Becky in the Media - "The Ghost Hunters" - Spirit & Destiny Magazine, Feburary 2006
Text Transcript
The Ghost Hunters
This month, our ghost busting team lift the curtain on the ghostly goings-on backstage at one of London's spookiest West Theatres.
Psychic medium Becky Walsh, a paranormal expert from the College of Psychic Studies in Kensington, London, has teamed up with one of her most promising students, Ian John Shiillito. Both previously worked as stage managers and so they know all about the trapdoors & winding staircases that make up the hidden workings of London's legendary theatres. Here at Fortune Theatre, Becky uses her psychic powers to tune in to spirits, while Ian interviews staff & digs deep into the buildings history. Together they attempts to bring the past to life.
What better place to go looking for ghosts than the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden, where the spine-chilling ghost story, The Woman In Black, has been running for 17 years. A theatre where it seems the ghosts are not just confined to the stage. A number of actors & crew have complained about a stench of rotting flesh coming from beneath the stage. And one actor was frozen with fear after reportedly seeing a fellow thespian walk into the arms of a ghostly woman. Another female ghost was spotted avidly watching the performance from the comfort of a theatre box.
Becky Says
Standing in the foyer I feel someone's eyes boring into my back. I'm aware of a female presence behind us. And as we climb the stairs to the upper circle she follows & then sits down a few rows behind us. I'm not yet sure if she's connected to the theatre, so I tune in to the building & try & get a clearer picture and go through it history in my mind.
I see an image of an old-style black gangster car. Then I become aware of an accident and somebody desperately trying to get to work. I sense this person was running late for their job at the theatre and seems anxious about getting to work even though he or she has crossed over. This appears to be a relatively recent event, so I'm going to focus further back& try to pick up residual images from the buildings past. Suddenly, I'm seeing a big riot, with lots of people shouting and fighting, and then a fire engulfing the building. I think that this building was on this site before the theatre was built. Now I've got a spirit lady called Mary coming through. She says that she started coming to the theatre to look after it when it closed own due to lots of people contracting a serious illness. She kept coming in & cleaning up, even though she was risking her own life to maintain the building. Sometimes she'd stay the night here. I feel that she's been coming back to check on the theatre long after death.
Next, Ian & I sit in theatre box A to see what I pick up there. Immediately I tune in to a female energy. I sense an old lady, with a strict, matronly personality, who speaks very properly. As I start to talk about what I feel, my voice changes. I feel the need to sit upright and talk in a clipped, posh voice. Ian says,” You’re being very curt. Why are you talking to me like that?" This spirits energy is so strong it's starting to blend with my own energy & become part of me. I ask her questions in my head; "What did you do in life?", "How did you die?" and "What period are you from?" Usually, I can get lots of information from a spirit this way, but strangely, there's no response. Then I ask "What do you do of an evening?" That perks her up and she is telling me, in my mind, that she loves watching the show & being part of the play. Next I feel the beginnings of transfiguration, when a spirit uses a mediums body - like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost - and I go into a mild trance. Her energy is powerful, & I know she wants to enter me and talk through my mouth. "You're not coming in", I tell her. I sense she wants to lay her energy over mine, and if I let this happen, I would take on her features & characteristics. "Ok, I'll allow you to do that" I say. Ian stares at me in disbelief saying "Your face has change. Your cheekbones have moved upwards, your eyes are staring and you look like you're wearing stage make-up!"
After a while it is clear no more information is coming through, so we move downstairs to the stalls. I'm shocked when I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, as there is a gap between my front teeth, which wasn't there before & I have an unfamiliar look on my face. She's still laying her energy over mine. I sense that she is not a dangerous presence but I tell her to go once and for all. I feel her leave & then start to yawn, feeling incredibly drained and sleepy. She's been using my energy to come to life and I think she's been using the energy of the theatre to exist. It's strange how she could only talk about the play and had no other memories of anything else. This makes me think she's not the ghost of someone who once existed, but something called a thought form, which can be conjured up by intense emotions - like those of an audience who are watching a thriller.
There have been no other strange happenings in the theatre, so we continue with our investigation. Underneath the stage, where the actors can cross from one side to another without the audience seeing, I get taken back to a time when this area was filled with gangsters. I start to feel a tightness around my throat and then I see someone having their throat slit! Walking off to the right wing of the stage I'm stopped dead in my tracks by the sense of a strong presence. It's an older gentleman. He was probably one of the actors who played the older man in a play at some time. He has a very grumpy , aggressive energy, which would make anyone working for a long time in this wing feel uncomfortable. But my sense of him keeps being overridden by more recent images of the car accident that the first spirit I encountered was trying to show me when we first entered the theatre. I cant ignore it, so I tune in to this female presence. I feel that this is someone who had strong connections to the world of theatre. Suddenly, the temperature drops right down, and Ian says he can see a thin wisp of a gossamer-like shadow floating just behind my shoulder. It's the woman who was killed in eh car accident I keep seeing. She just wants to tell me that she's fine now and that everyone who knows her, mustn't worry about her.
Ian Says
After Becky and I visited the theatre, I researched its history, reading documents and looking at old maps of the site. I was looking for any links between the paranormal clues Becky picked and what's already known about the place. The Fortune Theatre was the first theatre to be built in London after the First World War, & it opened to the public in 1924. It's rumoured to be on or very near the site of the Elizabethan Cockpit theatre, a cockfighting arena which dates back to 1609. As the theatre industry began in earnest, it soon evolved into a "playhouse theatre" the very first on Drury Lane.
Becky sensed rioting and unrest which would have been in keeping with this rough & ready neighbourhood in the 17th century. And she saw a fire, which did indeed destroy the place. Not long after its transformation into a theatre, it was burned down by rioters. It was rebuilt in 1618 and renamed The Phoenix. Mary, the caretaker or cleaner who came through to Becky, could have looked after the theatre during the Great Plague in 1665. Like she said, the theatre would have been closed due to public illness. In fact, there was a plague pit outside the stage door where they would have hastily buried bodies to try & stop the disease from spreading. This could also account for the mysterious smell of rotting flesh that some actors have complained about. In the early 18th century, the area became home to gambling dens & brothels, so it's no wonder Becky sensed violent acts.
One hundred years later the site was home to the Albion Tavern, the famous drinking hole for Victorian actors, which would add to the feeling of drama inside the theatre today. Intriguingly, there have been lots of sightings in the theatre box where Becky sensed the female energy that wanted to take over her body. Actor Sebastian Harcombe, who recently starred in the play, saw a grey lady appear many times. She would look at the audience and watch the whole show. And an usher in the upper circle once noticed a black shadow in the box, which took this woman’s form. She's wearing a Victorian dress with her hair up in a bun. This apparition just sat and watched the show until the usher left the auditorium. She mentioned it to a worker at the front of the theatre, who admitted they had seen a shadowy figure in the box too. Amanda Sim, who works the stage door, backs this up with a sighting of a half woman/half shadow elsewhere in the theatre.
A very scary sighting of this woman was in the right wing of the stage. An actor saw a ghostly woman in black standing with her arms wide open. To his horror, the actor walking in front of him didn’t see her & walked right through her. He stood dumbstruck on stage not wanting to walk into the ghost, until she disappeared. The right wing of the stage is also where a company member smelt pipe smoke, which could have been the old gentlemen Becky sensed. One for the former stage managers felt so uneasy in this part of the theatre she refused to be here alone.
It seems probable that the spooky apparition of the woman in black is in fact an incredible projection of the fear of everyone who watches the play. But there are lots of other ghosts who have attached them selves to this ancient site, too.
Interestingly one of the photographers said she could relate to the spirit of the woman who'd died in the car crash. A friend of hers had died in a car crash on the way to work here.