OCTOBER 2019 43
WEST TEXAS
THE PLAZA
THEATRE
PERFORMING
ARTS CENTRE
125 W. Mills Ave., El Paso.
EL PASO’S PLAZA THEATRE opened as an opulent movie palace in
1930, operating for 55 years before shutting down in 1985. The theater
then remained dark for about two decades before a grand renovation
took place, turning it into a performing arts center in 2006. Not sur-
prisingly, the Plaza spent its 76 years from inception to rebirth accu-
mulating ghost stories.
“We managed to revive this historic theater before it was too late,”
says Gary L. Williams, senior program officer with the El Paso Com-
munity Foundation, the organization that saved the Plaza Theatre
and then partnered with the city of El Paso to restore it to its former
glory. “The dust and cobwebs may be gone, but it appears the ghosts
have remained.”
Some of the Plaza’s creepy tales, concocted in abundance, feature all
the usual suspects—a drifting woman in white, a materializing man in
black, a vanishing child bouncing a ball. Like most ghost stories, their
veracity lies in the retelling rather than the reoccurring. But a much
larger share of the Plaza’s supernatural phenomena may require a ghost
hunter’s skill set to resolve. Apparitions including orbs, lights, and shad-
ows; physical manipulations like electrical components switching on
without power, objects moving independently, and sounds without
sources; and manifestations such as stimulation by touch, smell, and
temperature have all endured, transgressing the barrier between the
spiritual and the material worlds again and again. Together, they sug-
gest something more dynamic than a mere ghost story. You might want
to call this a real haunting.
“Intelligent people don’t believe in ghosts!” exclaimed 90-year-old
Charles Russell, Plaza manager from 1940 to 1951, during an interview
for the 2006 commemorative reopening. “While I consider myself to be
intelligent, if you ever spent the night in the Plaza Theatre, you might
change your mind.” –E. Dan KlepperFrom Top: Interior of the
Plaza Theatre from the
mezzanine; a door leads
to underground tunnels,
running beneath the
orchestra, that were once
used to cool the theater.