Victoria Theatre

A touring actress vanished from a locked dressing room in the early 1900s and has haunted this 1866 Dayton theater as "Vicky" ever since, bringing rose perfume, rustling petticoats, and a face in the dressing room mirror. She shares the building with a 1950s suicide victim whose face appears on the stage curtain and a ballet instructor named Josephine whose spirit lingers in her upstairs dance studio.

Sometime in the early 1900s, a touring actress walked off stage at the Victoria Theatre in Dayton, headed to her dressing room to grab a fan, and never came back. The door was locked from the inside. The room was empty. No one saw her leave the building. The cast waited. The show stopped. She was gone.

Staff and visitors have been encountering her ever since. They call her Vicky. The smell of rose perfume drifts through the hallways near the dressing rooms with no source. The sound of rustling fabric, like taffeta or satin petticoats, whispers across the stage when no one is on it. In one of the old dressing rooms, people have looked into the mirror and seen a woman's face looking back at them. Not their own.

Vicky is the most famous ghost here, but she is not alone. In the 1950s, a man killed himself inside the theater by falling onto a knife lodged in a seat. His face has been spotted on the stage curtain, visible only when the curtains are pushed aside near the left exit door. There is also Josephine, a ballet instructor whose energy lingers in her upstairs dance studio decades after her death. The Victory of Light Paranormal team investigated her room in December 2012 and described the energy as "easygoing, fun, and laid back," picking up Spirit Box responses almost immediately.

The most unsettling spot in the building, according to that same investigation team, is the orchestra pit. Medium CJ Reeves reported sensing something hostile trying to push her down the steps into the pit. Investigator Shelly Moore wrote that her knees were shaking so badly she could barely stand. When the group tried to re-enter the pit area later in the night, the doors would not open.

Then there is the private box incident. A man visiting the theater was slapped across the face so hard it left a visible mark. No one was near him.

The Victoria Theatre has earned every one of its ghosts the hard way. It opened on New Year's Day, 1866, as the Turner Opera House, built by brothers Joseph and William Turner for ,000. Press at the time called it "the best theater west of Philadelphia." The first performance was Edwin Forrest in Virginius. Over the next century and a half, Al Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Helen Hayes, and Harry Houdini all performed on its stage.

But the building has also survived a suspected arson fire in 1869 that caused ,000 in damage, the Great Dayton Flood of 1913 that wrecked the ground floor, and a second fire on January 16, 1918 that gutted portions of the interior. Each time, the theater was rebuilt. After the 1918 fire, it reopened in 1919 as the Victory Theatre, renamed to honor World War I veterans. In 1975, it was slated for demolition to make room for a parking lot. Public outcry saved it, and it landed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1972.

The basement still has original 1800s limestone walls that survived all three disasters. Stagehands have decorated one basement room, nicknamed the Puzzle Room, with over a thousand completed jigsaw puzzles. Paranormal investigators note that limestone is believed to store energy, which might explain why the basement feels heavier than the rest of the building.

Today, the Victoria Theatre seats 1,154 people across orchestra and balcony levels at 138 North Main Street. The rose perfume still shows up. The fabric still rustles. The dressing room mirror still catches faces that do not belong to whoever is standing in front of it.