The Rhoads Opera House Fire Tragedy

I’m really excited to bring you this guest contribution from a fellow Feminine Macabre vol. 1 contributor, Mallory Cywinski. She saw the call for Writers Wanted and queried about contributing a piece on the Rhoads Opera House, which I was definitely interested in looking at. And the rest, as they say, is history —in this case, the tragic haunted history of a Pennsylvania opera house.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Trapped in the Flames: The Rhoads Opera House Fire Tragedy

By Mallory Cywinski

As many of the congregation’s young actors and actresses ran their lines under their breath one more time and made small adjustments to their various costumes before diving into the third act of The Scottish Reformation for their loved ones out in the audience, a sharp hissing sound filled the air in the auditorium. A few small actors peeked out from behind the curtain, searching for the source of the noise, and in doing so, knocked over one of the kerosene lamps lighting their stage.

In the moments that ensued, while many increasingly-alarmed audience members waited for the flames to be readily put out by employees, they should have been hastening their exit from the doomed building. All too quickly, the building proved its many safety deficiencies for such a catastrophe.

As precious minutes passed and panic rose, the mass of frightened people pressed toward the doors, preventing them from opening inward. Those who did make it down the stairwell found that the walls narrowed at the bottom; the frenzy of people trying to flee wedged together too tightly to escape.

Those who remained trapped upstairs found, to their doubtless horror, after fighting through the chaotic maze left by discarded folding chairs, that the windows were too high up from the ground to climb through, as the billowing smoke and flames from the stage raged toward them.

The Rhoads Opera House Connection

The tragedy of the Rhoads Opera House fire unfolded on January 13, 1908 in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. I had not heard of this awful event until a few years after moving mere miles down the road.

Picturing the circumstances of that evening grieve me dreadfully each time I recount them. The panicked fear of the children onstage, the absolute horror of their mothers and fathers, witnessing every parent’s worst fear realized in front of them, and the subsequent reeling sorrow of the close-knit small community brings a lump to my throat.

As a seasoned paranormal investigator, I read, research, and explore tragic death as part of my everyday life, but somehow this tragedy, probably owing to its proximity to my own home where I live with my children, has gripped me time and again since I first began researching it.

The Fire’s Origins

That horrible night’s events began simply enough; a local church’s production of The Scottish Reformation in the second-floor auditorium, for about 400 friends and family members of the cast.

An insufficiently-trained employee named Harry Fisher mishandled a stereopticon projector valve, creating a loud hissing sound.

A stereopticon was a type of projector in which 2 slides were dimly lit from behind with an oil lamp or candle, and its operator needed to be able to project two aligned pictures in the same spot on a screen, gradually dimming a first picture while revealing a second one. The operator the night of the fire had had a rushed training period and presumably as he grabbed the wrong valve, gas rushed out between the small gap, creating the sudden loud sound which startled the crowd and actors.

Initially, the small fire onstage caused by the fallen kerosene lamp’s spilled contents was nearly extinguished, but when would-be helpful audience members tried to move the kerosene tank away, an even larger spill crested the tank. There was little to stop the subsequent engulfment as the chaotic scene of doomed attempts to flee played out.

The Devastation

Local fire companies reached the building quickly, but larger crews did not reach the building until hours later. The roof caved in around midnight. The inferno wasn’t quenched until the hours of the early morning, and the first bodies weren’t recovered until 9 the following morning.

The losses were staggering: 171 people died; 29 had been burned beyond recognition. Ten percent of the town’s population perished in one night.

The Aftermath

Though the tragedy quickly prompted statewide fire safety law changes, which no doubt prevented potential future loss of life in communities across the state, the tight-knit community was in mournful chaos for weeks after that night.

A massive memorial was dug in the frozen ground of a Pennsylvania January winter for the unrecognizable dead. In the interim, however, charred bodies remained in local buildings, including the high school and several local saloons. What were once destinations for laughter and relaxation now served as makeshift morgues.

Claims of hauntings as a result of the fire began circulating mere weeks after the event, when the community was still reeling. Many of these reports continue to this day.

Hauntings from the Rhoads Opera House Tragedy

I haven’t yet been able to secure a private investigation evening at one of the involved addresses to investigate for myself, but the many paranormal claims at nearby properties have me so very intrigued.

In a local restaurant I have often visited, there are claims of apparitions seen on the ground floor, barware and purses being flung from their positions, and people feeling physically touched by an unseen hand. A local paranormal group investigated at the behest of the saloon owner in 2013; I was able to contact a member of the team, but the individual confirmed that their team dissolved in 2015 on poor terms and he no longer had access to their old evidence.

I reached out to several of the businesses on the sites once used as morgues to inquire as to strange experiences, but none returned the message. Within the building proper, on the ground floor, stands an empty commercial property with a long wall of mirrors, facing dust-covered floors. The rumor mill in town suggests that the dance studio once there did not succeed when girls in the children’s ballet class were too frightened to attend, having seen ghostly images of children in the studios’ large mirrors. A resident who has lived across the street for many years has said she has often seen a woman in white and heard her declare she is “running late for the show,” before dissolving away in the wind.

The Rhoads Opera House Fire Tragedy Memorial Service and Site

I am pleased to relate that the neighborhood has not forgotten the tragedy and the memory of those who passed. Each year on the anniversary of the tragedy, a memorial service is held at the cemetery memorial site.

I have often made trips to visit the memorial myself and check to its tending; rarely have I found it needing much more than a brief weeding.

Remembering and Honoring

Often when we wonder as to the “why” of a haunting, we ponder that perhaps the spirits we are noticing want their stories to be told; they want to be remembered. The town and indeed, the county at large, seem to do an impressive job of commemorating and honoring the terrible loss of that evening, but perhaps that is not enough.

Perhaps it is the individual story of each soul lost that night that needs to be told. Perhaps they do not want to be remembered for their manner of death, but for the life they lived, and in many cases, the potential of what they could have been, had they lived the years stolen from them.

On the opposite end of the theory, perhaps these spirits linger because the event is remembered so vividly and they are not allowed to rest. Do we continuously pull them forward from rest as we recall the tragedy that ended their physical existence?

I believe it is right to remember, however painful, events such as the Rhoads Opera House Fire Tragedy and its victims. My own firsthand paranormal research and experiences have led me to follow the common belief that intensely emotional events project out a permanent impact onto the veil separating our world and that of the Other.

As a mother, I hate to ever think a child’s spirit is “stuck,” so perhaps, it is wishful thinking when I theorize that these spirits are just flashes of memory imprinted on the veil; the often-called residual spirit. I will continue to turn my thoughts to those individuals lost that night, and my quest to speak to them through the veil. Mary Becker, aged 10. Matilda Grabert, aged 9. Wayne Romich, aged 18. Ira Shober, aged 34. Edna Moyer, aged 14, and many, many more.

Check-In

Have you ever visited Boyertown, PA?

Sources

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/rhoads-opera-house-fire-building

https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/335167

https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-147

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereopticon

http://www.magiclanternsociety.org/about-magic-lanterns/lantern-slides/

https://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/feature-articles/trapped-third-act-rhoads-opera-house-fire

Farrell, Joe, Farley, Joe, and Knorr, Lawrence. Murders, Massacres, and Mayhem in the Mid-Atlantic; Volume 1. Mechanicburg, Pa, Sunbury Press, Inc, June 19, 2018

Guest Contributor Info

Mallory Cywinski has her B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from Penn State University. She lives just outside Philadelphia with her husband, son, daughter, and two rescue dogs. She is the co-founder of Blackbeak Paranormal, whose adventures are documented on Instagram @blackbeakparanormal. Her writing has been featured in Volumes 1 & 2 of The Feminine Macabre: A Women’s Journal of All Things Strange and Unusual, as well as on Atlas Obscura. She works with graphic design and reads too many fantasy books (both evidenced on her bookish Instagram page @coffeebooksandghosts), drinks too many oatmilk lattes, and hopes to one day finally finish editing her book-in-progress.