Gone But Not Forgotten...

‘‘I'm 55 years old, and there's no way I'm gonna sit here and tell you I believe in ghosts,” says Phoenix Theater manager Tom Gaffey, as he leans back in a wicker couch in the lobby, propping his feet on a table, then goes on to tell over a dozen stories about ghosts that have haunted the former opera house-turned-movie-theater-turned-sweat-box concert hall over the past four decades.

Weather you believe in ghosts or not it is sometimes hard to dismiss the things that go bump in the night like...

There was the night he slept in the theater as a teenager and heard footsteps “from someone really big walking across the stage.” 

Or the night he was managing the movie theater in the early '80s. He was all alone in the building when he got a phone call from the projection room, long after he had sent the projectionist home.

“So I pick up, and there's nothing — just this hot static. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

Bounding up the creaky staircase to the projection room, he yanked open the door “and there was no one there.”

It was the first of several calls over the years coming from the ghost projectionist.

         The Hill Opera House, March 30,1908

 

Here are few of the spirit regulars who call the Phoenix home:

Big Chris — Named after the lumbering cousin of a former Gaffey compatriot, Big Chris has been the most visible over time at the Phoenix. Known for clumsy, thundering footsteps, he could also be one of the apparitions referred to in AFI's song “Days of the Phoenix”: “The ghosts on the stage appeared/the time was so tangible I'll never let it go/ghost stories handed down, reached secret tunnels below.”

The Little Boy — Around 7 or 8 years of age, the little boy has free reign over the building and has been known to follow people around. One night as Gaffey and the crew were setting up for the theatrical metal band GWAR, a security guard pointed backstage and asked, “Who's that little kid back there?” It was 3 a.m. There were no kids in the building.

The Old Man in the Attic — He's about 5-foot-10 with thinning gray hair, wearing tan or green matching shirt and pants, possibly a uniform. He lives in or under the attic. Years ago, a psychic came through the Phoenix and pointed him out. Apparently “he's got issues with the idea that he harmed someone, but in fact he didn't,” Gaffey says. 

Just a few weeks ago, the Phoenix crew was lowering the stage lights before a screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and stopped several times to listen to the Old Man's not-so-stealthy footsteps.

The Lady in the Bathroom — The High Priestess of Haunt may have finally vacated the building, but for decades the girls' bathroom was the most shriek-worthy spot, with frequent reports of eerie reflections in the mirror. “I had janitors, a husband and wife team, that would always clean the girls' bathroom together,” says Gaffey.

Since William Hill built the Hill Opera House in 1904, the theater has risen from the ashes of two fires. The second blaze was reported around noon on Sunday, July 4, 1957. No one was in the building at the time. Fire investigators said it started near the projection booth. The cause? A short circuit or cigarette.

Like I said before Petaluma is not a young town and these folks that hang out at the Phoenix had to live some were, like the old Victorian house by the river at the edge of town ...stay tooned...