Drury Lane Ghosts

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This episode was originally
gonna be another edition of Ghosts of the British Isles.

(00:22):
This sort of still is, but it ended up being
all about specifically theatrical ghosts. As Andrew Dixon wrote in
an article for The Guardian in twenty fifteen, quote, there
is barely a theater in Britain that doesn't claim a
resident spook. History is littered with stories of phantoms, glimpsed
in the orchestra stalls or on stage, presences felt but unseen.

(00:45):
And so this particular episode is about theatrical ghosts. But
theatrical ghosts associated with one place, and that place is
specific and it has its own interesting history. That is
the Theatre Royal drury Lane. This theater is known by
a lot of names. Theater Royal drury Lane is one,
and perhaps its most accurate one, but it is more

(01:07):
often called the drury Lane Theater, sometimes just the Dreary,
et cetera. I picked this one because it's considered the
most haunted. But the thing is The ghost stories that
it has are many in number, but there's not a
lot of documentation about these sightings. So I thought, first
we would talk about this theater's history because it's really interesting.

(01:29):
So this is one for the theater kids in the crowd,
and then we are going to talk about some of
the ghosts that are associated with it, including one whose
ghost is a previous podcast subject, and I don't think
we talked about him being a haunting entity on that one.
I went back and checked and heard nothing about it,
so I don't think we did. We're like augmenting that story. Yeah,
we did mention this theater a lot in it, which

(01:51):
is why as I was reading through that line, I
kept being like, why, why is this familiar? Yeah? I
kept looking back through stuff and then went uh oh yeah, okay, okay.
So the Theater Royal Drury Lane in London is the
oldest theater of the city that's still in regular use.
There've actually been multiple buildings on the site over the years,

(02:13):
but they all operated under the same charter. Because of
this theater's age, it is home to a lot of
ghost stories. The theater is part of the City of Westminster.
That's a Borough of London and part of the city's
historic West End theater district. The name is actually a
little confusing because the theater's address and main entrance are

(02:36):
not on Drury Lane. They're on Catherine Street. Dury Lane
is one street over at the back of the theater.
The name may have come from another building that was
near the theater in its first incarnation, or because of
a renaming of the streets. One other theory is that
the name came from a previous theater run by the

(02:56):
Drury's first proprietor, which was and Drew Lane. The original
Theatre Royal Drury Lane opened on May seventh, sixteen sixty three.
It was built by Thomas Killigrew under a royal charter.
That charter was part of a rebuilding of the arts
in England that followed the Puritan into Regnum, that period
from sixteen forty nine to sixteen sixty when England was

(03:20):
a republic and not governed by a monarch. In the
time preceding the interregnum, the theater had been largely sponsored
by the Stuart Court, and when we say the theater
we mean the theater scene of London, not this theater.
After Charles the First was executed, an event that could
make a very good future episode. The Protestants sold his

(03:40):
art collection and banned theater for a variety of reasons
you will see summed up in different ways. When the
executed King's son, Charles the Second, regained the throne in
sixteen sixty, he was eager to re establish the cultural
institutions the Puritans had closed down. A charming contempt. Account

(04:00):
of the granting of this charter and another reads quote.
King Charles the Second, at his restoration granted two patents,
one to Sir William Davenant and the other to Thomas
Killigrew Esquire and their several heirs and assigns forever for
the forming of two distinct companies of comedians. The first

(04:22):
were called the King's Servants, enacted at the Theatre Royal
in Drury Lane, and the other the Duke's Company, who
acted at the Duke's Theater in Dorset Garden. About ten
of the King's Company were on the Royal household establishment,
having each ten yards of scarlet cloth with a proper
quantity of lace, allowed them for liveries, and in their

(04:43):
warrants from the Lord Chamberlain were styled Gentlemen of the
Great Chamber. Whether the like appointments were extended to the
Duke's Company, I am not certain. Can I just tell
you how much I love the idea of having a
job or title where they're like, here's your bolt, so
a fabric, go have your clothes custom made. That sounds dreamy.

(05:04):
But to go back to the theater. Killigrew was a dramatist.
He wrote the plays The Parsons, Wedding, the Prisoners and
Clara Scilla, and the theater company that Killigrew founded was
known as the King's Men in addition to the King's Servants,
and the theater opened with the nickname the King's Playhouse.
That theater, which costa reported two four hundred pounds to

(05:25):
build at the time, so that was pretty expensive, staged
The Humorous Lieutenant, a tragic comedy by John Fletcher, as
its opening play. The theater actually closed for a couple
of years, for sixteen sixty five and sixteen sixty six,
but once it reopened it had a lot of success
for several years, but then that success was halted on

(05:45):
January twenty fifth, sixteen seventy two, when the theater burned
to the ground. The theater was rebuilt in sixteen seventy four,
though its footprint changed as it was expanded considerably. It
is believed, although not conclusively documented, that Sir Christopher Wren
may have been the architect responsible for its construction. When

(06:06):
the new four thousand pound facility opened on March twenty six,
sixteen seventy four, Killigrew stayed on as Master of the Rebels.
In sixteen eighty two, the two companies that had been
formed in the sixteen sixty two charters were merged into one,
and Killigrew was still involved with this newly formed group
until his death, that was on March nineteenth, sixteen eighty three.

(06:30):
One of Killigrew's most significant contributions to the theater was
the use of women actors instead of troops consisting exclusively
of men. Samuel Peeps noted in a diary entry from
before the opening of the Jury Theater play staged by Killigrew,
of which he says, quote and here the first time
that ever I saw women come upon the stage. Killigrew

(06:53):
continued this practice at Dury Lane. Yeah, that was not
common practice yet. From seventeen ten to seventeen thirty three,
the Drury Lane Theater was wildly successful, and it was
home to the earliest productions of a lot of famous plays.
The credit for this success is often given to the
way it was run, which was the work of three men,
Robert Wilkes, Collie Sibber and Thomas Dogget. It was actually

(07:16):
sibbers autobiography that we read from in the account of
how the two charters were granted earlier. These men had
all been very closely tied to the theater for some time.
Early publications of the manuscript for the Humorous Lieutenant Liz
Cibber is one of the performers, and in seventeen thirteen
Barton Booth joined the three man management team when Thomas

(07:37):
Dogget retired. But then in the seventeen thirties, when Sibbers retired,
the theater was taken over by Charles Fleetwood. Unlike his predecessor's,
Fleetwood was not a good manager. Under his leadership, a
series of events that came to be known as the
Drury Lane Riots took place. A letter from Horace Walpole,

(07:59):
who we've talked about on the show before, to Horace Mann,
who I don't think we've talked about on the show
for mentions being at one of these riots. Quote. The
town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes
off the stage. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has
omitted nothing to support them, as they support his house.

(08:21):
About ten days ago he let into the pit great
numbers of bear garden bruisers, that is the term, to
knock down everybody that hissed the pit. Rallied their forces
and drove them out. I was sitting very quietly in
the sideboxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain
flew up and discovered the whole stage filled with blaggards,

(08:43):
armed with bludgeons and clubs to menace the audience. This
raised the greatest uproar, and among the rest who flew
into a passion. But your friend, the philosopher in short,
one of the actors, advancing to the front of the
stage to make an apology for the manager. He had
scarcely begun to say, mister Fleetwood, when your friend, with

(09:04):
the most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out,
he is an impudent rascal. The whole pit huzzad and
repeated the words, only think of my being a popular orator.
I just think that's adorable. I really loved reading a
lot of mariswaalbole stuff. When I was working on that,

(09:26):
I stood up and yelled, it's just so charming. The
cause of the riots is often choked up to rising
ticket prices, but modern scholarship makes the case that it
was really much more complex than that. Part of it
the inclusion of pantomimes instead of higher grade of theater,

(09:46):
which not everybody liked. Fleetwood had been steadily losing public
trust for years, and in the year before the riots,
the actors had a conflict with Fleetwood when he refused
to guarantee their wages for the season. The actors had
staged a walkout over treatment ten years earlier, in seventeen
thirty three, but in seventeen forty four, when this was

(10:07):
going on, their only recourse was to file a legal action.
They were no longer legally allowed to form their own
theater if they left this one. Although the actors did
lose their legal filing against Fleetwood, the whole thing left
Fleetwood's already weak reputation with the public just completely ruined.
After the seventeen forty four riots, he sold his stake

(10:29):
in the theater and left the country settling in France.
Will continue to discuss the many people who managed the
Theatre Royal Drury Lane, but we will first take a
quick sponsor break. In seventeen forty seven, the theater changed

(10:52):
hands yet again, to run under the management of David Garrick.
This was another period of incredible success and credit praise.
Garrick's Drury Lane run lasted three decades, and he appeared
in many of the venue's productions during that time. Before
he retired in seventeen seventy six, he gave a farewell
performance in a play called The Wonder In. This last

(11:15):
show for the beloved actor and manager was so anticipated
that it seemed that all of London showed up. There
was not enough space in the theater to accommodate the crowd.
Accounts note that the staging was changed that night so
that Garrick was alone on stage during his final lines
as he bid farewell to his life on the stage.
In seventeen seventy six, Richard Brinsley Sheridan took the helm

(11:39):
of the Jury Theater and he continued its run of excellence.
It was during his tenure there that he wrote and
premiered The School for scandal, but though the quality of
the plays was good, the quality of the building was not.
Over the years, a lot of problems had cropped up
in the theater and its age eventually surpassed management's ability

(12:00):
to keep up. In seventeen ninety one, the theater closed
temporarily in the building. This was, as you recall, the
second one was demolished. For the next several years, the
company continued to stage plays, but they were performed a
little less than a mile away at Theatre Royal Haymarket,
while the new building was erected at the Drury Lane location.

(12:22):
The third building for the Drury was designed by architect
Henry Holland and his project started right after the second
was torn down. When it opened in April seventeen ninety four,
it had this beautiful blue and white interior color scheme
described as just being very richly decorated. And this new
theater was once again bigger and could hold three thousand,

(12:44):
six hundred eleven audience members. This theater was built with
the latest and safety materials and was touted as being fireproof.
It even had a water tank series mounted above the
curtain to rapidly douse any flames on stage. But although
those fireproof claims were inaccurate, which is a sad theme

(13:05):
and supposedly fireproof theaters, it burned down in eighteen oh
nine and the Troop once again had to relocate to
the Haymarket then the Lyceum Theater, while the Jury was
rebuilt for the fourth time. One of the most delightful
aspects in my opinion of the fourth construction project was
that the architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt published a book about

(13:26):
its design titled Observations on the Design for the Theater
Royal Drury Lane as executed in eighteen twelve, accompanied by plans,
elevation and sections of the same. And the reason it's
delightful is that this book is available online. It is
something anybody can look at and will link it in
the show notes. It walks through the whole process from

(13:47):
the formation of a joint stock company and subscription sales
to fund the project, and Wyatt is very clear about
the challenge of this building project, noting quote the pecuniary
embarrassments of the property were at that time so great
that considerable doubts were entertained whether it would ever be
practicable to surmount those embarrassments. But they did get the

(14:10):
money together, and this fourth Theater is often referred to
as the Modern Theater. It's the one that is still
standing today. It took several years for the Fourth Theater
to be erected, but in eighteen twelve the jury opened again.
This marked the start of a really exciting time in
the theater, as the new facility was built to handle
large sets and could achieve more stunning visual effects. Five

(14:33):
years after the Modern Theater opened, the stage was lit
by gas lamps, making it the first theater in Britain
to do so. This new era headlined Edmund Keene as
its lead actor, and it did quite well for a while.
Keene's death is very closely tied to the theater, as
he was in the middle of a performance of Othello
in eighteen thirty three when he collapsed on stage, and

(14:57):
at that point his son Charles, who was playing Iago,
caught his father as he crumpled. Edmund reportedly said there
on stage, Oh God, I am dying. Speak to them, Charles.
He never recovered and he died a few weeks later.
After this, the theater again went through a rough phase
for the four decades after Keene's frightening collapse on stage.

(15:20):
The theater really didn't have a real success. In eighteen
nineteen it had been leased by Stephen Price, a theater
empresario from New York, and after he gave it up
in eighteen thirty, the least kind of had a revolving
door of managers. Yeah, I was like, I'm not going
to go through this whole list in the episode, because
it's literally like from April of this year to November

(15:42):
of this year, this guy tried it, got scared and left,
and then the next guy just tried to make a
quick buck and then he was out, and then the
next guy wanted to do something big but didn't like
it was. It's a very sad quick list of no accomplishments.
In eighteen seventy nine, Augustus Harris assumed management of the
Drury and he really invigorated the lagging space. Under Harris,

(16:03):
melodrama reigned supreme and it became one of the most
popular entertainments of London. After Harris, the Drury once again
had a successful leader at the Helm in Arthur Collins.
And Collins did not reinvent the theater's image. He continued
more or less in the vein of Harris. He basically
was like, we have a successful blueprint, I just need
to keep executing it. Musicals debuted at the Jury in

(16:26):
the nineteen twenties. Prior to this, it was considered the
home of dramatic theatrical performance, but it opened its stage
to musical theater to meet the demands of London's theatergoers. Yeah,
it's funny because now a lot of plays had end
up on Broadway start in London and like musicals are
super big. At the time, it was like should we

(16:46):
do this our reputation. During World War Two, the theater
became the home of the Entertainment National Service Association. You'll
see that listed as ENSA. This organization was started to
provide entertainment to BRI's troops during the war, and its
first large scale production was a variety concert that was
broadcast by the BBC at the same time it was

(17:08):
being performed before an audience at the Dreary. The theater
did sustain minor damage from bombing during the war, but
was able to repair and reopen in nineteen forty six.
Pacific eighteen sixty, a play written by Noel Coward, was
its first production after World War II, the theater was
given status as a Grade one Site of Historical Significance

(17:30):
in nineteen fifty eight. At the close of the twentieth century,
the theater was purchased by Andrew Lloyd Weber, who wrote Katz,
Phanom of the Opera, Jesus Christ, Superstar and Avida, among others.
This was part of one hundred and forty five million
dollar bid that included nine other theaters in London. In
a press interview, Weber stated that this bold move was

(17:53):
about keeping room for fresh, unique material on the stage,
noting quote, it is vital that the theater be in
the hands of people who know and love the theater.
Otherwise our lifeblood is taken away from us, and there's
no room anymore for the old fashioned producer who will
back shows that take risks. I would like to think

(18:13):
that we will be more sympathetic to shows that deserve
a break to survive. There are lots of shows that
don't look good on paper and appear not to be
good business, where we'll say, let's get behind this and
hope it pays off. I love that. Incidentally, while I
was researching this, I discovered that if you have a

(18:33):
double last name. You have to hyphenate it in English
standard writing. That's how I found it out. So I
don't know when we call him Weber, if we should
call him Lloyd Webber or not. But Andrew Lloyd Weber
has really followed through on his promise. He spent or
reported sixty pounds to refurbish the theater, restoring it back

(18:56):
to its eighteen twelve design, while also modernizing it to
include new cafes and bars to make it like a
destination for your entire day. You could hang out there.
It added disability access, It added more comfortable seating as
well as a lot of various technical additions that enable
really state of the art production values. And this renovation

(19:17):
won the twenty twenty two Theater Building of the Year Award,
which I did not know about until I was working
in this but it is given out by the Stage
Awards each year. Okay, time for ghosts, but before we
dig into the spectral inhabitants of Juryland, we will hear
from sponsors that keep the show going. Because of its

(19:44):
long history, the theater in Drury Lane has long been
rumored to be haunted, and some of these ghosts have
great stories of their own. So first up is kind
of a short one. It's Charles Keene, the son of
actor Edmund Keene, who we mentioned earlier. You'll recall Edmund
collapsed into Charles's arms on stage. Charles, like his father,

(20:05):
became an actor, and he also became a theater manager,
and his ghost is said to frequently take a seat
in the front row and wait for plays to begin,
and when the curtain rises and the stage lights come up,
Charles vanishes. And then there's Charles Macklin. Macklin's ghost has
a good bit of documented backstory on why it might

(20:25):
be lurking in the theater, and that is related to guilt.
This story is often summed up as Charles Macklin murdered
another actor by stabbing him in the eye with his cane,
and that is technically correct, but the actual events as
they played out are more tragic. This is a case
where some petty bickering escalated in a way, but a

(20:47):
line was crossed accidentally, and it all began with a
wig in seventeen thirty five when Macklin, who was a
popular Irish actor who was at the height of his
fame at Their Dreary, had prepared to go on stage
by dressing and applying his makeup, but he could not
find the wig that went with his outfit. He then
saw that actor Thomas Hallam was wearing it. Hallam was

(21:11):
a low ranking actor in the troop, kind of one
of those people that filled a lot of small extras
type roles, and seeing him and his wig incensed Macklin.
Hallam was persuaded to give up the wig and he
went to the props room to get another and switch out,
and that might have resolved things, but when Hallam then
came back with his new wig, he threw the original

(21:33):
wig at Macklin said something kind of, you know, incendiary,
and after a brief moment where it still seemed like
things might be okay, Macklin reportedly said to Hallam, quote,
God damn you for a blaggered scrub rascal. How durst
you have the impudence to take this wig. Hallam replied
by saying that Macklin was also a rascal, and Macklin

(21:56):
picked up his cane and thrust it in Hallam's face.
It seems like this was intended like as an admonishment
and a threat. He was not trying to strike him
in the eye, but then Hallam was bleeding profusely from
his eye. Maclin later described his own shock at the

(22:17):
scene quote, good God, said, I what have I done?
And I threw the stick into the chimney. He sat
down and said to mister Ames's son, who was dressed
in woman's clothes, whip up your clothes, you little bee,
and urine in my eye. But he could not, so
I did. As we know, sometimes people have used urine

(22:38):
to treat wounds, thinking it was sterile. You don't do it.
Don't pee on wounds, and especially not eye wounds. But
Maclin really thought he was being a good guy uh
by doing so. But at this point this seemed like
a gross but minor injury. Hallam was taken into a

(22:59):
room to lie down where he could be treated. One
of the women in the troop was looking after him,
and meanwhile, the play started and Maclin went on and
did his role. But then when the show was over,
Maclin was informed that the wound was actually quite serious
and that it was very likely going to prove fatal,
and at that point he fled the theater. Hallum died

(23:20):
the following day, and Macklin surrendered himself to the police
after a wilful murder indictment was issued. Macklin was tried
at the Old Bailey and represented himself in the end.
After many character witnesses passed through to support Macklin's story
that the death had been accidental and that he had
been shocked and upset when he realized what had happened,

(23:43):
the actor was found guilty not of murder but of manslaughter.
His sentence was that he was quote to be branded
on the hand and discharged. It seems like he may
not have ever even been branded though, and when he
went back to the stage he was applauded by the
audience in attendance, although there were protesters who wanted him
fired permanently. Yeah, he actually sued the organizer of those

(24:08):
protests and won. It kind of dragged out for a
long time where he tried to kind of regain his reputation,
and it dragged out because Macklin lived a long time
after this incident. He died in seventeen ninety seven at
the age of ninety seven. He appeared to have always
carried guilt with him though, regarding what had happened, and

(24:30):
he is now said to be seen walking near the
spot where he accidentally stabbed Hallum. We actually did a
whole episode on the life of the next Ghost. That
episode came out in twenty twenty three, although we did
not talk about his after life. This is Joseph Grimaldy.
Here's the very short version of his life. Joseph Grimaldy,

(24:50):
who went by Joe, was born December eighteenth, seventeen seventy
eight into a theater family. His father, Giuseppo was known
to be harsh and abusive, and when the elder Grimaldi died,
Joe became famous. He really eclipsed his father's reputation. Grimaldi's
fame came from just how far he was willing to
push himself physically in the interest of comedic entertainment. He

(25:13):
would perform tumbling tricks, pratfalls, and all kinds of slapstick.
And he painted himself stark white, which is why he
is sometimes called the first modern clown. Eventually, his physically
demanding act wore down his health. He retired in eighteen
twenty eight. There are some aspects of Grimaldi's haunting story
the evidence of a bit of confusion or even some

(25:35):
willful obfuscation of reality to just bolster the stories of
a ghost, one that comes up a lot is that
he requested to be beheaded before being buried because he
wanted to make sure he was not buried alive. So
this detail is usually used to explain stories that people
have of Grimaldi's clown painted head hovering in some of

(25:59):
the theaters audience boxes, But it was actually his father
who made that request in his will. That is an
order that's said to have been carried out by Joseph's
sister Margaret. The stories of Grimaldy's theatrical hauntings are usually
pretty tame, although depending on your point of view, they
could be considered assaultive. He is known to kick people

(26:20):
in the rear. Often this is to get a hesitant
actor to go out on stage, or just as prankish
behavior behind the scenes, but there have also been actors
who stated that they could feel him moving them on
the stage, sort of placing their limbs in a certain
way or shifting the direction their body was facing, and
that the result was always a better reaction from the

(26:40):
audience than they were getting before Grimaldy's ghostly guidance. Grimaldy
is also alleged to haunt Joseph Grimaldy Park that was
once a cemetery, and it is where the clown is buried.
Dan Lenno, who was born George Wild Galvin in eighteen sixty,
is another well known ghost of the Dreary. His two

(27:01):
is a story that's largely charming, but then has a
rather tragic end. He was born into performing. His entire
family was made up of traveling actors and comedians, and
he started on the stage as a toddler at age three.
Leno quickly rose to fame as a young adult and
became famous as a pantomime performer. He often appeared in

(27:22):
drag and was famous for a stage version of Mother
Goose with a title role written expressly for him. Leno
was dedicated to charitable works and took particular interest in
causes that helped other performers. Sometimes he is touted as
the highest paid performer of his day. He performed for
King Edward the seventh and was nicknamed the King's Jester

(27:44):
after the monarch gifted him an elegant tie pin. In
the early nineteen hundreds, but also in the early nineteen hundreds,
Leno started misusing alcohol. This is apparently a problem that
ran in his family. In nineteen oh three, he had
a mental breakdow down, and he was institutionalized for several
months at London's Camberwell House Asylum. After his convalescence there,

(28:07):
he did return to the stage, but only briefly. He
gave a performance on October thirty first, nineteen oh four,
and he died that same night. His cause of death
is reported differently from source to source, citing everything from
heart trouble to overwork. Most modern historians think he had
some medical problem that was the result of alcohol misuse.

(28:28):
Comedian Stanley Lupino described his encounter with Dan Leno's ghosts
to the press in nineteen twenty three. The following account
from Lupino ran in The Register, a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia.
Quote He stated that while asleep in his dressing room,
he was awakened by curtains moving and saw a form
flit across the room and disappear through a locked door.

(28:51):
Later he saw the face of Dan Leno. He rushed
out of the theater and spent the rest of the
night at a hotel. The next evening, he said, ay
be well known in the theatrical world, who had come
to visit me and my wife was alone in my
dressing room while I was performing on the stage. She
fainted and afterwards, although she had heard nothing of my experience,

(29:12):
declared she had seen the ghost of Dan Lenno. Leno's
ghost is said to be heard clogging throughout the theater,
and if you catch a whiff of lavender, that is
also attributed to him, as he reportedly wore the scent
when he was alive. Sometimes it is Dan that gets
the credit for assisting performers with their staging and body

(29:32):
position instead of Grimaldi. He has even been reported to
pat actors on the back after a good show. Drury
Theater's most famous ghost, though, is the Man in Gray.
He's the one who's been spotted the most, but he's
also the one we know the least about. According to legend,
this man appears in the upper circle and he's dressed

(29:53):
in eighteenth century clothing. He wears a tricorn hat and
a writing cloak and carries a sword. And the Man
in Girl is a very welcome spirit. It has become
one of those theater superstitions that his appearance blesses a
plays run. If you don't get the Man in Gray
to stop by during your pre production and rehearsals. Your
show might be doomed to flop. But who is he?

(30:17):
This is one that has a very compelling but awfully
difficult to corroborate detail that sometimes offered as the explanation
of his identity. Many accounts of the jury say that
during renovations in the nineteenth century a skeleton was discovered.
A nineteen thirty nine article about the theater written by
John Shan of The Guardian states of the man in

(30:39):
gray quote, this friendly apparition has been seen coming out
of the upper circle bar and vanishing through what was
once a passage to the stage by persons who know
nothing of the odd discovery made by workmen about eighty
years ago, while making alterations a wall where is now
the upper circle bar was pulled down. Behind it was

(31:01):
a small room. It contained a table and a chair,
and in the chair sat a skeleton with a dagger
in its breast. You may laugh at the ghost, but
the skeleton is a fact. An inquest was held on it.
But I never managed to turn up any mention of
the skeleton or an inquest in any newspapers. You would

(31:21):
think that would have been written about. Additionally, there's a
wild and I mean wild range of dates given by
various sources for the renovation that uncovered this skeleton you'll
see them that run from eighteen forty all the way
into the late eighteen seventies. I searched throughout all of
those time periods with a variety of different search chains,

(31:45):
and I did not turn up a single newspaper mention
to that end. Holly also wanted to include another quote
from that twenty fifteen Guardian article that we mentioned at
the top of the show. The writer Andrew Dixon conferred
with a woman and named Efa Monks, who's a theater
professor at Queen Mary University of London, about the theater
and why the theater community seems so prone to see ghosts.

(32:10):
Her answer was delightful. Quote. Theater is a ghostly experience
if you think about it. It's concerned with the unearthing
of texts that, in the case of the Greek tragedies,
might be two thousand years old, and an experience that
comes back night after night, but which also disappears in
front of your eyes as it does so sounds pretty
ghostly to me. I love that take. Yes, That's what

(32:32):
makes live theater so great, right, It's you're the only
people experiencing that moment in history together, which I love. Yeah,
those are the Drury Lane ghosts. A little later on
the ghosts than I would have liked, but we just
don't have that much info. Yeah, I really wish I
could have unearthed some magical mention of the body or

(32:53):
skeleton allegedly found in the wall. Not a peep. If
there's one out there, I'd love to see it. But
I do have listener mail from our listener Amanda, who writes,
Hello there, Holly and Tracy. This is my first time writing,
but I just listened to your weekend classic on the
Bell Witch, and I couldn't have been more excited. Growing
up in Kentucky, everyone would hear tales of the bell

(33:14):
Witch around Halloween, but my first recollection of hearing the
story was from our lunch room monitor at our Catholic
elementary school during October. She would read any and all
ghost stories to us during lunch, but the bell Witch
always indicated the start of ghost story lunches for the school.
If you walked past our cafeteria, you would have seen
two hundred kids as quiet as mice waiting for the

(33:37):
next scare scene. Fast forward thirty years to your Saturday classic,
and I was back in that black and white tiled cafeteria.
But I really appreciate how toward the end both of
you discussed all the permutations of the legend. I was
listening waiting for things to be said that weren't, because
obviously each ghost story has their own embellishments. I want
to say our Catholic elementary school's version had a down house,

(34:01):
and I would love to hear all of the local variations.
Thank you both for such a wonderful show. You bring
so much joy and reverence to all the topics you share,
which makes listening each week a true pleasure. Attached is
my pet tax our German shepherd guardian angel Bear, who
would listen with me on our walks, as well as
our senior chunky orange boy Chewy fourteen years old, and

(34:21):
crazy baby girl Kenny, who's in October Baby. Like me,
All our babies are rescues, although Kenny came to us
via the cat distribution system and we couldn't be happier.
Keep up the incredible work and know the three of
us are always excited for the next episode. Bear is
so beautiful and these cats listen, I'm telling you, I
love a goofy orange cat. I just love them. And

(34:42):
Kenny is also incredibly cute. So thank you, thank you,
thank you for sharing this with us. I love the
Belwitch story and I love that that was part of
their elementary school tradition. That time sounds great. I wonder
if they included the looking for her toothpart. And I
have a spawned an assortment of like local folklore, as

(35:03):
local ghost stories often do. Yeah, it's the best. It's
one of the things that makes Halloween great. It unites us.
We all want to hear the stories, and it's a
good way to share stories of our history, even if
they sometimes get a bit embellished. If you would like
to write to us, you could do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe on

(35:24):
the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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