Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Child spirit reported
- Vanishing donut offerings
- Disrupted performance legend
- Woman in bonnet
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
Stand on the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Fifth Street in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and you are looking at a stucco building that mixes rounded pueblo massing with the vertical thrust of an Art Deco skyscraper. You are also looking at the setting of the KiMo Theatre ghost story, an Albuquerque staple involving a six-year-old boy, a lobby water heater and a string of donuts hung on backstage pipes. It is one of the better documented hauntings in the Southwest, and that documentation cuts both ways: the person who looked hardest at the legend concluded that the incident which launched it never took place.
Quick Orientation
- Where: Central Avenue and Fifth Street, downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Built: 1927, in the rare Pueblo Deco style
- Opened: September 19, 1927
- Owner: City of Albuquerque, purchased from the founding family in the 1970s
- Seats: 650 following the restoration completed in 2000
- Status: Working performance venue, open to the public
Maria Bachechi’s Tribute and Carl Boller’s Design
The theater was conceived by Italian-American entrepreneur Oreste Bachechi, who lived from about 1860 to 1928, and his wife Maria Franceschi Bachechi, who lived from about 1865 to 1959. The building’s Native American character was not a marketing decision. It was Mrs. Bachechi’s wish that the theater pay tribute to the Native Americans who had embraced the Bachechi family as part of their own.
The couple travelled and met architects in both New Mexico and California before accepting a design from Carl Boller of the Boller Brothers firm, who researched the cultures and building styles of the Southwest before submitting it. What Boller produced is a three-story stucco building with the stepped massing of pueblo architecture set against recessed spandrels and the strong verticals of Art Deco. Indigenous motifs run through the exterior and interior, including a row of terra cotta shields above the third-floor windows, ziggurat patterns and murals on Native American themes.
Art historian Ruth Anne Phillips, writing in 2007 on pre-Columbian appropriation in American architecture, drew a line between the KiMo and theaters that borrowed heavily from Mesoamerican forms. She described the KiMo as primarily a Native American-themed building whose only pre-Columbian elements are the abstracted Maya-like glyphs on the entrance foyer walls, and placed it in a lineage with the Aztec Theatre in San Antonio, the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles, the Mayan Theater in Denver and Detroit’s Fisher Theatre.
Six Letters and a Fifty Dollar Prize
In June 1927 the Albuquerque Journal ran a competition to name the new theater, with fifty dollars for the winner. The rules were specific: the name had to suit a theater whose architecture combined Aztec, Navajo and Pueblo elements, it had to be an Indian name, and it could not run to more than six letters. More than 500 entries arrived from around the state. The winner was Pablo Abeita, former governor of Isleta Pueblo, who submitted “Kimo”, meaning mountain lion and sometimes loosely rendered as king of the beasts. The runner-up was “Eloma”.
Opening night, September 19, 1927, featured Native American dancers and singers, a performance on a newly installed Wurlitzer theater organ that cost $18,000, and the comedy film Painting the Town. Senator Sam G. Bratton, former governor Arthur T. Hannett and City Commission chairman Clyde Tingley attended. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks sent telegrams. Cecil B. DeMille wrote that the erection of such a theater was definite proof of the great progress being made by the industry.
Adult Films, Fire and a City Rescue
The KiMo’s decline was slow and commercial. In 1935 the Bachechi family merged their theater interests with those of Joseph Barnett, bringing most of Albuquerque’s screens under one owner; by 1952 the chain, Albuquerque Exhibitors, ran ten local theaters with 170 employees. The theaters were leased to the Texas-based Frontier Theaters chain in 1956, and Frontier was taken over by Commonwealth Theaters in 1967. Commonwealth closed the KiMo in 1970. Albuquerque Music Theater leased it for a few years, after which the building started showing adult films.
By 1977 a fire had left the theater in disrepair. The City of Albuquerque offered to buy the building at a fraction of its value or else condemn and demolish it. The family chose preservation and sold. Restoration has come in phases: the work completed in 2000 brought new seating and carpet, a new main stage curtain, a new tech booth, lighting positions concealed among the ceiling vigas, and a re-created version of the original proscenium arch. In 2011 the city installed a replica of the theater’s original neon sign, first put up around 1929 and removed at some point in the 1950s. The replica stands 24 feet tall by 5 feet wide and cost $16,000.
Bobby Darnall and the Donuts on the Pipes
Local legend holds that the KiMo is haunted by Bobby Darnall, a six-year-old boy killed in 1951 when a water heater in the theater’s lobby exploded. The story as usually told involves a production of A Christmas Carol that went badly wrong after staff were ordered to take down donuts they had hung on backstage pipes as an offering to him. The donut tradition is the detail everyone remembers, and offerings left backstage are still part of the theater’s folklore, along with reports from visitors of a quiet woman in a bonnet who walks the halls without acknowledging anyone.
None of that is verified event. It is reported experience and inherited story, and in the KiMo’s case the origin story has been examined directly.
What Benjamin Radford Found in the Records
Writer Benjamin Radford investigated the legend and found that the disrupted performance of A Christmas Carol took place in 1986, not 1974 as the story usually claims. Two people he spoke to who worked on the production did not remember anything unusual happening. His conclusion was blunt: all the evidence pointed to one inescapable conclusion, that the ruined play, the very genesis of the KiMo ghost story, simply did not occur and is folklore and fiction.
Radford also contacted Bobby Darnall’s siblings. They told him they felt exploited by the story and did not appreciate claims that their beloved brother is eating doughnuts or ruining performances at the KiMo Theater. That is worth carrying with you if you go looking for him. The boy was real, the accident in 1951 was real, and his family is on record asking that he not be treated as an attraction.
Seeing a Show at the KiMo
The KiMo belongs to the City of Albuquerque and is open to the public for performances, which is the best way to see the interior: the glyph-covered foyer walls, the murals, the vigas overhead and the re-created proscenium arch are all part of the experience of sitting in the 650-seat auditorium. From the sidewalk on Central Avenue you can take in the stepped stucco facade, the terra cotta shields above the third-floor windows and the 24-foot neon replica sign. The ghost story is the reason many people arrive. The building is the reason to stay.
See Kimo Theater for Yourself
Sources
- New Mexico State and National Registers
- History of The KiMo (Cabq (official))
- Art Deco: Identification and Price Guide
- O. Bachechi, Old Resident, Dies in Los Angeles
- New Mexico: State of spooks
- Wikipedia: KiMo Theater
Address: 423 Central Ave NW
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Kimo Theater located?
Kimo Theater is located at 423 Central Ave NW.
Can you visit Kimo Theater?
Kimo Theater is open to the public. Always follow posted rules and respect private property.
Reader sightings
Nobody has reported anything here yet. If you have been, you would be the first.
Report your own visit to Donuts on the Pipes: The KiMo Theatre Ghost Story
How haunted is this place?
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