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What’s Inside? Why I Love Halloween Avoid Getting Your Hands Dirty This Halloween Halloween CandyWorth Smiling About Fall Crafts for theWhole Family Easton’s Most Famous Ghost
The History of Easton’s Theater-Loving Spirit Fred the Ghost Many notable people have called Easton home over the years, from heavyweight champion Larry Holmes to James McKeen Cattell, the first psychology professor in United States history. The competition for Easton’s most famous resident may be a fierce one, but the battle for its most well-known ghost is hardly a contest at all. Fred, who is said to inhabit the State Theatre Center for the Arts on Northampton Street, is our most talked about and beloved paranormal “entity,” and there’s no better month than October to pay tribute to him. Fred’s full name is J. Fred Osterstock, and he was interested in the arts long before he was undead. Born in 1884, he came to the State Theatre not long after its original construction in 1925. From 1936 to his death in 1957, Fred ran the management company that owned and operated the theater, but his passion for the place went well beyond professional diligence. In 1955, Easton was hit with a terrible flood. One of the properties damaged in the flood belonged to Osterstock. But rather than worry about his home, he decamped to the theater, determined to ensure it suffered no damage. Given his lifelong love of the State Theatre, it’s easy to see why he may have decided to stick around. Unlike many ghosts, Fred isn’t known to be menacing or even all that spooky. He’s been reported to hang out, watch the shows, smoke a cigar, and leave pennies in the concrete. “It’s not a haunting,” Ken Kablunde, a former theater manager, said of Fred’s presence. “Fred was in the theater business since the 1900s. This is his home.” Sightings of Fred have been a semi-regular occurrence since the ‘70s, even after the State’s complete renovation in 1990. In 2003, the State Theater decide to name its awards for high school theater the “Freddys” in honor of Fred, an honor befitting his status as beloved theater-goer for well over a century. Whether you believe that Fred’s spirit really does reside in the State Theater or simply view the story as a fun piece of fantasy, we can all agree that if you’re going to have a ghost in town, you’d want it to be one as friendly as Fred.
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