Est. 1923 · Flagstaff community landmark since 1923 · Home of Theatrikos Theatre Company since 1988 · Named for founding theater advocate Doris Harper-White (2002)
The building at 11 W. Cherry Avenue was constructed in 1923, originally as a community hall. In Bisbee's era it served as the Elks Lodge for a period, then went through a sequence of uses unusual even for a building in a small western city: private residence, boarding house, and eventually the Flagstaff Public Library.
When the library relocated, the space sat unused long enough to develop a reputation for being unsettling before Theatrikos Theatre Company moved in. The company, which had been staging productions in Flagstaff since the early 1970s, established the venue as its permanent home around 1988. The building was formally named the Doris Harper-White Community Playhouse in 2002, honoring the company's founding member and leading arts advocate Doris Harper-White — for whom some accounts claim is herself among the spirits observed in the building.
Theatrikos celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2024 and continues to stage a full season of productions at the playhouse. The box office is open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from noon to 6 p.m., and two hours before each performance.
Sources
- https://theatrikos.com/visit/
- https://www.flagstaffarizona.org/blog/flagstaff-keeps-its-history-alive-and-freaky/
- https://azdailysun.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/50-years-in-revue-theatrikos-celebrates-50th-anniversary/article_3c52157f-1ed4-5ec6-b29d-1a51abd995b0.html
Male apparition near loading dockElderly woman in white dress in empty auditoriumIndoor rain in basement hallway (two witnesses)General sense of presence in auditorium when empty
The Doris Harper-White Playhouse has accumulated a specific and unusually varied set of paranormal reports, which is why it appears on every major Flagstaff ghost tour rather than just the thematically broad ones.
The most alarming account centers on a young man believed to have died by suicide by hanging on or near a loading dock when the building served as the Flagstaff Public Library. Witnesses describe him as agitated — not passive like many reported apparitions — and the energy around the area where he allegedly died is consistently described as unsettling rather than melancholy. No newspaper death record for this incident has been publicly linked to the building, and the claim circulates through oral tradition and tour literature.
The second figure is far quieter. Actors and staff rehearsing alone in the main auditorium have reported an elderly woman in a white dress sitting in the audience seating, watching. She appears to arrive and leave without using the doors. Some accounts identify her with Doris Harper-White herself, though this is an informal association rather than a documented claim.
The third incident is the hardest to categorize. Two volunteers working in a narrow basement hallway roughly ten years prior to 2023 reporting documentation experienced rain falling inside the corridor — actual water droplets, in an enclosed underground space, with no pipes overhead and no weather-related explanation found when the building was inspected afterward. The two witnesses corroborated each other's account independently.
Notable Entities
Unidentified young man (alleged suicide, loading dock)Elderly woman in white dress