.
Once suited and booted, the cast go down the stairs together, and across the courtyard into the first room on Ghosts Alive. Around a circular plinth in the centre, with a waxwork of Fulke’s ‘ungrateful man-servant’, Ralph Heyward, the cast gather in a circle for an elongated warm up session in preparation for the day ahead.

The warm up is a series of exercises designed to limber up actors, both physically and vocally and are lead by either Dominic McChesney, (Dom), Sudden Impact!’s Assistant Director for Ghosts Alive, or John Gullidge, Tussauds’ Show Captain for Warwick Castle.

They start off by stretching, then moving onto breathing exercises. Both of these are important; the actors spend almost all day on their feet, acting – just like anybody would do in the theatre. And, unlike The Freezer, there are a lot more disciplines to be adhered to in Ghosts Alive – there are scripts to be followed, actors have to adopt an olde English accent, and stunts include jumping through doors and collapsing on beds. It’s strenuous stuff.

The warm up exercises move onto tongue twisters, starting with the easily accomplished ‘unique New York’, moving onto ‘red lorry, yellow lorry’ and concluding with ‘Ken Dodd’s dad’s dog’s dead’, which even John struggled with, much to the amusement of the actors.

Once warm up is completed, the actors have a chance to go to their positions, and rehearse one last time before the doors open and the public go in. Actors go off in various directions into darkened corners, muttering lines to themselves, energetically gesturing as they go.

Finally, there is a quick run through of emergency procedures. It is things like this that separate Ghosts Alive from normal stage productions. While scripts are followed and actors perform to an audience, they also adopt a responsibility for the safety of those in their company.

Each scene has an emergency stop button that stops the show in the current room. It mutes the music and turns the lights on in that scene. If there is a more pressing emergency, there is another emergency stop that halts the entire attraction.

Lynton takes centre stage, as he gives the actors one final morale boost.

“This is what you work for. We had a wonderful day yesterday. Today, there’s the potential for a tough day. There’s a group of French kids outside who are already interested.

“Yesterday – it was a complete high, it couldn’t have gone better. Today – you could feel flat by the end of it. You’re a great cast, you’re completely different and the show feels brand new.”

The house lights go off, and it is whispering from now on in. The first group are outside, and the actors disappear to their quarters as myself, Lynton, Dom and John huddle into a darkened concave to watch the show.

One actor freezes in a pose in the centre of the room opposite the waxwork, while two others squat either side of the closed entrance door. As the door opens, a group of twelve enter, and are guided in a line around the plinth on which the actor dressed as Sir Fulke Grevelle stands.

As the group pass through the doors, the two actors either side scurry around in the darkness, exploiting the guests’ disorientation, lurching out at them, hissing, breathing (Lynton explained that this is how ghosts should act with breath, not voice), and growling before disappearing back into the dark corners.

The actor in the centre of the room then explodes into a rousing introduction about the history between him and Heyward. As he warns that his ghost is everywhere, an airblaster goes bang as 11 people jump and one gentleman makes some witless smarmy remark before the group move on into the next room.

Several minutes later, once the group have finished the first show, the actors converge in the first room again as the house lights go on and the music stops for a chance to reflect on the first real public show.

“See, that’s what I was talking about”, says Lynton. “After the high of yesterday, we get that know-it-all tosser”.

The Collins Dictionary definition of ‘tosser’ is someone who, when in a situation that purports to be scary, instead makes every effort to LOUDLY prove that he is neither scared or impressed at efforts to scare him.

Said tosser in his attempts to belittle himself forgets the historical merit and story being told, and instead of looking clever instead looks like an insecure idiot with a very tolerant partner.

But, of course, we have the so-called tosser to thank for one thing – he was a baptism of fire for the actors. They had been trained for such eventualities, and being new, they have already learnt how to deal with them at this early stage.

Most, if not all of the actors, seemed unperturbed by this idiot. None were flustered while performing, and most barely noticed his manly remarks.

Lynton went through a few final reminders.

“This is your stage. You must not forget it, you must treat it with all the respect you treat any other stage. You were fantastic. You won’t scare everyone, but you can act for everyone. Don’t panic or yell at the audience [Training taught the actors to avoid cliché’s like ‘yelling’ at an audience believing it to be scary] if you forget a line, just continue on your way”.

The lights go out, the music comes on and the actors get into position for the first of the real run of shows.

The next group to come through is a group of French students, about 12-14 years old. Mostly boys, with a female teacher and two stereotypical coach drivers, all of them loved the show, proving that despite not all understanding the lingo, Ghosts Alive works on many levels to entertain.

After a few shows, the first teething problems come to light. The pair of doors where the actor jumps out from is often obscured by guests not realising that there is a door there. The solution is to have the Narrator Host stand in front of the doors, which subtly discourages people from standing in front of it. The host then can make sure they’re out of the way when it comes to the scare.

The same actor also has a problem with an LED torch not working properly, so this is quickly fixed for the next show. The rehearsals are a good time for these problems to arise, as guests are under no false pretences that Ghosts Alive is nothing more than a dress rehearsal at this stage.

Lynton warns the cast the next group is a group of British schoolchildren. They’re all young, but ‘too cool for school’, so this would be a good challenge for the cast.

Having dealt with the earlier idiot, the actors duly rise to the challenge, and soon blow the wind from the childrens’ sails. Exchanging stories quietly while they wait for the next group, one of the actors says of the bedroom scene that one of the children just dropped to his knees in fright when he lurched into his “as you can see...” line.

The next group is comprised of a mixture of French students, both boys and girls. Unbelievably, as one of the actors jumped out at one coming through the door, the young teen lurched backwards almost as if shot by a gun, flying back, legs in the air before landing on his back.

Fortunately his landed on his backpack, and was on his feet in no time and the show went on with no interruption once it was clear he didn’t hurt himself, but once that group had gone through, the actors had a moment to discuss this accident.

It was the first real example of just how volatile the audience can be. When acting so intimately, and with the aim of scaring people, it is impossible to know how people will react. Most laugh, some jump, but some – like this French student – react completely unexpectedly.

The actors have only a couple of minutes to recoup while the Landing Host starts her presentation for the next group. They’re concerned – having felt guilty for making children jump already, the fact a teenager flew backwards so unexpectedly is a humbling lesson. While actors are taught about the unpredictability of the guest, it is still a shock when something like this happens. Continues...