Grand Opera House (Dubuque)

Designed by Chicago architect Willoughby J. Edbrooke and opened in 1890, the Grand Opera House is the last surviving opera house in Dubuque, with the largest stage the city ever had. It hosted touring productions until the late 1920s, was restored in the 1980s, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. It still hosts live events, including a seasonal haunted-house attraction.

The theater itself acknowledges "certain unexplained occurrences" and says ghost hunters have visited several times. Volunteers, performers and night staff describe boxes and stage props shifting on their own, footsteps and singing coming from the empty stage, the smell of perfume and cigar smoke, and a woman in white near the stage. One story names a spirit called Sarah who supposedly died near the opera house in the early 1900s, but it comes from a Ouija session and no record of such a death has been found. The ghosts are described as playful rather than frightening.