HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
+ 3 further entries on record
1927 Greensboro Vaudeville Palace with a 1981 Arson Fatality
310 S Greene St, Greensboro, NC 27401
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Ticket prices vary by event. The theatre hosts film series, live music, comedy, and dance programming year-round.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Restored historic theater with accessible seating and elevator access
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1927 · National Register of Historic Places · 1920s Vaudeville Palace · 1981 Arson Fire · Greensboro Civic Restoration
The Carolina Theatre opened on October 31, 1927, at 310 South Greene Street in downtown Greensboro, built by the Saenger-Publix company at a cost of more than $500,000. Mayor Paul Lindley bought the first ticket. The 2,200-seat house was billed as the Showplace of the Carolinas, with a Greek terracotta facade, crystal chandeliers, marbled columns, a Robert Morton pipe organ, and a house orchestra for vaudeville and silent film. It was Greensboro's first air-conditioned commercial building, and in 1928 it became the first theater in the state to install Vitaphone sound, showing Glorious Betsy as its first talking picture. Ethel Barrymore was among the performers who used the stage in its early decades. The building also carried a segregated balcony with its own entrance; on May 15, 1963, students from North Carolina A&T and Bennett College blocked the doors after being refused admission.
By 1975 the building was slated for demolition. The United Arts Council raised funds to buy it for $550,000, and volunteers helped refit it as a performing arts center that reopened in February 1978. On the night of July 1, 1981, Melvaleene Reva Ferguson, 47, hid inside after closing and set fire to cloth in the southeast stairwell, where she was found dead; the Greensboro Daily News reported the case on July 3, 1981. Repairs closed the theater for about a year, and the balcony was taken out of regular use. A 1988 Renaissance Capital Campaign raised $5 million, and the theater reopened in 1991 after a full renovation.
The Arts Council transferred the deed to the nonprofit Carolina Theatre of Greensboro in 2006. The Crown, a third-floor black-box space, opened in 2013; a $2.8 million Setting the Stage campaign finished in 2022, and facade and leaded-glass restoration wrapped up in 2023. The auditorium now seats about 1,100 and draws more than 100,000 guests a year for film, music, comedy, and resident companies including the Greensboro Ballet and Community Theatre of Greensboro.
Sources
The Carolina Theatre's ghost reports cluster around three figures. The best known is Melvaleene Reva Ferguson, who set the July 1, 1981 fire and died in it. Staff and performers describe a woman walking across the mezzanine, sometimes carrying what looks like a clothes basket, and vanishing; Community Theatre of Greensboro cast members told Strange Carolinas in 2016 that they watched someone cross the mezzanine during a production and disappear into the north wall. The theater does not confirm the identification, and the FOX8 WGHP series Hauntings in the Piedmont treated the link to the fire as an open question.
The second figure is a workman. Brandon Warren, the theater's technical director, told Strange Carolinas he saw a full-bodied man in work clothes open a restroom door and vanish; staff tradition holds that a worker fell from a beam during the 1927 construction, though no contemporary record has been produced. The third is a boy, called Christopher by some staff and guides, blamed for moved chairs, bolts tossed onto the stage, and a storage-closet doorknob a house manager described as rattling on its own. The name is folkloric; no record ties a child of that name to the building.
Other accounts include footsteps on the empty stage, country music from the third-floor kitchen, a former employee hearing his name over an unpowered Clear-Com headset, and the smell of smoke far from concessions. The Ghost Guild ran public investigations on May 27, 2018 and July 2, 2022. In October 2017 Community Theatre of Greensboro staged Paranormal Carolina, an interactive history-and-ghost tour through the building that ended in an investigation. The theater treats the stories as tradition and presents them alongside the documented 1927 and 1981 history.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Attend a film screening, concert, or live performance in the 1927 vaudeville and silent-movie palace that opened on Halloween night and has hosted Ethel Barrymore, Bob Hope, and Elvis Presley. The theatre's historic interior — including its chandeliers, balcony, and mezzanine — was extensively restored after the 1981 arson fire.
The Carolina Theatre occasionally hosts public ghost tours covering the building's documented paranormal reports, the 1981 fire, and the multiple long-term apparition accounts. Check venue website for current scheduling.
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Joliet, IL
The Rialto Square Theatre opened May 24, 1926, designed by Chicago firm Rapp & Rapp for the six Rubens brothers. Its Neo-Baroque interior — modeled in part on the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles — earned it a place on the American Institute of Architects's '150 Great Places in Illinois' and a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
St. Louis, MO
The Fabulous Fox Theatre opened in January 1929 as one of five 'Fox' picture palaces commissioned by film magnate William Fox. Designed by C. Howard Crane in a 'Siamese Byzantine' style, the 4,500-seat auditorium was the second-largest in the United States at its opening. After decades of decline the theatre closed in 1978 and was restored by the Fox Associates beginning in 1981, reopening in 1982 as the centerpiece of Grand Center.
Lewisville, IN
The Guyer Opera House was built in 1901 in Lewisville, Indiana after physician Dr. Oscar K. Guyer persuaded local citizens to fund construction on a block where earlier buildings had burned in 1893. Guyer died in March 1901 at age 49 before the building opened; his funeral was held in the auditorium. In spring 1923, six-year-old Newell Calpha was fatally shot in the forehead when a bullet ricocheted during a firearms demonstration, dying in his father's store downstairs. The theater closed in 1942, was rediscovered in 1969, and has operated as a nonprofit community civic theater since 1976. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.