The Hauntings That Follow Us

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.