“They’re our colleagues, even if they’re dead. We have to work with them,” explains Jacob Ross who leads the front of house team at Sheffield’s Lyceum theatre.
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00:00There's a show in town that you may not know about. We're in Sheffield, the home of
00:06Sheffield Theatres and of course the prestigious Lyceum Theatre, which is now
00:13hosting its own behind-the-scenes tour. But the real drama happening here is the
00:19ghost stories. Yes, it's a paranormal trail of the Lyceum Theatre from staff
00:26stories and accounts to lost legends.
00:32There's been iterations of ghost tours that have been done
00:36historically. It's part of like our fun palaces thing that we did pre-lockdown.
00:40The reason, one of the main sort of things we wanted to lean into as we
00:47started doing the research for these tours is we do have a lot of
00:53stories in this building from what we call Lyceum legend. We've got a
00:58relatively famous ghost known as the Lavender Lady, but through research we've
01:01also discovered that around seven other theatres around the country also have a
01:05Lavender Lady as well. So we wanted to really lean into staff stories, basically
01:11things that I myself have experienced and things that my colleagues have
01:16experienced as well. So a little background on myself, prior to working, I'm
01:20deputy front of house manager. Prior to this role I worked on stage door which
01:23has meant me locking up the building at all manner of ungodly hours. The currently
01:29sold-out ghost tours take place after hours. A story from the same member of
01:35the cleaning team actually who witnessed several young children running out of a
01:40dressing room. There were no children as part of the cast, there were no children
01:43on site that we were aware of. Five children or so came running out of
01:47dressing room five. So when I've discussed this with her she seems to
01:51think that maybe it's something similar that happened. Another thing I
01:58do like to point out is there's a seat just there in the middle of C row which
02:01is sort of partially down already. Quite often we'll be in here and you'll
02:06hear them snap back up into position. Not necessarily chased as such but
02:10there's somebody keeping step with you the entire way. The story I want to
02:15tell in this area relates to a member of our cleaning team who was in this
02:19area very early in the morning cleaning the area, ready for the matinee that day.
02:23They were actually in this area here, hoovering, wiping the door rails and the
02:28doors and what have you. They both heard something and said, did you hear that? So they shouted down the
02:34corridor, anybody there? I suppose at this point just in case anybody responds
02:38usually they don't so that's good or bad, it goes to them. And what they heard in
02:45response was what a member of the cleaning team describes as the most
02:50beautiful hello in response. Now I like to tell this story because a lot of the
02:55time with ghosts it's geared towards negative energy and bad
03:01experiences and scary experiences and both members of the team both remember
03:06this story very positively, said that the voice was almost angelic and that
03:11the purposes of this person contacting them was only for good reasons.
03:16Something we're going to a lot more detail on the tour about but these are
03:20these are places of high emotion anyway because of what's happening on stage.
03:23People come out crying, laughing, there's a whole range of emotions and there's a
03:29theory, a supernatural theory called stone tape theory. So going back to a
03:39time before I was in the role I'm in now, I was locking up this area of the
03:43building and when we're working on stage door we have an alarm panel. When we put
03:49our fob on that it tells us which points around the building are unlocked, those
03:52have to be shut in order for us to lock the building. So on this particular
03:57occasion it was a get out so the show was being taken down and moved on to the
04:00next venue. All the crew had left, the show was gone and I was on my own. I put
04:06my fob on the panel and it said the amp room was open. Now the amp room is just
04:10through this door here. It's literally just a little white box on the door
04:15frame and a little white box on the door itself, those have to be connected in
04:18order to be able to set it up. So it was open, that's quite normal for a get out.
04:22I came up here, shut the door, it's a big big heavy door and continued my lock up.
04:28When I got back down to stage door I completed my final checks, paperwork,
04:32ordered my taxi and went to set the alarm. When I put my fob on the alarm it
04:36told me that the amp room was open even though I'd just been up here 20 minutes
04:42previous to shut it. And I thought to myself, my mind didn't instantly go to
04:47anything supernatural, I just thought I've not done my job properly, it happens.
04:51So I came up here, by this point in complete darkness because I'd already
04:55turned off the lights, I could only see as far as my torch beam would allow
04:58which didn't even stretch to the back of the balcony here. Got back to this door
05:01here and the door was wide open. Now if it were just sort of two I would think
05:06maybe I've not done it properly. It was wide open. Now I don't have my keys on me
05:11so I can't show you the door but the door has a door closure on it so it swings
05:14shut. If you open it and let go it swings shut. The door was wide open against the
05:19wall, it was pushed wide open to the wall. There was nothing holding it open, there
05:23was nothing propped underneath the door, nothing like that. As I reached out, I got to
05:27the door, as I reached out to put my hand on the handle to shut it, it started
05:31closing towards me and slammed shut in my face. I was like, I'm done up here. Came
05:36back along this little platform here. Now I set a lot of store by gut feelings and
05:42how I feel in certain situations. When I got back into this area I got such an
05:47overwhelming sense of, nothing nasty, nothing insidious or anything like that
05:54but there was a sense of mischief. Like I'd been brought back up here because
05:59somebody was playing a game with me.