Silent Screams

Whaley House Museum Shop
2476 San Diego Avenue
Historic Old Town San Diego

October 14, 21 & 28, 2015
$13.00 Limited Seating

Screened in San Diego’s first commercial theater, these historic horror films will add an extra level of fright to the darkened, haunted setting. Early filmmakers and audiences certainly showed an interest in the macabre, and silent horror has a dreamy, can’t-wake-up-from-a-nightmare quality that sound cinema can’t approximate, shimmering with light, beauty, and the poetry of the unexpected. Prepare to be scared. Horror and suspense classics of the Silent Era screened in San Diego’s first theater in the “most haunted house in America.”

The Whaley House Theater was first established in 1868, when Thomas Tanner, the leader of The Tanner Troupe, rented the upstairs from Thomas Whaley, set up a stage and audience chamber, and presented weekly entertainments. With his daughter Soledad as his leading lady, Tanner and his company packed in 150 people for the first performance. Sadly, the curtain came down on the Tanner Troupe too soon when Tanner dropped dead backstage after a performance one night soon after opening.