St James Theatre
New Zealand's home of ballet is, by steady local account, also home to a playful Russian dancer, a vengeful wailing woman, a wheezing dead actor and a choir lost at sea — all in one 1912 playhouse.
Case File No. 130
FILE 01 The Legend
Built in just nine months and opened in 1912, the St James is Wellington's grand old theatre and the official home of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Its cast of ghosts is unusually well-organised. Yuri, a Russian dancer, is said to have fallen from the flies — pushed, it is widely whispered, by rival Pasha — and now messes with the lights after closing and swings doors open; he is credited with twice pushing a projectionist out of harm's way. The Wailing Woman is an old vaudeville actress booed off the stage while attempting a comeback; she is blamed for accidents befalling successful women in the building, most famously a broken foot during The Sound of Music. Stan Andrews, a deceased American actor, wheezes backstage. And voices of a boys' choir, lost at sea returning from a performance here, are heard in the stands but never found. The theatre was investigated by the TV show Ghost Hunt in 2006; Sir Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have both said they saw the Wailing Woman in an apartment across the road — two years apart.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
Theatre staff have reported lights operating themselves after closing, doors swinging on windless nights, and the wheeze attributed to Stan Andrews in the wings; cast members of shows with prominent female leads leave offerings and apologies for the Wailing Woman, whose grudges are treated as a workplace safety issue. Ghost tours and the 2006 Ghost Hunt television investigation added a national audience.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
These are theatre ghosts in the fullest sense: stories a working theatre tells about itself, lovingly maintained, audience-facing, and perfectly paced for a backstage tour. No death in the flies is documented, the choir cannot be traced, and the Jackson sightings arrived via decades of retelling. The council that owns the archives publishes the ghost roster openly — heritage marketing at its most honest.