She’s roamed the majestic halls of the Landmark Theatre for more than 80 years wearing a simple white dress and smelling distinctly of lilacs. She’ll linger in the upper mezzanine, staying loyal to the theater and its employees after all of these years.

And if you break any of the Landmark’s rules, beware: she’ll make her presence unexpectedly known in the form of a pale apparition.

Clarissa is one of Landmark’s resident ghosts and has famously haunted the theater for decades. Landmark’s employees and professional ghost hunters say that not only do the ghosts exist, but their presence adds to the theater’s atmosphere.

Legend has it that in the early 1930s shortly after the theater opened, Clarissa witnessed her lover die of electrocution while working backstage. Another version of the tale states that she was an actress who was distraught from losing an important audition.

Either way, the result was the same — Clarissa threw herself off the balcony.

But she may not be the only ghost that haunts the theater, said Thomas Kazmierczak III, the executive director of Landmark Theatre. Stories of other spiritual entities such as Charlie, the janitor who died of natural causes in the boiler room, and Oscar, the stagehand who may or may not have been Clarissa’s lover, are common as well.

“I think they contribute in the way that they bring excitement and history to the theater,” Kazmierczak said. “But it’s also sad that they want to be there because they’re staying out here instead of the afterlife.”

Kazmierczak said the staff hosts “small ghost hunts” and “big ghost hunts,” in which members of the public are invited to explore the theater in hopes of encountering the spiritual entities.

The smaller hunts may be hosted by staff members holding flashlights and taking people around the theater. Kazmierczak said the big hunts are “more official,” emphasizing the presence of equipment, ghost hunters from the Central New York Ghost Hunters and the local go-to psychic.

Stacey Jones, who founded the Central New York Ghost Hunters about 10 years ago, said that she has done 25 ghost hunts at the theatre.

“I was never really a believer in ghosts, but I think people have to have their own personal experiences,” Jones said. “I was always skeptical, saying I wanted evidence. Tales were fine — I didn’t dismiss them — but I wanted my own evidence.”

The need for evidence drove Jones, a former police officer, to become a ghost hunter. She said that during ghost hunts, they use voice recorders to pick up “electronic voice phenomena,” or EVP. They re-created Clarissa’s death by throwing a dummy off the balcony and went around the theater trying to be as quiet as possible to pick up traces of EVP.

Through the ghost hunts and investigations she has conducted at the Landmark Theatre, Jones said she has a different theory about the relationship between Clarissa and Oscar.

“I think he might have been her father,” Jones said. “We checked the census for that year before the incident, and the following year, a father and a child weren’t accounted for. We suspect she was traveling with Dad and saw him get electrocuted, but we just don’t know.”

Next January the ghost hunts will happen on a monthly basis. But for now, Kazmierczak, who has been the director of the theater for just over a year, said that the theater will stick to holding several ghost hunts during the Halloween season.

Kazmierczak has also had paranormal experiences in the theater. During a ghost hunt this year, he thought Amanda Schulz, a volunteer, was tapping his shoulder when really, there was no one near him. He also smelled lilacs, indicating the possibility that it was Clarissa next to him.

“We thought (Schulz) was tapping me on the shoulder,” Kazmierczak said. “There were people to my right and left, and (Schulz) could sort of see me moving, but no one was tapping me on the shoulder.”

As Schulz recalled the memory, she noted that the area they were standing in was also colder compared to other areas of the theater.

“That was really weird to be there, to know that something definitely happened, even though I couldn’t see anything there,” said Schulz, a science teacher for Central Square Central School District north of Syracuse.”
Schulz also said she thinks the ghosts add a new dimension to Landmark Theatre’s personality.

“It’s already beautiful, and it’s got a lot of history. It can attract different people and crowds,” Schulz said. “But there’s also the mystery aspect of ‘You never know what you’re going to get.’”