Youngstown Playhouse

The Youngstown Playhouse traces its origins to the early 1920s, when four women from Temple Rodef Sholom began reading plays together for their own enjoyment. Formally incorporated as the Youngstown Players on February 16, 1927, the group first performed in a converted horse barn at 138 Lincoln Avenue on the North Side, fitted with 165 seats and a 25-foot stage. After two fires at that building hastened a move, supporters raised $30,000 in 1940 to renovate an abandoned movie house, the Ohio Theater on Market Street, for live performance. In 1959, the Playhouse moved to its current 45,000-square-foot facility off Glenwood Avenue, featuring a 400-seat mainstage and a 75-seat black box theater. Under the artistic direction of Broadway director Arthur Sircom during World War II, the Playhouse became a nationally recognized training ground that launched the careers of Ed O'Neill, Joe Flynn of McHale's Navy, Elizabeth "Biff" Hartman, and Broadway producer Michael J. Moritz Jr. It remains one of the oldest continuously operating community theaters in the country.

According to decades of accumulated accounts from cast members, stagehands, and staff, the Playhouse is home to multiple unexplained presences. The most commonly reported is a shadow figure that appears seated in the balcony during rehearsals and performances. Actors on stage have described looking up to see a dark, humanlike silhouette sitting motionless in the upper seats, watching the show. The figure has been observed repeatedly over the years, though no one has identified who the shadow man might have been in life.

A second presence is associated with the light booth above the balcony. Stagehands working in the booth have reported catching glimpses of a half-seen face peering at them from the darkness when the booth is supposed to be empty. The face appears only briefly before vanishing, and those who have seen it describe the experience as deeply unsettling. A mysterious white apparition has also been observed sliding through closed doors in the building, moving from one area to another as though the physical structure poses no barrier.

Beyond these visual encounters, staff report a range of other phenomena throughout the building. Cold spots appear unpredictably in hallways and backstage areas. Strange whispering has been heard in the wings when no one else is present, and ghostly music has been reported playing in the building after hours when it should be completely empty. Objects have been found moved from their original positions with no explanation.

Perhaps the most striking account comes from a former security guard who described the overwhelming sensation of being watched while making rounds through the empty theater. On one occasion, according to his account, the presence appeared to follow him out of the building entirely. He reported feeling distinct pressure against the back of his car seat, as though someone's knees were pressing into it from behind, as he drove away from the Playhouse. The feeling persisted until he was some distance from the building.

No specific identities have been attributed to the Playhouse's ghosts, and the building's long history across multiple locations makes it difficult to trace the hauntings to any particular tragedy or death. The PANICd paranormal database lists the Playhouse as an active location and investigators visited the site in June 2019. Today, the Youngstown Playhouse continues to produce shows while its resident spirits, according to those who have encountered them, continue to attend performances of their own.