Harvard Exit Theater – Seattle

Harvard Exit Theater Cinema in Seattle, Washington, said to be haunted during the early 1970s through the mid-1980s. Some of the phenomena remain unexplained, but some are confessed practical jokes.

The cinema, established in 1968 and named after a freeway exit, occupies part of a three-story, turn-of-thecentury building on Capitol Hill, one of Seattle’s older neighborhoods. The rest of the building is occupied by the Womans Century Club, once active in the suffragist movement and now a civic organization.

Under its original owners, the Harvard Exit Theater gained popularity for its foreign and independent films, and for its homey atmosphere, with waiting parlors furnished in old pieces. The main auditorium is on the second floor; a second auditorium was later added to the third floor. The third floor is where most of the alleged phenomena occurred.

Tales of a ghostly woman dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing haunting the place began to circulate in the early 1970s. The manager at the time, Janet Wainwright, reportedly saw the female APPARITION, which on one occasion was sitting in a chair by the fireplace and vanished as Wainwright drew near. Wainwright also reported finding lights on and a fire going in the fireplace when she was the first to arrive some mornings to open up. Once she found chairs arranged in a semicircle around the fire. On the third floor, she reported seeing several apparitions of women. Other employees reported hearing sounds of a woman sobbing, and the projectionist allegedly arrived one day to find the projector already running.

In 1982, Wainwright left and was replaced by Alan Blangy, who managed the theater until 1988. One night, shortly after Blangy began his job at the theater, he and his assistant manager were closing up when Blangy thought he heard a noise in the third-floor auditorium. Entering it, he saw the door to the fire escape close, and he thought an intruder had been in the building. But as he attempted to pull the door shut, something on the other side pulled back in strong jerks. A tug-of-war ensued. Blangy called to his assistant, who arrived just as he managed to pull the door shut. Together, they then pushed the door open, expecting to see an intruder fleeing down the fire escape or out into the street. They found nothing. Nor had they heard any sounds of feet running down the stairs. The incident spooked Blangy, who from then on never wanted to be in the theater alone.

Around 1985, a group of paranormal investigators set up equipment in an effort to record evidence of haunting, but results were inconclusive. They claimed to record ghostly voices on tape and to see a ball of light fl oat across the third-floor auditorium. Blangy never heard the tapes, and the ghost hunters eventually left. The phenomena ceased in the mid-1980s. In 1987, an independent filmmaker, Karl Krogstad, moved his goods into rental quarters in the theater and experienced his stacks of boxes falling over repeatedly for several days. No explanation was found.

Blangy theorized that the theater may have been haunted by the ghost of Seattle’s first and only woman mayor, Bertha K. Landes, an early feminist and reformer. A leader of the Womans Century Club and other women’s organizations, she served as mayor from 1926 to 1928 and made significant inroads against government corruption. She died in 1943.

Blangy was told by early staffers that some of the phenomena were outright jokes on Wainwright. After Wainwright reported seeing an apparition, other staff members played pranks of lighting the fire prior to her morning arrival and setting up the chairs in the semicircle. According to Blangy, some of the other phenomena may have been exaggerations, or may have had natural explanations. For example, since movies were screened by the staff during the day, it is possible that someone left the projector running prior to the arrival of the projectionist for the public showings.

At about the time the phenomena ceased at the Harvard Exit, a museum opened in downtown Seattle with objects and photographs pertaining to Landes. An account in one of the local newspapers mentioned that workmen at the museum site reported strange incidents such as tools and materials being misplaced. Blangy opined that the ghost of Landes relocated to the museum to look after her things. However, museum officials claimed no knowledge of any unusual happening during or after construction. In 1988, some of the Landes objects were sent to another museum in Seattle, whose officials claimed likewise.

SOURCE:

The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits– Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – September 1, 2007