The Music Box Theatre was built in 1929 and it feels the way many older, well-preserved buildings feel: beautiful, a little mysterious, and deeply, deeply haunted. It’s the exact sort of place one would expect to see a ghost.
Back then, the theater still showed movies on 35 mm film. This meant that Jacobs was responsible for changing over one reel of film to the next in both booths. The process is fairly straightforward: “You watch the little window for that cigarette burn,” she explains, “and then you have to [switch] the audio and the picture at the same time. So you go down [to the projection booth] a few minutes early, and you just sit, and stare, and wait.”
That night in the projection booth was the only time Jacobs saw Whitey and the only time she has ever seen a ghost. But she’s not the only one who has felt Whitey’s presence at the theater. Manager Ernestina “Ernie” Garcia says she’s felt someone standing behind her several times, and even heard a voice calling her name in the lobby after hours. But she is quick to say that Whitey isn’t scary. “I like to say he keeps an eye out,” she says.
