by John Pinkney
The mystery deepened one summer morning when a keeper unlocked the lighthouse and found large wet bootprints on the steep stairway. The weather was dry - and psychical researchers were unable to find a commonsense explanation for the marks. The phenomenon recurred several times, prompting the popular theory that the stairs were haunted by an early keeper of the lighthouse, George Smith. For many years it had been one of Smith’s duties to climb up to light the lantern.
Phantoms of the Footlights
Princess Theatre Entity ‘Predicted’ a Tragic Fire
During a seance videotaped by Channel 10 in Melbourne’s deeply haunted Princess Theatre, the wineglass spelled out a grim warning of ‘FIRE’. Three days later the uncanny omen apparently came true, with scores of blazes erupting across Victoria - and killing three women in Fairlea prison. The seance’s 400,000 viewers heard the medium say that the ghost guiding the glass was Federici, the dead singer who has stalked the theatre for more than a century. But others on the stage of the Princess that day believed the message had come from an entirely different spirit…
THE EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNICATION beyond the grave was televised in 1983 by the ever-innovative Ten network. The production crew set up their seance on the shadowy, cavernous stage of Melbourne’s Princess Theatre, long thought to be haunted by the phantom of English baritone Federici (Frederick Baker). Since he suffered a fatal heart attack on stage on 3 March 1888 there had been several unsuccessful attempts to contact him via a seance. But this was the first time the procedure had been shown on TV.
I (the author of this book) sat in on the seance, along with medium Kerry Kulkens and her ‘circle’, and actress Kerry Armstrong. Using a felt pen the latter Kerry marked the circular red-topped table with the 26 alphabetical letters, the digits 0 to 9 and the words YES and NO.
Kerry Kulkens, who died while this book was in preparation, then opened proceedings.
As cameras rolled she said, ‘If anyone is here, give us a sign.’ Almost immediately the wineglass began to move powerfully beneath our lightly resting forefingers. Sometimes it slid across the table at such speed that group members had to stand to keep their fingers in place. (Many parapsychologists believe such movements are caused, not by a ‘ghost’, but by unconscious surges of telekinetic force from someone at the table.)
Kerry addressed me. ‘You’re the sceptic about seances,’ she said. ‘You can ask the questions.’
Accordingly I conducted the following dialogue with the glass:
Who are you?
Glass moves in circles
Are you Federici?
Glass moves forcefully to ‘YES’
You died here in 1888. Why have you stayed around this theatre for so long?
Glass moves to letters K, B, N, Z
Can’t you spell proper words for us?
No
(Kerry Kulkens said, ‘You often pick up garbled messages if two entities are trying to get through.’)
Is there something you want to tell us?
Yes
Will you try, then?
Glass moves to A…K…L
We still can’t understand you. I’ll ask some questions you can answer with yes or no. Are you happy here in the theatre?
Glass circles between YES and NO
One of the group is complaining about a violent pain in her left arm.
Did you hurt your left arm?
No answer
Do you like to be known as Federici?
No
Would you rather we used your real name, Frederick Baker?
Yes
All right Frederick. Do you have any messages for anyone at this table?
Yes…K
Kerry Armstrong?
Yes
What do you want to tell Kerry?
H…A…P…P…Y
Any other message? Is there anything you’d like to tell the people watching this TV program?
Yes…Fire
Is that a warning? When will the fire be?
F…7
At this point several more people complained of unpleasant head and arm pains, prompting Kerry Kulkens to bring the seance to a close. ‘There’s no doubt we were in touch with an entity,’ she said, as we later walked through the deserted auditorium. ‘Federici died of heart failure and fell through that stage trapdoor over there. Considering some of us felt such bad pains in the arm - symptoms of a cardiac attack - it’s a fair bet it was him we were talking to.’
Federici died of heart failure under Melbourne’s Princess Theatre stage in 1888 - and has haunted the premises ever since. The Australasian Sketcher
Not every seance participant accepted Kerry’s theory. Several young people who had sat with us on the stage subsequently told me that a much-loved mutual friend had been killed in a motorcycle accident three weeks earlier. They were convinced that although he was still disoriented by the violent nature of his death (as evidenced by the jumbled letters and other confusion in his replies) he had managed to convey one comforting message to them - by suggesting that he was ‘H…A…P…P…Y’.
It was not until several days later, however, that we realised something remarkable had happened during the experiment. The seance had been videotaped on 4 February. Three days later, on 7 February, 98 blazes erupted in Melbourne, giving the city its most disastrous fire day in 20 years. The Sunday newspapers on 7 February were full of stories about a fire that had broken out the previous night at Fairlea Prison, killing three women.
To recapitulate the relevant dialogue:
Any other message? Is there anything you’d like to tell the people watching this TV program?
Yes…Fire
Is that a warning? When will the fire be?
F…7
The debate began. Was the glass’s ‘choice’ of letter and number a mere coincidence? Or did the message F…7 refer to February 7 - or Fairlea - or both?
How the Princess Haunting Began
For 117 years, actors, stagehands and patrons have been reporting eerie lights, strange noises and inexplicable occurrences in the Princess Theatre on Melbourne’s Spring Street. TV entertainers Bert Newton and Colin McEwan had brushes with a phantom while they were all-night announcers at the Princess-based radio station 3XY. (See Wraiths that Haunt Radio, page 56.) I have spoken to numerous performers and theatre staff convinced that they too were touched by the cold breath of the supernatural. Typical was mechanist Jim Sullivan who told me that often, when he was working in the theatre alone at night, he would hear creakings in the circle. ‘I get the horrible impression someone is moving about up there,’ he said. ‘When I check, there’s never anyone around - but the noises continue.’
One of the usherettes described an encounter so alarming that she felt she had been ‘drenched in freezing water’. She recalled, ‘One night during a National Theatre season I was standing on stage when I glimpsed from the corner of my eye the figure of a man in a black suit. I assumed it was Blair Edgar, the singer. I turned to say hello to him - and the figure vanished. I bolted out of the theatre.’
By becoming Australia’s most famous ghost, the English baritone F. Federici (born Frederick Baker) achieved greater fame posthumously than he had ever enjoyed in life. In 1887, after appearing in an American Gilbert and Sullivan season Federici sailed to Australia aboard the steamer Chimborazo. He was contracted to give a series of performances culminating in his role as Mephistopheles in Gounod’s opera Faust. The production, mounted by entrepreneurs Williamson, Garner and Musgrove, premiered on 3 March 1888 at the New Princess’s Theatre - as the Princess was then known.
At interval, members of the capacity audience pronounced the opera a brilliant success and predicted a long season. Newspaper critics were already amassing adjectives to grace their glowing encomiums. No one dreamed that the performance would end in nightmare.
During his triumphant final aria Mephistopheles wrapped a scarlet cloak around his victim, then, wreathed in smoke and fumes, descended via a stage-trap to a t
heatrical version of Hell. As the audience applauded and demanded an encore, the curtain fell. The packed theatre waited, but there was no encore. Neither F. Federici nor his supporting cast reappeared to take their bows. Finally the puzzled patrons, some grumbling, headed for the exits. They would not discover, until they read their newspapers, that Federici had died beneath the stage.
A capacity audience (1888) awaits a performance in the Princess Theatre Melbourne, around the time of Federici’s death. Illustrated Australian News.
The Illustrated Australian News (31 March 1888) described the confusion and grief that followed. The report read, in part:
Nothing more weird and melancholy than this unlooked for and highly sensational occurrence has been recorded in connection with the stage. And yet, this is what occurred at the termination of Faust on Saturday, 3 March. Mr F. Federici, the popular baritone, died as the act drop (final curtain) descended. With his red cloak wrapped around Faust, he stood upon the trap by which he sinks from view. The trap by which the descent to the infernal regions is made is worked on a slot, running on an inclined plane, so that the characters disappear gradually and in a slanting direction.
As he was disappearing from view, Mr Federici was seen to put his arm before his eyes in a feeble manner, which seemed to indicate that he was completely worn out. The rostrum on which he stood was just reaching the cellar floor when the gasman, who was working the steam pipe, noticed him lean forward as if in a faint. The next instant he had fallen on the man’s shoulder, and never spoke again.
The men in the cellar carried him up to the Green Room. The scene was weird and impressive. The dying actor, in the red costume in which a few moments before he had stood up as the representative of His Satanic Majesty, lay stretched upon the floor, with his wife and anxious friends about him, trying to restore him to life. Dr Wilmott and persons attached to the theatre persisted in their endeavours for up to an hour, but neither the galvanic battery, nor other restoratives, could call the actor back to life.
Mr Federici’s death is attributed to disease of the heart, from which he had been suffering for the past nine years. The doctor has advised that the end was accelerated by the nervous excitement under which he laboured while performing a part that cost him much anxiety. Whilst the performance was in progress, the excitement kept him up, but directly he had spoken his last line, the reaction set in.
According to Princess Theatre lore the haunting began shortly after Frederick Baker was buried in Melbourne’s General Cemetery. Numerous staff and performers began to claim that they had encountered ‘cold spots’ on and beneath the stage. Some said they had seen a man’s dark figure in the wings and on the stairs of the deserted theatre. Betty Beddoes, who for decades worked as wardrobe mistress, had her sole, memorable encounter with the presence in 1917 during the Alan Wilkie company’s season of Sheridan’s School for Scandal.
She was working at about 3 am preparing costumes for the opening night when a watchman leaned into the doorway and said, ‘Come and see a ghost.’ Suspecting a joke she accompanied him to the dress circle - where, in ‘moderately bright’ light they clearly saw a man in evening dress, sitting in the front row and staring at the stage. The figure was motionless, the white shirt glowing brightly. The pair stood staring for what might have been 10 minutes. When nothing further happened they returned to their duties. After finishing work an hour later, Betty Beddoes returned, curious to the dress circle. The figure was still sitting there - and remained visible when she left for home minutes later. ‘I was never frightened at any time,’ she said.
Other employees were unable to echo her. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, staff rostered to work late in the empty theatre said they had been ‘touched’ by invisible hands - or, as in the case of young radio announcer Colin McEwan, pushed from behind by a powerful force. These incidents prompted some investigators to surmise that the Princess might be home to several ghosts, with differing personalities.
Singer Rob Guest has neither seen nor sensed Federici. But while he was performing the eponymous role in Phantom of the Opera he received a curious letter from a Melbourne woman who asserted that while sitting in the dress circle she had distinctly seen a man in dated evening dress standing at Guest’s shoulder.
When theatrical entrepreneur David Marriner bought the Princess a journalist asked if he would ever consider employing a medium, to persuade the spectral baritone to quit the premises. Marriner deplored the idea, saying, ‘It’s a privilege to have Federici here and he shouldn’t be disturbed. He’s a very friendly ghost - and I consider him part of the family.’
The Deaths that Blighted ‘Blithe Spirit’
For many years the Australian actress Gwen Plumb refused to speak publicly about the ‘evil, malign spirit’ which, she believed, had almost ended her career. Ultimately she agreed to tell me her story (which was well known in the theatrical world) in the hope it might serve as ‘some kind of warning’ to other performers:
‘After a reasonably quiet few years devoted mainly to television, I accepted the stage role of Madam Arcati, the medium in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. I had a few qualms about signing - having read somewhere, years before, that spirits dislike being mocked. But it’s a marvellous comedy, frankly far too tempting to refuse - so in the end I went ahead.
‘Right from the start, though, I wondered if I’d made a wise decision. While driving to the first day’s rehearsal I smashed into the rear of a Bentley. I arrived at the theatre badly shaken. And my unease grew worse several days later when a car driven by someone else in the cast, Jess Noad, was hit by a maniac speeding through a red light. That was just the beginning. Shortly after the play began, Judi Farr, who played Ruth, was knocked over by a car while crossing the road. She had no understudy, so she performed that night in bandages.
‘After that the deaths began. Friends I’d known for years - including my dear mates Noel Brophy and Ronnie Frazer - began dying all around me. As all this was happening in the context of a highly successful season I kept right on rationalising - putting everything down to a horrible, but essentially coincidental, run of ill-luck.
‘But then came the stench - and it changed my views completely. One night I walked into my dressing room to find it was filled with what I can only call the smell of hell. No one could trace its source - but it was a terrible musty burning odour that scared everyone who came near it. The stench started to spread to other parts of the theatre and everyone was fearful it would drive audiences away.
‘That’s when the exorcist was called in - a woman who conducted a very powerful ceremony, and urged me to call on the protective help of good spirits like Ronnie and Noel. I took her advice. She also urged me to recite the 23rd psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd, every night before going on stage.
‘The exorcism worked. The smells and the deaths stopped. But I don’t think I’d ever dare to act again in a comedy about seances. I know that I became the target of something so evil, so malign, that I’m amazed I survived it.’
THE FOLLY AND THE PHANTOM When Lois Jackman moved into Ascot House, Toowoomba (above), she discovered it was haunted. A 20-year investigation finally led her to a 19th-century coroner’s report describing the tragic death of household servant Maggie Hume (left) who many believe lingers in the premises. The baroque folly was added to Ascot House, also pictured on page 12, by a wealthy previous owner.
STRANGLED SPECTRE The ghost of a theological student who suicided in 1930 troubled Pepper Film and TV Studios in Kent Town, South Australia (above) for several years. Employees said the intruder habitually emerged from behind the multi-track recording machine.
ANNOUNCER BRIAN MARKOVIC (right) was one of many 3UZ Melbourne staff who heard an ‘invisible pianist’ playing in the station’s pitch-black auditorium. The station, then in Bourke Street, occupied a building used as a brothel in the 19th century.
DEAD NEWSREADER RETURNED When David Mann [left] was a young announcer at Melbourne’s 3AW he encountered,
in the station’s corridors, the apparition of a newsreader who had died on-air of heart failure, decades earlier. Many other staff-members also saw the phantom. Courtesy 3AW
CLOCK MYSTERIOUSLY STOPPED Adelaide radio announcer Judith Barr (above) recalls that on the day her uncle died his favourite cedar-cased clock inexplicably malfunctioned, resisting all attempts to restart it. But the sequel to this event was even stranger…
MANSION OF MANY GHOSTS Parapsychologists consider the Monte Cristo homestead in Junee, NSW (above opposite), to be Australia’s most haunted house. For decades witnesses have been reporting visible entities, inexplicable sounds and a broad range of paranormal phenomena ranging from solid ‘walls of light’ to the mysterious deaths of domestic birds and animals. The spirits of Christopher and Elizabeth Crawley (above), who built the grand mansion in 1884, are still reportedly seen throughout the premises, particularly in the upstairs hallway (right), the boxroom and the former chapel.
Sightings have also been reported in the carriage shed (above). Note the glowing female figure, with period hat, at right of carriage. Photographs courtesy Reg and Olive Ryan, Monte Cristo.
DEAD HUSBAND APPEARS IN PHOTO When Mrs Emmy Barnes [left], of Adelaide, posed for a picture at her second wedding, she was unaware of the startling silhouette in the mirror on the wall. It wasn’t until the prints were developed that she saw it.
‘TOO CLOSE FOR COINCIDENCE’ Emmy and her friends and family immediately recognised the distinctive features of her deceased first husband, Jimmy (left). Emmy then recalled that before Jimmy died he had urged her to remarry, promising that he would be a benign presence at the wedding.