Ask the people who work in the building. Actors, directors, and stage crew at the Doris Harper-White Community Playhouse, home of the Theatrikos Theatre Company, have described apparitions near the stage, equipment that fails without explanation, and footsteps crossing the boards when the room is empty. Our co-founder Susan Johnson has been involved with Theatrikos on and off since 1996, and this is one of the two buildings she keeps circling back to when people ask which place in Flagstaff is the most haunted.
From Elks Lodge to playhouse
The building at 11 West Cherry Avenue has lived several lives. It went up in the 1920s as the town's Elks Lodge and later spent years as Flagstaff's first public library. Theatrikos is older than its address: the company formed in 1972, when a group of Flagstaff residents met in the basement of the Weatherford Hotel and decided the town needed a community theater. The troupe performed wherever it could for more than a decade before settling into the Cherry Avenue building in 1989.
The name over the door honors Doris Harper-White, one of the founders from that Weatherford basement meeting. She arrived in Flagstaff in 1968, taught acting at Northern Arizona University and in community classes around town, and when the city weighed tearing the old lodge down for a parking lot, she fought to keep it standing as a theater home. Theatrikos renamed the playhouse for her in 2002, on the company's thirtieth anniversary. She died in 2009. The stage she saved still runs a full season every year.
What people report
First-time visitors assume the basement is the haunted part, and it looks the part: steep, narrow stairs drop into a warren of small partitioned rooms, and volunteers from the late 1990s remember not wanting to be down there alone. The surprise is that most of the reported activity happens upstairs. Actors, directors, and staff have described apparitions around the stage, lights that flicker, doors that open on their own, cold spots in the hallway, falling books, even flying toilet paper. More than one account mentions a young child who is never on the cast list. Some of these accounts are first-hand, others live in newspaper archives, and several are hard to wave away.
Regulars also notice the timing. The strangest interruptions tend to cluster in the tense hours before a performance, as if something in the building wants the cast to break more than a leg. One of our guides, James, acted with Theatrikos before joining Freaky Foot Tours and points to this stage as the site of a first Flagstaff encounter with an apparition.
The castle wall outside
The strangeness does not stop at the doors. Beside the playhouse stands a crumbling stone battlement, a remnant of the original Babbitt castle raised by the family whose mercantile empire helped build early Flagstaff. On one evening tour, Susan Johnson watched a white orb roughly the size of a soccer ball zigzag over the grassy area near the theater for about three minutes before it vanished. A guest saw it too and tried to photograph it. Nothing showed on the phone, but an EMF meter registered a positive swing for several minutes.
The murder story that belongs next door
One correction, because Flagstaff's stories get braided together. Some tellings place a schoolhouse murder inside the playhouse. That tragedy belongs a short walk away, at the site of the old Emerson School, where a janitor murdered his family and then hanged himself in the basement, and where the Flagstaff Public Library stands today. The playhouse has no crime like that on its record. Whatever moves through this building seems drawn to the theater itself, which may be the strangest part of the whole file.
Questions people ask
Is the Doris Harper-White Playhouse haunted?
The people who work there have the reports: apparitions near the stage, unexplained technical failures, falling objects, cold spots, and a child who is never in the cast. No tragedy is on record for the building, which makes the volume of reports harder to explain, not easier.
What was the Theatrikos building before it was a theater?
It was built in the 1920s as Flagstaff's Elks Lodge and later served as the town's first public library. Theatrikos, founded in 1972, made it the company's permanent home in 1989.
Who was Doris Harper-White?
A founding member of Theatrikos who taught acting at Northern Arizona University and helped save the Cherry Avenue building from demolition. The company renamed the playhouse in her honor in 2002. She died in 2009.
Did a murder happen at the playhouse?
No. The schoolhouse murder sometimes attached to the building happened at the old Emerson School site a short walk away, where the Flagstaff Public Library stands today. The playhouse carries plenty of reports but no such history.
Can you go inside the playhouse?
Yes, by seeing a show. Theatrikos stages a full season every year in a room small enough that no seat sits far from the stage. Our tours stop outside after dark, near the castle wall, where the stories carry just fine through the walls.
Hear it after dark
The playhouse is a stop on the Flagstaff Haunted History Tour, our family-friendly evening walk through downtown, and it keeps its place on Mountain Town of Madness, the adults-only telling that starts after the sun goes down. Both pause outside the building, near the castle wall, and save the full accounts for the walk itself.
For the rest of the town's roster, start with our guide to the haunted places in Flagstaff.
