Hollywood Pantages Theatre

Howard Hughes bought the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in 1949 and set up his offices on the second floor, and after his death in 1976, staff started hearing him. Former executive assistant Karla Rubin reported cold winds, banging drawers, and brass handles clicking in empty rooms. A second ghost, a woman who died in the mezzanine during a 1932 performance, is still sometimes heard singing in the building.

Karla Rubin used to work as an executive assistant in the Pantages Theatre's second-floor conference room, and she did not believe in ghosts until the conference room started acting up. Her desk was just outside the room, which had been Howard Hughes' personal office when he owned the Pantages in the 1950s. She would feel a sudden coldness first, she told interviewers, and a wind going past her when the air conditioning wasn't even on. Then the sounds would start. Banging on the walls. Brass drawer handles clicking. The clatter of someone working at the desk.

She would get up and walk into Hughes' old office to investigate and the room would be empty. Very empty, she said. And very cold.

The Hollywood Pantages Theatre sits on Hollywood Boulevard at Argyle, a jaw-dropping 1930 Art Deco palace that was the last and most opulent theater Alexander Pantages ever built. Pantages opened it in June 1930, in the middle of the Depression, as a 2,812-seat movie palace with a gilded lobby, terra cotta detail, and a ceiling so ornate that audiences used to come just to stare up at it. It hosted the Academy Awards from 1949 to 1959. Every Oscar ceremony of the 1950s happened inside that auditorium.

Howard Hughes acquired the Pantages in 1949 and renamed it RKO Pantages. It became the crown jewel of his RKO Pictures empire. He loved the theater and set up personal offices on the second floor, directly above the auditorium. He ran his film empire from that conference room for years. He died in 1976, on a plane over Texas, paranoid and emaciated and mostly forgotten by the industry he had once owned. And then, starting in the years after his death, the second floor of the Pantages started getting weird.

The accounts from staff are remarkably consistent. The temperature drops sharply inside the conference room. A phantom breeze moves through the space even with no open windows and no active vents. Bumping and banging in empty offices after hours. The clicking of brass drawer pulls when nobody was near the desk. Karla Rubin is the most-quoted witness, but she isn't the only one. Executive staff over the years have reported the same phenomena, always centered on Hughes' old workspace. A break-in by vandals in 1990 is often cited as the trigger that intensified the hauntings, as if the theater resented the intrusion.

The second Pantages ghost predates Hughes. In 1932, a woman died in the mezzanine during a performance. The details of her death aren't well preserved, but her voice reportedly is. Staff and performers over the years have described hearing a woman singing inside the building when the theater is empty. Her voice carries through the auditorium and into the backstage areas. Cast members rehearsing after hours have stopped dead on stage, convinced someone was singing along from the balcony. When they checked, the mezzanine was empty.

The Pantages today is one of the premier touring Broadway houses on the West Coast. It has shown Hamilton, The Lion King, Wicked, and nearly every other major Broadway production since being restored in the 1970s. Staff don't officially advertise the ghost stories. But if you take a backstage tour and ask the right person about the second floor, they will tell you Hughes is still up there. They will also tell you he was a terrible landlord even when he was alive.