Opened New Year’s Day, 1900
Weatherford Hotel
A figure crosses the Zane Grey Ballroom floor and does not stop at the wall.
Flagstaff lore
Orpheum Theater
The 1911 Majestic, reborn as the Orpheum in 1916
The history
John Weatherford opened the Majestic Theatre on October 27, 1911, and lost it on New Year’s Eve 1915 when five feet of snow brought the roof down. He rebuilt, and the house reopened as the Orpheum on August 31, 1916. It has run movies, vaudeville, and live music across three centuries’ worth of Flagstaff nights, and it is still the town’s marquee.
The haunting
Projectionists and crew describe a dark figure in the projection room, and the balcony and concession areas carry their own accounts. The popular version ties the figure to an employee death in the theater’s early years, though the dates in that telling sit uneasily against the building’s documented timeline, which is reason for a historian’s care rather than a louder retelling.
The Orpheum was one of the downtown locations featured when The Dead Files investigated Flagstaff in 2022.
The theater district is part of the town Haunted Flagstaff walks through, and the book’s closing chapter ranges beyond the famous addresses. The Orpheum’s legend is best heard with the house lights down.
Cite this page
Chicago“Orpheum Theater, Flagstaff.” Haunted Flagstaff, the Book. https://hauntedflagstaffbook.com/haunted-places/orpheum-theater.
APAHaunted Flagstaff, the Book. (2026). Orpheum Theater, Flagstaff. https://hauntedflagstaffbook.com/haunted-places/orpheum-theater
Citing the book itself? Edition details and ISBNs are on the buy page.
Keep Walking
More of the town’s restless addresses
Opened 1927, on what became Route 66
Hotel Monte Vista
The Grizzly Meat Man of Room 220, the rocking chair of 305, and the bellboy who knocks for no one.
Built 1926, now the Flagstaff Visitor Center
The Historic Train Depot
A conductor still works a platform where no train has boarded passengers in decades.