Orpheum Theatre — the ghost of Mary, Memphis's eternal audience member

The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, is a grand Beaux-Arts performance hall that opened in 1928 on the site of an earlier theater that burned down in 1923. The theater's resident ghost is Mary, described as a young girl in a white dress who appears in seat C-5 during performances. According to the most popular version of the legend, Mary was a 12-year-old girl who was struck and killed by a streetcar outside the original Grand Opera House (the Orpheum's predecessor) in the early 1920s. She has been seen by performers, stagehands, and audience members, always in the same seat in the mezzanine. Performers on stage have described seeing a girl in a white dress in the audience who wasn't there at the end of the show. Stagehands report hearing a child's giggling in the corridors behind the stage, and some have described feeling a small hand tugging at their clothes. The theater's management has long embraced Mary's presence, keeping seat C-5 marked as hers. During renovations, workers reported increased paranormal activity, as though Mary was unsettled by the changes to her theater. The Orpheum offers ghost tours that share Mary's story, and the legend has become an integral part of Memphis's cultural identity.