Sterling Opera House

A Brief History: The Sterling Opera House, located at 102 Elizabeth Street Derby Connecticut, was established on April 2, 1889. It was designed by H. Edward Ficken, an Italian-Victorian style architect who also designed the famously well known, Carnegie Hall in NYC. Surprisingly, the Sterling Opera House was much more than just that! The first and second floor of the building were actually the town’s City Hall and Police Department all the way until 1965. The theater on the top floor has had many prominent performers during its lifetime. One of them being Harry Houdini himself! The theater officially closed on December 1, 1945, after showing it’s final production of “Ye Olde Time Minstrel”. The building would remain open as a means to serve the public until it closed it’s doors for good in 1965.

Haunted History: There have been a few claims about the Sterling Opera House being haunted. Most include stories about a child spirit who remains there to this day. Investigators who have had the opportunity to visit and caretakers that still enter the building say that there are toys all over the place to appease the spirit of the child. On more than one occasion there have been reports of soccer balls moving on their own, toys ending up in different places, or things just disappearing entirely! There have also been mentions of people seeing light orbs flying around and even shadow people sightings. It’s said that there were no tragic deaths on the premises but with all the liveliness that building brought, who knows what energy could have been trapped inside.