Before I sat down with the LA Philharmonic to talk about their ghost stories, I found myself thinking about the last time I had been onstage. It was at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, in the museum's beautiful and, at times, rather eerie theater. Many of our usual readers will know that I previously worked at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which includes the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museum. It’s a public secret that the Legion was built on the grounds of a former cemetery that operated from 1868 to 1909. When the city decided to turn the area into the park it is today, families were ordered to remove the graves, many of which were reinterred down the peninsula to Colma, also known as the "City of Souls.” Unfortunately not all of the bodies were removed, something made gruesomely clear during the museum’s seismic renovation in the 1990s. One quick Google search and you will see the remains of the unfortunate souls the city of San Francisco was too cheap to remove.
Before the museum was renovated to include its downstairs galleries, the only original underground section of the museum was its divine theater. The circular room was designed in a Louis XVI style, with red velvet seats that glisten beneath an ornate ceiling painted by Spanish painter Julio Vila y Prades. It’s a gorgeous setting for any production, but the times I’d spent in the theater when it's empty often chilled me to the bone. During my time at the museum, there were many a security guard who refused to go into the theater at night, let alone anywhere downstairs at the Legion of Honor.
Alas, this conversation is not about the Legion of Honor, but three even more renowned stages: The Hollywood Bowl, The Ford, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Together, these three venues serve as the primary stages for the LA Philharmonic, and present nearly 300 concerts each year. The Bowl and The Ford were built in the 1920s, while Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, opened in 2003. These venues have seen the greatest musicians in the world, from Ella Fitzgerald to The Beatles, retaining the profound energy and emotions that have passed through them. And perhaps, a few lost people who have never seemed to find the exit.
On this episode of Unibrow Radio, we continue our Ghost in the Gallery series, where we look beyond the art inside our beloved cultural institutions, to the things that can’t quite be explained. Today, I speak with Derek Traub, a writer at the LA Philharmonic, about the institution's hallowed halls and strange encounters. At the heart of our conversation is a question that has lingered in the wings for centuries: Why do theaters and concert halls seem to attract so many ghosts?
So come along. The performance may be over, but not everyone has left the building. –– Shaquille Heath
Visit LAphil.com to see current offerings and performances.
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