Fresno's 1928 atmospheric movie palace, where staff and visitors report shadow figures and a projectionist who never clocked out
1400 Fulton St, Fresno, CA 93721
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Ticket prices vary by event; check the venue calendar for current shows
Access
Wheelchair OK
Multi-level historic theater with lobby, orchestra, and balcony seating
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1928 · National Register of Historic Places · 1928 atmospheric movie palace · Original Pantages / Warner Brothers theater
Warnors Theatre opened on October 20, 1928, as the Pantages Theatre, named for vaudeville magnate Alexander Pantages, who then owned it. The building seats roughly 2,100 and was designed by architect B. Marcus Priteca, who blended Moorish, Spanish, and Italian Renaissance Revival elements into an ornate auditorium meant to evoke an open-air courtyard. A backstage room was built to hold live animals for vaudeville acts, a reminder of the era when the house mixed stage performance with film.
The Pantages name lasted barely a year. After a 1929 criminal case ended Alexander Pantages's career, the theater passed to Warner Brothers and operated as the Warner Theater. In the 1960s the name was shortened to Warnors to sidestep a trademark conflict, and the contraction stuck.
The theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and retains its original Wonder Morton pipe organ. Today it operates as the Warnors Center for the Performing Arts, a nonprofit venue hosting concerts, classic-film nights, and live events in downtown Fresno. The combination of an aging movie palace, decades of continuous use, and a backstage warren of dressing rooms and catwalks has made it a recurring stop on local accounts of haunted Fresno.
Sources
The paranormal reputation of Warnors centers on the building's older working spaces: the projection booth, the catwalks above the stage, and the empty auditorium after hours. The most commonly named figure is a former projectionist, described in local accounts as a presence that lingers in the booth where film was once threaded and screened. Staff and visitors have reported shadow figures crossing the aisles and balcony, cold spots in specific rows, and stray notes of piano or organ music with no player at the keys.
The accounts circulate through Fresno-area paranormal media rather than a single archive. The podcast Witch Dark Tales devoted an episode to the theater's reported hauntings, and regional paranormal investigators have written up sessions in the building describing the same booth-and-auditorium phenomena. None of it is tied to a documented death on the premises, and the projectionist remains unnamed in the sources consulted, which is why the haunting reads as durable local lore rather than verified history.
For visitors, the practical reality is that the most reliable way inside is a ticketed show. The atmosphere of a 1928 movie palace, with gilded plasterwork, a darkened balcony, and an organ that still plays, does much of the work on its own, with or without the projectionist.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Warnors operates as the Warnors Center for the Performing Arts, hosting concerts, classic film screenings, and stage events in its 2,100-seat auditorium. The most reliable way to see the interior is to attend a scheduled event; tickets are sold through the venue's calendar. The building's haunted reputation circulates through downtown ghost-tour lore rather than a venue-run investigation program.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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