Is the former OCP Theater haunted?

Approximately fifteen years ago, after the Orange Community Players Theater had been renovated after Hurricane Ike and before the organization was permanently forced to leave the building after TS Harvey, a group of paranormal investigators from the Texas Society of Paranormal Investigators (TSPI) did an investigation to collect evidence of reported activity in the building.

The theater had long been reported to frequently have paranormal activity. There were many tales through the years of noises and voices with no one there.

Brooke Lemley had reported locking up for the night, only to hear voices and thinking they had locked somebody inside. Upon checking, the theater was deserted. One member of the board saw a shadow down the hall in the prop room, only to find no one there.

A few board members had reported seeing the front door open and closed on its own. That was the deciding factor of the board to have the group come in, when Kevin Doss said he had also seen that happen.

The paranormal group arrived after a day at the Texas Ghost Show, a paranormal conference they were hosting in Beaumont.

Cameras were set up in the lobby, one on the counter of the concession stand facing the front door to try to capture if it opened and another next to the ticket booth near the door facing the concession stand and the long hall that led to the restrooms and prop room in the back, because someone had reported seeing a shadow down the hall.

Once the cameras were set, the group moved to the audience area of the theater and positioned themselves in various locations in the room and started audio recording and asking questions.

A member at the back of the room sitting in front of the tech booth heard male voices the seemed to be coming from the backstage area to the left, near the orchestra pit or behind it.

"Can y'all hear that?" she asked. No one else heard the voices. "They are clearly male, having a conversation." The fact the voices were male was significant, because there were only two males in the group that night and both were visible in the room. One was stationed near the stage to the right, the opposite side of where the voices were coming from, and the other was stationed at the back of the audience area, near the door to the lobby.

Upon investigation, no one was found in the orchestra area or the prop room. Nothing was found on the audio recorders. Nothing else was experienced that night.

Later, the tedious task of viewing the video footage from the lobby began, and something was found. On the camera that was near the door facing the concession stand captured a mist that moved from the area of the door crossing to the left of the room. Even more curious, it captured the recording light of the camera facing the door going out before the appearance of the mist.

At first the person reviewing the footage just thought the counter camera ran out of film and quit recording when they saw the light go out, but not long after the mist passed through the room, the recording light on the camera came back on. How does that happen? The light goes out, the mist passes, and the light mysteriously comes back on? Were there spirits that cut the camera off to prevent evidence from being collected? If so, why did they not cut the other camera off too? Did they miss it? Did they not see it? Since the other camera was cut off, there was no evidence if the front door opened or not. That could not be determined.

For those that may say the mist was just a car passing in front of the building, that was debunked because there was video of a car passing by and the light of the car created a very defined, squared shape of the window in the door. The light from the car moved across the room in a much slower manor, proving the mist was something else.

It might be possible that it could have been dust blowing across the camera from a gust of wind from the door opening, but if so, who opened the door? Since the other camera cut off, we don't know if the door opened or not. But who cut off the camera? There was no one in the room seen cutting it off, but you clearly see the recording light go off, then sixteen minutes later, it came back on. Yes, all of that happened in a span of 16 minutes, but the edited version above shows the sequence of events with all the lag time taken out.

Is the old OCP Theater haunted? No one can say, but there is video proof of something mysterious going on.