Is the Camelot Theater haunted? We look at three Ames-area sites with ghostly reputations

Legend has it that ghosts have haunted Camelot Theater in Nevada for many years.

Former owners, Larry and Cindy Sloan say they have experienced the supernatural dancing its way through the historic facility. Larry shared some of those ghost stories with the Ames Tribune in 2016 as the theater prepared to host psychic medium, Dani Lin.

“There always have been stories here among the employees — stories of chandeliers swinging, lights being turned on and off, things like that,” Sloan said.

The discovery of the 'creepy closet'

The Sloans explored the nooks and crannies of the building once they bought it. When Cindy opened the closet door under the balcony stairs, she saw a fake ficus tree.

And the tree was shaking, Sloan said.

“After that, we started calling it the ‘creepy closet,’” he said.

Several other spooky moments convinced the Sloans that ghosts haunt the theater. They even occasionally hear murmuring.

“You can hear people talking but can’t make out the words,” Sloan said.

They also stumbled upon a huge collection of movie posters in the basement's furnace room, estimating that there were at least 1,000 posters. Though many of the posters had significant water damage, roughly 20-30 remained in pristine condition.

Larry was in the room again a few weeks later and found a couple dozen more posters, in perfect condition, unrolled and lying on top of some tubes. He assumed Cindy had found them.

But she hadn’t.

“That’s the first ‘gift’ we got from the ghosts,” Sloan said.

Every two or three weeks, the Sloans would inexplicably find 20-40 more posters presented similarly in the poster room.

In total, they found about 300 pristine, tightly rolled posters.

“As collectibles, the posters have been worth from between $10 and $900,” Sloan said.

Moving chairs and flickering lights

The Camelot "ghosts" seem to enjoy the theater room, but they also like to have a little fun.

The lighting crew sometimes noticed that two or three empty chairs in the theater would rock to music.

A band member watching warm-ups noticed a chair started rocking in his row a few years ago.

One night, after Cindy vacuumed the theater, she coiled the cord along with a 50-foot extension cord and left the vacuum at the back of the theater near the aisle.

Then, the "ghosts" made their move.

“The next day, the cord was uncoiled, perfectly straight, stretched all the way to the stage, dead center in the middle of the aisle,” Larry said.

Larry was baffled by the theatre's lighting issues. He and Cindy purchased some high-tech lights, which are connected to power strips and controlled by switches. He has often arrived at the theater to find them on.

He looked for malfunctions in the switches and the lights themselves but didn't find a solution. He refused to believe ghosts were behind it.

“I’m always looking for realistic reasons as to why these things are happening,” he said. “I am just naturally a skeptic. I’m cynical. I hang out with a lot of illusionists, so I know the explanation to lots of tricks.

“We’ve even wondered if someone was coming in here at night and playing pranks on us, but there have been too many things that have happened.”

Enter alone, if you dare

The Camelot ghosts like to toy with people as well.

Rob Bacon, former theatre owner, had his own paranormal experiences, Larry Sloan said and Bacon later confirmed.

One night, he was painting the wall by the balcony stairs and felt like he was being watched. He couldn’t shake it.

Finally, Bacon, who was alone in the theater, said, “Don’t just stand there and watch me. Pick up a brush and help.”

Instantly, he felt a wind brush past him toward the lobby. The doors to the theater began to rattle. The rattling stopped, and the wind blew past him in the opposite direction.

Bacon quickly put the lid on the paint can and was ready to leave. The eerie encounter convinced Bacon to never return to the theatre alone after dark.

“And Rob had spent many years as a funeral director,” Sloan said.

Whatever might be inhabiting the Camelot Theatre, it never harmed them, Sloan said.

“If there are ghosts, we don’t want to cause them fear. We don’t want to frighten or agitate them," he said.

Iowa Paranormal Investigators studied the Camelot

The Sloans invited the Iowa Paranormal Investigators to study the theater. His caveat was that they could not challenge or disrespect the ghosts.

The paranormal investigators found a “definite presence of three ghosts — two female and one male,” Sloan said.

There is also one elemental, he said.

“An elemental is not a ghost or a demon, but it has the personality of a prankish 6-year-old,” Sloan said.

An elemental gets around in its environment through closets, trees and plants, which could explain the shaking ficus in the creepy closet.

The Sloans named the elemental Henry.

For the identity of the male and two females, Sloan referred back to the theater’s history.

The Circle Theater was built in 1928 by Oscar Strine.

It was not the only theater in Nevada then, but almost immediately, the Palace Theater down the street went out of business after the Circle opened. Strine only charged a dime, and people were excited to visit the new theater.

Unfortunately for Strine, the Great Depression hit shortly after he opened the Circle Theater, and he lost his business. It was purchased by Werner and Myrtle Grossman, who ran the business along with their daughter Gloria. The Grossmans hired Strine to work at the theater.

After Werner’s death, Myrtle and Gloria continued to run the theater, and the Grossmans kept it for 40 years.

“We don’t know whether the male is Werner or Oscar. We’re pretty sure the female ghosts are Myrtle and Gloria,” Sloan said.

That was psychic Dani Lin’s take on the situation, too, as she performed there multiple times.

“The ghosts are good-humored,” Sloan said. “We’re very affectionate about them. They’re like family to us.”

'Poltergeist' is showing Saturday night

The Camelot Theater Foundation now owns the historic theater and is working to renovate the iconic building to include a bistro and rooftop bar.

The Camelot is showing the classic scary movie “Poltergeist” at 7:15 p.m. on Saturday. Admission is $5 and concessions will be available for purchase.

Ames Haunted Forest is open two more nights this season

Sometimes people create a Halloween-themed attraction and claim that it’s haunted. And sometimes the haunted part is there long before the attraction exists. The latter is the case with the Ames Haunted Forest, its owners say.

The Haunted Forest, open Friday and Saturday night to end the Halloween season, has been in the Ballard family for a long time. When Orville and Bonnie Ballard tried to sell the property, no one would buy it because of its reputation for being haunted.

In 1962, Orville and Bonnie built Riverside Manor nursing home, which included the area where the Haunted Forest is now. The building eventually flooded and was torn down.

“The property we’re on is haunted,” Haunted Forest co-owner Lynn Ballard said. “When the property that the nursing home was on sold, the buyers didn’t want the forest because of its history of being haunted.

"Some eerie things have gone on."

Many spooky rumors have circulated over the years of things people have seen near Ioway Creek, Ballard said, and sounds they’ve heard — like children giggling when no one else is around.

“Lots of odd things,” he said.

The property — located just off S. 4th Street across from Jack Trice Stadium — is owned by Lee and Lynn Ballard, Orville and Bonnie’s sons, who operate the attraction along with many family members.

Orville Ballard owned an excavating business, but one of his big passions was being a magician. Offering a haunted forest on his property near Iowa State’s football stadium was a fun idea, Lynn Ballard said of his dad.

The attraction draws around 800 visitors on a normal night and exceeds 1,000 on a busy one.

Haunted Forest owners say ‘Don’t come alone’

The spooky attraction will open Friday and Saturday from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m.

“We will be open until at least 11 p.m., but we hope to have such a big crowd that we’re open until 2 o’clock in the morning,” Ballard said. “We’ll stay open if we have people in line.”

The haunted school at Farrar has been featured on TV

The Farrar schoolhouse near Maxwell was featured on the Travel Channel in January 2020 following an investigation by paranormal group, Kindred Spirits. The team members are among thousands of people who visited the allegedly haunted school after Nancy and John Oliver purchased it in January of 2008.

The Farrar schoolhouse was closed in 2002 and became a haunted attraction site for paranormal enthusiasts.

“We don’t disturb people while they come,” Nancy Oliver told the Ames Tribune in December 2019. “I let them in and retreat to our (apartment) to be quiet.”

According to Oliver, the school has been part of thousands of investigations and has seen guests including Des Moines band Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, The Discovery Channel’s “My Ghost Story” and “Ghost Stalkers.” They also occasionally hosted tourists for overnight stays at the property.

According to a press release from the Travel Channel, the “team investigates a dark paranormal force that recently seized control of the closed schoolhouse,” where “witnesses claim a massive 14-foot entity now runs rampant through the four-story schoolhouse, prompting caretakers to call in help.”

After the Olivers purchased the property, a “well-known psychic,” Jacqueline Carpenter, pulled up the drive and told Oliver a young girl in the building wanted to talk to her.

“I thought it sounded fun,” Oliver said about the inquiry. “I thought it was a hoot.”

In the first 20 minutes, Carpenter, followed by a cameraman and her daughter, went inside the building to the boys bathroom with an “EVP” (electronic voice phenomenon), and heard from a woman, Oliver said.

The visit sparked a friendship with Carpenter, Oliver said, who suggested getting the word out by building a website.

“We got on Facebook,” Oliver said. “That’s where all the people are that are interested in this kind of thing.

“And we just slowly built it up.”

Without Carpenter’s encouragement to create the website, hauntingfarrar.com, Oliver said the two would have never thought people wanted to visit the location.

“I love those kinds of shows, but I was never really into it,” Oliver said.

After moving into the building, Oliver said she’s endured paranormal experiences such as seeking a figure that resembled a “little boy standing on the stairs.” The figure stood around three feet tall and was gray, Oliver said.

“I think I pretty much shut it out now,” Oliver said.

Ronna Faaborg covers business and the arts for the Ames Tribune. Reach her at rlawless@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Three Ames-area sites are believed to be haunted. We have the details