Bozeman's 1919 Beaux Arts playhouse with a man-in-black on the balcony
17 W Main Street, Bozeman, MT 59715
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Ticket prices vary by performance; see the box office or website for the current show.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Two-story historic theater on Main Street with a ground-floor auditorium and a balcony
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1919 · First Purpose-Built Theater in Bozeman · Story Family Legacy · Beaux Arts Architecture · Main Street Historic District
The Ellen opened its doors in December 1919, the first building in Bozeman put up specifically as a theater. It was financed by Nelson Story Jr. and T. Byron Story, two sons of Nelson Story, the cattle baron and merchant who had been one of the wealthiest men in early Montana. The brothers named the 800-seat house for their mother, Ellen Trent Story.
The two-story Beaux Arts building was designed by Bozeman architect Fred Willson, whose work shaped much of the city's early-twentieth-century downtown. The theater carried elaborate terra cotta ornament on its Main Street face and was built to handle both stage productions and the new motion pictures. For decades it served as a vaudeville house, movie theater, and community gathering place.
The building declined in the late twentieth century. In 2005 the local nonprofit Montana TheatreWorks purchased it, and after restoration the Ellen reopened on December 4, 2008. It now operates year-round as a performing-arts venue for live music, theater, and film, and remains one of the anchors of Bozeman's Main Street Historic District.
Sources
The Ellen's best-known account is the figure of a man in a black suit. Staff have described seeing him on the balcony and near the ground-floor ladies' room, and the figure is commonly identified as one of the Story brothers who financed and built the theater in 1919.
People who have written up the story treat it as a residual haunt rather than an interactive presence, meaning the figure is said to repeat ordinary movements rather than respond to the living. Local writers note that the area now occupied by the expanded women's restroom was once a smaller office or storeroom, and they tie the sightings near that spot to its earlier use.
Bozeman ghost-walk operators include the Ellen on their downtown itineraries, and the theater appears in regional roundups of Bozeman hauntings. The theater itself does not market the building as haunted; its public identity is the restored playhouse and its performance calendar.
Notable Entities
The Ellen runs a year-round calendar of concerts, plays, and classic-film screenings in its restored 1919 auditorium. The building's haunted reputation is not the draw; guests come for the programming and the Beaux Arts interior, which the man-in-black accounts are tied to.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Philipsburg, MT
Prominent businessman Angus A. McDonald built this two-story masonry theater in 1891 to entertain the silver-mining towns of Philipsburg and nearby Granite. It is described as Montana's oldest operating theater. Renamed the Granada Theatre in 1919, it later screened films for decades and continues today as a live performance and movie venue.
Missoula, MT
The Wilma Theatre opened in 1921, built by William 'Billy' Simons and named for his wife, light-opera singer Edna Wilma. Designed by architect Ole Bakke, it anchored an eight-story complex that was Missoula's first steel-framed high-rise. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and operates today as a cinema and concert venue.
Slippery Rock, PA
Miller Auditorium at Slippery Rock University was named in honor of Emma Guffey Miller, a Pennsylvania Democratic Party stalwart who served as an SRU trustee for decades and helped secure state funding for eight campus buildings between 1928 and 1939. Born July 6, 1874, in Westmoreland County, she became the first woman to receive votes for a presidential nomination at a Democratic National Convention, in 1924.