Liberty Theatre

The Naval Reserve Aviation Base was built in the summer of 1942 and is located at today’s Joint Forces Training Base. The Liberty Theatre was originally a USO theater, seating 1,040 and presenting movies, USO shows and military briefings.

The Southeast Civic Light Opera and the Seal Beach Leisure World Theatre Guild used the theater as a playhouse from 2002 to 2013. Director Jeff Hathcock renamed building 6 the Liberty Theatre and spent $10,000 of his own money in renovations to the 930-seat venue to stage musical productions.

On July 5, 2008, the Los Angeles Times profiled the theatre and James P. Combs, commander of the base, noted “All the famous show business figures of that period came through”. Mr. Hathcock said he and other cast members had seen, what appears to be ghosts in the theatre.

Stranger than the previous ghost sightings, in May 2010 a man was murdered in the auditorium. As reported in southern California newspapers, a 26-year-old Afghanistan war veteran, who had saved over $60,000 in combat pay, was killed for his ATM card. The murderer, also 26-years-old, was a community actor who went on to perform at another venue that evening with apparently no remorse. The crime took on a life of its own, stranger than any movie, with the killer receiving a death sentence and later life.

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