Great Australian Ghost Stories Read Free Page A

haunts the fly bridges above the stage, and ‘Paddy’, the meddlesome ghost of a derelict whose ashes are entombed in the building’s foundations. Harry rattles ropes and pulleys and Paddy makes his presence known by taking noisy swipes at the instruments in the percussion section of the orchestra during performances.
    Fascinating and frightening though Fred, Harry, Paddy and their counterparts in other theatres might be, the award for Australia’s top theatrical ghost must go to Signor Federici — a true ‘phantom of the opera’ who manages to achieve maximum effect with minimum fuss and who has been alarming actors, singers, dancers, managers, technicians and patrons at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre for more than 100 years.
    Federici’s story begins on a chilly autumn night in 1888 when the grand old Princess (which was then the grand new Princess) was packed to the rafters. Elegant ladies with bustles you could rest your beer on and gentlemen wearing tall silk hats lounged in the dress circle; merchants and their wives decked out in their Sunday best filled the stalls; and the ‘gods’ was crammed to overflowing with noisy housemaids in their smartest bonnets and apprentices in their shiniest boots. All had come to see and hear a new production of Faust , the most popular opera of the time, and, as the night sped on and the drama built to a climax, none doubted they had got their money’s worth.
    In the last act of the opera, while the deranged heroine Marguerite expires in a prison cell, the devil (Mephistopheles) claims the guilt-ridden hero (Faust) and drags him down into the fiery depths of hell. Melodramatic stuff indeed; and when elevated by Gounod’s stirring music, guaranteed to move an impressionable audience like this one. There were sighs and gasps aplenty when this moment was reached and not a few of ladies in the audience suffered palpitations.
    The hapless heroine was sung by Nellie Stewart, darling of the Australian stage for forty years, Faust by an English tenor, Clarence Leumane, and Mephistopheles by the celebrated basso Signor Federici. At the climax of the scene Federici threw his scarlet cloak around Mr Leumane, steam began to rise around their feet, coloured orange and red by flickering limelights, then the trapdoor on which they stood slowly descended, the two singers disappearing as if by magic beneath the stage.
    A storm of applause and shouts of ‘bravo’ drowned the final chorus. The faces of the conductor and players in the pit glowed with unabashed pride, singers in the wings smiledwith self-satisfaction and the promoters rubbed their hands together; a long and successful season seemed assured — but all was not well.
    In the cellar beneath the stage the trapdoor came to a shuddering halt. Leumane stepped off and headed straight for the stairs to take his bows. Signor Federici seemed to hesitate then pitched forward into the arms of the steam machine operator, the victim of a massive heart attack.
    The basso was carried upstairs unconscious (the pallor of death already on his face) and laid on a settee in the Green Room. Someone went for a doctor while others fussed over their colleague or stared in disbelief. His distraught wife arrived, closely followed by the doctor, who made a hasty examination then ordered that the patient be laid out, full length, on the carpet.
    Two galvanic batteries were fetched and leads attached. The doctor frantically tore open Federici’s costume and applied these to his barrel-like chest. Electric shocks sent spasms through the singer’s limp body but failed to restart his heart.
    It was, as the press reported, a scene both tragic and macabre. The red skullcap and false beard had been removed and the doublet ripped, but the cloak, the red silk tights, the sharp-pointed shoes and the rest of the satanic regalia the singer had worn on stage still clothed his now lifeless body. Stunned silence