Moore Theatre

Seattle's oldest active theater, opened in 1907 on the site of the city's first cemetery where not all the bodies were moved before construction. The general manager heard phantom footsteps three times before confronting the presence out loud, and a still-existing segregated entrance on Virginia Street is a physical reminder of the building's Jim Crow era.

Workers building the Moore Theatre in 1907 broke ground on Seattle's first cemetery. Pioneers had been burying their dead on this hillside near Second Avenue and Stewart Street since 1853, just two years after the Denny Party landed at Alki Point. About twenty people were interred here before burials stopped around 1860. Most bodies were supposed to have been moved to the municipal cemetery at what's now Denny Park, but the wooden grave markers had rotted and vanished in western Washington's perpetual damp. When builders dug the foundation for the nearby Denny Hotel in the 1890s, they found remains they hadn't expected. In 1898, workers discovered two Indigenous graves containing burial goods, sparking a rush of treasure hunters. Not everyone was accounted for.

James A. Moore, a Nova Scotia-born real estate developer who had opened entire Seattle neighborhoods including Capitol Hill and the University District, hired architect E.W. Houghton to build his grand theater on this very ground. The Moore Theatre opened on December 28, 1907 with a performance of The Alaskan, a comic opera featuring falling snow, sled dogs, and thirteen singing totem poles. It cost roughly $350,000, seated 2,436, and its balcony hung from a massive 22-ton steel girder that eliminated every support column. The lobby was the largest of any American theater at the time, with Mexican onyx wainscoting, brass fixtures, and a marble mosaic floor that alone cost $30,000. Moore turned management over to John Cort, who later became a prominent New York impresario.

The theater also carried a darker architectural feature: a separate entrance on Virginia Street that funneled Black audience members directly to the worst seats in the second balcony. That segregated passage exists today as a physical reminder of the Jim Crow era.

The ghostly reputation crystallized in the late 1970s, when owners Dan Ireland and Darryl MacDonald discovered several employees conducting a seance in the auditorium. The two had just placed the theater on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and renamed it the Moore Egyptian. They fired the participants on the spot, but the ritual was never formally closed. According to local paranormal researchers, the interrupted seance left something open.

Steve Martin, the theater's general manager since the mid-1990s, described his own encounter to Seattle Refined. One morning around 9:30, alone in the basement production area, he heard distinct footsteps crossing the stage above him. He went upstairs and found no one. The footsteps repeated three times before Martin confronted the presence out loud, asking it to stop. It did. "If there are ghosts here," Martin said, "they're cool with our presence."

Other staff hear something being dragged across the stage followed by deliberate footsteps, though the source is never found. The smell of cigar smoke drifts from the seats, a phenomenon many attribute to Moore himself, who died debt-ridden in San Francisco in 1929. In February 2021, a concert attendee saw a woman in a Victorian-style blue dress with small flowers walking purposefully toward a sectioned-off area before vanishing instantly, despite appearing completely solid moments before. At the adjacent Moore Hotel, employees have seen a shadowy man in a top hat who appears in guest rooms and kicks the foot of beds.

The TAPS team from Ghost Hunters investigated for Season 3, Episode 15, titled Ghostly Houseguest. Investigator Dave captured an audio recording that sounded like the word "chestnut," and Jason noted video of a dense, solid black mass that appeared to be a female figure. TAPS ultimately determined they could not substantiate the claims.

The Moore remains Seattle's oldest active theater. On June 9, 1989, Sub Pop Records staged the sold-out Lame Fest showcase with Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Tad, a night that helped launch the grunge movement. The spirits of the Moore, whoever they are, have been an audience for over a century of Seattle culture, from vaudeville to grunge, and if the accounts are right, they haven't bought a ticket yet.