When I lived in Glasgow, I was in a show called Maskerade. In it, I played a wannabe opera singer, which meant I had to sing Mozart. I was a well trained vocalist. I had started my university studies as a voice major, but changed my path to English (literature, linguistics, and writing) a year later. By the time I was in Maskerade, it had been a couple years since I had proper voice lessons. To make up for lost time, I spent several hours a day at the theater, singing and training, doing my best to come to an agreement with Mr. Mozart.
For all my vocal training, I lack extreme vibrato. I am great at jazz, blues, Broadway belters, chorus, folk. I have some vibrato. But to sound like the stereotypical opera singer wearing horns on her head, blond braids, and making the glass shatter, nope. not going to happen.
The theater was called The Ramshorn Theater. It was originally a church built in 1824, constructed on the site of another church that had stood there since 1720. It was surrounded by a tall wrought iron fence that was painted a dusty sky blue. Being in the Gothic Revival style, it looked like a small medieval cathedral.
One entered the theater via the side door, after buzzing to be let in. It was a few steps down from the sidewalk into the building. Then it was one hall going past Susan’s (the theater director) office, then Sylvia’s (the theater administrator and receptionist) office. The crypt/prop and costume storage room was directly across from Sylvia’s office, with the kitchen down the hall to the left. After that, there were the stairs going up like the inside of a snail shell, leading to smaller rooms, the main theater, and the lobby where where I rehearsed.
I have forgotten something.
When I say this was a kirk, a church, I mean in all the ways. The green space outside the theater was a graveyard. In the 1820s, the cemetery was pillaged by bodysnatchers for local universities, and when Ingram Street was installed, more graves were disturbed and eventually moved to other resting places. Inside the building, the crypt remained intact, and doubled as costume/prop storage. Some of Glasgow’s most important forefathers rest there. When trying to access something in the crypt/prop room, it was considered good practice to ask permission, or beg pardon of the sleepers, before you reached over them. Good manners never go out of style.
On this particular day, I came in, greeted Sylvia ( who became my Scottish mum who made sure my coat was buttoned all the way to the top, and clucked at the lads I was dating), left a note for Susan (who was out that day), and then I asked who else was about in the building. “Bruce is in the kitchen doing some costume work.”
“Aye, I’ll go say hello,” I said as I waved back to Sylvia.
Bruce was dressed all in black (because, he said, you never had to worry about matching clothes if everything was black). His dark hair was flecked with a little gray hair, and few cobweb remains. He was brushing down a dark blue frock coat. Several black cat collars lay on a table next to him.
“How ye’ doin, Bruce?”
“Aye, smashing.” He reached past the cat collars, to his cup of tea, and took a sip..
“The collars for Greebo?” I asked. Greebo was a cantankerous cat that would become a cantankerous human in the second act of Maskerade.
“Aye.” Bruce tried on a collar, and shook his head.
“I’ll be upstairs, if ye need me.”
Bruce nodded. “Off ye get.”
The stairs corkscrewed all the way to the main floor. The performance space was a black box theater: a flat black floor, black walls. There was no built-in seating. Chairs, or risers could be installed temporarily. To get height on the stage, small wooden platforms were placed. This allowed for flexibility in set design. That day, it was empty. I walked across the stage and into the lobby.
The lobby ceilings were high with stained glass windows that reached between 15-25 feet tall. Most depicted scenes from the Old and New Testament. The whole space was empty save for a couple stacks of chairs, and an upright piano. The piano was a basic, blond, upright piano. I didn’t notice the name except that it wasn’t a Yamaha (the worst piano in my book) or a Steinway (the best). Its sound was good. The response and resistance of the keys was perfect; not too light or plasticky like an electric keyboard, and not too heavy like pressing down a brick. With keys like this, you could coax sound out of the instrument like a whisper, or make the room shake with force, and the piano wouldn’t flinch. Being in a room with thirty foot ceilings certainly didn’t hurt.
“Hello, my dear,” I said as I opened the keyboard lid. I played a few gentle chords in greeting. (Before I was a vocalist, I was a pianist.) After saying hello to the piano, I got to work.
Singing is meant to look and sound easy, just like ballet is meant to look effortless. You open your mouth and those sounds just… come out.
Instead, singing is very physical. You can’t run a marathon cold. You have to stretch, set your pace, train, conquer other distances, and techniques. Singing is the same. There’s vocal exercises, breathwork, easier songs to get the voice limber before you tackle the harder ones.
And of course there’s scales. The “simple” stepping up each note, and then stepping down the vocal staircase takes more discipline and precision than one might guess. Think of it as climbing up and down stadium steps, over and over again, just with your voice. That’s where I started.
After about an hour of scales, singing, and other exercises, my voice was ready for a break. When I descended the notes, I finished with less finesse than when I had started.
As I stood there, catching my breath, and sipping my water, the room echoed back to me, singing the same scale in my wake, but this echo giggled on each note as it sang.
Giggled.
It had matched me note for note, step for step, and had come to the bottom of the scale, half a breath behind me, just close enough to hide, but different enough to catch my attention.
I froze in my spot, not breathing, before I rushed to Sylvia.
“So Sylvia….” I leaned against her door frame. I tried to look and sound casual, though I imagine the slightly panicked look on my face may have given me away.
“Ye alright, hen?”
I sat down and told her the whole story, about singing, and the giggle.
When I was done she smiled. “Ach tha’s jus’ Edie.”
“Edie?” I repeated.
“Aye. She’s the ghost. Sometimes ye’ll walk intae a room and feel a cold spot, or somethin’‘ll go missin.’ That’s Edie. She’s a good sort. Been here for ages.” Sylvia paused, and took a sip of her drink. “I’m surprised ye’ve no’ met her before. She loves music. Except country-western. The night we had a show with that in it, she tucked ‘erself beneath the platform and started makin’ an awful noise. Had to break for intermission. Surprised no one wanted their money back.”
“Really..”
“Aye, Edie. She’ll no hurt ye. In fact, I expect she’ll be happy to make yer acquaintance. Just tell her hello when ye’re about, and ye’ll be alright.”
Part of me thought that I should have known better. Theaters and ghosts go hand in hand. At my home university’s theater, the ghost was discussed like a nuisance child, that no rational person would admit to knowing. Dean (for Dean Dutcher the theater building’s namesake) was blamed for all sorts of things - slamming bathroom stall doors, stealing props, hijacking the elevator. But no one admitted to believing in him.
Yet, here Sylvia was telling me to say hello to Edie, in the same matter of fact voice that she would say to jiggle the handle on the toilet to keep the water from running.
So I did just that. I went back upstairs, said hello to Edie, told her I liked her voice, and that she could sing with me any time she wanted. When I left for the day, I said my goodbyes, and thanked her for the company. I never heard her again as clearly as I did that day. There’d be moments where I felt someone in the room, or when I might hear a quieter duet partner when it was just me in the lobby at the piano.
When my year was up in Glasgow, I said many tearful farewells to my Ramshorn family. Before I left, I sat at the piano, and sang my way through a few pieces, carefully listening, and feeling my unseen duet partner Edie. While I didn’t feel her come sit next to me, or sing with me, I hope she knew I was grateful for
Twenty some years later, the Ramshorn’s theatre days are long over. Yet I still wonder if Edie sings in the lobby.
© 2026 Rebecca Lane