Dock Street Theatre

Dock Street Theatre opened in 1736 as the first American building purpose-built for theatrical performances. It's been rebuilt and renovated multiple times since, but the haunted reputation has outlasted every renovation.

The Dock Street Theatre at 135 Church Street opened on February 12, 1736, with a production of The Recruiting Officer -- the first building in America designed specifically for theater. Fire destroyed the original around 1740. The current structure went up in 1809 as the Planters' Hotel, one of antebellum Charleston's most luxurious spots, attracting the city's wealthiest for evenings of drinking, gambling, and less respectable entertainment. In 1937, it was converted back into a theater.

The ghost people encounter most often is a woman called Nettie, thought to be Nettie Dickerson. The story goes that Nettie was a twenty-five-year-old woman from the South Carolina upcountry who came to Charleston around 1840, drawn by city life. At twenty-five -- well past marrying age by 1840s standards -- the wealthy men of Charleston had no interest in someone they considered a spinster. She worked as a clerk at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, grew tired of trying to get ahead, quit despite the priest's pleas, and likely became a prostitute working the Planters' Hotel. How she died depends on who's telling it. In the most dramatic version, Nettie climbed to the second-floor balcony, shouted that no one could save her, and was struck dead by a bolt of lightning. Other accounts say a botched medical procedure killed her.

Staff and visitors report a red-haired woman in a flowing red dress on the second floor, drifting through hallways and down stairways in semi-transparent form. Some say she looks zombie-like, her features distorted. One architectural detail makes her sightings genuinely strange: during the 1937 reconstruction, the second floor was raised by one foot. Nettie's ghost consistently appears from the knees up, as if she's walking on the original Planters' Hotel floor that no longer exists -- a surface only she can feel.

The theater's second ghost is Junius Brutus Booth, the famous English stage actor and father of John Wilkes Booth. Junius performed at the Planters' Hotel with his company during the 1830s and 1840s. Witnesses describe a man about five foot seven in a frock coat, top hat, and knee-high boots walking the stage during rehearsals. Actors and staff say he's come close enough that they've felt his breath on the backs of their necks.

Beyond those two, the theater produces a steady stream of oddities. The temperature shifts without warning in the auditorium. Lights flicker with no electrical cause. Backstage doors open and close on their own. Actors on stage have felt watched from the empty balcony, and some have spotted figures in period clothing sitting in seats confirmed vacant.

The City of Charleston operates the Dock Street Theatre and hosts a full season of productions, concerts, and events. It's a regular stop on Charleston ghost tours -- a theater where performers living and dead share the same stage, separated by one foot of raised flooring and nearly two centuries.