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'No other conclusion': Paranormal investigators say Capitol Theatre has ghosts

Vicky Taylor
vtaylor@publicopinionnews.com
Brian Phillips a paranormal investigator of the Ghost Pit, center, shows the staff of Capitol Theatre a report of his team’s findings from their investigation into paranormal activity at the theater on Tuesday, April 25, 2017.

CHAMBERSBURG - The Capitol Theatre has at least one resident ghost or spirit, and could be home to several more.

That's according to a report by a team of paranormal investigators who gave its initial report to theater management this week.

Deborah Holtry, Capitol's events and box office manager, believes she knows one of the alleged ghosts. She has had experience with the theater's first organist, Wilford Binder, who worked at the Capitol for 25 years before retiring in 1952.

"The story has it that he is still here," she said. "I've never seen him myself, but I have had experiences that I believe he had a hand in."

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She isn't surprised that investigator Brian Phillips and sensitive Cathy Gasch found evidence of paranormal activity during two investigations in the historic old building.

Phillips runs The Ghost Pit, a group of paranormal investigators that include Suzanne, Sarah and Miley Byers. Gasch was invited to participate in the Capitol Theatre investigation because of her abilities as a  paranormal "sensitive," or a person who can sense paranormal activity.

Phillips showed Capitol's management videos he had taken in the totally dark theater auditorium during his team's two evening visits in April. He pointed out faint lights that appeared and disappeared in various places, including one in which a light in the seating area shot up across the screen toward the ceiling or balcony area.

In one frame, a faint shape that was slightly lighter than the dark shapes of the theater seats could be seen, drawing comments of "yes, I see it!" from the theater personnel gathered around Phillip's laptop computer.

Phillips said he and his partner, Suzanne Byers, went to the theater first to investigate and in that session Byers thought she saw a man standing at one of the doorways leading into the auditorium. He made the second trip with Gasch a week or two later, at the same time of the evening.

Gasch reported seeing a man sitting in a seat near the spot where Byers said she saw the man in the doorway, even though both investigators said they had not talked about the findings from the initial investigation.

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During the visit with Gasch, Phillips took more audio and video, then back in his Mont Alto studio compared the two sets of film in an effort to rule out dust specks on the camera lens or light reflections from somewhere else in the building.

"It's important to me to rule out any logical or reasonable explanation for these anomalies (in the recordings)," he said. "Integrity and honesty are the most important part of our investigations."

He said he always looks first for logical explanations for anything his cameras and other equipment pick up during an investigation, and at times he can rule out paranormal activity instead of confirming it.

In the case of the Capitol Theatre investigation, he said he exhausted all leads that would explain the anomalies in the recordings.

"There was no other conclusion," he said. "There was a lot of (paranormal) activity going on (in the theater)."

While Phillips and Byers concentrated on the interior of the auditorium and the balcony that looks down on the stage area, Phillips and Gasch went up onto the stage and into the backstage dressing room area.

They didn't film there, but instead turned the lights on to explore that area.

Onstage, Gasch said she saw a woman dressed in a blue dress who told her to get off the stage, and in the dressing room, she encountered a man in one of the rooms who told her she couldn't come in there.

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A short time later, while Phillips and Gasch were standing in the hallway between the dressing rooms, they were startled by a loud noise. They turned and looked back toward the heavy metal door at the entrance to the dressing room area in time to see the door, which they said they closed when they came in, slowly swinging closed.

Telling the story to those gathered around Phillips computer, she said Phillips immediately began looking for reasonable explanations, walking toward the door and stomping on the floor in search of loose floorboards then banging on the wall around the door frame to see if loose boards there might cause the door to move.

She then grabbed the handle, pulled it down and let it go.

The sound of the handle going back up was the sound they had heard standing at the other end of the hallway.

Holtry, the box office manager, was excited.

When Binder was associated with the Capitol, he occupied an apartment in what is now the backstage dressing room area, she said.

Holtry had just started working at the Capitol in 2003 when she first "met" Binder, she said.

She was locking up the theater and put down the metal shade for the box office window before locking the outside doors. When she came back to the box office, the shade was partially up, with a stapler wedged between it and the shelf at the bottom of the window.

"It was strange because the window gate has a sensor that makes it go back up if anything is between it and the ledge," she said. "So it should have gone back up when it sensed the stapler there."

It was the first of numerous encounters with the entity that Holtry believes is Binder's spirit.

She isn't the first Capitol employee to have such experiences, and many attribute them to Binder's spirit. Others, including past Capitol Manager Linda Boeckman, have talked about him and describe him as protective of the theater, as well as somewhat playful and whimsical at times.

Holtry says it is rumored that at least six spirits or ghosts living at Capitol, including a "white lady" and a little boy who is usually seen in the balcony area.

"Over 90 years a lot has happened here," said current Capitol Manager Jon Meyer. "This is a place that holds a lot of memories, so it is not surprising that people would want to hang around here once they have discarded their mortal shell."

Phillips had one last tidbit for the Capitol Theatre managerment. He said that as he and Gasch were walking past the concession stand at the back of the building as they were leaving following their part of the investigation, they heard footsteps behind them, and the sound of people whispering.

"I want to come back again," he said. "I want to learn more about the spirits here."

Vicky Taylor, 717-881-5373