This historic theater designed by architect George Kadane in Frederick Oklahoma was originally built in 1929. James Beard named the theater after his daughter Ramona Beard Ayers. James was also known as J.B. and was the local bank president.

When it was opened as the Ramona the Kasane family acquired the rights to cotton queen pageant. The Ramona then became the official home of this pageant from 1930 until world war II. At that time it moved to Nashville and was renamed the national “Cotton Maid” pageant. Back in the day the theater was also used for minstrel and vaudeville shows. Today the theater is still in operation with it being used approximately once a month or more for events.

According to historic paperwork, the Ramona was built on the site of an earlier theater named the A-Mus-U. I do not know if any part of the original structure from that building is still standing as a part of the Ramona. They did acquire funding for construction of the current theater through stock sales to investors. The building was built in the Spanish Colonial style that was popular in 1915-1940.

It is interesting that I was able to find a reference to numerous theaters being built in that time frame that would fit the earlier building being named the AMUSU. At the time of this writing I am not sure which version is correct the A-Mus-U or AMUSU. If this was the originally AMUSU then it could have begun its history from a man named Allan Tom. He had a dream where he took to the road with silent movies in a Traveling Picture Show. I cannot confirm this at the moment but will continue to explore what may have been originally located here.

The theater still contains the original fixtures and details except the second floor balcony which was changed to the current marquee in 1949. When it was opened in 1929 it was hailed as the “Showplace of the Southwest”. This jewel of the past has given some of the workers reason to pause and think they were not alone or think they may be going crazy. These stories prompted our group to be the first to investigate for paranormal activity.

We really enjoyed being in the Ramona with all of its rich history. You could almost feel what it was like to be back in 1929. Our investigation was productive in that most of our team had some sort of personal experience while there. It wasn’t until we went through our footage and audio several times that we realized we actually captured something. We were able to get evidence that there is something unexplainable going on inside the theater. We captured numerous evps on our investigation. Some of the evps seemed to be of an intelligent nature and not just residual. I will be uploading the evidence to the society of the haunted website soon.

Go check out the gallery for this investigation
http://www.hauntedchef.com/1960-2/the-ramona-theater/

The Lawton Constitution wrote an article about us coming our to investigate. You can read about that article here

http://www.hauntedchef.com/2011/10/04/who-you-gonna-call/