Following shows and rehearsals, CEPA director Jeff Thompson and Spotlight Coordinator Shelby Duke are usually the last ones to leave the theater

When assistant director and Spotlight coordinator Shelby Duke leaves the CEPA theater for the night, clicking off lights, tidying the tech area and locking the door, she always wishes the lurking spirits goodnight. They’re left to the building with dim stage lights to allow their performances to continue on into the afterlife. 

According to the stories that have been passed down from CEPA theater generation to the next, there are three spirits keeping the building electric and, sometimes, spooky.

The first ghost is named Emily. Duke isn’t sure where the name came from, but she thinks of her as the most playful out of the three. She typically haunts in the orchestra pit and among the costumes in storage. 

“The story from students is that they would be on stage and they could hear her singing or crying from underneath their feet,” said Duke.

“She’ll rattle clothes downstairs too. She likes to play pranks or scare people in general,” said Duke. 

 “My experience with the little girl was in 2013, we were rehearsing for a show and they called us all out on stage because someone over one of the mics was singing,” said Duke.

She said the voice came over the speakers. The directors of the show accused Duke and her friends, but she said she was just changing clothes. 

Finally, it was going on while the actors were on stage. It was never figured out, but eventually stopped. 

“Later that night I had to go down into the orchestra pit and I thought one of my friends was playing a prank on me because the clothes started moving very frantically,” said Duke. 

She pulled the clothes back and no one was there and the people she was with were steps behind her.

One of the theater superstitions is whenever you do a production ghosts are traveling with certain scripts. 

“I feel like some of the ghosts that we encounter that don’t have a name it may not be the tech ghost, I think some of them travel.”

“Theater lore is full of ghosts, every theater, I feel like, has their own ghosts. The ones they bring with them become fact as they travel from one group of kids to another. They want to believe in this so bad, it becomes real for them,” said Jeff Thompson, CEPA director. 

The second ghost, and the only one Thompson believes he’s ever had experience with was in the lobby. He remains nameless and doesn’t usually interact with the inside of the theater. 

“I was done with the show one night, and was turning the lights off in the lobby. It started with this really low hum,” Thompson said. 

He described it as the sound of a car humming in his ear, and felt as if it bounced and echoed off the top of the lobby. There are a few small vents on one side of the ceiling, but not enough to create a loud hum, even if it were blowing air.

“I start yelling at this ghost, ‘alright, what do you want? Fine, I’m done, I’m out,’ I come back out and hit the door to leave and it just flat stops.” 

The noises of the building are typical for one of its size, but some of the sounds just can’t be explained.

“The weirdest is that you will hear doors. You’ll be sitting alone in the dark in the theater and hear a door close somewhere in the building,” said Thompson. “You go check and it’s nothing, knowing yourself the only one in the building.”

“Most of the ghosts are helpful,” said Duke.

Tech fixes are usually attributed to the third CEPA spirit. She believes he likely shifts between the theater and the CEPA office.

She stayed late one night with the lights flipped off and was trying to find her script for the show with her phone flashlight. After deciding the theater felt a little too spooky and almost leaving, she heard the sound of something drop onto the stage floor. 

“No one else is in the theater and all of a sudden I hear on the opposite side of the stage something that sounded like paper hitting the ground,” said Duke.

 The, sometimes helpful, spirits don’t bother Duke and Thompson. Neither of them feel afraid of what might lurk after dark in their

It’s a coincidence that a framed picture in the lobby appears to be bleeding as the adhesive melts down the wall, but it certainly matches the theme.