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Tabetha Starcher follows current Tuckaway owner Ken Keene Jr. in o a hallway where a portrait of the palmist Nellie Simmons Meier hangs among others. (Michelle Pemberton for The Star)

Jim Walker wears night vision goggles as he tours the old Rivoli Theatre. (Michelle Pemberton for The Star)

Inside the drawing room of the Tuckaway, once the home of internationally famous palm reader Nellie Simmons Meier. (Michelle Pemberton for The Star)

These are two very different haunted houses. While each is supposedly frequented by ghosts and built on Indian burial grounds, the Rivoli Theatre, resonant with bad breaks and sad memories, and the warm and welcoming Tuckaway have only a few things in common.

Both are featured in Indianapolis filmmaker Dan T. Hall's "Ghost Stories: Walking With the Dead," !a documentary premiering Oct. 26 and 27 at the IMAX Theater in the Indiana State Museum.

And both made eye-opening stops on a recent adventure to explore two of the city's palaces of the paranormal. This isn't the place to delve into my theories on the paranormal or to rattle on about my belief, or lack thereof, in ghosts.

Hall, likewise, hasn't set out to prove that spirits exist. His mission -- like mine as a journalist -- is to look for answers to questions. And the notion of life after death leaves plenty of good things to ask.

After we met recently, Hall arranged for our visit to two of the local places he covers in his film. And the locations' owners -- Charles Chulchian at the Rivoli and Kenneth Keene at Tuckaway -- graciously opened their doors.

Hollow, hidden ruin We started our night at the Rivoli. Located in a rough area on the Near Eastside ripe for redevelopment, the Rivoli has sat empty since 1992. From the outside, this Mission Style movie palace still looks pretty solid. On the inside, the ornately decorated front lobby is dark and dusty. But it's not hard to imagine walking up to the counter to buy a ticket and a bag of popcorn. Beyond the lobby, though, the theater vanishes into shadow, and -- as my eyes adjusted to the dark -- I began to see how far gone it really is.

The roof of the theater built in 1927 has fallen in chunks into the aisles, leaving gaping holes that reveal slices of the yellow, city-lit sky. The 1,500 seats disintegrate in their places as they look ahead at the stage where curtains and a white screen still hang. The place is a hidden ruin. We explore its main floor and the basement, with Hall leading the way with his flashlight and me trying out some Soviet-era night-vision goggles he brought.

While the place feels plenty spooky, we don't encounter anything ghostly -- like "Lady Rivoli" who Chulchian says visits every day at 3 a.m. -- during our visit. But I felt touched by the sadness of the owner's situation.

Once a thriving theater that hosted such musicians as John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen before its decline, this place -- so central to Chulchian's life for 30 years -- is fading and falling before his eyes. Don't think of the basement While Keene's 1906 Tuckaway bungalow on the Northside is a little worn at the edges, it still brims with light and life.

Like Chulchian, Keene is confident his home is haunted. But, except for one bad encounter in the basement, he's found his spirits to be friendly.

Once the home of internationally famous palm reader Nellie Simmons Meier, Tuckaway hosted visits from famous people like Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, George Gershwin, Amelia Earhart and Franklin Roosevelt.

Keene, who bought the house 35 years ago, discovered trunks left behind in the basement full of pictures and papers related to Meier's famous clients and friends. These black-and-white portraits of dead people -- often signed with handwritten notes -- hang on !the walls throughout period-decorated Tuckaway, which feels as much like a museum as a home.

When everything quiets down and you are alone at night, Keene said, the downstairs area fills with a ghostly mist, and you can hear cocktail laughter and tinkling from the piano. Things never hushed to that level during our visit -- which was an interesting and detailed tour of Tuckaway and its garden.

Maybe it was all those faces from another time staring from the walls or simply the Halloween season, but, just like at the Rivoli, you can't help but feel something, otherworldly or otherwise, in a place thick with so many memories. Maybe, ultimately, that's what hauntings are all about.