About This Location
A 1920s rococo theater building in downtown Charleston, built on property that once housed the Welch family mansion dating to the late 1700s. The ornate theater has served the city for a century as a performance and film venue.
The Ghost Story
The Capitol Plaza Theater in Charleston was built between 1909 and 1914, but its haunted history reaches back more than a century before the first curtain rose. The theater stands on the ruins of the Welch mansion, a grand home constructed in 1798 that bore witness to decades of family tragedy before the original structure was lost to fire and time.
John Welch raised his family in the mansion during the turbulent decades of the mid-nineteenth century, and the household was not spared the sorrows common to that era. His youngest daughter, a girl of just eight years, died of pneumonia in 1840. The child's death cast a shadow over the Welch home that the family never fully escaped. As the decades passed, the mansion fell into decline, and when the property was eventually cleared for the construction of a grand theater, whatever lingered in the ground and the memory of the place came along with the new building.
The Capitol Plaza Theater was designed as a showcase venue, and it earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance. For decades it hosted performances, concerts, and community events, becoming a cultural anchor of Charleston's downtown. But performers and staff noticed early on that the theater had peculiarities that went beyond aging infrastructure. Doors opened and closed without explanation. The temperature in certain sections of the house would plummet without cause. And in the quiet moments before rehearsals or after the audience had gone home, the unmistakable sound of footsteps could be heard crossing the stage and moving through the wings.
The ghosts most frequently encountered are those of John Welch and his young daughter. Welch has been spotted in the theater during performances -- a solid, well-dressed figure watching from the shadows near the back of the house, only to vanish when approached. His daughter appears less frequently but more memorably: a small figure in period clothing seen near the stage and in the hallways backstage, sometimes accompanied by the sound of a child crying.
In 1923, a devastating fire collapsed the auditorium roof, gutting much of the interior. The theater was rebuilt, but workers during the reconstruction reported encountering phenomena they could not explain -- tools relocated overnight, the sound of voices in the burned-out shell of the building, cold spots in rooms that should have been warmed by summer heat. Some believed the fire had disturbed whatever equilibrium had existed between the living and the dead.
The theater was eventually sold to the state of West Virginia and restored for use by West Virginia State University's drama, film, and music programs, operating under the name The Capitol Center. But the Welch family, it seems, did not vacate with the change in ownership. Students and faculty have continued to report unexplained occurrences -- lights that turn on and off by themselves, the sensation of being watched from empty seats, and props that move between rehearsals without human intervention.
Charleston's US Ghost Adventures tour now includes the Capitol Plaza Theater on its route, and tour director Samantha Gensch has noted that the building's documented history provides all the material needed for genuine chills. "We don't make stories up; we don't add fluff," she has said. "We believe that real history can be scary enough." The Welch family, who lost a child in the home that once stood here, seem determined to prove her point.
