Springer Opera House

Edwin Booth, the greatest Shakespearean actor of the 19th century and brother of Lincoln's assassin, performed Hamlet at the Springer Opera House in Columbus on February 15, 1876. His ghost haunts the prop room, rearranging wardrobe and preferring the company of female cast members. According to Columbus legend, he won't leave until Hamlet is staged at the Springer again.

Edwin Booth performed Hamlet at the Springer Opera House on February 15, 1876. According to Columbus legend, the ghost won't leave until the play is staged there again. Whether the theater has deliberately avoided putting on Hamlet is a question nobody in Columbus seems willing to answer directly.

That is not a minor detail. Booth was widely considered the finest Shakespearean actor in America. He was also the older brother of John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in 1865. When Edwin came to Columbus in 1876, the Springer was only five years old, and he was trying to rebuild a career his brother had destroyed. The two had performed together in an acclaimed production of Julius Caesar in 1864, just a year before the assassination. After April 1865, performing anywhere in the South was complicated. The Springer engagement was part of his first Southern tour after the war. By all accounts, the audience loved him.

The Springer Opera House opened on February 21, 1871, built by Francis Joseph Springer, an immigrant from Marlenheim, Alsace, France who had made a fortune in the grocery business. The inaugural event was a benefit concert for Trinity Episcopal Church. Within a few years, the Springer was drawing the biggest names in American performance: Oscar Wilde, Lillie Langtry, John Philip Sousa, Ethel Barrymore, Will Rogers, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Governor Jimmy Carter named it the State Theatre of Georgia for its 100th anniversary. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1978, one of only seven theaters in the country with that designation.

But it's Booth who gets the ghost credit.

The hauntings center on the prop room and backstage areas. Staff and performers describe wardrobe being moved, props disappearing and reappearing in the wrong places, and a presence watching from the wings. The ghost seems to prefer female company. Encounters disproportionately involve women in the cast or crew. In one account from Faith Serafin's book Haunted Columbus Georgia, a New York couple was preparing backstage when the woman felt a tap on her shoulder. Her husband insisted it wasn't him.

Other reports include a figure occasionally spotted on stage, orbs of light captured on video bouncing around the theater (one appeared to touch a visitor), and a general sense that the building is most active during performances. The presence seems drawn to a show.

The Springer runs ghost tours on Mondays and Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. for five dollars. It's a working theater that produces a full season of shows, and the ghost stories have become part of its identity. Not a gimmick, but a layer of history that performers and staff treat with a mix of amusement and real respect.

A ghost that moves props, prefers women, and stays because he loved the room. That sounds like an actor. And if any ghost in Georgia earned the right to haunt a theater, it's the man who played Hamlet while carrying his brother's shame.