Springfield Theatre Centre

The Springfield Theatre Centre at 101 East Lawrence is haunted by Joe Neville, an unpopular 1950s actor who killed himself on May 13, 1955, the night before an embezzlement audit would have caught him. His signature: the smell of Noxzema cold cream, which he slathered on a chronic leg rash, drifting through a building that banned the product decades ago.

You can smell him before you see anything. Noxzema, the cold cream, thick and mentholated, wafting through a building where no one has used the stuff in decades. The theater actually banned it. Didn't matter. The smell comes back on its own, drifting through the old dressing room and down the corridors, the calling card of a dead man named Joe Neville.

Neville was a 1950s actor at the Springfield Theatre Centre, talented but hard to get along with. Arrogant, eccentric, and difficult in the way that made other cast members avoid him. He had a mysterious past, including claims of acting work in England under a different name that nobody could verify. He also had a horrible rash on his legs that never healed, and he coped by slathering on layers of Noxzema every day. The smell followed him everywhere.

On the evening of May 13, 1955, Neville left the theater after a dress rehearsal for "Mr. Barry's Etchings." He went home and killed himself. The reason became clear almost immediately: an audit at his day job had uncovered embezzlement, and a colleague had pointed the finger at Joe. Tom Shrewsbury, a longtime guild member, put it plainly: "Joe went home and committed suicide. There was apparently an audit of the books... A lot of money had been misappropriated and it looked as though Joe would be caught the next day."

The theater didn't mourn long. His lead role in the production was reassigned the night before opening. But something in the building shifted after he died.

The Springfield Theatre Centre was founded in 1947, and the building at 101 East Lawrence Avenue was constructed in 1950, opening for its first season in 1951. It served as Springfield's community theater for over 50 years before the company relocated to the Hoogland Center for the Arts at 420 South Sixth Street in 2004. The ghost stories center on the original Lawrence Avenue building, where the activity was concentrated from the late 1950s onward.

Sets and props are the primary target. Pieces move between shows. Stage elements fall over when nobody is near them. Heavy objects have been hurled at people working alone. Power tools have switched on by themselves. Costumes vanish from racks and turn up later, neatly folded behind a staircase as if someone had tidied up and put them away in the wrong spot.

Doors open and close on their own. Lights flicker in rooms that should be dark. A girl once reported having her hand held by an invisible escort while crossing a room. A white, filmy figure has been spotted on the overhead catwalk, visible from the stage but gone by the time anyone gets up there to check.

In 1997, paranormal researcher Troy Taylor visited the theater and investigated the old dressing room. He detected the Noxzema scent before anyone told him its significance. Former theater manager Rebecca Sykes confirmed the connection: "Joe had this horrible rash on his legs that never seemed to heal. He used to slather layers of Noxzema on them." The smell had been showing up in the building for over 40 years by that point. The cream had been banned from the theater specifically to rule out a living source.

Nobody at the Springfield Theatre Centre was especially sad when Joe Neville died. He wasn't liked. His role was replaced in less than 24 hours. But whatever energy he left in that building outlasted every performer who came after him. Forty years of community theater, and the most persistent presence on that stage was a man the company couldn't wait to forget.