HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
SUU's Adams Theatre, longtime home of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, where staff report a top-hatted figure and voices in the stage tunnel.
351 West University Boulevard, Cedar City, UT 84720
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Performances at the Adams Theatre and Auditorium are ticketed; the campus grounds are free to walk. See SUU and Utah Shakespeare Festival listings for show schedules and prices.
Access
Wheelchair OK
University campus with paved walks; the Adams is an outdoor Elizabethan-style stage.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1961 · Longtime outdoor home of the Utah Shakespeare Festival (founded 1961) · Core of Southern Utah University's performing-arts program · A signature cultural venue for southern Utah and Cedar City
Southern Utah University traces its roots to 1897, when local residents raised the original Branch Normal School building, later known as Old Main, on what is now the Cedar City campus. The school grew into a teachers college and then a university, and over the twentieth century it built a strong performing-arts presence in southern Utah.
The Utah Shakespeare Festival began at the institution in 1961 and became one of the region's signature cultural events, drawing audiences to Cedar City each summer. For much of its history the festival performed at the Adams Memorial Shakespearean Theatre, an outdoor stage modeled on Elizabethan playhouses, while the campus Auditorium hosted year-round student productions, recitals, and rehearsals.
Generations of students, festival actors, and stage crew have worked late hours in these buildings, and the after-dark routine of theater work is the backdrop for the ghost stories collected by the university and local press. Southern Utah University documents several of these accounts on its own website as part of campus folklore. The theater complex remains in active use for performances and instruction.
Sources
Southern Utah University's own account describes a haunting tied to the tunnel that connects the stage to the underground dressing rooms, where people have reported the sounds of a man and one or more children who whistle and recite lines from plays. The university notes that the identities behind the voices have never been established.
Local radio station KSUB adds reports from the Auditorium: a figure resembling a man in a top hat seen in the balcony during a late-night rehearsal, the figure of a woman in a purple dress, and the sounds of children carrying from the tunnel toward the nearby theatre. Theater crews who keep late hours have long traded these stories, and the building's reputation has become part of campus lore.
HauntBound presents these as documented campus folklore rather than verified events. The accounts come from the university's published collection and local press; no death or specific historical incident has been tied to the tunnel voices in any source we could confirm. The verifiable element is the venue's long theatrical history; the figures and voices are reported phenomena, not established fact.
Notable Entities
The Adams Theatre is the longtime outdoor home of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and the adjacent Auditorium hosts campus productions. A ticketed show is the practical way to spend an evening in the spaces tied to the campus ghost stories; backstage and the tunnel are not part of general access.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Rochester, MN
The Rochester Civic Theatre was founded in 1951 by a group of local performers calling themselves the Log Cabin Players. A capital campaign in the early 1960s funded the current 300-seat downtown building along Civic Center Drive SE. The organization has run continuously for over 70 seasons.
Cripple Creek, CO
The Butte Theater on Bennett Avenue is a historic Cripple Creek opera house rebuilt after the April 1896 fires that devastated the city. Associated with the Imperial Casino, it has operated as a performance venue for more than a century and is reportedly haunted by a ghost named Jack, linked to the nearby fire department.
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.