The KiMo Theatre ghost

A ghost story told about the KiMo Theatre on Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico, built around a six-year-old boy who died there in a 1951 explosion.

Bobby Darnall was six when he died in the KiMo Theatre in 1951. Susan Gerbic, writing in Skeptical Inquirer, says a water heater blew up in the lobby. The Santa Fe New Mexican gives a different account: a loud noise sent him from his seat to the lobby just as the basement boiler burst, and seven other people were hurt.

The theatre is a City of Albuquerque venue, and the city's history page covers its Pueblo Deco design without mentioning a ghost. The ghost story grew up around the boy anyway. The New Mexican reports sightings of a small boy in a striped shirt and jeans on the lobby staircase, and an unseen presence said to trip performers and cause dropped lines, lighting faults and forgotten props. Gerbic says the theatre and the town added that he bites doughnuts and must be kept happy with toys.

Gerbic writes that an investigator she calls Ben found Bobby's siblings, and they were unhappy with the story. Wikipedia says the writer Benjamin Radford, looking into the tale, found that the production of A Christmas Carol said to have been ruined, the root of the ghost story, was staged in 1986 and that the legend puts it in 1974. Two people who worked on it recalled nothing odd. Radford concluded the ruined play never happened and was "folklore and fiction".