Over the years, many have explored the Dreamland Ballroom and Taborian Hall for supernatural activity with varying results. So, leading up to Halloween, I’ll share some of the ghost stories of Taborian Hall that we know. No need to fret! As far as anyone can tell, our specters are as benevolent as they come.
I’ve spent a LOT of time in this old building over the years. Workdays and evening events, of course, as well as hours spent here on days and nights when very few or no other people are in the building. Ghost hunters, folks who routinely travel and search for the supernatural, have come in with all their tools and instruments to give the building a once over. And while the building can be rather spooky late at night or when the wind whistles through the old brick walls, it would seem the ghosts of Taborian are quite hard to pin down. Or they just don’t want to be found, only appearing within specific circumstances with almost all the stories centered around music. Hearing music from nowhere or seeing someone, who does not seem entirely corporeal, while music is being played.
I’ll start with a personal story about an evening, a few years ago, when I spent the night in Taborian Hall with two ghost hunter friends of mine and their various tools for locating and communicating with the deceased. It firstly must be noted that almost all the paranormal activity in Taborian Hall occurs in the Dreamland Ballroom. Even the dank and dark basement shows low readings on the instruments ghost enthusiasts tend to have. So, on this night, we did some obligatory rounds through the basement, the 1st, and 2nd stories of the building with some activity. But nothing that couldn’t ultimately be contributed to something else, a nearby outlet or rattling window, that kind of thing.
We settle in the ballroom. My friends break out a few of their gadgets, most of which I can’t name or tell you the purpose of. The results from these did get them excited. One friend saying that he believed there was a child among us, just a feeling though. At one point, one of them wandered into the very center of the ballroom with an EMF meter, a device used to read ambient electromagnetic energy. This is presumably the stuff ghosts are made of, but also what is emitted from outlets or wires or electronics. So, we had to be careful because the meter was going crazy!
Out in the center of the ballroom, no outlets or electronics were nearby. I ran down to the second floor to look up at the ceiling. There’s no drop ceiling there so you can see any wires running under the floor of the ballroom. Remarkably, there are no wires running down the hallway where we were getting the strong reading above.
So, we proceeded to ask the potential specter questions. A beep for yes and a silence for no. And this is when things got weird. The meter became silent the moment we posed these “yes or no” parameters. And for every question we asked, “Are you an adult?” silence, “are you a child?” an immediate beep. And this is how it went. The immediate responses to the questions were just too much! That a beep never came in the middle of a question or hesitated after a question was ask. It was either silence for “no” or an immediate short beep for “yes.” “Did you live around 9th St?” beep “did you come to this building often?” beep, “did one of your parents work here?” silence, “are you a girl?” silence, “are you a boy?” beep. Until “do you want to play a game?” beeeeeep! This was the only response that was drawn out. “Ok,” we had some chairs around, “how about musical chairs?” beep! We set up the chairs with one stool and said, “you’ll start at the stool,” and we put the EMF meter there. It instantly lit up with a drawn-out beep like he was standing there. And when the music started, the beeping stopped like he was walking around the circle with us. And when the music stopped, the meter on the stool lit up and the drawn-out beep started again. Needless to say, he won the game. We played a couple more times with the exact same results until nothing. The beeping stopped completely, and we never got another reading for the rest of the night.
Was this really the ghost of a kid that lived in the area who knows how long ago? Or just my friends and I playing a silly game while our imaginations ran wild. I don’t really know. But I loved thinking about that kid. What his life was like, maybe he had a parent who played music in the area, and they did a show in the ballroom a few times. Or he regularly came to Gem’s Pharmacy for a coke and candy. He said his parents didn’t work in Taborian. So maybe he came to visit a friend. A kid whose parent(s) worked here in an office on the second floor, or as a custodian, or served at a private club or restaurant in the building. As kind of a history nerd, what I love about spooky things like this is building a narrative. What their lives were like, what did they do, who did they know and love, why they or anyone would haunt this place? My friends and I spent the rest of the night talking about this kid and his community. Whatever it was, it was a good time.
Keep Dreaming, Matthew McCoy
