Garde Arts Center

A 1926 Moroccan-revival movie palace in New London, built on the site of a whaling merchant's mansion where five of his children died, is haunted by a little girl clutching a balloon in the balcony, a man slumped in a theater chair, and a protective spirit that caught a falling employee. TAPS investigated in 2016 and captured evidence of an intelligent haunting on the catwalk above the stage.

Vera Leeper painted the Garde Theatre's interior in 1926 wearing knickers and a painter's frock, crawling through scaffolding with a knife instead of a brush. She applied a substance called "morene" directly to rough cement walls, sculpting Moroccan desert scenes in bas-relief. The New London Day reported it was the first theater in America decorated using this technique. Leeper was 27 years old. The building she was decorating had been built on land where five children died.

Thomas Wheeler Williams launched New London's whaling industry in 1819 with the successful voyage of the brig Mary. He represented Connecticut in the U.S. Congress from 1839 to 1843. He built his mansion on the block at State and Huntington Streets, a reflection of the fortune whaling brought him. But wealth couldn't protect the Williams family. Five of his nine children died before reaching adulthood. His first wife, Lucretia, died in 1829 at just 32.

The mansion was torn down in 1925. The following year, under the direction of Arthur S. Friend, a New York movie studio attorney and early partner of Cecil B. DeMille, architect Arland W. Johnson designed a theater that would transport audiences to another world. The Garde opened on September 22, 1926, with the silent film The Marriage Clause and its Wurlitzer pipe organ filling the 1,420-seat auditorium. Warner Bros. bought the theater for one million dollars in 1929 to introduce their "talking pictures" technology. The press called it "one of the finest theatres in New England."

The theater closed in 1977 as multiplexes and suburbanization killed downtown movie palaces. A nonprofit, the Garde Arts Center, formed in 1985 to save it. A $15 million restoration by Centerbrook Architects, completed in 1999, preserved the exotic Moroccan interior. In 2022, the League of Historic American Theatres named it the Outstanding Historic Theatre in America.

The ghosts apparently never left during the closure.

The most frequently seen figure is a little girl clutching a balloon, spotted wandering the balcony area by multiple staff members and visitors over the years. Some people believe she's one of the Williams children, still attached to the land where she lived and died before the theater replaced the mansion. She doesn't interact with anyone. She just walks the balcony, holding her balloon.

A full-body figure of a man has been seen hunched over in a theater chair, as if watching a performance that ended decades ago. He sits motionless and vanishes when someone approaches. One of the most specific accounts comes from a theater employee who fell from a ladder while working. He claims an unseen force caught him before he hit the ground, breaking a fall that could have caused serious injury. Staff speculate the helpful spirit might be a former lighting worker who died at the theater and still watches over the crew.

TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) investigated for their Ghost Hunters episode "The Haunting of the Garde" in 2016, Season 11. Lead investigator Jason Hawes had a notable experience on the catwalk high above the stage. The footage captured voices and sounds with no visible source that followed Hawes through the narrow walkway. He believed the evidence pointed to an intelligent haunting, meaning the spirits seemed to react to and interact with the investigation team rather than just replaying old patterns.

The Garde has leaned into its reputation. John Zaffis, known as "The Godfather of the Paranormal" and nephew of the legendary Ed and Lorraine Warren, leads annual paranormal investigation events at the theater alongside Seaside Shadows founder Courtney McInvale, a practicing medium and author of haunted history books. These aren't just Halloween gimmicks. They're organized investigations in an active performing arts venue that happens to have an active population of dead people.

Vera Leeper died in 1969. Her Moroccan murals, the desert scenes and Oriental designs she carved into cement with a knife at 27 years old, still cover the walls. The theater she decorated sits on ground soaked in the grief of a whaling merchant's family. Five children died in the mansion that stood here. A girl with a balloon walks the balcony. A man watches an empty stage. Someone catches falling workers. The Garde is still one of the finest theaters in New England, and not everyone in the audience is alive.