Ask Lemmy

Huh. Never heard of the ghost light thing. Neat! Thanks for sharing it!

Wikipedia says that it's got some weird traditions around it, but that it has a real safety rationale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_light_(theatre)

A ghost light is an electric light that is left energised on the stage of a theatre when the theatre is unoccupied and would otherwise be completely dark.

The practical use of a ghost light is for safety. A ghost light enables one to navigate the theatre to find the lighting control console and to avoid accidents such as falling into the orchestra pit and stepping on or tripping over set pieces.

The superstitious have various justifications for the ghost light in relation to the supernatural. A popular theatrical superstition holds that every theatre has a ghost, and some theatres have traditions to appease ghosts that reach far back into their history. For example, the Palace Theatre, London keeps two seats in its balcony permanently bolted open to provide seating for the theatre ghosts.

Many theatres that were forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic renewed the tradition of ghost lights as a way of indicating the theatres would re-open.

EDIT: Actually, this is a good candidate for !wikipedia@lemmy.world. Gonna go submit it there!

Whistling comes from when whistling was used to communicate to stagehands to lower and lift the various backdops that used sand bags as counterweights. Whistling could cause someone up in the grid to send something down that was heavy, injuring or killing people.

The thing about the Scottish play that you mentioned (which is what most theatre folks call it) is more of an actual superstition, but may well stem from the fact that the play has a lot in it that can cause injury if not done safely, so the thought is that a lot of productions of the play can feel cursed, so that turned into referencing the play feeling cursed.