1913 Beaux-Arts vaudeville house in downtown Norfolk, home of the Virginia Stage Company since 1979 and known to its crew for a stagehand named Ned and a woman in white.
108 E Tazewell St, Norfolk, VA 23510
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Ticket prices vary by Virginia Stage Company production; typical mainstage tickets $30–60. Building owned by City of Norfolk.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic theater with accessible seating; some balcony levels not wheelchair accessible
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1913 · Beaux-Arts Vaudeville Architecture · Wells Brothers Southern Theater Circuit · Virginia Stage Company Home · National Register of Historic Places (1980)
Jake Wells (1863–1927) and his brother Otto built the Wells Theatre in 1913 at the height of their Southern theatrical empire — by the 1920s the Wells brothers controlled a circuit of 42 theaters across nine Southern states. They commissioned the New York architecture firm of E.C. Horn & Sons to design the Norfolk house, and the result was a richly ornamented Beaux-Arts neoclassical theater with three balconies, twelve box seats, and a total capacity of approximately 1,650.
The theater opened on August 26, 1913, with a Shubert musical, 'The Merry Countess.' Through the 1910s and 1920s it hosted the top performers of the vaudeville and legitimate-stage era, including John Drew, Maude Adams, Otis Skinner, John Philip Sousa, Billie Burke, Fred and Adele Astaire, and Will Rogers. In 1916, Jake Wells added a movie screen and projector, making the Wells the most prominent first-run movie house in the Southeast, though live booking continued to dominate.
The theater drifted through changing ownership and a period of decline in the mid-20th century before the City of Norfolk took title and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 1980. The Virginia Stage Company, founded in 1979, became the resident professional theater company and undertook substantial restorations of the auditorium, stage house, and public spaces. Today, the Wells is operated by SevenVenues on behalf of the City and serves as Virginia Stage Company's mainstage.
The Wells Theatre is also recognized by the Library of Congress (Highsmith Archive imagery) and is one of the most-studied surviving examples of an early-20th-century vaudeville house on the East Coast.
Sources
According to WAVY-TV 10 and 13News Now reporting (Haunted Hampton Roads features), as well as Colonial Ghosts and VisitNorfolk's blog, the Wells Theatre has one of the most developed and self-aware ghost traditions of any working Virginia theater. Crew members tell visitors that whenever a prop disappears, a door locks, or a piece of rigging behaves badly, the standard response from above the deck is 'Stop it, Ned!' — invoking a stagehand who is said to have fallen to his death from the fly system in the early years of the house.
A second figure, nicknamed 'Boots,' is described as a young boy whose squeaky shoes are heard in the upper second balcony, often during quiet rehearsals. MATPRA's Norfolk haunted-locations writeup describes 'Boots' as a mischievous presence. A third spirit, the Woman in White, is reported singing operatic arias in the lobby and dressing rooms — usually heard rather than seen. The fourth, a man in a top hat, is occasionally sighted in the box seats by house managers during after-hours walks.
The theatrical tradition of naming and even greeting these spirits is part of why the Wells's lore is so well documented: crew accounts have been collected on camera by Norfolk's network affiliates, and the theater itself has not disputed the stories. The named anchors — particularly Ned and the fly-system fall — are folkloric rather than archivally corroborated; the Wikipedia entry and the Library of Congress documentation do not record a specific stagehand death. All paranormal claims here are framed as 'according to Virginia Stage Company crew and local news reports.'
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Attend a production by the Virginia Stage Company in the restored 1913 Beaux-Arts theater designed by E.C. Horn & Sons. The opulent gilt and plaster interior is itself a star, and the crew's traditions around the house's named ghosts — Ned the stagehand, 'Boots' the boy in the upper balcony, the Woman in White, and a man in a top hat — are part of the company's lore.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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