Location Description and History

The Wool Warehouse theatre is a national historic landmark that is presently owned by the Doubletree Inn. The Wool warehouse building was constructed in 1929 on First Street NW in albuquerque. The building housed offices of the New Mexico Cooperative Wool Marketing Association, Bond McRae Company (dealers in wool) and the New Mexico - Arizona Wool Warehouse Company. Frank Bond used the building as his grand headquarters in New Mexico, as he had extensive sheep ranching interests in the state. It's Egyptian structural ambiance was due to its main architect, T.Charles Gaastra, who had just gotten back from a trip to Egypt, which obviously influenced his work on this building. Through the years, the building was passed down to various Bond Family members, until 1974, when the city of Albuquerque used the building as a records warehouse.

In 1984 it was bought by Betty and George Luce, who turned the second floor into a theater restaurant, as it was still a classy place, perfect for an upscale dinner theater, as it "recalls an era of casual elegance, with "massive columns featuring Egyptian motifs and Roaring 20's art deco appointments." This building became The Wool Warehouse Theater Restaurant.

The second floor still is the home of The Wool Warehouse Theater, which still has dinner theater activities, as well has hosting weddings and other special events in need of a stage. It encompasses 5000 sq. feet and holds up to 350 people, 250 for dinner theater.

The Luce's renovations of the building activated a spirit hanging around the building, which often happens after old buildings are renewed structurally. Further renovations in the coming years increased the area of spiritual manifestations felt in the building, even in stair case leading to the basement area. Reported phenomena includes;

The unidentified ghost of a man in a double breasted, cream colored suit has appeared near the stage during performances. Thought to be one of the men in the Bond Family.

1985 -During the first production presented in this theater, Stage Manager, Vicki , at first kept seeing a cream-colored thing go past her. Then at intermission, she went to check something on the left side of the stage, and there before her, she saw the apparition of a very clean, very pleasant looking man who was wearing a cream-colored, double-breasted suit, standing right by the prop table, happily watching what was going on, very pleased with the theater production.

In the following years, employees and guests have felt hot and cold spots, and have actually felt a presence among them, watching them. Things and objects in the theater have gone missing, only to reappear in other places in the building. Employees avoided going down the stairs behind the stage area to the basement, unless they really had to go there. It was reported that employees have felt a push from unseen hands while attempting to go down the stairs and had something grab at their ankles. Strange sounds have been heard coming from the walls as well.

Cold spots and a eerie presence have also been felt by customers and employees.

We arrived on scene at 1800 hours and began sweeps with the EMF Detector around the outside of the building. Buck picked up some minor fluctuating readings, between 6 to 10 milligauss at 20Hz, before we even got close to the front door. We were met by an employee, who lead us in to the theater to take a look around. We entered the elevator and went up to the 2nd floor, which is the main floor/lobby of the place. This area also had odd EMF fields, but possibly due to the excessive lighting this room contains. We do not believe that these were paranormal in origin. Still it is difficult to tell. Cody took a few photographs here and then the team moved on through a large hallway to the theater section of the building.

A demonstration had just finished and the crew were packing up their equipment as we arrived. Buck registered another abnormal reading near the stage area, but due to the workmen on the stage, he couldn't get close enough to investigate further without disturbing them. Cody took a few more photographs of the area around the stage.

After about 15 minutes, some of the workers had a break and Buck had a chance to talk with them about the phenomena. They call the ghost "BOB" and while none of them had actually seen the ghost, they spoke of having the feeling of being watched and of various objects being moved, lost and/or found some where else in the building.

They lead us around backstage, but we were unable to fully investigate the area, once again because of the workers. An interesting thing about the backstage area is a stairway that leads down to a basement level. None of the workers have personally been down there but they told us of people who have had unpleasant experiences there. Unseen hands have reportedly pushed people, grabbed their ankles and there are all sorts of odd sounds coming from the walls.

They didn't have a key to get in the room in the basement , but would arrange to have it on a follow-up investigation. Once we had the tour of the backstage area finished, we went back out to the hallway near the bar. Suddenly, Odin picked up very strong readings on the EMF. The field was stationary at first but then seemed to move around the pink columns that adorned the hallway.
Cody began to search the area for natural causes of the EMF field. The lights were about 25 feet overhead, thus ruling them out. There were no water pipes in the area, except for the one that ran behind the bar, and we were told that it was inoperative and the water there was shut off. The fact that the field was moving also adds mystery to a natural cause.