Overview
The Riley Center occupies the 1889 Grand Opera House of Meridian, Mississippi, and its attached Marks-Rothenberg building — a Romanesque block whose horseshoe-balconied theatre hosted touring companies until it went dark in the 1920s and then slept, remarkably intact, for eight decades until a meticulous restoration reopened it in 2006 as a performing-arts and conference centre operated by Mississippi State University. Long dereliction is fertile ground for stories, and the theatre gathered its share: staff, performers and patrons have described a woman in Victorian dress in the balconies, a man glimpsed in the old dress circle, voices and applause from the empty house, doors and lights behaving oddly backstage, and cold spots in the original dressing rooms. The tellings are gentle and theatrical rather than dark. These accounts should be presented as staff and performer reports and local folklore rather than proven phenomena — the theatre's genuine story, a Gilded Age opera house asleep for eighty years, needs no embellishment. Current performance and tour details should be confirmed from the official site before publishing.