History & local legend
Philadelphia's Academy of Music has a theater ghost story that begins with an apparently empty seat. In a collection of city folklore, Michael McMahon described accounts of cushions depressing and chairs creaking as though an unseen audience member had settled in beside the living.
Other stories in the same account involve patrons feeling a pinch or a tug at their hair. A more visible figure was said to stand beyond the last row of the balcony: a man dressed in black who disappeared when the lights came up for intermission.
