Larry in the Balcony: the Orpheum Theater in Sioux Falls

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

Vaudeville acts, second-run pictures and community theatre have all taken turns on the same boards inside the Orpheum Theater in Sioux Falls, a 1913 house that has outlived most of the entertainment formats it was built to serve. It sits in the heart of downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, still selling tickets, and it carries a ghost story that regular patrons treat as part of the furniture: a figure in the balcony who is said to have been waving at actors since the late 1950s.

What the Solari Brothers Built in 1913

The theatre opened its doors in 1913, constructed by the Solari Brothers as a purpose-built vaudeville house. The original plan seated roughly 900 people and included a grand auditorium, an elevated balcony and a generous backstage capable of handling the constant turnover of touring acts and staged productions that vaudeville demanded. That layout matters to the ghost story later, because almost every reported incident involves either the balcony or the stage.

When the 1920s brought film to the front of American entertainment, the Orpheum did what nearly every vaudeville house in the country did and converted to a movie theatre, showing pictures instead of booking live bills.

The Community Playhouse Takes the Building Back

The reversal came in the 1950s, when the Community Playhouse Association acquired the building and restored it, returning the Orpheum to live performance after decades of projection. That decision is the reason the theatre survived at all: many comparable houses were demolished or subdivided in the same period.

Recognition followed in 1983, when the Orpheum Theater was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural and historical value. Today it functions as a working community venue rather than a museum piece, hosting concerts, plays, musicals, civic events and private bookings, and drawing more than 100,000 visitors a year.

Larry, the Figure in the Balcony

The theatre’s resident ghost is known simply as Larry. According to local lore, Larry announced himself in 1959, when an actor rehearsing on stage looked up and saw a strange figure in the balcony waving down at him. The account includes two details that have kept the story alive: the figure was lit by an odd blue light, and the moment came with a cold breeze through the house.

It is worth being clear about what that is and is not. There is no verified record of a death at the theatre attached to the name Larry, and the 1959 sighting survives as a story passed down through the people who work in the building rather than as a documented investigation. What the theatre has is a tradition, and traditions in old playhouses tend to acquire a name whether or not a name is ever earned.

The Photograph That Would Not Stay

The second widely repeated Orpheum story involves a director who was cleaning the stage and found a small antique photograph of a bearded man lying there. Nobody could account for where it had come from, and by the telling of it, the photograph later vanished as unaccountably as it had appeared. Some who repeat the story treat the bearded man as a portrait of Larry himself, which is an interpretation rather than a fact. A misplaced prop, a stray item from a props table or old storage, would explain the first half of the story easily enough. The disappearance is the part that keeps it in circulation.

Seeing a Show at the Sioux Falls Orpheum

This is one of the easier haunted buildings in the region to get inside, because you do it the ordinary way: you buy a ticket. The Orpheum is an active performance venue with a full calendar of concerts, plays and musicals, and it is also available for private events, so access generally means attending a show rather than booking a ghost tour.

If the stories interest you, the balcony and the stage are the two places worth paying attention to, since both figure in every version of the Larry account. Check the theatre’s official website or box office for current programming and ticketing before travelling, and expect a historic auditorium with a working schedule rather than a paranormal attraction. Anyone hoping for an empty, atmospheric building will be disappointed. Anyone who wants to sit in a 1913 vaudeville house that is still doing its job will not be.

See Orpheum Theatre for Yourself

Sources

• Wikipedia: Orpheum

Address: 315 N Phillips Ave

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