats that were confirmed vacant.

Today the Dock Street Theatre is operated by the City of Charleston and hosts a full season of theatrical productions, concerts, and events. It is a regular stop on Charleston ghost tours and remains one of the most atmospherically haunted performance spaces in America -- a theater where the living and the dead share the same stage, separated only by a single foot of raised flooring and nearly two centuries of accumulated sorrow.