Ghosts, Poltergeists & Apparitions > Ghostly Encounters

NYC - 44th Street theater

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Desdemone:
Yesterday would have been the 149th birthday of the producer they called "The Bishop of Broadway," for his white collar and dark suits, but those who've worked at his 44th Street theater - now home to "Enchanted April" - says he's still around.

They've been spooked by odd odors, strange sightings, footsteps and laughter - especially from Belasco's private apartment at the top of the theater.

The stagehand who worked the follow-spots for "Follies" won't forget the time she saw the outline of a man in a black suit - and what looked like a white collar.

"I finished my cue and ran up to the second box, but there was no one there," she tells The Post. "And there's no way out of the box except down the stairs I came in on."

The smell of cigar smoke and flowers and misplaced props bedeviled the cast and crew of "Frankie & Johnny" when it played the Belasco last year.

"We'd close the kitchen door, then the curtain would rise and the door would be open," says a production stage manager named (aptly) Spook Testani.


Testani has ghost stories to share from other productions at the Belasco:

"The woman who played Gertrude in 'Hamlet' had a death scene every night when she'd die in a chair, center stage, looking up," she says.

"Every night, she'd see a woman in a blue dress in the balcony walk up the center aisle and leave."

The Belasco's balcony doesn't have a center aisle.

Stagehand Ted Abramov doesn't believe in ghosts - but back in 1981, he and the head electrician were locking up for the day when he saw a woman in blue walking across the back of the theater.

"I told the electrician and he said, 'There's no one there.' I saw her go up the stairs to the first balcony - but she vanished," he recalls.

"Oh," someone told him later. "You saw the lady in blue."

"I'll remember the color of that dress to this day," he says.

Peter Guernsey won't forget it either. The stagehand was closing up one night, about eight years ago, when a sudden chill made him turn around.

"I saw a two-foot trail of blue material, like the train of a dress, going up the stairs" to Belasco's apartment - which is wired with sensors that would have gone off if anyone were there.

No alarm sounded - and Guernsey fled.

So who is the woman in blue? Mary Ellen Kelly, who's researching the history of Belasco and his theater, says many believe it's the late actress Leslie Carter.

"[Belasco] was building that theater the year he broke with her," Kelly says. "She went off and got married and he never hired her again.

"Her career never recovered."

Kelly says she's more interested in Belasco the man than Belasco the ghost.

Still, she wonders about the time her friend took her shepherd pup for a walk, and the dog stopped dead in front of the theater and looked up, "as if he'd seen something up there, as if someone were hailing him.

"But there was nothing but painted-over windows," Kelly says. "So who knows?"

"Enchanted April" star Jane Adams has noticed something amiss, too - when she brings her yellow Lab to the theater, her mild-mannered dog barks excitedly in an empty room.

"Someone had told me about the ghost the last time I played this theater," Adams says. "I sort of like it."

Then the props at "Enchanted April" started disappearing - a flask, a (fake) check - only to reappear, exactly where the propmaster had placed them, after the scene was over.

"There's something about these old theaters," Adams muses. "You have all these strong personalities who've worked so hard to get there - you almost can't imagine them leaving."

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