Posted on August 25, 2009 - by Andrew

Sir Patrick Stewart sees the ghost at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

Sir Patrick Stewart the actor famous for his appearances in StarTrek and X-Men as well as his sterling performances in Shakespeare plays has said he saw a ghost while performing Waiting for Godot.

Sir Patrick has been performing the play with fellow X-Men star Sir Ian MacKellen and being followed by a film crew from Sky Arts.

Sir Ian asks Stewart, “What  happened, what threw you?” after the two actors go offstage for the interval.

“I just saw a ghost. On stage, during Act One,” Patrick Stewart replies. The Sky camera man didn’t record the image but the actor describes the ghostly figure as wearing a beige coat and twill trousers.

Stage crew at the theatre believe this is another sighting of the spirit of John Baldwin Buckstone. Buckstone was the manager of the Theatre Royal Haymarket, a friend of Charles Dickens, a playwright and an actor too.

During Buckstone’s time as the actor-manager, the Theatre Royal Haymarket staged some 200 plays and became known as the leading comic theatre of the day. Buckstone didn’t die in the theatre, though, he died in Kent in 1879, at the old age of 77 and after a long disease.

In Pure Spirit

Do you think it encourages greater open mindedness when celebrates report their ghost sightings? Do you think Patrick Stewart would have mentioned seeing the ghost had it not been a real time comment captured by a camera on the scene?

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