Chilling encounters with Albert, the ghost of the Edinburgh Playhouse

THERE'S a ghost light currently casting an eerie glow into the shadows of The Playhouse auditorium.

Pam Aldred on the haunted Level Six of the Edinburgh Playhouse in search of Albert the theatre's ghost

Like theatres everywhere right now, the Greenside Place venue is in limbo, between shows, closed until further notice due to the pandemic.

Opened in 1929 as a ‘state of the art cinema’, The Playhouse has had periods of darkness throughout its lifetime, and like many, it comes with strange tales of supernatural happenings and ghostly manifestations. In fact, of all the Capital’s theatres, The Playhouse is perhaps the most conducive to such paranormal activity.

It is built on the site of what is believed to have been a 14th century open-air theatre, the remains of which are said to lie deep beneath the venue’s car park. Indeed the entire Greenside valley was gifted to the people of Edinburgh by King James II of Scotland in 1456 as a ground for jousting and entertainment.

Pam Aldred of the Edinburgh Playhouse in search of Albert the theatre ghost

Around the same time, it also became home to a more gruesome spectacle when, as local folklore has it, a colonel from the King’s Army met his fate in the hangman’s noose for attempting to leave the Capital, then a walled city, to visit his lover in the borders. Could he be one of the restless spirits that continue to haunt the area?

He’s certainly not the best known. In recent times, that honour has gone to Albert, reputedly the original stage door keeper of The Playhouse who, it is said, died alone in the building late one winter’s night. Albert’s ghostly existence first came to light in the 1950s when, as one version of the story goes, police were called to a reported break-in.

The young officer dispatched to investigate found the stage door open and went inside to check and secure the building. On Level Six, he met an old man who introduced himself as Albert, the stage door keeper. Have completed a fruitless search, the constable took his leave and headed back to Gayfield Square police station. The old man assured him he would lock up the premises.

The next day the policeman called in to The Playhouse to ensure there had been no further problems. He explained a younger guy looking after the stage door that he had been called out the night before and spoke to Albert. The ashen faced stage door man explained to him that Albert had died some time previous and that the theatre had been empty all night.

In another telling of the tale, the Constable returns to Gayfield to discover none of his superiors have any knowledge of any call to The Playhouse. The story of Albert is one that has intrigued me for more than 20 years now, ever since I embarked on a ghost hunt one evening with Pam Aldred, now the venue’s marketing manager.

One evening back in 1999, we toured what is Europe’s largest proscenium arch theatre in search of the ghost that has terrified staff and visitors alike over the years since his first appearance. By the end of the tour, we would have experienced our own catalogue of unexplained events.

Talking to staff at the time, the stories of Albert’s haunting were legion. His successor at the time, the latest in a long line of stage door keepers, Keith Donald, certainly needed no convincing that there is something unnatural lurking in the cavernous bowels and labyrinthine corridors of the building.

He told us, “One night, I’d gone all the way up the North Tower and across the stage and, as usual, my dog Meg was with me. I was just about to go up the steps of the South Tower when I realised Meg wasn’t with me. I looked back and she was just sitting there, staring. I went back and tried to encourage her but she wouldn’t move. So I put her lead on her and tried to get her to come with me but she literally went rigid, looked at me, then to the top of the stairs, and then back at me as she started moaning and whining. That was enough for me, the South Tower didn’t get checked that night.”

Spooked, Keith was glad to be away from the tower, but that wasn’t his only otherworldly experience... and this one proved far more sinister. “

“One day, I’d just stepped into the foyer and just felt something. There was no way to describe it other than I knew I was being watched.”

In those days, all the lights in the theatre were kept on overnight. What happens next, Keith described as “the most frightening experience of his life.”

“There are two sets of doors from the foyer to the auditorium and there is a light between them,” he explained. “As I approached the first set of doors I realised it was dark between them. I went to investigate but as I got closer, the light suddenly came on. Chills began to run down my spine as I realised that the darkness which had blocked the light had moved into the auditorium. The closer I got to it, the further it receded. Terrified by this time I was determined to find out what it was so forced myself to go into the auditorium.”

Once inside, Keith couldn’t believe what he saw: “The stage right box was lit as normal, but the stage left box was shrouded, at about five per cent of it’s usual output and I got the awful feeling that something didn’t want me to be there.”

Supporting Keith’s claim that Albert likes to roam his domain in peace when The Playhouse is deserted, then maintenance manager Billy Capener told us: “I remember once I got a call to fix a leak on Level Nine - that’s basically an attic that runs across the auditorium. No one goes there except us.

“When I got there, both manual and emergency lighting wouldn’t work so, getting my torch out, I found the leak. The minute I knelt down to fix it I had this weird feeling that someone was leaning over me, crushing me, and watching what I was doing... I’ve never fixed a leak so fast in my life. When I got back to the office I asked who had reported the leak, to this day, we haven’t found out.” Sound familiar?

Billy’s tale is not unusual. Over the years there have been reports of unexplained noises, of lights mysteriously turning themselves on, of a tape recorder flying, unaided, six feet across the stage, of taps turning themselves on and even one of staff holding a seance to see if Albert would give them the lottery numbers.

The ghostly stage door keeper was also seen by a member of a team of ‘ghost-busters’ who spent a week investigating the venue. On his way out of the building after what had been a fruitless endeavour, he had got lost and had to ask for directions to the exit from an old man he met hanging about backstage. When his fellow investigators heard this they went straight back in and set up again, they were the only people in the building that night.

If Keith’s dog Meg had not been happy about going up the South Tower, she wasn’t the only canine to sense something she didn’t like. As then staff member Penny Docherty recalled as she related an incident ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1997.

“We were talking to the police security advisors the night before the summit when a call came over the radio. The police sniffer dogs had been in all night clearing each level for bombs. The call was to tell the Inspector that they couldn’t clear Level Six as the dogs wouldn’t enter it. We joked that it was Albert, but the freaky thing was that when we explained, we were taken seriously. The army dog-handler was called and Army dogs cleared Level Six.

“Jokingly, I asked if this was because Army dogs were ‘harder’ than police jobs... ‘No,’ came the reply ‘but they’re based at the Castle so they are used to spooks and spirits. Put in that matter of fact way, it was quite chilling.”

Although sceptical as we set off on our tour of Albert's haunts, half way through Pam and I too began to wonder if there might just be something too the tales. The first signs came when my tape recorder, which was working perfectly until then, taped nothing but static. Just a technical hitch, I thought at the time, although Pam did joke that it might be Albert at play. Incidentally, after, leaving the theatre, it again worked as normal.

Starting again, this time we played safe and I took notes as we explored Albert’s lair. However, as we reached the infamous Level Six, which as Pam had promised did indeed have an oppressive atmosphere (“as if the air is heavy and pressing down on you”), the pen stopped working. The refill had burst. Was Albert indeed up to his tricks?

As we looked back over the auditorium before returning to the foyer, that certainly seemed to be the case. There, by the old brass radiator where my pen had exploded, was a darkness, an inexplicable shadow.

“It’ll be Albert,” said Pam, “he’s often spotted working on the radiators.”

So, when The Playhouse reopens after the pandemic, if you feel a sudden chill as you are crossing Level Six heading to the Balcony... you may just be in the presence of Albert.

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