Kentucky

Ashland

Paramount Movie Theatre

Paramount Movie Theatre opens on September 5, 1931 and the first movie shown is Paramount Pictures' Silence. The theater ran until 1l971 when it permanently closed as a movie theater.
The theater was only closed for one year before Ashland Oil CEO, Paul Blazer, Jr. purchased it.

He formed the Greater Ashland Foundation (now the Foundation for the Tri-State Community) with its first project, the establishment of a performing arts center in the building. They began fulfilling their plans to restore the old theater to it original glory with its historic Art Deco style, beginning with the lobby and its beautiful murals.

It was during this period of renovation that the legend of the ghost began. It took root from an accidental death that in the early 1940s. Four workers from the Boyd Theater Company from Cincinnati, Ohio were working inside the auditorium. It got to be lunchtime and everyone left the theatre except one man, Joe. When the others got back from lunch, they found Joe hanging from the curtain rigging

Ever since this time, strange cold draft floats through the auditorium, odd, unexplained noises reverberate from the walls. Objects move from one place to another and sometimes disappear for days before reappearing in strange places. The apparition of a man occurs occasionally leaving the viewer shaking his head in disbelief.

Bill Ray Cyrus filmed his video for “Achy Breaky Heart” here at the theater and learned about the ghost. He was heard talking to the ghost of several occasions and fulfilling the custom of the theatre signed an 8 x 10 photograph to hand on the “Wall of Fame” in the box office. He also signed copies for each of the women working there and leaving one for Paramount Joe, as they came to call the ghost. The women kept their pictures near their desk and Joe’s copy went up on the “wall of fame”. In time the wall was over- crowded and they needed more room, Because Bill Ray was all over the place, they asked the woman to take their down. But the women did not want to give up their copy so they took down the one on the wall, signed to Paramount Joe.

Joe was not happy for when they returned to work, all the 8 x 10 pictures that had been on the wall were laying with their glass frames broken. Joe Paramount’s picture went back up immediately in a special place, in the Marquee Room, now the Paramount Joe’s Rising Star Café.

Lights leading to the basement mysterious turned on for several new employees wanting to check out the basement. The wiring has a different switch for each section of stairway. There is no master switch that will light the whole stairway so when the lights went on, there isn’t a plausible explanation except for Paramount Joe.

A message from a psychic occurred in 2004 when the Marketing Directory Tyson Compton received the call. The psychic delivered the message that Joe said he is here. It was only the day before as he gave a tour to some high school students that he had asked the question, “Joe, are you here”? It appears it was and he is. The theater sits at 1300 Winchester, in Ashland, Kentucky.

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