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Walk onto the Wisconsin Union Theater's stage at night and you'll find a lone light to guide your way. Nestled in a squirrel cage on a stand, it is known as the ghostlight. It is there to ensure that people don't crash around...and so that the theater's ghosts have a light and feel welcome. Theater ghosts tend to be the spirits of people who died in them. According to former Director Michael Goldberg, the Union Theater is home to two ghosts. One is a construction worker who died in a work-related accident in 1939, when the theater was being built. The second was a percussionist with the Minneapolis Symphony. The orchestra played here on March 12, 1950, introducing its new musical director, Antal Dorati. Just before the intermission, an unrehearsed crash was heard in the percussion section. The substitute tympanist had a heart attack, collapsed, crawled off-stage and died before a doctor who was in the audience could reach the backstage area. After the intermission, the manager walked onto the stage and announced the tragedy. The orchestra played the somber second movement from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony while the shocked audience filed out.

Goldberg sometimes finds himself all alone in the theater in the wee hours, after the last crew person has left and when all the doors are locked. He has never seen a ghost but he has often felt a presence, heard someone walking, or noticed some other sound that didn't fit. He makes it a point to distinguish between the super-natural and the supra-natural.

For people who have attended concerts here for decades, says Goldberg who has been connected with the theater for some 40 years, the presence of many past great performers is palpable. "Some loom very large in my memory," he says. "When I look at a great musician I can see other great artists who played here before, especially when they play something I heard 20, 30 or 40 years ago. The richness of the [theater's] experience is cumulative that way. The past enhances the presence."

Do you have an interesting theater-related story? Send it to Esty Dinur at the theater or email edinur@wisc.edu. Please enclose a phone number.