Case 3: Volendam Theater

Compared to our second case, this third case would be far less intense, but still very interesting. We had all long heard stories about haunts at the historic Volendam Theater, and Marie herself had an experience while still in middle school. When we got word that we would be able to investigate the theater at the start of March, all of us were excited.

The Volendam Theater is a small playhouse and concert hall dating back to 1907. It can hold around 900 people, or a little over a twentieth of the town’s entire population. It can show movies, concerts, and plays, and has done so nonstop since it opened. Although not the primary movie theater of the area by any means nowadays with the advent of modern multiplexes, it still shows the latest films, albeit usually during the middle of the day and not often in the evening or at night, with the later hours often being reserved for plays or concerts. The Town of Volendam School District, where all of us attend, also holds its graduation ceremonies here, and has done so continuously since the opening of the village’s high school in 1914, with the graduation ceremony covering the whole town ever since the various smaller schoolhouses in town and the other high school in Leesville were consolidated in 1948, with the old Leesville High School becoming the middle school. The only exceptions were, of course, the COVID classes of 2020 and 2021.

Needless to say, with a history of use dating back over a century, there’s bound to be ghost stories. There are plenty of legends about the theater, and we did our hardest to research every one of them, and we will point out if each legend can be corroborated.

The oldest stories date back to before the theater was even built, and concerns the land it sat on. Before the theater was built, the land used to be home to the village’s police station and jail, as well as one of two execution sites in the county before executions were moved into New York State prisons with the advent of the electric chair in the 1880s. If someone committed a capital offense such as murder in the western end of our county, they would be hanged in Volendam. Records we found indicate a total of seven hangings from 1793 to 1870, with five being for murder, one being for rape, and one being for robbery. One execution in particular, that of Robert William Hummel in 1860 after he was convicted of killing his wife’s parents, became infamous after the rope snapped during his hanging attempt, breaking his right leg in the process. He was successfully hanged a few days later.

The police station and jail burned down in a devastating fire that also destroyed two houses on the same street in 1899. Following this, a new police station was built, and the land remained vacant until the theater was built in its place. From here, all of the stories concern the theater itself. The man who built the theater, named Eustace Williams, died in the theater of a heart attack in 1911 while sitting in his office, which was the first death inside the theater itself.

Starting in the 1930s, reports of a brown dog running around backstage began to pop up. Despite numerous attempts to catch the dog, it always seemed to disappear whenever someone got too close to it. Uncle A from the previous case, as a matter of fact, had seen this dog while working at the theater as a janitor in the late 1980s. He recalled to me and Marie that on two occasions, he saw the dog walking around upstairs near the offices and changing rooms backstage while cleaning late at night. He said the dog did not seem threatening or malevolent, and he only noticed it was not a living dog when it vanished in front of him the second time he saw it. It is not known how this dog came to haunt the theater, although it is known Eustace Williams did own several dogs in his life.

During the Second World War, many people from our town went off to fight in the war. One of them was a stagehand named James McMahon, or Jim for short. Jim enlisted immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and joined the Marines. He would be killed in action in the Battle of Tarawa on September 20, 1943, just minutes after landing on Beito Island. To this day, it is said Jim walks the halls of the entire theater, often saying hello to people who pass by before disappearing.

The next death to occur in the theater itself was in 1947 when a stagehand fell from a box seat while cleaning a light fixture, striking his head on a metal chair and dying almost instantly. After this, a third death came in 1978 when an old man had a fatal heart attack while watching a movie in the theater. While there are no reported stories of spirits related to these incidents, we would not be surprised if these two men are still wandering the halls of the theater.

Perhaps the most well-known spirit inside the theater is that of Edwin Renaud, a man who worked at the theater for 50 years before his death in 1996. An army veteran, he returned home after having spent seven years in the service before and during the Second World War and was hired as a repairman by the theater. Edwin died at a hospital in Schenectady at the age of 76, a week after suffering a stroke at his home, but his spirit is known to wander the halls of the theater, often appearing whenever something breaks down. Many of the staff regard him as a premonition that something is about to need repair inside the building, but otherwise he is not a malevolent ghost by any means. Uncle A, who knew Edwin personally, recalled just a week after his death that he was trying to fix a broken light in the basement when Edwin suddenly appeared behind him and told him exactly what was wrong. Uncle A did as instructed, and the light turned back on. He turned around to thank Edwin when he saw that he had disappeared, and it was then that he remembered Edwin had died.

Marie herself has felt the presence of spirits inside the theater, and it was in fact in the theater where she began to realize she was more sensitive to the paranormal than the average person. Before we began our work as investigators, she told Ashley and Naomi, and eventually me and Jared, about a time where she was getting changed for a play when she was about eleven years old when she felt someone watching her in the dressing room. She turned around to find no one, but quickly got dressed anyway and walked out to see if perhaps someone had slipped past her, only to see the brown dog spirit trot down the hall and disappear around a corner.

…

Our investigation would be on the night of March 2, a night where nothing was scheduled inside the theater past eight in the evening. The only people inside the theater would be us. Because it was a school night, we would investigate only until one in the morning before going home. Marie, Ashley, and Yukiko would focus on the backstage area and the stage, while me and Jared would focus on the seating area.

In one of the dressing rooms, Marie could already feel the presence of spirits as Yukiko began to record video. “They’re already here, guys.”

Ashley turned and asked her, “You okay, Marie?”

“Yeah,” she assured them. “It’s not like (NAME CENSORED)‘s house. This isn’t bad at all.” She then grabbed a DVR and told the others, “We might as well get started.”

“I’ll start taking pictures,” Ashley added as she grabbed a photo camera. As she did, Marie pressed record, and within just a few seconds of doing so, the DVR captured the first piece of evidence for the night, consisting of an indiscernible whisper that belonged to none of the three girls in the room.

Marie asked the spirits, “Okay, so… Some of you may recognize me. I’ve been here a lot throughout my life, both in the audience and on stage. If, uh… If any of you have seen me before, can you tell us?” Pause. “Can you tell us who you are?” Pause. “Did you work here? Did you act or play music here?” At this moment, all of them felt the room get cooler, with Marie commenting, “Did you guys feel that?”

“Yeah,” Yukiko replied. “It got cooler in here.”

“That’s a sign someone’s here with us,” Ashley pointed out. All of them then felt an unexplainable breeze pass by them in the room. “Wait, what the Hell? Did someone open a door or window?”

“I didn’t,” Marie shook her head, having felt the same breeze.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” Yukiko confirmed. “None of the doors or windows in this room are open, and obviously the air conditioning isn’t on given it’s basically still winter.”

“Let me play back the recording real quick.” Marie then stopped recording and began to play back the EVP session to see if anything was captured. After first identifying the whisper at the beginning, the three of them also heard a spirit reply to Marie’s first and second questions: ‘Yes’ and ‘Stage.’

“Sounds like they know who you are,” Ashley nodded.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Marie replied sarcastically. “I feel like there’s a man in here with us, but I can’t really see him. It’s more like I can feel his presence.” She then asked Ashley, “Did you get anything in your photos?”

“No luck,” she dejectedly replied. “Whoever this is seems camera-shy.” She then opened the door to the hallway. “Let’s move to another area and continue there.”

Yukiko suggested, “How about Mr. Williams’s office?”

“Sure.”

…

In the front, me and Jared were taking photographs of the upper seating area when we felt the air around us get freezing cold. “Damn, the temperature dropped,” I remarked to him as I then took a photo of the stage in the darkness, making sure not to fall over the edge as I did so.

“You’re telling me,” he chuckled as he held up a video camera in one hand and took photos with his cellphone in the other. “I’m freezing.”

We both then heard footsteps from behind us and turned around to find nobody there. Nobody was up here aside from us, at least nobody who was alive of course. “There’s someone up here, dude.”

“Yep.”

I then began to check the photos I had taken, and in one photo of the area behind us I had taken just two minutes prior, a black shadow in the shape of a person was standing in the doorway to a flight of stairs down to the lower level of seating. “Hey, Jared, check this out.”

“Coming.” As Jared walked over to me to check the photo out, we heard someone whisper from a few rows away and turned in that direction. “What the Hell?”

“You heard that too?” Both of us became very uneasy, feeling as if we were being surrounded by several spirits on the upper level. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

“No shit. I am, too.” We then checked out the last photo I had taken, which was on the stage. In that photo, after some careful examination, we found a white orb-like object floating above the stage. While an overwhelming majority of alleged ‘spirit orbs’ are nothing but camera dust or rain particles referred to as backscatter, this was not one of those. This orb was of an irregular shape and had motion going towards stage left. “That looks like it could be something.”

“Yeah.” Jared then turned around, seeming to have heard something I had not. “Hey, hold up.”

“What’s u-?”

“Shhh…” We both went dead silent as we listened for any odd sounds, and within a few seconds, we both heard what sounded like a whispered conversation from the opposite end of the upper seating area, which was captured on Jared’s camera.

As we slowly walked over to the other side of the upper level, I whispered, “It’s still going on.”

“Yeah.” Then, as soon as we got within about fifteen feet of the whispering, it suddenly stopped. Confused, we looked around the best we could in the darkness of the upper level to see if there were any signs of other activity, only to find nothing. It was as if whoever was conversing had vanished as quickly as they had come. “They’re gone, dude.”

“Just as we got close to them,” I realized. “Of course. Let’s head downstairs for a bit.”

As both of us walked to the stairs down to the lower level seating, we thought we could hear scratching sounds from within the walls. However, we obviously could not confirm that this was paranormal, and it very easily could have just been an animal that had crawled into the walls instead. Nonetheless, the sounds still creeped us out immensely, and hastened our departure from the upper level.

In the back of the lower level, Jared pointed his camera at the stage and immediately noticed something that made him freeze in place. “Hey, Takeo, look.”

Turning my head towards the stage, I saw what looked like a faint blue light floating above it. I whispered to Jared, “What the fuck is that?”

While neither of us could see it well due to the darkness, on the night-vision camera Jared was holding, the blue light had a slightly more defined shape, that being of a person. We both watched in amazement as the light slowly floated from stage right to stage left. After hovering around for about ten seconds, the blue light suddenly dashed off stage and vanished, leaving both of us in shock at what we had just captured. What are the odds that we would capture such significant evidence in two back to back investigations, after all?

…

Unaware of our find in the front, the three girls had entered the office of Eustace Williams and began an EVP session, with Marie taking the lead. “Hello, Mr. Williams,” she greeted him with. “It’s been a while since I’ve been back here. I wonder if you’ve seen me before when I used to do events here. Are you here with us now?” After a pause to allow for an answer, Marie commented to the others, “I definitely feel like there’s someone else here with us.”

Almost on cue, they all heard footsteps from down the hall and turned towards the doorway, thinking that perhaps me and Jared were coming to join them. Yukiko asked the others, “Is that Takeo and Jared?”

“Maybe,” Ashley replied.

“Hey,” my sister asked out into the hallway. “Is that you guys?” No response came, but the footsteps did stop upon her asking the question. All three of them quickly became uneasy as they realized that it was in fact a spirit. “Marie, can you figure out who it is?”

“I can’t get a good idea,” she replied. “But it feels like they’re an older man…” She then looked out into the hallway and clarified further, “And it feels like they’re from a long time ago.”

“Perhaps it’s Mr. Williams,” Ashley pointed out. “We’re in his office, after all.” She then snapped three photos of the hallway as Marie continued the EVP session.

“Mr. Williams,” Marie asked the presumed spirit. “Can you speak to us? Can you prove to us you’re here?” Pause. “What do you think of the theater and how it’s doing now?” Pause. “If you’re not Mr. Williams, can you say who you are?” After one last pause, Marie stopped recording. “Let’s play it back.”

All three of them grew silent as they began to listen in on the recording, trying to see if they had picked anything up besides the footsteps, which were indeed audible on the recording as well as Yukiko’s camera. After the last of Marie’s first set of questions, all three of them heard a male voice on the recording, but none of us were ever able to tell what exactly was said. Ashley remarked to the others, “You heard that, right? What did he say?”

Marie replied before being interrupted, “I couldn’t te-“ Before she could finish her sentence, all three of them heard a male voice from down the hall that did not belong to either me or Jared, causing them all to look towards the direction of the sound as their eyes widened with shock. “Holy shit…”

“You heard that, right?”

“Yeah,” Yukiko replied to Ashley. “That’s definitely not my brother or Jared.”

“Let’s listen to the rest of the tape before we get interrupted again,” Marie then told the others as she restarted the recording. For the second set of questions she asked, she got a single response in her second question. This time, it was a male voice saying ‘well done.’ Marie said to the others, “It sounds like someone saying ‘well done.’ I think this might be Mr. Williams.”

“Probably,” Ashley nodded.

As the three of them walked out of the office, Ashley snapped a few more photos. After this, no other evidence was captured by either us the trio for the rest of the night, at least none that they knew of right then and there.

…

While shorter than our previous investigation, this one still proved rather fruitful, and definitely confirmed in our eyes that the theater was haunted. On March 4, the Saturday after the investigation, me and Yukiko began reviewing the evidence we had captured at our house. While going over the photos taken by all of us at the theater, one in particular taken by Ashley caught the eye of my sister.

I had taken a break from reviewing evidence to do homework in my bedroom while Yukiko sat nearby at my computer to continue looking over evidence. “Hmmm… Let’s see… I gotta carry the three over here… Wait, hang on. I gotta do this first.”

Yukiko turned and asked me, “Got a problem with math?”

“You know I’ve never been too strong with it.”

“Come on,” Yukiko joked. “You’re letting our fellow Asians down.”

“Oh, shut up.”

My sister laughed and switched to Japanese to further mess with me. “Awww, did oniichan get offended by my joke? I’m sorry. Your cute little sister won’t do it again. I promise.”

Replying in kind, I told her, “This isn’t anime, you know. How can you go from messing with me in English to being the cute little sister character in Japanese so fast, anyway?”

“Have you seen the people we’re friends with? We’re surrounded by anime, oniichan.”

“Ugh, fair enough.” I then turned back to my homework while Yukiko turned back to the computer.

However, a few seconds later, I turned around when I heard her say to herself in English, “What the Hell is that?”

“Huh?”

“Takeo, take a look at this.”

I got up and looked at the photo over her shoulder. “Wait, what is that?”

“That… That looks like a person.” Yukiko was clearly disturbed by what she was seeing in the photo, which was taken of the hallway outside of Mr. Williams’s office. She increased the lighting in the photo to get a better look, and as she did, what we saw came into view a lot better. “Holy shit…”

At the very end of the hallway was a man, or at least something in the shape of a man, looking at Ashley as she took the photo. None of his facial features could be made out, but it looked as though he was wearing some form of work clothes. Upon Ashley, Jared, and Marie being forwarded this photo, they were all amazed. Marie recalled that she had felt the presence of an adult male while walking down the hallway, and this photo confirmed it.

Marie also forwarded this photo to Uncle A, who almost immediately responded back by saying he was 100% sure it was Edwin Renaud due to the height of the figure and the clothes it seemed to be wearing. This email exchange would also give us our next case, which would take place in the other incorporated village in our town: Leesville.