The Ritz Theater

Houdini played here. Staff hear singing from the attic, footsteps on empty stairs, and see figures in the corridors of this 1906 Scranton theater.

Harry Houdini played this stage. So did W.C. Fields and Will Rogers. The Poli Theater opened in 1906 on Wyoming Avenue as a vaudeville house, and over the next century it passed through lives as a movie palace, a concert hall, and now a restored Art Deco venue anchoring downtown Scranton. What the building kept from all of it, according to staff and the Lackawanna County Haunted Trail, is the singing.

It comes from the attic. Not voices talking, not footsteps above the ceiling. Singing. Faint, unaccompanied, loud enough that you hear it once and spend the rest of the night trying to hear it again.

The theater's paranormal reputation is specific enough to have earned it a featured spot on the TV series "The Ghost Finders." The Haunted Trail write-up from Visit NEPA lists three recurring phenomena at the Ritz: the attic singing, faint footsteps on the staircases, and apparitions in the corridors. Three different locations, three different types of activity, which is unusual. Most haunted theaters settle on one cold-spot ghost and stick with it. The Ritz seems to be split across levels.

Built originally in 1906 as the Poli, the building got its Art Deco facelift in 1937 when it was converted to a full-time movie house. The marquee and the vertical blade sign above Wyoming Avenue both date to that renovation. Inside, after a major 2023 restoration, the 500-seat venue now shares the building with an odd little cluster of gothic tenants: a dark-spirits bar called NOIR, a midnight-black soft serve shop, a tattoo studio named the Thirteenth Realm, and a fantasy meadery. Whoever curated that lineup was clearly leaning into the building's reputation.

Whether that's made the haunting worse, better, or just louder is anyone's guess. Staff reports haven't changed. Singing in the attic. Footsteps on empty stairs. Something walking the corridors before the house empties out for the night.

If you want to hear the attic, the stretch of Wyoming Avenue in front of the Ritz is worth the walk after a show lets out. Stand near the old Poli corner. Wait until the last tail lights disappear. Some nights there's nothing. Other nights people swear they hear a woman singing, a few bars only, and then it stops as though she realized somebody was listening.