The New Albany Opera House opened to the public in 1866. With a classic proscenium stage and 2500 seats, it served as a central point of the community for decades. Trains and ferries brought audiences from Jeffersonville and Louisville. Opera, vaudeville, plays, variety acts of all sorts. The building caught fire in 1939. The cause of that fire remains a mystery to this day.
Our seances will not be the first performed on site. The Davenport Brothers operated their famous Spirit Cabinet here in 1873. In 1882, Professor J Randall Brown, mindreader and spiritualist, also took the stage. In 1933, Bess Houdini attempted to contact her husband here. Some think that spiritual activities like that, with so many people involved, performed over time in the same place, can wear the veil thin between worlds and times. I prefer to think they simply leave their stamp on the place, for others to experience later. Whatever the explanation, I expect we will see some very interesting phenomena.