Kai Roberts, writing for Spooky Isles, describes the Midland Hotel as a classic Victorian railway hotel, built in 1890 on Cheapside beside Forster Square station. In October 1905 the actor Sir Henry Irving and his manager, Bram Stoker, were staying there while Irving played the title role in Tennyson's Becket at the Theatre Royal on Manningham Lane.
On 13 October Irving collapsed on stage after a stroke. He was taken to the hotel lobby, where he died. The death itself is well documented and is the factual core of the story.
According to Roberts, Irving's ghost has since been seen at both the Theatre Royal, which was demolished in 1990, and at the Midland Hotel, in the room in which he had slept before that last performance. The apparition is said typically to appear as an incorporeal figure that coalesces from a haze of something like smoke.
No witness names or dates are given for the sightings, so the haunting is a traditional attachment to a real and dramatic death rather than a documented investigation.
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