When the Ghost Screams(50)
Paramount Joe
According to local lore, the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, Kentucky, is haunted by a worker who died there in a freak accident.
In 1931 the historic building debuted as a plush movie theater, complete with a stage and heavy curtains. While workers were putting the finishing touches on the theater, a man died in a freak accident, say locals.
“Paramount Joe” was left alone in the building while the rest of the crew went to lunch. When they returned, they found he had been strangled in the ropes that operated the stage curtains.
While actual documentation of the death has eluded researchers, many have witnessed odd things there, and some have speculated that the dead man’s spirit is still there. Does he blame the crew for abandoning him in his time of need?
Witnesses have seen the lights turn themselves on and off and heard the sound of heavy boots clomping across the empty stage. When Ghost Chasers International, a paranormal research team, investigated the old theater, its EMF meters picked up inexplicable energy, particularly on the stage.
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PARAMOUNT ARTS CENTER
1300 Winchester Avenue
Ashland, KY
(606) 324-3175
www.paramountartscenter.com
Tragedy on Virginia Street
Owners of Cal Neva’s Nevadan Hotel have plans to turn the building into a condominium complex. Reno ghost enthusiasts are waiting to see if the change will release the spirit of a woman stuck there for over three decades.
It was November 22, 1973, when a forty-seven-year-old Canadian woman had the misfortunate to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. She was strolling past the old Hilps Drug Store on Virginia Street as workers dismantled the building.
The building collapsed prematurely, dumping heavy debris onto passersby. Two people were injured, and the Canadian woman was killed.
When the hotel was later built on that spot, folks began to spy an attractive woman who was not of this world. The slender redhead wore bright red lipstick and smiled at those she encountered. A painter reported that while he was working in the basement men’s room he heard the phantom steps of a high-heeled woman tapping across the tile floor.
Many believe that the friendly ghost belongs to the woman who died so suddenly when the building collapsed. If the new residents of the condominium should find the smiling ghost in their living room, a few kind words could help her to move along.
The Nevadan is on Virginia Street in downtown Reno, Nevada.
Ghosts in the News
Tea Dance Terror
ONE MOMENT THEY WERE DANCING, laughing, and sipping champagne; the next they were dead, dying, or searching desperately for loved ones. A shocking Kansas City, Missouri, accident in 1981 may have launched some spirits on a journey backward in time, according to an October 27, 2005, edition of the Pitch, a Kansas City weekly newspaper.
It was Friday night, July 18, 1981, and hundreds of people had gathered at the new Hyatt Regency for a “tea dance” in the lobby of the forty-story luxury hotel.
Some of the crowd moved to the skywalks, where they leaned on the railing and chatted with each other as they watched the dancing couples below. At 7:05 p.m. those on the fourth-floor skywalk had no time to react when the floor beneath them vanished. The fourth-floor skywalk pancaked onto the second-floor skywalk, directly below it, and that in turn crashed to the floor. While some people were instantly killed, others were trapped in the wreckage.
Firefighters and volunteers dug through the tangle of twisted steel, shattered glass, and debris, frantically trying to save those who cried for help. In the end 114 people were killed, and over 200 were hurt.
An engineer hired by the Kansas City Star soon discovered the flaw in the design that caused the catastrophe. While the original design was sound, with each skywalk suspended from the ceiling with six rods, a change was made so that the second-floor skywalk hung from the fourth-floor skywalk. The strain on the higher skywalk was simply too great, and it gave way.
In his 2005 article in the Pitch, writer Justin Kendall said that employees experienced a haunting at the hotel soon after the accident. He consulted two psychics who suggested that management may have secretly had the hotel cleansed of the energy left over from the trauma, as paranormal incidents reported there ceased shortly after the tragedy.
Justin Kendall also wrote that the late Kansas City ghost investigator Maurice Schwalm had difficulty snapping a photograph at the scene of the disaster. Each time he tried to take a picture, an unseen hand jerked the camera.
Oddest of all are the reports that Maurice Schwalm received prior to the tea dance tragedy. “Before the skywalks collapsed,” wrote Justin Kendall, “Schwalm was getting calls from neighbors of the Hyatt claiming they’d had visions of couples dancing outside of their windows.”