Some things make your skin crawl.
That's what Daniel MacPherson said at The Woman in Black's national tour announcement earlier this year. And when it comes to the theatre adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 book of the same name, that's certainly the case. There's something about the atmosphere created on stage that makes it easy to believe in otherworldly beings and hauntings.
But then again, theatres and ghost stories tend to go hand in hand - something MacPherson knows all too well. When performing at Her Majesty's in Melbourne for a different production last year, he couldn't help but wonder about haunted happenings.
"There's been a theatre on that site since the 1800s," he says.
"And it may not have been this specific theatre but there are documented experiences and people and things and whatnot that are known to inhabit some of the rooms and corridors."
Fast forward to the present and he, and cast mate John Waters, are in their final week of performing The Woman in Black at a different Melbourne theatre, the Athenaeum, where ghost stories are still captivating cast, crew and audience members.
Spooky stories
On stage, it's Arthur Kipps' story - a lawyer obsessed with a curse he encountered decades before. He had been called on a work trip to deal with the estate of a recently deceased widow, and his time at Eel Marsh House left more than a mark on him.
Off stage, however, it's the ghostly tale of Roberta that is shared. A former usher who dreamt of being on the stage, it is said she spends her afterlife in the nearly 140-year-old theatre's front of house, with reports of people hearing her operatic voice echoing through the building.
"I don't know the story of how she died or why she's still hanging around," Waters says.
"But she tends to hang around in the upper circle in the front of house area. Having been an usher, I suppose that's where she worked. But she doesn't come backstage.
"One of our technicians when we moved into the Athenaeum said she definitely experienced a presence of someone in the ladies' toilets in the front of house. She said she heard the door open and close so she thought someone went in there. But when she came out there wasn't anyone there."
Waters doesn't believe in ghosts as much as MacPherson, but he's not completely dismissive about them either. The veteran actor likes the unknown factor about all things supernatural. But when it comes to bringing the fear factor to the stage, it does make for gripping theatre.
"The Athenaeum is an old, kind of slightly creepy theatre anyway so it was an ideal venue," he says.
"But it doesn't matter what the venue is in the end, because when the lights go down and we have our own little proscenium and set, and that's all that the audience sees, we take them into that environment anyway."
It's good news for audiences attending the remaining performances of The Woman in Black. The relatively newer theatres in Canberra, Wollongong, Newcastle and Sydney possibly don't have the same historical spookiness as their Melbourne counterpart, which was established in 1839.
All that's needed for a successful run of The Woman In Black is somewhere for the two actors to stand, and somewhere for the audience to sit. Stephen Mallatratt's ingenious stage adaptation of Hill's book relies on ambience, imagination and a few Victorian-era stage techniques to bring this spooky stage performance to life.
"It's quite unique among plays, I think - a two-hander which requires the actors to build up the imagination of your audiences; imagine things with great help from sound effects and lighting," Waters says.
"And the audience gets very invested in it because they've been asked to go along with a lot of things that they can't actually see but we've created in their imagination. It always goes back to imagination."
"I don't think there are many plays that attempt the horror ... genre because it is difficult on a stage. But this play has achieved it."
Gripping ghosts
Theatre productions may not attempt to deliver the fear factor very often but there is a long history of ghosts, superstitions and the stage.
Macbeth - as well as being referred to as "The Scottish Play" due to theatre superstitions - is one of a few Shakespeare plays featuring ghosts. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is often brought to the stage, and there have also been stage adaptations of Carrie and The Exorcist. And before MacPherson was cast in The Woman in Black, he was in 2:22 - A Ghost Story - a much more modern scary tale than his current project.
When the curtain closes - on these and other stage productions - a different type of ghost story takes over. When the house lights are turned off, the ghost light is turned out - a low-watt bulb, placed in the middle of the stage is said to keep ghosts away.
So what is it about ghosts and the theatre that seems to go hand in hand? And what keeps us so fascinated?
"It has to do partly with that tradition of telling ghost stories around the campfire," says Rebecca Clode, the Ethel Tory Lecturer in Drama at Australian National University.
"There's a sense of community in a live theatre audience that works really well to create the right atmosphere for a ghost story.
"And also ghost stories play with the boundaries between reality and illusion in really interesting ways, and theatre does that too."
But not all ghost stories are created equal. When it comes to the appearance of ghosts in theatre and literature, they can serve different purposes. As Waters points out, not all ghosts are written about for the fear factor; they can often teach a lesson.
In The Bells - a 19th-century theatre production that most notably starred Henry Irving as Mathias - the ghostly beings are a figment of Mathias's guilt. Interestingly, Irving is also referenced in passing in The Woman in Black. Perhaps this extends from the many references to Victorian theatre traditions and gothic styles - which often utilise ambiguity to help deliver a spooky scene - used throughout The Woman in Black.
"The Woman in Black, although it was written in the 80s, harks back to some of those 19th-century gothic traditions where there are storytelling narrator characters who actively encouraged others to use their imagination," Clode says. "So we have these stories that actively engage the audience's imagination and create a sort of thrilling, exciting experience for them.
