Ghosts at Circa 21 Dinner Playhouse

Circa 21 Dinner Playhouse is a dinner theatre in Rock Island, Illinois where I performed in a production of “Singin in the Rain” for about five months circa 1990.  The theatre is an old vaudeville house, beautiful, albeit somewhat rundown when I worked there.

 No sooner did the show open, I started hearing stories about the ghosts.  Years later, I tried to find information online to see if any of the said tragedies really happened, if these stories were local urban legends or rumors, etc.  I found absolutely nothing except one blurb from an Iowa paper mentioning the actors and waitstaff tell stories of ghosts.

 As a cast and crew, we experienced some “things.”  To this day, I can’t decide if these things were coincidence, our imagination or…?

This one is the story that most sounds like an urban legend.  Allegedly there was an engineer who worked in the building – the time frame was never mentioned to me.  Apparently he died in an explosion in the boiler room and his spirit is apparently angry about this.  Techies claimed to hear a voice in their ear telling them to “jump” when they were up on the catwalk or on ladders.  One evening, one of our leading ladies was complaining and complaining until suddenly a big blob of grease landed on her head.  Could have been a coincidence, but it shut her up and the rest of us found it quite funny.  I never personally experienced anything related to the creepy boiler room guy.

The female dancers’ dressing room was on the second floor and the costume shop was on the third floor, directly above us.  One night, I was lingering in the dressing room after everyone else left for the bar across the street.  I was almost at the end of a good book and wanted to finish it.  I heard the loveliest soprano voice singing upstairs.  I went up there to see who was singing.  Nobody was there, nor was there a recording or radio playing.  The next day, I talked to our costumer about what I had heard.  He said that legend had it that the costume shop used to be a dressing room in vaudeville days.  There was a fire and an actress/singer died up there.  He said he heard her all the time.  Were we both imagining that?  I don’t know, honestly.

The balcony of the theater was closed.  It wasn’t safe and at the time, the theater didn’t have the money to renovate it.  One night, while tapping in “Broadway Rhythm,” I looked up at the balcony and saw a woman in a long dress with a Gibson girl hairdo sitting in the balcony, smiling and enjoying the performance.  Several other dancers saw the same thing.  We were later told that was the third-floor soprano who died in the fire.  Were the locals playing a practical joke on us?  Maybe, but I don’t know.

 Ghost stories are fun to hear and tell.  I’m open to all possibilities while being skeptical at the same time.  The imagination is a powerful thing.  That said, I always had the creeps in that theater and I was relieved to not have to go  back there once the show closed. J