For one night each October, the Opera House at Boothbay Harbor stops being a concert hall and becomes something closer to a haunted house — or at least a haunted potluck supper. The annual Scary Readings and community Halloween potluck returns on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 6 p.m., with doors opening at 5:45. There are no tickets and no reservations. You bring a dish, you eat with your neighbors, and then a troupe of readers takes the stage to try to scare everybody in the room.
The transformation is the work of Kevin Kiley, the Opera House's technical director and set designer. In past years he has promised "an array of spooky decorations, skeletons and haunting sights" festooning the hall as guests sit down to dinner — which is a polite way of saying the man who normally builds sets for touring musicians spends his Halloween rigging the building for ghosts. Kiley is not only a backstage figure; he is also a musician who has performed on the Opera House stage himself, playing piano accompaniment for vocalists in the venue's Broadway-themed shows, and he has appeared among the readers in past Scary Readings lineups alongside other local performers.
The potluck has its own house rules, refined over years of practice. Guests are asked to bring an ample main dish or side dish to share — and, in some years, a Halloween dessert if they are known for one. Bread is discouraged. Guests should bring their own plates and silverware if possible, plus serving utensils for whatever they contribute. The building has limited electrical outlets, so crockpots may not be able to be plugged in. The Opera House bar serves cold drinks, and guests are asked not to bring their own beverages. The evening is aimed at older families and adults; the readings are not appropriate for young children.
What makes the setting work so well is that the Opera House does not need much help looking eerie. The three-story Queen Anne building at 86 Townsend Avenue was put up in 1894 as a headquarters for the local Knights of Pythias lodge, a fraternal order akin to the Masons. In its long life it has been a great many things besides a theater: town offices, fraternal meeting rooms, a roller-skating rink, a venue for basketball games, minstrel shows, professional wrestling matches, movies and town meetings. It remains one of the last small-town Maine "opera houses" — a name 19th-century promoters used to lend an air of respectability to their entertainments — still operating as a year-round performance venue.
It is also, by local reputation, haunted. The building's best-known ghost is nicknamed "Fingers," a presence credited with coaxing music out of a broken player piano on the second floor on multiple occasions — in 1949, 1957 and 1977, according to local lore. Some believe the spirit belongs to Earl Cliff, a pianist who played there in the early 1900s. Others say the second-floor room that once belonged to the Knights of Pythias carries a bitter chill and the sensation of being watched or followed. Ushers have reported hearing their names called and feeling a hand on the shoulder when no one was there. Whether or not you believe any of it, it is a fine place to listen to scary stories on the last Thursday of October.
The Scary Readings are a genuinely local production — not a touring show, not a ticketed attraction, but a community supper with a performance attached, the kind of event that small Maine towns have held in the same hall for generations. Its details shift a little from year to year: the date moves around Halloween week, the cast of readers changes, the menu is whatever the town decides to cook. What stays the same is the format — eat first, get frightened second — and the setting, a 130-year-old wooden hall with a reputation for not always being empty.
This year's event runs from 6 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, at the Opera House at Boothbay Harbor, 86 Townsend Avenue. Admission is free; bring a dish, bring a plate, and leave the bread at home.