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Something about the Linkville Playhouse refuses to let curtain call be the end. Locals know him as Ralph — a devoted actor who gave his whole life to this stage and, by most accounts, never left it. Sit alone in the house long enough and you might catch the faint curl of pipe smoke drifting through empty seats, or glimpse a figure settle quietly into the audience during a dress rehearsal, only to be gone when you look again. Ghostly music drifts from the attic; lights flicker where no one is working. Ralph isn't threatening — he just, apparently, still has a show to watch.

Tucked inside the tallest building in downtown Klamath Falls, the Linkville Playhouse occupies what was once the Pine Grove Room ballroom of the Willard Hotel — now Lake Park Towers, a six-story Mission-style landmark at 201 Main Street. The Linkville Players, descended from predecessor troupes the Pelican Players and Klamath Civic Theatre, have staged more than 300 productions since the 1960s, making them the oldest community theater group in the Klamath Basin. They found their permanent home here in the mid-1980s. A grand ballroom repurposed as a 118-seat intimate theater — the building, it seems, has always attracted people reluctant to leave.