Dock Street Theatre

Nettie Dickerson, struck by lightning on the Planters' Hotel balcony around 1840, haunts this Charleston theater from the knees up, walking on a floor raised one foot during 1930s renovations. Actor Junius Brutus Booth, father of Lincoln's assassin, and a mysterious White Lady round out the three known ghosts at America's first purpose-built theater.

During the 1930s restoration of the Planters' Hotel, workers raised the second floor by exactly one foot. Nobody thought much of it until Nettie showed up from the knees down missing.

The Dock Street Theatre sits at 135 Church Street in Charleston, on ground that has hosted performances since February 12, 1736. That first theater opened with George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer and later staged Flora, the first opera performed in America. The Great Fire of 1740 destroyed the original building. In 1809, Alexander Calder built the Planters' Hotel on the same site, and it became one of antebellum Charleston's most exclusive gathering spots for wealthy rice planters during horse-racing season. Cast-iron balconies and sandstone columns were added to the facade in 1835. The 1886 Charleston earthquake badly damaged the structure, and it sat abandoned for nearly fifty years before the WPA rebuilt it as a theater using cypress wood salvaged from other Charleston mansions. It reopened on November 26, 1937.

Nettie Dickerson arrived in Charleston around 1840, a twenty-five-year-old woman from the South Carolina upcountry. By the standards of the time, twenty-five without a husband made her a spinster, and Charleston's wealthy men weren't interested. She took a job as a clerk at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, quit despite the priest's pleas, and ended up working as a prostitute at the Planters' Hotel. She bought an expensive red dress to attract clients. How she died depends on who tells it. The most common version: during a thunderstorm, she climbed to the second-floor balcony and shouted "you cannot save me!" at her former employer below. A bolt of lightning struck her dead on the spot. Another version says a botched medical procedure killed her.

Tour guides and stagehands describe a red-haired woman in a tattered red dress drifting through the second floor hallways. Some say she looks distorted, almost zombie-like. But the detail that makes her sightings unusual is architectural: because the floor was raised that extra foot in the 1930s, Nettie appears from the knees up. She walks on a surface that was torn out nearly a century ago, a floor only she can feel beneath her.

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 theater company during the 1830s and 1840s. During one stay around 1838, he flew into a rage and attacked the hotel manager, nearly killing him. Witnesses describe his ghost as a man about five foot seven in a frock coat, top hat, and knee-high boots walking across the stage during rehearsals. Actors and staff have felt his breath on the backs of their necks.

A third spirit, known only as the White Lady, appears sporadically to visitors. No one knows who she was.

The theater produces a steady stream of smaller oddities too. Temperatures shift without warning in the auditorium. Lights flicker with no electrical cause. Backstage doors open and close on their own. Actors on stage have spotted figures in period clothing sitting in seats confirmed vacant moments before. Staff say activity increased noticeably after a $19 million renovation completed on March 18, 2010.

The City of Charleston operates the Dock Street Theatre and hosts a full season of productions and concerts. It landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Ghost tours stop here regularly, though the theater doesn't need the marketing. The performers living and dead share the same stage, separated by one foot of raised flooring and nearly two centuries of history.