Haunted place · Oregon, United States

Roseland Theater

Updated November 20269 sources How to visit

2 archive documents

A 1922 church turned concert hall in Portland, Oregon, where a young promoter was murdered in 1990 and is said to haunt the building, his body never found.

The story

The Roseland Theater is one of Portland's best-known concert halls, in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood. It began life as a house of worship, erected in 1922 by the Apostolic Faith Church on the site of a former saloon, finishing in August of that year largely with volunteer labor. The upper floor held a meeting hall for about 1,150 people, and the lower level had a chapel seating 200 and church offices. The congregation sold the building in 1981.

In 1982 a promoter named Larry Hurwitz turned it into a music club called Starry Night. The club's darkest chapter began in January 1990. Its promotions manager, a 21-year-old with ties to Reed College (Willamette Week calls him a "Reedie") who also handled the club's publicity, told his parents he intended to confront his boss over a scheme involving counterfeit tickets for a John Lee Hooker concert. He disappeared on January 23, 1990.

The case took a decade to crack. Hurwitz sold the club in February 1991, saying he had lost the backing of the local music business, and under new management the venue took the name Roseland. Investigators first caught up with Hurwitz over tax evasion; after his extradition from Vietnam he admitted those charges in 1998. A tip then led detectives to the club's former sound engineer, who confessed that the young man had been strangled inside the building and that the two of them had buried the body across the Columbia River in Washington. It has never been found. On September 25, 2000, Hurwitz pleaded no contest to murder. Sources differ on his sentence (eleven years according to Wikipedia, twelve according to Willamette Week); a civil suit settled in 2001 committed him to pay the victim's family $3 million, and he left prison in 2008.

In the 1990s a new operator took over the hall, later buying and renovating the building, and the Roseland has remained a busy stop for touring acts ever since.

The legend

The Roseland's ghost story grows directly out of that real crime. The murdered promoter is said to still haunt the place where he was killed, a belief repeated by local media around Halloween, including a KOIN 6 roundup of Oregon haunts in 2022 and a 2023 Willamette Week piece on the venue.

What people actually report is remarkably thin. The KOIN story quotes a Portland ghost website describing murmurs and voices heard around the empty ballroom, and adds that the station knows of no sightings. Portland ghost-walk listings speak vaguely of presences and sounds around concerts, without names or dates. No apparition report, paranormal investigation or television episode is known.

The chronology is telling. No haunting report is known from before the 2000s; the haunted label became common only after the case was solved and Hurwitz convicted in 2000. Wikipedia mentions a Best Haunted Venue title awarded in a 2008 Best of Portland retrospective of the year 1988, but the cited page no longer works, the credit is confused between two local papers, and a 1988 list could not refer to a 1990 murder, so that claim could not be checked. Some descriptions place the killing in one of the theater's hallways, but the detailed accounts of the case only say it happened inside the building.

Above all, this is a real and recent tragedy. A young man was killed, and his family has never been able to bury him. Whatever one thinks of the ghost stories, they rest on his death, and visitors should treat the subject with respect.

What remains today

The former church is now a working concert hall with a standing-only main floor, an upstairs balcony next to a bar, and Peter's Room, a smaller showcase space for about 400 people with its own restaurant and bar. Reviewers praise its sound: one music journalist compared the atmosphere to a damp cave while admiring its acoustics, and a travel writer noted its varied lineup, good sound and clear sightlines to the stage.

Visiting

The Roseland is an active concert venue, so the legal way in is simply to buy a ticket to a show; check the venue's own listings for upcoming dates. There are no ghost tours inside, and no Portland ghost walk is confirmed to stop here, though some walks mention the Starry Night case. Please do not hunt for ghosts during shows or approach staff about the murder; the victim's family is real and his remains have never been recovered.

The ghosts

Servant or worker

The murdered promoter of Starry Night

Said to be A 21-year-old with ties to Reed College, promotions manager of the Starry Night club, murdered in January 1990

The young promoter strangled inside the building in 1990, after confronting his boss about counterfeit tickets, is said to haunt the venue. The only phenomena cited are murmurs and voices in the empty ballroom, and no sightings are known.