Haunting Gothic Ghost Story Creeps Into Haunted El Paso Playhouse

Just in time to send off spooky season with a shriek, the El Paso Playhouse is staging the horror fiction classic the Netflix series The Haunting of Bly Manor is based on.

The city's longest running community theater presents "The Turn of the Screw" October 15 through Halloween night, and what better place to bring to life a local production of a “gothic ghost story” than in one of El Paso's legit haunted spots, am I right?

The Haunting of the El Paso Playhouse

Like many of the buildings on Montana, the one housing the El Paso Playhouse has stood for decades. It was the Festival Theater then a church before being home to the community theater for 55 years now and counting.

And for just as many of those years, actors and patrons have spoken about the paranormal phenomena experienced there.

Unexplained activity most frequently reported includes hearing footsteps on the staircase when no one is on it, doors opening and shutting on their own, props being moved and placed somewhere else, and disembodied voices and spine-chilling whispers when no other living person is around.

Longtime listeners of Mike and Tricia Mornings know we’ve worked with local paranormal groups to tell the tales of Haunted El Paso and documented their investigations for over 10 years. The El Paso Playhouse is one such place.

In 2011, the now defunct Research in Paranormal Science of El Paso investigated the Playhouse on our behalf and captured a couple of instances of the type of ghostly whispers and voices many say they've heard at the Playhouse themselves.

The Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) of the El Paso Playhouse

EVP 1: This EVP was caught in the initial walk-through of the theater. The first person you hear is one of the investigators. There's some indistinguishable female whispering after he says, ‘I don't remember what show it was.’

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EVP 2: This audio was captured in the ladies bathroom. There were two group investigators there at the time communicating with each other. Towards the end of the clip, a third male voice can be heard talking over them.

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I've never been able to make out what either one of the ghostly whispers is saying.

The Turn of the Screw

The play is based on a short horror story of the same name originally published in 1898, and the inspiration for the Netflix series, "The Haunting of Bly Manor." Here's how the event post describes the local production:

Two recently orphaned children are left in the care of servants at a lonely English country house. Their young governess becomes convinced that the children are being haunted by the evil spirits of the former governess and her lover. But are the ghosts real, or the product of her own fevered imagination?

Ghosts? No ghosts? Well, that will be up to you to decide.

The Turn of the Screws will be staged Fridays through Sundays, October 15 – 31. Tickets are $15 with various discounts available.