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The moment you walk into the theatre to see this amazing show, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, you hear an eerie soundtrack: dripping taps, howling wind, a very strange buzz. This vibration reminded me of “infrasound”, a very low sound frequency that makes you scared and convinced something’s standing behind you. Parapsychologists believe this sound is often found in haunted places – and in the theatre, it proved seriously unnerving. People were screaming before the show had even started.
The show takes the form of a lecture from a parapsychologist, who discusses the history of ghost stories; we then hear several. The phenomena these describe are very accurate. In one, a man driving alone late at night sees a “road ghost”, a shapeless thing that falls on his bonnet as he turns a corner. These are quite common – I’ve encountered one myself, a white shadow that hit the side of my van one night at 2am on a long, empty road. I rang the police the next day, and they found nothing.
Spooky … David Cardy in Ghost Stories.
Another story concerns a poltergeist that throws books and sends nappies skidding across the set: I’ve no idea how they did this, but it was very clever. There’s also a strange smell of bleach, which reflects the weird odours you find in haunted places. The classic scent is tobacco smoke, but I led a ghost hunt recently where we smelled sulphur; on other hunts, I’ve smelled baby sick.
The lecture concerns the psychological aspect of ghost sightings: he argues that they might be projections of our own anxieties. I agree: I’m convinced people see ghosts with their “psychic eyes”, inside their own heads, rather than their physical eyes. What the show does, very convincingly, is show us how much it’s all about suggestion and the power of the mind. It was refreshing, and made me jump, several times. I’m a real wuss in the dark.
source: guardian.co.uk