How haunted is the Leeds Grand Theatre?

It may be spooky season but eerie sights, sounds and smells have been reported at the Leeds Grand Theatre all year round.

Transcript

00:00In the theatre we really, really love stories and we love watching stories and we love telling stories and we love hearing stories.

00:07So everybody at the theatre has a different ghost story and we love to share them and all chat about our different experiences.

00:14When this theatre was first built the boxes were more of a place to be seen in rather than to see in.

00:20And on one particular night we believe that a figure from the past wanted to be seen again.

00:25It has been reported that people have been able to see a man smoking cigars in this box.

00:32Although he's never been found or tracked down.

00:35For a long time there were accounts of audience members seeing a waiter walking where we are stood right now

00:40across this back wall here and then through the wall disappearing.

00:45When we did our transformation work in 2006 they recovered archive images of this room

00:50and were reminded, discovered, that once upon a time there was a door here to the bar.

00:56So this wall where people had watched this waiter disappear for years before

01:00actually did used to be the door to where he probably worked.

01:03Up on the balcony level there lives the Lavender Lady.

01:06She really likes opera.

01:08So the story goes that if you smell lavender after an opera it means she's really enjoyed the show.

01:14So it's a good thing when the Lavender Lady comes.

01:17She's a very friendly ghost.

01:19On this particular night it was a man working on stage door.

01:22As he was doing his final checks he could see a light.

01:25He walked into the almost pitch black auditorium and looked up

01:29and saw that the light in this box, box B, was still on

01:34despite having disconnected the electricity to the whole building.

01:38We've come round the corner in the basement and we're now in the old horse stables

01:41that were then also used as air raid shelters.

01:43I would easily say this is the spookiest part of the entire building and we are leaving very quickly.

01:48In the holidays we do school holiday activities called LHT on Rats.

01:52We do spooky drama days.

01:55So if you have a young person who's interested in the ghost stories of the grand

01:59they should definitely come along.