every theatre is haunted
j. ferron hiatt (ferronhiatt451)
Every theater is haunted and so tonight we broadcast from an especially haunted theater, the Mauch Chunk opera house, and we thank you for tuning in on such a suspicious night as this.
Many of you are not familiar with the opera house and it’s own ghosts. There are a lot of historic firsts in Jim Thorpe, but one little known is possibly the first on air murder ever broadcast.
The Dorsey brothers, born in Shenandoah raised in Lansford, were growing in popularity and in the late 1920’s were scheduled for the first radio broadcast from the flagstaff ballroom.
The nightclub, opened in 1901, was building the broadcast up to the be the event of the fall and major investments were made into creating studio that could do live radio broadcasts.
Night before, the scheduled first broadcast in old Mauch Chunk, three you students from the high school were setting up their own ham radio operation from the old Mauch chunk opera house. It was a small set up and only a few people in the surrounding neighborhood would be able to hear it, but it would be the first if they could get it done in time.
But word got back to the backers of the famed broadcast and they made inquiries.
Around midnight when Ronnie Fisker was warming up the amplifier to test the new invention a figure entered through the back and approached.
A few people only heard on the fuzzy radios back home a buzz then the choking sounds and a clunk, the next day Ronnie was found dead on this stage, but the broadcast mic and all the equipment were missing. But no one noticed because the excitement in the air was of the first radio broadcast of the Dorsey brothers from flagstaff mountain.
