Ever had a supernatural experience? I have, or have I?

Hallowe'en, when thoughts turn to spooks, scares and tales of the undiscovered country, I have to confess though, fascinated as I am by the unexplained, I’ve yet to be convinced that unsettled spirits of the past roam their old haunts long after their physical bodies have rotted away.

Haunted stage

That doesn't mean I’ve not had the odd unnerving experience in my time. In the days before caller ID I could freak out the person on the other end of an incoming call by greeting them by name. Don't ask me how, I just could. It became my party piece.

Then there was the occasion a friend's mother popped into the post office I was working in to supplement my then freelance-lifestyle. I was surprised, she lived on the other side of the country. Switching off my service light to call her over and save her queuing, I looked up to see her leaving. At the door she stopped, turned, smiled and waved. I waved back, then, for some reason, decided to phone my friend. They answered, clearly upset. They’d just had a call from the local hospital to tell them their mother, who had been ill, had just passed away. I've never even tried to explain that one away. Had she appeared to say goodbye? Or was it a coincidence that, at that very moment, her doppleganger had dropped in to randomly wave at me? I'll never know.

However, perhaps my strangest experience happened late one night in the Little Lyceum. A theatre torn down in the late-1980s to make way for Saltire Court, it sat on the same plot of land The Traverse does now. When I appeared in productions there in the mid-80s, it was already in a pretty dilapidated state. Its long, thin, glass-fronted foyer and old style box office was in need of some TLC, as was the black-box horse shoe auditorium. Stairs to the right of the foyer led up to the Green Room, public toilets and a door that served as a portal to backstage and the dimly-lit balcony that ran around the performance space and led to the dressing rooms and backstage.

On the very last night I was ever in the building, knowing it was set for demolition, I decided to take one last tour… at about two in the morning. The place was in darkness but for the glow of the emergency exit signs. I wandered the balcony, stopping in the middle with a view over the auditorium and down onto the stage. As I did there was a shift... the hubbub from the last stragglers in the Green Room faded to be replaced by a silence so complete it was unnerving. In that moment, every line I’d ever uttered on that stage was suddenly in my head and I could hear a chorus of declaiming voices as the temperature dropped and a dark shape suddenly appeared to stare up at me from below. A chill hit, then as quickly as it appeared, the shape was gone. I get a shiver down the spine even now when I write about it.

Paranormal experience or one too many at the party? Maybe a bit of both.

The strange things is, just about everyone I know has a story like that. Don’t they?

Happy Hallowe’en.

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