Down a metal elevator is the entrance to Sacramento State’s University Theatre basement, the alleged home of the theater’s resident ghost. Props take up much of the room in the basement. Old chandeliers, Victorian dressers and outlines of people painted and cut out from wood are just some of the items stored in the dark room. In the far back corner of the basement is the theater’s coffin collection. It is easy to see the “haunted” nature of the place.

Sac State’s Technical Director Richard Stockton said he can see why people believe the theater is haunted – especially those whom he said have an overactive imagination.

“There are a lot of people who say we have a resident ghost, but I don’t know,” Stockton said. “He’s never personally introduced himself to me.”

The University Theatre was built in 1955, and celebrated its 50-year anniversary last year. Stockton said the story behind the theater ghost is a building inspector was walking the catwalk and slipped. Because there was no stage under him, he fell to his death on the basement floor. He said it is the building inspector’s spirit that supposedly haunts the theater’s basement and wanders the halls. The ghost is said to play tricks on people and disrupt things throughout the opening nights of performances.

Stockton said a reason people think the theater is haunted is because it creaks and makes noises many people would attribute to a ghost. These noises, he said, are a result of the theater expanding and contracting, not the spirit of a dead building inspector.

Senior theater major Brian Watson said there is nothing worse than a pitch black theater. During Sac State’s 2007 production of “Seussical the Musical,” he spent time in the basement alone while working on the trapdoors for the show. Watson said the absence of other people was a little creepy, especially when the air compressor above him gave out a loud noise.

“It was dead silent and only parts of the basement were lit. The air compressor was really loud,” Watson said. “That gave me a little jump.”

Watson said he remembers being told the story of the theater’s ghost for the first time while walking the catwalk that hangs above the stage. He said he believes almost every theater’s staff has stories and superstitions that they tell – it’s all a part of a theater’s culture. Watson said he is still new to the theater, but hopes he will get the chance to experience the ghost.

Professor Liam Murphy, who received his doctorate in sociocultural anthropology from Yale University, teaches an anthropology class on magic, witchcraft and religion on campus. Murphy described ghosts as “the disembodied spirits or ‘essences’ of the deceased.” He said ghosts linger around places they knew in life.

Murphy said the general idea Western societies have towards ghosts are that they are wrong and frightening. He said we often associate ghosts with other “post-death beings,” such as vampires, zombies, demons and witches.

“The historical conception of the ghost is that they’re something to be afraid of…as I say, because they’re unnatural and by extension, un-Godly,” he said.

Murphy admits he has never personally experienced the supernatural as it pertains to ghosts.

“Not every culture draws a hard line between what is natural and what is unnatural,” he said. “Whenever we start to speak of the supernatural, right away we reveal our assumption that returning spirits are not desirable.”

Stockton said he works in the theater a lot, and that he is not convinced there is a ghost that wanders the halls and the basement.

“This is theater. There are a lot of weird things that go on, especially on stage, but nothing that really pertains to the supernatural,” Stockton said.

Adina Zerwig can be reached at [email protected]