ZEKE CAMPFIELD

FREDERICK  There’s nothing eerie about the Ramona Theater, but whoever said ghosts had to be spooky
anyway? Partly on a hunch and partly for history’s sake, a group of Oklahoma City-based paranormal investigators has targeted the downtown Frederick theater as the site of its next project.

Beginning at sunset tonight, members of the Society of the Haunted will use their experience and some expensive, high-tech recording equipment to try to capture any spirits that may or may not exist within the theater’s antique walls.

They’re not saying the Ramona is haunted, but members of the Frederick Arts and Humanities Council say the building is definitely a living beast.

“You always feel a presence  not scary, not bad, but a presence,” said the council’s president,
Dana Greer. “Not this winter but last winter I spent a great deal of time through the winter painting rooms upstairs, painting the downstairs bathrooms. You hear noises, but is it the old building creaking or what?”

The Ramona Theater opened as the “Showplace of the Southwest” in 1929, the day before the stock market crash kicked off the Great Depression.

For years it was the social centerpiece of town, from its opening night feature  “Gold Diggers on Broadway”  to a series of vaudeville acts during World War II.

The theater was closed after “The Sound of Music” premiered in 1965, but the Frederick Arts and Humanities Council has continued to keep it maintained and hosts events there several times throughout the year