Est. 1973 · University of Idaho Theatre Arts mainstage · Home of the Idaho Repertory Theatre
The Hartung Theatre sits at 625 Stadium Drive on the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, near the intersection of Sixth Street and Stadium Drive by the Kibbie Dome. It opened in 1973 and was known in its early years simply as the Performing Arts Center.
The building is a proscenium house seating 417, with the playing area now branded the Fagerbakke Stage after renovation work added new seating. It serves as the principal venue for the Theatre Arts department, which mounts a full season of student and faculty productions during the academic year. In the summer, the building hosts the Idaho Repertory Theatre, the university's long-running professional summer company.
The University of Idaho Library, which maintains a campus-buildings collection and has published an account of campus hauntings, places the theater's ghost story within the building's construction-era history. The library's account notes that no death record supports the legend, treating it as folklore that has circulated among theater students and staff for decades rather than a documented event. Tickets to Hartung productions are sold through the university's box office at uitickets.com.
Sources
- https://harvester.lib.uidaho.edu/posts/2021/10/15/u-of-i-hauntings.html
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/campus/buildings/hartungtheater.html
- https://www.uidaho.edu/class/theatre/facilities
Disembodied voicesEquipment malfunctionMissing or moved propsDoors opening on their ownFootsteps
The Hartung's resident story dates the haunting to the building's construction around 1973. As the legend is told, a construction worker had a heart attack while checking the steel girders above the Green Room and fell to his death. The University of Idaho Library, which published an account of campus hauntings in 2021, notes plainly that no evidence supports the legend and that no death record has been located to confirm it.
What the library does record is a consistent set of reports from the people who use the building. Over the years, students, staff, and faculty have described unexplained voices in empty parts of the theater, lighting and sound equipment that malfunctions without cause, props that go missing and turn up elsewhere, and doors that open on their own. The Odyssey Online, in a roundup of haunted places near Moscow, repeats the same construction-worker account and the reports of footsteps, screams, and self-opening doors.
The reputation is the kind that attaches easily to old theaters, where call boards, fly lofts, and dark backstage corridors invite stories. The Hartung does not market itself as a paranormal site, and the only way to enter is to attend a scheduled production.
Notable Entities
The construction worker (unnamed)