The State Theatre — The Fantasm Flapper

212 South Michigan Street · the Blackstone of 1921 · the lore's print form from 2025, its hunts from 2016

The building: the theatre at 212 South Michigan Street was built as the Blackstone — the corporation incorporated on 9 January 1919, the survey card recording the auditorium's informal opening on 28 January 1921 to a News-Times billing of "Indiana's Most Beautiful Photo Play Theater." Its course is in the Architecture and Theaters sections: receivership in 1931, when it took the name it keeps, the State; closed in the mall era — the Tribune's account dates the closing to 1977, the nomination's to 1978; films again from 1993 to 1997; a nightclub from 1999, closed in 2016; bought by the South Bend Redevelopment Commission in 2025, with a Community Foundation plan and $4 million of state READI 2.0 money before it as this history is written. A theatre that has stood dark or near-dark for much of fifty years is the classic ground of a theatre ghost, and the State has one of the classic kind.

The telling: the flapper's fullest published form is the History Museum's, supplied to the visitors bureau in 2025 under the heading "Fantasm Flapper of the State Theater." In the museum's account, the Blackstone closed in October 1929 after a performance by "Hindu Wausau and Her Oriental Belles," was bought by the Publix chain that November, remodeled with sound equipment, and "re-opened on Christmas Day, 1929, under the new name State Theater" — a date the building's documented record contradicts, the Register nomination and the theatre's own later manager both placing the renaming in the receivership of 1931; the two datings are printed together because the lore's carrier is also its first casualty. Of the haunting itself the museum writes: "It is unknown when the first haunting of the State Theater occurred, but those that have reported seeing a ghostly visitor mention it is a figure of a woman dressed in 1920s clothing. Some have seen her in a white dress; others say it is lavender. When the State Theater hosted musical acts in the 1980s and 1990s, it was related that fantasm flapper was often seen when blues bands played." She has no name, no death and no story — a period figure for a period room, her dress dated to the decade the house was new. "The theater is now closed," the museum's account ends; the redevelopment record above is later than its telling.

The hunts: the flapper's working life in the record is a single documented season. In 2016, as the Tribune reported in an account preserved in quotation on the theatre's Cinema Treasures page, the closed theatre opened after dark for public ghost hunts — the first hunt that February — led by BSR Paranormal, whose founder Jennifer Jacobs ran the investigations, while the theatre's manager Jackie Oberlin retailed her own experiences in the building to the paper. The hunts belong to the same economy as the Birdsell tours, a decade earlier and a block apart: a landmark between uses, monetizing its darkness while its future was argued. No published account of the hunts' findings, beyond the manager's anecdotes, has been located; the flapper herself predates and postdates them in the telling, but the hunts are the only occasion on which her house sold tickets to look for her. The State's afterlife since — public ownership, a funded plan, a proposed new movie theatre in the old room — is the Architecture section's record; whether the flapper survives the renovation is a question for the update cycle of this history, and it is left, properly, to the future.

Sources:

1. The History Museum, accounts supplied to Visit South Bend Mishawaka, "Stranger Things in South Bend" (30 October 2025) — the Fantasm Flapper entry, quoted and paraphrased, including the Christmas Day 1929 renaming as the museum's account gives it.
2. This history, Architecture and Theaters sections — the Blackstone's incorporation and January 1921 opening, the 1931 receivership renaming, the 1977/1978 closing conflict, the nightclub years, the 2025 public purchase and the 2026 plan.
3. South Bend Tribune, account of the public ghost hunts at the State (2016), as preserved in quotation on the theatre's Cinema Treasures page — manager Jackie Oberlin's experiences; BSR Paranormal and founder Jennifer Jacobs; the first hunt in February 2016.