Hunting for ghosts at Petaluma's Phoenix Theater

‘‘I'm 55 years old, and there's no way I'm gonna sit here and tell you I believe in ghosts,” says Phoenix Theater manager Tom Gaffey.

Leaning back in a wicker couch in the lobby, he props his feet on a table and goes on to tell over a dozen stories about ghosts that have haunted the former opera house-turned-movie-theater-turned-sweat-box concert hall over the past four decades.

There was the night he slept in the theater as a teenager and heard footsteps “from someone really big walking across the stage.”

Or the night he was managing the movie theater in the early '80s. He was all alone in the building when he got a phone call from the projection room, long after he had sent the projectionist home.

“So I pick up, and there's nothing — just this hot static. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

Bounding up the creaky staircase to the projection room, he yanked open the door “and there was no one there.”

It was the first of several calls over the years coming from the ghost projectionist.

On Sunday, when a team from the Syfy Channel's popular “Ghost Hunters” series arrives for a paranormal investigation, they might run into a few of the spirit regulars who call the Phoenix home:

Big Chris — Named after the lumbering cousin of a former Gaffey compatriot, Big Chris has been the most visible over time at the Phoenix. Known for clumsy, thundering footsteps, he could also be one of the apparitions referred to in AFI's song “Days of the Phoenix”: “The ghosts on the stage appeared/the time was so tangible I'll never let it go/ghost stories handed down, reached secret tunnels below.”

The Little Boy — Around 7 or 8 years of age, the little boy has free reign over the building and has been known to follow people around. One night as Gaffey and the crew were setting up for the theatrical metal band GWAR, a security guard pointed backstage and asked, “Who's that little kid back there?” It was 3 a.m. There were no kids in the building.

The Old Man in the Attic — He's about 5-foot-10 with thinning gray hair, wearing tan or green matching shirt and pants, possibly a uniform. He lives in or under the attic. Years ago, a psychic came through the Phoenix and pointed him out. Apparently “he's got issues with the idea that he harmed someone, but in fact he didn't,” Gaffey says. Just a few weeks ago, the Phoenix crew was lowering the stage lights before a screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and stopped several times to listen to the Old Man's not-so-stealthy footsteps.

The Lady in the Bathroom — The High Priestess of Haunt may have finally vacated the building, but for decades the girls' bathroom was the most shriek-worthy spot, with frequent reports of eerie reflections in the mirror. “I had janitors, a husband and wife team, that would always clean the girls' bathroom together,” says Gaffey.

Sunday's spectral fright night will also be a homecoming for “Ghost Hunters” investigator Amy Bruni, who grew up in Petaluma going to the Phoenix after school and for late-night concerts.

“I heard so many stories as I was growing up,” she remembers. “There was the woman in the bathroom and people were seeing her reflection in the mirror. People were always hearing footsteps running up and down the lobby stairs. Someone went up in the balcony and saw a little boy tearing apart one of the seats.”

Traveling all over the country with “Ghost Hunters,” from the Stanley Hotel in Colorado to abandoned mental hospitals in Connecticut, Bruni tries to document the supernatural with audio recorders capturing electronic voice phenomena, infrared video and thermal-imaging and full-spectrum cameras.

“I'm not here to try to prove it to anybody,” she says. “If they want to believe they can. It's my personal belief that ghosts exist. I like to prove their existence, not necessarily for other people, but even just for them.

“I don't like the idea of being stuck in limbo and not knowing what's going on. If there's a way that we can interact with these things and learn from them or help them, that's really the ultimate goal.”

Her boyfriend, Eddie Walsh (forever immortalized by AFI's live EP “Eddie Picnic's All Wet”), will never forget the night he crashed at the theater after a late-night band rehearsal.

“We heard footsteps across the stage, and then all of a sudden the doors to the backstage slammed open and it got really cold. Then we heard lots of footsteps and loud banging. I grabbed my stuff and started running. Microphone stands and stage monitors had been knocked onto the floor, but there was nobody in the building. After that, I didn't set foot in the Phoenix for two or three weeks.”

Since William Hill built the Hill Opera House in 1904 (Google “penny postcards sonoma” and you'll see a faded sepia postcard from 1908), the theater has risen from the ashes of two fires. The second blaze was reported around noon on Sunday, July 4, 1957. No one was in the building at the time. Fire investigators said it started near the projection booth. The cause? A short circuit or cigarette.

Over the years, there have been seances for Harry Houdini, who once performed in the building, and several paranormal investigations. But Gaffey has since instituted the rule: “No Ouija boards and no seances.”

“If there are spirits from the past here, then we all have to use the building in the same way,” says Gaffey. “The one rule that (former owner) Doc Naify brought to light, which I think has been followed since the day this building opened, is it must be available to anyone who needs it. And you may not chase anybody out. If you do, you cannot stay here yourself. It's gotta be that way for the spirits, too.”

He even imagines a day, when he's no longer manager and no longer breathing, when he might be welcomed into the phantom gallery. “Following in the footsteps of those ghosts or the spirits of those people would be an honor,” he says.

(Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and follow on Twitter @becksay.)