COEUR d'ALENE — “We call this the ‘skipping hallway,’” Brooke Wood said on a gray Tuesday afternoon, pointing down the dark blue corridor on the main floor of Lake City Playhouse.

“A lot of time when the lights are off, people will run down to turn the lights on because they get a weird hallway energy," she said. “The stories that everyone has are in this hallway for sure. We hear lots of running when no one’s here. Lots of running.”

Lights flicker or turn on and off by themselves. Disembodied voices can be heard at times.

“In this corner (Spokane Paranormal Society) got weird stuff,” she said, gesturing to the southeast section of the theater seats. Second row, second chair in.

“Supposedly there’s a guy who sits there and watches the plays,” Wood said. "We liked that one because he said that he loves it here.” 

The gaping entrance to the attic gives people the willies.

"We have a hole in the dressing room, that’s the scariest one,” Wood said. "People don't like it up there. We've had a couple actresses who've said they don't like the energy that's coming from up there, they get a weird vibe. When the ghost hunters were here, they picked up the energy of a guy who was a peeping Tom kind of vibe, and it's funny because our actress said that. Every time she'd be getting ready, she'd be like, 'I hate that hole, I feel like someone's watching me.'

“And then the basement scares everybody," Wood said. "It doesn’t me. I love the basement; I don’t get scared about this kind of stuff.”

In the spirit of Halloween, The Press wandered through Lake City Playhouse to hear about its resident ghosts. The previous Saturday, the playhouse was investigated by Spokane Paranormal Society, which found about seven different spirits in the more than 100-year-old building.

"They range from a little boy to a man who was probably the collector for a gambling person," Spokane Paranormal Society co-founder Mark Porter told The Press in a phone interview.

Years ago, the building was moved from Farragut State Park to its current location, then operated as a church. It has been the playhouse for 64 years.

Wood said one of the stories of the building is the basement was once allegedly an illegal gambling hall where people would sneak in and out the back door.

"But I don't know how much of that is true," she said.

Using equipment that included spirit boxes to pick up voices, special cameras for visual evidence and meters to detect fluctuations in the electromagnetic field, the society encountered a "thug" in the basement. Porter said he and his team helped three spirits cross over to the other side that evening, including two negative ones.

"They said they asked them to leave, and my daughter said she felt like the energy in the building was better," Wood said.

She said she usually senses helpful ghosts, including ones that have made paintbrushes appear when they're building sets.

"But we do have costumes go missing all the time," she said. 

Wood said the paranormal society's psychic, Amy Forness, told her the little boy spirit — which they call "Sammy" — loves to steal costumes.

"That one resonated to us," Wood said. "It's little kids' costumes that go missing, not adult costumes."

She said it may even be the costumes that are haunted, rather than the building.

"We have a lot that's donated from the 1800s," she said. "Some of that stuff could be attached, but that's just my take on it."

Porter said he and his team found Lake City Playhouse to be haunted.

"We passed three spirits, but it's still haunted," he said. "Any place that has that much emotion, that much energy where people come there because they love it there, that’s going to be their happy place after they leave. That's where they will go back to."

Theaters are often quite haunted, he said, and Lake City's spirits are happy ones.

"There’s a lot of good stuff there," he said.

Wood speaks to the playhouse's unseen residents every day.

"I do put out the ghost light every single night," she said.

A ghost light is a theater tradition — a lamp or single bulb that is left burning to illuminate an otherwise dark stage. It helps with safety, but this storied practice is also done for a theater's unseen performers.

"And every night I say, 'I love you all, have a great time,'" Wood said. "And I turn on the ghost light."

Spokane Paranormal Society is still going through footage, but Porter said the Lake City Playhouse investigation should be up on YouTube in a few months.

    Lake City Playhouse Artistic Director Brooke Wood discusses how costumes have gone missing for no reason, and perhaps some of them come to the playhouse with their own spirits.
  

    The spirit of a man who enjoys watching the shows at Lake City Playhouse is said to linger in the far corner of the theater in the second row from the back, Brooke Wood said.
  

    The gaping entrance to the attic at Lake City Playhouse gives people the willies. "People don't like it up there," Brooke Wood said Tuesday. "We've had a couple actresses who've said they don't like the energy that's coming from up there, they get a weird vibe."