![]() ![]() ![]() Sure, they used to milk the spook factor for all it’s worth every Halloween during Dark Harbor, but the temporarily-possibly-permanently-shuttered Queen Mary in Long Beach is certifiably haunted according to the countless visitors who claimed to hear voices and rattling chains during tours and overnight stays. “She saw his body lying there and hasn’t been back since.”Īustin’s ghost is said to still haunt the lobby and Hampton’s ghost can be heard roaming the second floor, where he once lived. ![]() “We had a woman come to our Spirits with Spirits event who was actually there that night when the shooting happened,” says Carradine. Van Sickle and the hitman are currently serving life in jail. The whole thing turned out to be a murder-for-hire conspiracy hatched by Austin’s lover and theater projectionist James Van Sickle, who later claimed that Austin signed the theater over to him in a hand-written will. Hampton’s mentee Lawrence Austin took over the theater.īut one night in 1997, while visitors were watching a film, Austin was shot to death in the lobby by a hitman. ![]() Hampton used toxic chemicals in his bathtub above the theater to preserve his films-unwittingly exposing himself to toxins that hastened his demise in 1990 from cancer. The original owner, John Hampton, started the theater in 1942, showing his personal film collection at a time when most studios were destroying old silent prints. The Silent Movie Theatre (formerly home to Cinefamily, now Brain Dead Studios) has a complicated history worthy of a blockbuster drama. ![]()
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