Opera House visitors get in the spirit; Tour delves into mysteries of 'haunted' building
Posted By Courtney Whalen
The sound of rousing applause in a theatre is usually a good sign - unless, of course, the show is long over and the audience has gone home.
Ghostly applause, spectral songs on the piano and an unexplained unravelling of a fire hose are all part of the legends of hauntings at the Orillia Opera House.
Last night, more than 80 people, children and adults alike, visited the Opera House to hear the legends, get an insider's tour of the historical building and decide for themselves if they believe in ghosts.
A self-proclaimed non-believer, Opera House general manager Michael Martyn led two tours from the top of the towers and projection room - where he explained away sightings of ghostly movement as a sheet of plastic being blown by a draft - to the basement that once housed the local jail cells and the entrance to a tunnel.
Now bricked over, legend has it the tunnel ran from the former city hall location to the present location of Fred's Meat Market, where locals could allegedly find spirits of the liquid kind during prohibition.
Eager spectators crowded around the old elevator shaft in the basement, where a man died in a fall.
"Cool," several young voices in the crowd said.
While Martyn allowed it's possible there might be some credibility to that unfortunate man haunting the Opera House, he said the story of finding a skull in a basket at the bottom of the elevator shaft several years later is unlikely.
Despite the chandelier lights in front of the Gordon Lightfoot Auditorium not working on the tour, it wasn't until the end that anything out of the ordinary happened.
"There's someone up there," someone in the crowd said, pointing to the control room in the studio theatre.
After a quick check, Martyn said no one was in the booth - seconds before the lights went out and spotlights started dancing around the room.
"It was pretty creepy," said seven-year-old Hannah Sutcliffe.
cwhalen@orilliapacket.com
"As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see...."
