Stories of the Past

These ghost stories are, if nothing else, fun! Whether ghosts are real, whether people are experiencing anxiety, exhaustion, projecting their own feelings, haunted by their own pasts, I’m not here to say. What I love about these stories is their ability to activate your imagination while taking you back in time. Thinking about the boy who visited Taborian Hall regularly in his life, the musician who played here, the sounds of many footsteps by no one. The little glimpses we get from these spooky experiences allow us to build narratives around history. The added context makes often tedious historical facts easier to understand and learn from by encouraging us to empathize with the people of the past.

If you aren’t familiar or need a refresher, read some of our previous posts about the history of The Line, Taborian Hall, and the Dreamland Ballroom. and build your own story, based in fact, and inspired by people who, presumably, lived here.

Keep Dreaming, Matthew McCoy  

What’s your Story?

You have heard our stories, what are yours? You can share any Little Rock ghost story with us, but we are particularly interested in tales of 9th St or Dreamland specters. While we may be only one of two historic buildings left on The Line today, for many years, empty or low occupancy building lined the once thriving district. Or maybe you have a story from a parent or grandparent that grew up down here. We would love to hear from you.

Share to freinds@dreamlandballroom.org

Keep Dreaming, Matthew McCoy

The Trumpeter

A few years back, the Friends of Dreamland facilitated an album release party and fundraiser for a band called The Wildflower Revue, a great group made up of some talented local musicians. The night was an absolute blast, and the music was superb, surely on par with many of the ballrooms past performances. And as it turns out, the physical bodies in the ballroom that evening weren’t the only ones who thought so.  

Days after the event, two of the artists, Amy and Bonnie, reached out to us. Both had separately but simultaneously experienced some peculiar circumstances during their show. As the intermission ended, the pair moved to flank the Dreamland stage getting ready for their second set, standing directly across from each other in the lower boxes. Amy was feeling nervous before the start of the song, something she admits was weird. She had performed the song many times since she was young and could not fathom why she was getting so nervous. Breathing rhythmically, she looked across the crowd gathered in front of the stage when she noticed an old man standing right at the front, just under where Bonnie stood. He was a black man holding a trumpet and he was looking right at her. A moment later the intro signaled the end of intermission, and the second half of the show began. The old man gave Amy a slight nod and a smile and she felt instant relief. Her nerves were gone, and I can personally attest that she performed beautifully.

At the same time, Bonnie was feeling a similar rush of anxiety. She was feeling nervous about the lyrics. This was a song she also knew well and the level of worry she was experiencing was unusual. She pulled out her phone to review the lyrics before the song began, only to have her fully charged phone die the moment the words were up. The intro to act two began and she felt calm. Without her phone she had to trust herself and it turns out she did.

It was a couple of days before Amy and Bonnie reflected on the exciting night and realized their experiences happened at the same time. The Wildflower Revue had no trumpet players, and no other bands or musicians were playing that night. Amy claims that she never saw the man again, and Bonnie’s never had any phone issues before or after the show.  

I told this story once to a Flagandbanner.com employee that works in the building. After I finished, her eyes widened. At the time, a homeless man named Ray spent a lot of time hanging around the building. Ray was a nice, well-read man and every night would set up a sleeping bag and alarm clock in the nook that led to the staircase to Dreamland. According to the FAB employee, late at night Ray would occasionally hear trumpet music coming from, what he assured us, was unmistakably the third-floor ballroom. He could hear it coming down the stairs and even out of the windows when he would walk out into the street.

When I told these stories to Kerry, the building’s owner, she mentioned that years ago she invited ghost hunters to walk around the building at night. At one point, they left a tape recorder running to pick up anything they may not be able to perceive in real time. When playing the tape back, they claim to have heard a trumpet. They were very confident that no trumpet sounds were playing while they were up there. Kerry had dismissed their assertion as the distant sound of sirens but perhaps not.

The Trumpeter is likely Dreamland’s most corporeal ghost: a seemingly friendly musician who may have played in the Dreamland Ballroom, perhaps as part of a large ensemble who toured with a famous performer or a smaller local group. It’s fascinating to think about all the people who must have performed here and it’s easy to forget they weren’t all national and international sensations. Many of them, possibly like our Trumpeter, were small-time players, running a local circuit of venues and gigs entertaining their neighbors and friends. Providing regular relief to those who lived the hard life on The Line.

It’s Spooky Season!

Over the years, many have explored the Dreamland Ballroom and Taborian Hall for supernatural activity with varying results. This October, I will be sharing 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, around two 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 up with us this month for more stories. This is only the beginning …

Keep Dreaming, Matthew McCoy