Our favorite venues hold some of our best memories, those times when we rocked out, grooved, and swayed along to the music we love. Some music venues, however, house more than memories and the echoes of loud nights with good bands. Some venues are home to ghosts.
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Here are six music venues across America believed to be haunted.
1. The Viper Room – Hollywood, California
The Sunset Strip’s Viper Room is an ominous-looking building from the inside out. A black facade welcomes visitors into a somehow even darker nightclub. It’s not so difficult to believe the venue would be a sanctuary to a specter or two.
The building has a storied past and is one of the last whispers of Old Hollywood. For over a century, the structure has stood under marquees that read: The Cotton Club, the Greenwich Village Inn, The Melody Room, and Filthy McNasty’s. These all-night clubs welcomed performers, celebrities, and even mobsters through the door.
It would not be dubbed The Viper Room until 1993 when it became infamous as the site of young actor River Phoenix’s passing. The venue’s past and tragedies seem to cling to the walls and it is now believed to be a hotbed of supernatural activity. Watch Ghost Adventures investigate the spot below.
2. The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, Georgia’s The Masquerade is a mid-sized concert space and destination as a rock, metal, and punk venue. The building was originally the historic DuPre Excelsior Mill built in the 1890s, and then fashioned into a venue in the late 1980s.
The Masquerade is believed to be teaming with hauntings across its three aptly named interior stages: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. According to hauntedrooms.com, there have been reports of a large, dark figure of a man who walks the nightclub and messes with the amplifiers at night. Disembodied footsteps and blood-curdling screams can also be heard in the building.
3. Ryman Auditorium – Nashville, Tennessee
Seeing a show at Nashville’s “Mother Church” is a spiritual experience in what used to be the Union Gospel Tabernacle, but the Ryman Auditorium reportedly houses its own spirits, as well.
Since the late 1800s, the building has stood proudly in downtown Music City. It became the site of the Grand Ole Opry in 1943 until the stage performances moved to the Grand Ole Opry House in the 1970s. Iconic voices of the Opry are said to still haunt the pews of the Ryman. Staff has reported hearing country legends Patsy Cline and Hank Williams in the building.
In the past, the Ryman has offered haunted history tours for visitors to investigate the legendary structure’s underlying spookiness.
4. Paramount Theatre – Austin, Texas
Before it was the Paramount Theatre, the 1915-erected structure in Austin, Texas, was called The Majestic, a stage that had originally been intended for vaudevillian acts. Today, the Paramount is a destination for live events and is one of the venues used during the South By Southwest convention.
According to austinghosts.com, there are three ghosts reportedly living in the theatre – the figure dressed in white who frequents the mezzanine, called Emily; the theatre’s former projectionist-turned-mischievous ghoul, named Walter; and the cigar-smoking apparition of an old man who resides in one of the box seats.
Get a glimpse of the “Phantom of the Paramount” that was supposedly spotted below.
5. Avalon – Hollywood, California
Hollywood, California’s three-floored Avalon Theater is another remnant of the town’s Golden Age. Built in 1927, the building has gone by many names like The Hollywood Playhouse, The El Capitan Theatre, and The Palace Theatre to name a few. As a theatre, it was home to various early television programs like The Lawrence Welk Show and it hosted many a Bob Hope special.
When the building took the name Avalon in the early 2000s, it was remade into a nightclub where electronic acts frequent to this day. The building’s history has lingered, and so have former stage acts, hauntedhouses.com explains. Witnesses have spotted a tux-clad spirit and apparitions in high heels, all thought to be past performers, and chorus girls yearning for the spotlight they once enjoyed at the playhouse.
6. Bobby Mackey’s Music World – Wilder, Kentucky
Wilder, Kentucky is home to a gateway to hell? The town’s resident nightclub and honky tonk Bobby Mackey’s Music World seems to be the spot. The venue – owned by country singer Bobby Mackey – has a dark history that still echoes within its walls, giving life to supernatural occurrences.
The structure was apparently used as a slaughterhouse and meat-packing facility in the 1800s, according to the Travel Channel. When it closed later that century, it then became a hotbed for cult activity and then Prohibition-era mob dealings.
Before it came under Mackey’s ownership in the late 1970s, the building already had a past stained with death and wrong-doing. Today, reports of phantom footsteps, possessions, forceful apparitions, flying trash cans, and even an entrance to hell itself can all be found in the town of Wilder at Bobby Mackey’s Music World.
Check out Ozzy Osbourne’s son, Jack, with Katrina Weidman as they discuss the venue on the show Portals to Hell.
Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images
