Hull New Theatre opened in 1939, replacing an earlier Theatre Royal that had stood on the same Kingston Square site, and it has hosted touring performers ranging from Laurel and Hardy through to, according to local telling, some connection to Charles Dickens dating back to the venue's earlier incarnation on the same ground. Theatre staff over the decades since have nicknamed a recurring presence Charlie, blamed for knocking on dressing room doors when nobody is actually there to have knocked, moving small props around between performances, and generally causing minor, good-natured disruption backstage rather than anything genuinely threatening to those who work there.
Sightings and reports are not confined purely to the backstage areas either: a woman in old-fashioned dress has reportedly been seen in the Dress Circle, and Royal Box B has built up its own separate reputation for unexplained cold spots and a persistent sense of being watched during otherwise quiet performances, when the box itself sits empty of any living occupant.
As with most working-theatre ghosts recorded throughout this collection, none of this activity is tied to any specific death or named individual, and the stories function as much as genuine backstage folklore, passed carefully between successive generations of theatre staff over the decades, as they do anything resembling a formally documented haunting with real evidential weight behind it.
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