If you’re looking for a real Shakespearean experience in the ATL, you don’t have to search very far. The Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern, America’s only Shakespeare Tavern®: An Original Practice Playhouse® give you the full experience: a Globe-inspired façade, delicious English cafe-style food, a yummy bar, and of course, a stunning Shakespeare performance on the stage.
But that’s not the only reason that the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern is a hotspot in Atlanta. It’s also… haunted! This spooky season, let us take you on a deep dive into the ~spirited~ history of the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern!
Is the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern haunted?
Is anything? It depends on if you believe in that sort of thing or not.
But according to multiple visitors’ accounts, staff and performers, the answer is a resounding yes. The Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern is haunted.
Here are some of the spirits and ghosts haunting the Shakespeare Tavern:
According to Haunt Tracker,
During a production of Henry IV Part I in 1993, the actor playing Falstaff suddenly came from the men’s dressing room, very shaken. He had seen a very young boy dressed in a velvet suit much like children wore in the 1800’s beside his dressing table.
There have been other accounts of the spirit of a little boy playing around the building, but it is unconfirmed if this is the same spirit.
Either way a child from the 1800s isn’t the only local spirit, some have reported hearing voices–as if in a meeting–even when the building is entirely empty, and others have spotted shadowy figures, odd lights and passing energies.
One story that tends to be fairly well-known is a feminine apparition and energy that appears in the women’s dressing room, knocking over items, moving things, and is the possible culprit behind an “incident in which a shout of ‘Fire!’ from behind the curtain briefly cleared a theater audience” at the Tavern, according to Haunt Bound.
But possibly the most negative spiritual energy comes from the upper-level storage room, which reportedly contains a terrible energy, keeping spiritually sensitive people away. Some staff have apparently refused to go up there due to the bad feeling and clammy air up there.
Are you brave enough to check out Atlanta’s haunted Shakespeare Tavern?