The Strand Cinema
Customers, Staff—and Even Ghosts—Are at Home at the Strand Cinema | October 2018
By Maria Landry
To some, the Strand Cinema is haunted. To others, it’s just a movie theater. But to General Manager Katy (Qualey) Oliver, “it’s kind of like home.”
“September 29th was my nine-year anniversary here,” she said recently from her office nestled in the back of the historic Court Street theater, which first opened in 1929. “I’ve been here since I was a junior in high school. I spend most every weekend here. Even if I’m not working, I’m usually here.”
Entrusted to run the theater by owners Matt and Misty Dexter—who bought the Strand from John Moore in September 2013 and made Oliver manager a month later—Oliver is clearly passionate about her second home.
“It’s fun to work here. Matt and Misty are like family to me—they’re like the crazy aunt and uncle,” Oliver said. “I enjoy seeing all the regular customers that come in. We get to know each other pretty well. Now it’s to the point that when they come through the [concession] line, I know what they want. I’ve been here for so long, it’s second nature to me now. If I’m not here, I feel out of place.”
The Strand has a fully restored main theater with stadium seating and two smaller theaters that were added in 2005. Though most patrons are local, Oliver says they do have quite a few who come from the Waterville area and some from Farmington.
“A lot of people come here because of our prices,” she said. “We’re still very low compared to Flagship and Regal. We’re still one of the lowest in the state.”
Regular ticket prices are $7 for ages 12 and up and $5 for kids under 12 and seniors. Mondays and matinees are also $5.
To sweeten the deal, the Strand annually offers a gift certificate sale during the Holiday Stroll (Nov. 30-Dec. 1 this year). During this year’s sale patrons can purchase a book of 10 tickets with popcorn and soda for $65 and a book of 10 tickets only for $50.
The theater also offers a free holiday movie during the Stroll each year. Oliver says she’s working with distributors to see what they can offer her.
“We have a booker for each film company—Universal, Warner Brothers, Fox, Sony, Disney,” she explained. “They determine if we get the movie or not. Halloween, for example. We weren’t able to get it opening weekend because they wanted to see how it would do before they would give it to a small theater. So if it did well nationwide, then we could get it. If it didn’t do well, then chances are we weren’t going to get it.”
“They look at our demographics,” she said. “We are mostly a family-friendly town, so they’ll give us Disney movies versus horror movies because horror movies don’t usually do that well in Skowhegan. It all depends on demographics, on nationwide polls, and—they also require deposits on some of them—and so that deposit sometimes can be too much for us. There’s a lot of factors that go into it.”
Oliver said that movies usually come out on Thursdays or Fridays, and she’ll only find out on Monday if the Strand is getting the movies she requested.
If she can’t get the movie, “then we scramble,” she said. “Then it’s, okay, what’s Plan B? Can we hold a movie that we’ve had already, or can we get a movie that came out maybe two weeks ago that we weren’t able to get when it opened? We did that with A Star Is Born. We couldn’t get it for two weeks. Last week we were scrambling, they wouldn’t give us any new movies, so we said, let’s try A Star Is Born—and we were able to bring it in.”
Dealing with the unexpected seems to be a rite of passage at the Strand. The nearly 90-year-old theater is known nationally for its stories of hauntings.
“Because of our ghost stories, this past May we recorded a show with Most Terrifying Places in America on Travel Channel,” Oliver said. She missed its original air date on Oct. 14 but planned to host a staff viewing party at her house for the rerun on Oct. 28.
She was excited to see what footage was included in the episode.
“We were here for 15 hours filming,” she said. “We had customers come in, some old staff members came back, and then we did a bunch of reenactments. Our episode is called ‘The Devil’s Playground.’”
Though Oliver wouldn’t go so far as to say she believes the Strand is haunted, she admitted there have been some creepy happenings.
“You kind of convince yourself that it’s not a ghost and that you’re sane and everything’s fine and it’s just the boiler making noise or something,” she said.
She recalled one instance when she was working late one night with her manager at the time.
“There were only two of us working, and we had just mopped the lobby. We had put the mops away and we were in the concession stand, because we leave through that door in the concession stand, and we heard something in the lobby. It sounded like the bucket rolling across the floor. So we went over there, and both of the buckets were filled and the mops were propped up against the lobby doors. … We don’t know if someone else was here that night and was trying to play a trick on us, or if the ‘ghost’ did it.”
Another time, Oliver related, a fellow staff member was coming up the basement stairs when she felt as if something took possession of her body and she was frozen in place, unable to move.
Despite the possibility of ghosts, Oliver has been known to spend the night at the Strand during bad weather.
“This is my home,” she said. “I also work full time at the hospital. I work all day there and then I come here at night and do paperwork and work shifts. Go pick up all of our candy and soda, drop off old movies, pick up new movies, posters. It’s an adventure. A very crazy adventure, but I love it.”
For more on the Strand, visit their website or Facebook page.
