The Gaiety Theatre on the Douglas promenade is a Victorian showpiece, rebuilt by the theatre architect Frank Matcham and restored in the late twentieth century. Like many old theatres it has collected ghosts, and in this case four of them are usually listed.
The most famous sits in the stalls. The lady in seat B14 is described as an unassuming elderly woman, like somebody's grandmother, who watches performances, sometimes a whole show and sometimes only the parts she likes. The story attached to her is that she lost her husband in the First World War. The seat is said to be left empty for her when possible. She is also said to walk through walls when she leaves.
The others are a woman in black who moves along the stairways and corridors, a man, sometimes described as dressed in grey, who sits in one of the boxes smoking a cigar and then gets up and goes through the wall, and an unseen helper backstage who hands props to actors or guides them onto the stage in the dark.
Every version of these stories that could be found says that the ghosts have been seen by many people, and none names any of them or gives a year. The Gaiety's ghosts are part of the building's lore, retold on its tours and in the local press, and are tagged here as thin.
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