Читать книгу More Haunted Hoosier Trails - Wanda Lou Willis - Страница 19

Fairmount, Indiana, is perhaps best known as the hometown of actor James Dean. But there’s another stage-struck entity that is making its appearance at the historic Scott Opera House.

In the nineteenth century, many cities and towns were constructing opera houses to bring cultural resources to their citizens. Levi Scott, who was involved in establishing the first Fairmount bank as well as maintaining interest in natural gas resources through the Fairmount Mining Company, undertook the endeavor for Fairmount. In 1884, Scott erected a two-story Italianate building at 116 South Main Street. Scott’s opera house was located on the second floor. It was not unusual for opera houses to be built on the second floor since this would allow better utilization of the street level for commercial businesses.

The Fairmount News, in an 1890s account, praised the facility as “one of the nicest and best-arranged to be found in any place this size,” adding that “the auditorium had a seating capacity for six hundred people.”

The opera house played host to a wide variety of cultural events and persons in its heyday—comedy theater productions, famed Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, and “silver-tongued” orators addressing such topics as religion, politics, and demon rum.

By the twentieth century, the once-proud building had suffered the ravages of time. It took imagination to see how the building could have been such a focus of cultural life and entertainment for the town. The stage and seats were removed, and a partition had been built dividing the space into two rooms.

In 1993 came new signs of hope that the Scott Opera House may once again be a focal point of community cultural activity. A group of local residents interested in preserving Fairmount’s architectural and cultural heritage began meeting and studying the possibility of community revitalization. From the beginning, the primary goal was the restoration of the Scott Opera House for use as both a community arts and cultural center.

During this time, students began using the old opera house for band rehearsals. It wasn’t long before strange things began to happen.

Judy Cowling, president of Historic Fairmount, first heard the ghost stories from her son, Andy, the band’s guitarist. The students had been so spooked by their experiences that they were convinced there was a real phantom in the opera house.

One evening, Andy placed a coil of guitar wire on one of the speakers. A few minutes later he watched as the coil mysteriously unwound and began rising into the air like someone was stretching it.

Cowling tried to explain away the various reports that began coming from the band members. The eerie noises? That’s typical of old buildings. The lights going off and on with no one around? The electrical system needed to be checked or there could be a short in the wiring. And when band members reported that objects they’d put down would be moved to other locations, Cowling said it was probably one of the boys playing tricks on the others.

Then one night a band member saw a disembodied face of a bearded man! Cowling had no explanation, and the kids were really frightened. They began carrying Bibles to rehearsals.

Still Cowling was skeptical. She wasn’t convinced there was anything supernatural about the “unexplained” happenings. To prove this to the kids and alleviate their anxieties, she decided to spend an evening in the old opera house with the band.

At one point that evening, Judy Cowling opened the unlocked door of one of the building’s rooms, entered, and shut the door behind her. When she tried to reopen the door, she discovered it was locked! Eventually, she was able to force the door open.

Could this be the proof she needed that the building had a phantom? She shrugged off the incident, instead choosing to believe that the old door must have gotten stuck.

The mystery is still a mystery. It’s still possible there’s a phantom in the old Opera House.