Confronting theatre ghosts – Part I, Alice

​In my life, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity of having two wonderful and fulfilling jobs. Writing now, but before that I was an actor…

Playing Laura Warwick in The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie at Redgrave Theatre, Farnham, UK

​I’ve met more than my share of ghosts in Britain’s theatres. In Harrogate Theatre, where I performed a number of plays, musicals, and pantomime, there was Alice, who apparently fell from the top balcony to the stalls and to her death many years earlier (the theatre was opened in 1900). 

Photo credit: Celia Perry [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

​At the time I was doing my stint at Harrogate Theatre, a box in this balcony area was used as the sound and lighting box. The guys up there knew Alice well. They said they saw her or felt her presence all the time (they didn’t mind). 
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One lunchtime break on a day when we were rehearsing in the theatre itself which hardly ever happened until the Tech - the Technical Rehearsal, which took place a day or two before the Dress Rehearsal, which took place a day or two before Opening Night - so it was exciting to get behind the proscenium arch. I was alone in the auditorium. Alone, I say.

​A seat flipped up behind me, then another (the seats were a dull, faded colour back then, not the elegant aqua they are now). 

I checked, but there was nobody there so I presumed they occasionally flipped all on their own, being so old. Then … one by one, slowly at first, more seats flipped, until they were flipping up behind me like firecrackers at a firework display. I did what any girl would under such circumstances – I ran.
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Nobody knows who dear Alice was - but according to some, she makes her presence known by a smell in the corridors. I have to say, during all those plays I did at the theatre, I never had a hint of her aroma in the corridors. But I certainly felt her presence in the auditorium that day and I have a feeling she was laughing at me as she flipped those seat. Go, Alice! Haven't known anyone say they didn't like you - even those lighting and sound technicians, and we all know how down-to-earth cool those guys are.

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Sure, I ran from Harrogate Theatre auditorium that day - but not as fast as I ran when I was performing at the Theatre Royal Brighton where I confronted their ghosts.

Part II coming tomorrow – The Lady in Grey, Theatre Royal Brighton.

Jennie x (and Alice) 
 👻