The drowned boy and the ghosts that haunt our theatres

It kind of makes sense that our theatres should be haunted. Our theatres are buildings rich in emotion and rich in history – a history which seems to cling to the walls. It’s hardly surprising then that some of our theatre’s past inhabitants should cling to their buildings too.

A new theatre piece Do You Believe In Ghosts? taps into precisely that thought as it hits the road on a tour which will take it to Eastbourne, Hastings and Guildford. You can imagine it getting great audiences from the living. You can equally imagine it getting some decent audiences from the dead…

Our Sussex theatres certainly seem to have their share of ghosties.

Brighton Theatre Royal is a theatre famous for its apparitions, as Jackie Alexander, at the venue, explains: “Our most prominent ghost at Theatre Royal Brighton is Mrs Ellen Nye Chart (theatre manager from 1876) said to walk the royal circle and sit in her favourite seat to view get ins and get outs. Legend has it that if the seat is down, Mrs Nye Chart is sitting in it – so often staff will say hello as they go past if they think she’s in situ.

“There is a story of a little boy who came to see a show with his dad and was fascinated by the lady in ‘Victorian costume’ he saw in the royal box. When his dad asked front of house whether there was a special event going on, he was told there was not – but that in all likelihood it was Mrs Nye Chart, who has always loved welcoming children and families into the theatre.”

Other Brighton Theatre Royal ghosts include The Grey Lady and Moses The Cat (the theatre cat in the 1950s – eulogised by JB Somerville in the theatre programme the week Moses sadly disappeared).

Along the coast in Eastbourne, things also go bump in the night at the Devonshire Park Theatre. Theatre spokeswoman Aimee Pugh recalls a team of paranormal investigators visited the venue in 2005.

She wrote at the time: “It seems there have been a number of patrons who have been attending Eastbourne Theatres without tickets, but this is not just a case of people sneaking into watch one of the shows! There has long been stories of ghostly goings-on at the Theatres, and a band of intrepid local paranormal investigators were keen to learn more and unravel the truth behind the Theatres spectres.

“East Sussex Paranormal Investigators, under the guidance of a theatre manager spent part of the night at the Devonshire Park Theatre in March 2005. The team of researchers set up trigger objects, recorded temperatures around the building and took photographs during their stay at the playhouse. The team arrived in moonlight at 12.45am and stayed until the small hours recording noises and capturing 'orbs' floating in mid air on camera.

“The full findings of the investigation concluded that whilst there were many unexplained fluctuations in temperature, noises and even floating orbs, the team didn't actually see an apparition but they certainly sensed spirits.

“One of the team members is a medium who picked up on a number of presences, including a man sitting in one of the Upper Circle seats. This has been also noted by a number of other people at other times. The medium picked up the name Murray which could be linked to popular licensee of the Devonshire Park from 1906-1936, Murray King, who also appeared on the Devonshire Park Theatre's stage as an actor as far back as 1894 in The Masqueraderes.

“The team took a number of photographs and an anomaly is visible in one of the seats in the Upper Circle. The team reported seeing strange lights and recorded erratic E.M.F readings in the basement of the theatre, and in the passageway backstage an investigator felt a draft down her left side and back and her torch batteries drained after just half and hour.

“Visions of a violinist who appears in white tie and tails in the Orchestra Pit and stalls have been reported over the years. It was commonly thought that this may be the ghost of the violinist John Wesley Woodward, one of the heroic musicians who went down in the Titanic in April 1912 and who is commemorated with a plaque at the Bandstand. However on further research John Wesley became famous as a cellist.”

Across the county border at the Kings in Southsea, marketing & PR officer Julia Worsley is certainly a believer – of her own eyes.

“This theatre is known for its ghosts, one of which is a little boy that drowned under the stage. There used to be a small lake under the stage as there is a natural spring there. We now use pumps to keep the water at bay. But the musicians in the past would have to get a boat from the back of the under stage to the pit. The little boy was allegedly one of the musicians’ sons. He sadly drowned in the lake.”

“I have actually seen the little boy ghost here in our office! And of course there is the lady ghost called Sarah I believe who has been spotted in the auditorium.”

Almost inevitably, Worthing’s Connaught Theatre is haunted too. There’s also a grey lady in Worthing. Like any long established theatre the Connaught can count a number of recorded ghostly observations: “We’ve seen objects moved mysteriously, sandbags, bibles, mirrors and more eerily the sound of a piano playing. On one occasion, during WW2, a ghost was blamed for causing a lightning bar to fall into the audience.”

The first recorded sighting was not until 1974 when there were reports of a grey lady seen in two of these dressing rooms. The Worthing Theatres website notes: “The Worthing Gazette in July of that year credits a twenty year Old Middlesex Polytechnic student, who had a ‘walk-on’ part in the current production, as seeing ‘a grey lady with a white face and something on her head, vanishing into the wall. The eyewitness, Angelica Clayton, supported by a girlfriend, added that the figure was moving past a rail of clothes, but was actually above the rail. With her interest in history, she was able to date the costume to the Elizabethan period.

“The second sighting of the grey lady was in August 1987 when fifteen year-old Joseph Hall, spending his summer holidays at the theatre as a trainee, came down here to fetch something and ran into her on the spiral staircase. Panicked he did not stop to study her more closely, but was able to describe her as Victorian.”

As for the touring theatre show, Do You Believe In Ghosts?, it comes billed as an experiential ghost story. Dates on tour include White Rock Theatre, Hastings on Friday, May 19; Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne on Wednesday, May 24; and Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre on June 6.

As director Julian Woolford explains, the two performers in the piece had become interested in the great tradition of the theatre ghost: “As a performer one of them had seen that there is barely a theatre in the country that doesn't have a ghost story attached to it and I've been thinking a lot about why.

“I think it's the fact that there is an energy attached to a theatre. We have a term in theatre academia which is about ghosting. If you do play which is about real people then you've got the ghosts of those real people but if you're doing something like Hamlet, which obviously has got a ghost in it anyway, then in a way you are playing the ghost of those characters and also the ghosts of everyone else who's ever played those characters. And when the critics are reviewing Hamlet what they're really doing is comparing the performance with the ghosts of all the other performances that they have seen. And I do think that there is a sense particularly in older theatres that every time a particular play is staged, there is an energy from everything has gone on before on that stage. And if you happen to be in a theatre when there is not a show on, which is not something that a lot of people get a chance to do, there is still a feeling of energy that comes from the building.”