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The
following are true accounts of unexplained happenings reported by
Savoy Theatre's employees, board members, volunteers
and visitors. Some
story contributors have requested their names be withheld.
Do
you have a Savoy Theatre ghost story?
Contact
us.
With your permission, we'll print it here.
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The grey haired lady
When I was
about 7 or 8 my mom and I were at the box office buying
tickets for a concert when i told my mom I had to go to the
bathroom, she
told me she would meet me in there. after I was done, I came out
of the
stall and my mom was there waiting for me by the sink, there was
an old lady
i saw, she had short grey hair and was wearing a baby blue
sweater. i asked
my mom who she was and i pointed to the wall where I saw her,
and my mom
said, what lady, i kept pointing to her, but my mom didn't see
anything. About a year later, when I was visiting my uncle in Ontario, the
day I was
supposed to come home, we stopped at the bank for some money
while my cousin and
I stayed in the car and i saw an old lady, with short grey hair
and a baby
blue sweater on, staring right at me. after all, they do say
that the things
that can see ghosts the most are infants, animals, and children.
Thanks for
listening to my story
~ Alanah Head, 12
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Don't
blink, or you might miss it!
Hello
- My name is Andrew Warner. I happened to be on the Savoy's
website where I read the ghost story section. I'd like to submit
my own ghostly experience to the website.
It's
been a few years since this has happened.
I
was involved in the Glace Bay School Band all the years I was able
to be in it. I don't remember what year this was, or how old I was
at the time. I was down at the Savoy with members of the band
setting up for a concert. There were quite a few of us there that
day, but when I ran into the ghost I was alone.
I
was downstairs where the dressing rooms are located. Someone
yelled that we were done and that everyone was leaving. By the
time I made my way up the stairs to backstage, and around the
stage curtain, I found that the seating and stage area were
deserted. I could hear murmurs of my band mates from the lobby
area, so I walked down the steps in front of the stage. (Facing
the seats, the stairs would be on the right-hand side).
When
I reached the bottom of the stairs, I suddenly had the feeling I
was being watched. I looked to my left, and to my surprise, there
was a strange figure standing by the wall in the seating area. It
looked like a man to me, but I could not really tell. I just
continued walking and watching the figure.
When
I got to the middle of the seating area the figure just seemed to
vanish. It was like there was nothing there.
At
that time I did not tell anyone about what I saw. It was a years
later when I heard my father mention something about a ghost at
the Savoy. At that point, I told him what happened.
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A
Chill in the Air
Late
one night, after the last fire had struck in 1991, former Board
Member Wendie Muise was at the Savoy Theatre taking inventory of
salvageable items. "I was heading to the dressing rooms, and
was making my way down the left aisle of the theatre when all of a
sudden I was overwhelmed by an extremely cold sensation. It was
almost as if there was a concentrated pocket of cold air in one
spot."
Wendie
continued to the dressing rooms, but on her return, she walked up
the opposite aisle to get out of the Theatre. "It didn't
really scare me, but it was eerie to have that happen in the big
dark theatre, especially since I was alone. It's hard to explain
unless you've had it happen, but it's as if you go from feeling
alone, to suddenly feeling like someone else has entered the
room."
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Late Night Visitor
In
2002, Savoy box office manager Patricia Pace was working late one
night selling the Savoy's popular Dream Vacation Draw tickets.
"I was alone in the building because I had come in after
hours to call patrons." After making all her phone calls for
the evening, Patricia began the process of locking up the box
office. She then made a quick trip to the washroom located in the
Savoy's inner lobby. "I was walking out of the washroom,
drying my hands on a paper towel, so my head was down. Someone
walked right in front of me and I had to literally stop to let
them pass. It was an automatic reaction, a reflex. I think I may
have even muttered the words 'excuse me'."
It
was at that moment that fear set in. "It dawned on me that I
had just stopped for someone when I was supposed to be alone. I
looked all around, and there was no one in sight. But I know
someone walked in front of me. The presence was so strong that it
stopped me in my tracks. So I didn't waste any time grabbing my
purse and running out the door."
The
following day, as Trish recalled her story for other staff
members, she pointed out that she wasn't really afraid of whoever
it was. "It didn't give me a scary feeling when it walked by
me, but it was something I couldn't explain and so I guess THAT'S
the scary part. If there are spirits dwelling here, that's fine by
me. Just as long as they keep to themselves!"
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Bathroom Mischief
Early
one morning, while setting up for a private function, a Savoy
Theatre employee (who wishes to remain nameless) was startled to
find there was someone else using the facilities, even though the
worker was supposed to be the only one in the building at the
time. "It was about 5:30am, it was still grey and dark
outside. I was making my way out of the washroom when one of the
stall doors slammed itself shut behind me and then the toilet
flushed. I went back to check it out, but I didn't see
anything."
The
employee continued to set up for the function and didn't want to
mention anything to anyone for fear of being laughed at, until a
few days later. "We were showing movies for March break and
one of the kids came out of the women's bathroom and told us that
while she was standing next to the sink, the water was turning
itself off and on. It was then that I told the manager about the
flushing toilet."
The
Savoy worker still comes to work alone. "Whatever it was
seemed friendly enough, so it's not something I worry about."
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Media Shy Ghost?
Savoy
Theatre employee Jennifer Crocker was working on a show called
Cape Breton Book of the Night, when she experienced some playful
teasing by an unseen visitor. "The show was based around true
ghost stories reported in Cape Breton. Whenever I was working on
anything to do with the production, my computer would shut down.
And this didn't happen just a couple of times. It happened at
least seven or eight times over the span of a week. I was ready to
throw the computer out the window."
But
it seems there was more going on than just a buggy computer
program. "The first time it happened, I tried everything to
get the computer to come back on, that's when I discovered it
hadn't just crashed the program, it was turned off from the back
of the computer. To get at that button on the back of my computer
tower, you have to crawl under my desk and pull the tower out.
Something or someone kept turning the entire computer off, forcing
me to do a complete system reboot."
Jennifer
says that it was more annoying than scary. "It was really
frustrating, but I think that was the whole point. I started
making other employees come with me when it would happen, just to
prove I wasn't crazy. People kept saying that I must have hit it
myself or bumped into it and shut it off."
To
make sure that wasn't what was happening, Jennifer tried to
recreate the situation, by pushing the computer with her feet to
try and shut it off. "No matter what I did, I couldn't get
that button to turn off on its own. I'm convinced that something
or someone didn't care for me drawing so much attention to Cape
Breton spirits. Point taken."
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There's No Such Thing as Ghosts!
Savoy
Theatre technician Dave Bailey says there is no Savoy ghost.
"I'm here alone more than anyone in this building, and no
ghost has ever tapped me on the shoulder." Dave refers to the
Savoy Theatre ghost sightings, reported on and off since the
1970's, as silly stories. "It's an old building. The
radiators creak, the plumbing makes noise, the lights flicker. But
there are no spirits from the other side involved. People just get
carried away when they're alone and they hear noises."
Dave
has faithfully maintained that if there was someone from the other
side haunting the building, he'd know who they were. "I'm
sure I'd know them. So why wouldn't they make themselves known to
me? If there is a ghost, I wish he'd give me the lotto numbers or
tell me something useful."
But
other staff at the Savoy aren't so sure Dave really believes
there's nothing lurking in dark corners at the Theatre. "Dave
has been here a long time. Maybe he had one of the first run-ins
with the entity, and maybe he does know who they are. If that's
the case, it seems logical to me that Dave would want to protect
the ghost," comments Savoy Theatre manager Donald Ferguson.
"Sort of a 'you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone' type
of deal."
"Too
many things happen here that nobody can make any sense of,"
comments Jennifer Crocker. "I've had so many things happen to
me that I don't even bother telling anyone anymore. Noisy
radiators don't open and close doors."
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A Smelly Ghost
On
the way down to the box office from her office upstairs one day,
Jennifer Crocker noticed a strong scent of perfume in the
stairwell. So strong in fact, that she wrinkled up her nose and
said aloud, " Holy perfume!" It was at that moment that
she bumped into a man coming up the stairwell. "I was a
little embarrassed, because I had assumed that whoever it was
might have been with him. And I knew he must have heard what I
said. I expected to see an angry woman behind him on the
stairwell."
Once
she arrived downstairs to the box office Jennifer asked who had
been upstairs lately that would have left the perfume trail.
Patricia said she hadn't seen any patrons go upstairs all day,
except for the one man. "Once I told Patricia about it, we
started laughing, because then we thought maybe it was the man I
had smelled and I was mistaking his cologne for perfume."
Jennifer
and Patricia waited for the stranger to come back down stairs.
"He didn't leave any trace of cologne or perfume when he
walked out of the building. And of course we didn't want to ask
him. He'd think we were crazy. But something or someone in that
stairwell was wearing an immense amount of a flowery
perfume."
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Everybody Saw
It!
During
a performance of the Soda Shoppe Gang in late June 2002, a
balloon, which had floated to the ceiling during a children's
concert days earlier, began to descend during the performance. At
first, this wasn't considered unusual as helium does eventually
escape from balloons causing them to lose their buoyancy and float
back to earth. But this balloon dropped to the centre of the
theatre, just out of arm's reach, then appeared to hover. It
didn't move with the flow of air from the air-conditioning, but it
seemed to purposefully glide over the tops of heads in the
audience, from one side of the theatre to the other, always out of
reach from waiting hands. Then it gently floated back to the
ceiling where it stayed for the rest of the concert. Many in
attendance that night said they thought someone must have been
deliberately moving the balloon, as its pattern of flight was not
normal, and did have an air of peculiarity to it.
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Best Seats
in the House
Colleen
MacIsaac, a part-time worker at the Savoy, thinks that the ghost
of the Savoy appreciates good entertainment. "I was
rehearsing for a show here in the summer, and while standing on
stage, I could see that one of the seats -which were all empty-
was turned down the way it is when someone is sitting in it. That
in itself means nothing since it could have been a loose seat that
fell down when someone got out of it. But I left the stage to grab
a prop, and when I came back, a different seat was turned down and
the previous one was back up in the regular folded position."
Colleen laughs as she recounts the story with co-workers. "I
mean it's not a really big deal, but it's kind of freaky just the
same. Nobody was near the seats. We were all on the stage. So who
moved it?"
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Did you See That?
Darlene
Melnick can't say she's ever actually seen anything that looks
like a ghost at the Savoy, but she won't say she hasn't either.
"Well, there are times when you just don't feel like you're
alone when you're here, and I have had supplies go missing, or
turn up in odd places. I don't know if that means there's a ghost
here or not. Maybe I've been here so long, it ignores me."
Darlene has been cleaning the Savoy for over 25 years. "When
I'm here, the vacuum cleaner is always on, so maybe I'm missing
out on the action."
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Can
I Help You?
A
part-time box office worker was scared out of her wits when she
thought someone walked behind her one night while working. "I
had just hung up from a customer and out of the corner of my eye,
I could see someone behind me. Just someone standing there, but it
was behind me, and I was supposed to be alone. I jumped right out
of the chair! When I looked again, the figure was gone. I was
jittery for the rest of the night. I'm just glad nobody heard me
scream. I felt silly after the fact, so I didn't tell anyone about
it." The worker still prefers to remain anonymous.
"That
feeling you get when someone walks into a room...even without
seeing them, you know they're there. That's what it felt like. But
I have no explanation for it. Maybe I had one too many coffees
that day!"
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Hair Raising!
"I
can honestly say, I've never seen anything resembling a ghost here
at the Theatre. But that doesn't mean I don't believe there's a
lost soul hanging around." Savoy Theatre manager Donald
Ferguson spends a lot of late nights at the venue, long after
others have gone home for the evening. "There's been more
than a few occasions where I've chased unexplained noises through
the theatre, expecting to find that someone wandered in from
outside. "
On
more than a few occasions, those unexplained noises have sent
Donald Ferguson home early too. "I've had situations where
I've exhausted myself by roving through the theatre like a madman
looking for the person whose footsteps I just heard, or whoever
was just using the paper towel dispenser in the washroom, or
whoever opened the administration door coming into my office.
Sometimes, I get an eerie 'someone is standing behind me'
sensation where all the hairs on the back of my neck are at
attention and I almost feel sick. All of a sudden, you don't feel
alone anymore. It's during those moments when I just pack it in
for the night because I can't concentrate on anything else."
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Do
you have a Savoy Theatre ghost story? Contact
us.
With your permission, we'll print it here.
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