Oldham Coliseum ‘ghost’

At first glance, it’s just a photograph of some scaffolding. 

It captures the inside of the Oldham Coliseum, as the venue on Fairbottom Street is being stripped and rearranged as part of a £10m rescue mission. 

But look a little closer and you might notice something odd in the bottom left corner. A face, a Victorian outfit, the ghostly apparition of a little boy seemingly caught mid-step as he glances at the camera. 

It could just be a trick of the light. It could be a doctored image. It could just be the human impulse to find patterns where there aren’t any. 

But it’s certainly not the first time rumours of ghosts have swirled around the Coliseum. 

“The whole building always had a feeling about it,” former employee Aileen Menzies said. “I’ve worked in a lot of theatres, and the Coliseum was by far the freakiest.” 

The eerie photo from inside the theatre was recently posted on the Facebook page of Friends of the Coliseum, a campaign group spearheaded by actor Julie Hesmondhalgh that played a pivotal role in securing the theatre’s future after its shock closure in 2023. The post has brought in a flood of comments about the theatres’ ‘haunted’ history. 

The snap is apparently from a scaffolding contractor, who tried to photograph his handiwork for the council back in 2024. He didn’t notice there was anything strange until he got home. 

“We weren’t sure what to do with it when he sent it over,” a council source said. “It’s just quite freaky. We even ran it through an AI picture identifier, and it said it was all clear.” 

And Hesmondhalgh said she’d been ‘assured the photographer is a complete technophobe’, stating she believed the photo ‘definitely wasn’t doctored’. 

“I have to admit it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end,” she added. “But it’s a wonderful reminder of the rich heritage and history of that very special place.” 

There are a lot of ghost stories linked to the Coliseum. The venue even featured in a 2004 episode of ‘Most Haunted’, where ghost hunter Yvette Fielding and Spiritualist Medium Derek Acorah encountered a series of ‘presences’ – including a ‘mischievous’ little boy called Tom. 

The ghosts were an ‘open secret’ among staff in the theatre’s heyday. Employees regularly reported inexplicable sounds and smells, doors opening and closing when no one else was there, and even sightings of figures or ‘orbs’ floating around the stalls. 

“There was talk of all sorts, ” said Menzies, who started out in the stage department aged 18 in 1996. “A ghost in the corridor who had been hit by a (coal) tram, who walked the road where he was killed. And there was the actor who was killed on-stage.

“I never hung around long enough to see anything – but you could feel and hear things.” 

Harold Norman is one of the most famous ghost stories about the Coliseum. Norman was starring in the 1947 re-run of Macbeth, when he was accidentally stabbed in the stomach by the six-inch dagger his scene partner was using.

The wounds he received in front of an audience of 800 later led to his death – and to this day he allegedly roams the upper circle of the theatre. 
“Everyone spoke about Harold,” Menzies said. “You would hear a seat go down in the circle and you’d know he was there to watch rehearsals, but it was never a bad feeling.

“But wardrobe corridor was different. That was the corridor that connected the stage to the wardrobe department upstairs. There was a key-coded door at the bottom, and –  Oh my god. You just couldn’t stand with your back to the stairs because you’d get this horrible feeling. 

“There was a real oppressive presence there. We often left the door ajar so we didn’t have to stop to punch in the key code.”

On one occasion, Menzies went to the understage area, where there were a series of storerooms connected by a hallway, which also contained the spare stage rigging. Because there were multiple lightswitches, you could end up in the middle of the storage space with no lights on if someone hit the wrong switch at the wrong time, Menzies explained. 

“One night, during lock-up, I ended up in the pitch dark,” she said. “And suddenly there was this banging – bam, bam, bam, like the scaff-arms were being beaten together. 

“I thought the stage technician was having a laugh with me. So I ran out, straight to the bar where they were all sitting round the table with their pints after shift. There was absolutely no way they could have gotten there quicker than I did.” 

Drew McCoy, 31, also recalled some inexplicable events while gaining experience as a teenager on lighting gigs at the Coliseum between 2008 and 2013. His name whispered over an intercomms system. Strange sightings in the stalls. 

McCoy recalled: “Once, while setting down for the night, we were stood onstage waiting for the manager to let us out. The doors were locked as it was early hours of the morning. 

“Me and two others were sure we saw a little boy sat in one of the seats in the back of the stalls. As we noticed him, he got up and left. There were no children on this performance, and none of the crew had brought their kids along. We searched the property but no one was around. 

“Who can say if it was paranormal? But it was definitely strange to witness.”

For Michaela Sky, who worked as an usher during performances between 2002 and 2016, the scariest part about the hauntings at the Coliseum was that they would happen even when the theatre was full of people. 

“A colleague and I were getting the ice cream trays ready for the pantomime interval and were standing between the doors to the toilets. Suddenly, the ladies’ door slowly opened for a few seconds, then banged shut with some force,” she said.

“It shocked us. We were thinking it was children playing with the door but as we looked inside it was empty. No windows were open and it wasn’t a windy night.” 

Another time, Michaela and a colleague were sitting on the second last row of the auditorium during a performance, in case a member of the audience needed assistance. 

“There was no one sitting in the row behind us, but twenty minutes into the play, we felt the backs of our seats move like someone had sat down there. We assumed another member of staff had come in to watch the show. But then it happened again, and we turned around and there was no one there. 

“My colleague said: if that happens again, I’m moving. Seconds later, it felt like someone hit the arm rest between us. We both got up and moved.”

It’s unsurprising that the 140-year-old theatre has gathered its fair share of hair-raising tales. The site is rumoured to have been built on an old coal pit, where kids worked alongside men and casualties and injuries were part of the every day. 

In 1887, a wooden structure was erected on the site as a permanent circus venue, hosting Colleen’s Circus before it was relicensed as a theatre in the same year. Much later, the building was renovated, and the walls filled in with masonry – though some of the original timber structure was reportedly discovered by contractors during the recent works. 

In its life as a circus, theatre, a host venue for Charlie Chaplin, and hundreds of tragedies and pantomimes, echoes of the past are likely to haunt the much-used walls of the theatre house. 

And thanks to a concerted campaign to rescue the venue after the Arts Council withdrew its funding in 2023 – it will continue to do so once the theatre reopens later this year. 

“I have wondered what the little ghosties must think about it all,” Menzies said. after recounting her experiences with a mixture of horror and affection. “You know, with the theatre being so quiet and empty at the moment.”