News, sport and entertainment from the Bournemouth Echo and Dorset Echo.

Phantoms of the Opera...

From the Echo, first published Thursday 30th Oct 2003.

EVEN during daylight hours the Opera House is a spooky place. It's a nightclub so, of course, the walls are painted black and it's always pretty dark inside, but there's something about the building in Boscombe precinct which made me feel uncomfortable even when I popped in to talk to staff on a Thursday afternoon.

Perhaps it's because there's so much history contained within those walls, as the Opera House started life in 1896 as the Grand Pavilion Theatre.

The basic fabric of the building has barely changed since then - the stage, proscenium arch (painted a ghostly grey), balcony, ornate staircase and bench seats are still there - and it's easy to imagine the days when opera and even circus shows were performed inside to huge crowds.

Down in the basement you can still see the pens where the circus animals were kept and tunnels used for bringing the animals through from outside.

A climb up some back stairs and onto a ladder will bring you out into the upper balcony - now out of bounds to the public - from where a young girl is said to have fallen to her death not long after the theatre opened.

Perhaps she's the girl whom many of today's Opera House staff claim to have seen while alone in the building, particularly around the bar and dancefloor upstairs in the area known as Benedict's.

Assistant manager Andy Smith says: "About a year and a half ago on a Monday morning I arrived and unlocked the chains on the door.

"There was no one else here and I went straight up to Benedict's.

"I went into the washroom and the figure of a girl was walking towards me. She stopped in the doorway, looked at me and then carried on walking towards the bar - and then I ran."

Cleaner Tony Lundberg has been working at the Opera House for 20 years and is convinced the ghost of a young woman haunts the building.

He tells me of a time when he was alone inside and a glass came at him from nowhere before shattering into thousands of tiny pieces.

And Tony is adamant he actually walked into the ghost one summer's night last year.

"We get 2,000 people in some nights and it gets very, very hot, so we were all feeling really hot and sweaty. I was walking through from the balcony to Benedict's and I walked into her by mistake.

"I knew it was her because it was like stepping into a fridge - the cold was just indescribable."

He adds: "There's only one ghost and it's a woman of about 35. She wanders down only one staircase and goes between the area of the balcony and Benedict's.

"There's been some really weird stuff happening, but you can't make the ghost come out to order - she comes out to play when she wants to play."

Maybe that's why, despite my constant pleading, the ghost didn't show herself to my friend and I when we spent Monday night in the eerie darkness of the Opera House after closing time.

We even consulted a guide to essential ghost hunting equipment, which recommended taking a coin, a piece of paper, and a pen. The idea is that you draw around the coin, leave it for a while in the area where the ghost is supposed to be, and if you return to find your coin has been moved, you know the ghost exists.

Well, we left the coin on the bar in Benedict's, but it didn't budge an inch.

We heard lots of strange sounds - scraping, tapping and creaking - as we sat in the pitch black on the balcony, but old, empty buildings at night do make noises.

The only noise we couldn't quite explain was the sound of a distant door being shaken three times in the early hours.

Nathan Owen, stage manager, says he didn't believe in ghosts before he joined the staff at the Opera House, but now he's convinced they exist.

"I was standing in Benedict's and I turned around because I heard a noise. The next thing I knew there was an image in the mirror of someone on the far wall - I just ran.

"There's definitely something about this place that's not right."

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