Landmark Theatre

Syracuse's Landmark Theatre, a 1928 movie palace, is haunted by three ghosts: Clarissa, an actress who fell from the balcony in 1930 and still enforces theater etiquette; Oscar Rau, a stagehand electrocuted at the lighting board; and Charlie, a 1970s janitor still sweeping the basement.

"I fell off."

That's what ghost hunters captured on an audio recorder inside the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse. A woman's voice, clear and close, answering a question nobody had asked. The team from CNY Ghost Hunters had been investigating the theater's second-floor balcony when the EVP came through. They think it was Clarissa.

Clarissa (sometimes called Claire) was a young actress who performed at the Landmark not long after it opened on February 18, 1928. The theater was a showpiece, one of those extravagant movie palaces that cities built in the late twenties to make audiences feel like royalty for the price of a ticket. Clarissa fell in love with a stagehand named Oscar. In 1930, she fell from the balcony and died. Whether she jumped or slipped depends on who's telling the story. The EVP suggests she thinks she fell.

Her ghost wears white. Staff and visitors have spotted her as a pale figure drifting through the balcony seats, usually at odd hours, usually when the theater is quiet. She also announces herself with the smell of lilacs, her favorite flower. But what makes Clarissa interesting isn't just that she shows up. She has rules. Multiple accounts describe her appearing specifically to people who are breaking theater etiquette, especially smokers. She'll materialize near someone lighting up and stand there until they stop.

Oscar never left either. Oscar Rau was electrocuted at the theater's lighting board when a faulty Westinghouse generator sent current through his body. His ghost tends to stay backstage, near the massive lighting panel where he died. When he's restless, the lights flip on and off by themselves. Stagehands working late shows have gotten used to it. The lights flicker, someone mutters about Oscar, and everyone moves on.

The third ghost is Charlie, the theater's longtime janitor. Charlie lived in the basement and took care of the building until he died of natural causes sometime in the 1970s. People see him in the lower levels wearing the bell-bottoms and wide collars of the era he died in. His haunting is the most practical of the three: piles of dirt and debris get moved around the theater overnight, swept from one spot to another with no explanation. Charlie is apparently still cleaning.

The Landmark nearly died itself. After decades of decline, it closed in 1975 as the neighborhood deteriorated. Volunteers and community fundraising brought it back, restoring the ornate interior that Thomas Lamb had originally designed. The theater reopened and now hosts concerts, stage productions, and comedy shows. It also hosts annual paranormal investigations every October as fundraisers, partnering with the Central New York Ghost Hunters since 2011. The building is open about its ghosts. Management doesn't try to explain them away or play them up for tourism. The theater just acknowledges that three people who loved this building never left it.

What's striking about the Landmark isn't any single ghost story. It's that each of the three spirits behaves exactly like they did when they were alive. Clarissa performs and enforces decorum. Oscar works the lights. Charlie sweeps up. Whatever is happening in this building, it's consistent. And that audio recording, that quiet voice from the balcony where a young woman died in 1930, is one of the more convincing EVPs you'll hear from a haunted theater anywhere in the country.