Princess Theatre (Melbourne, Australia)

The long-time haunt of opera singer Frederick Federici, who died of a heart attack in the middle of a performance.

In any worldwide guide to paranormal sites, the Princess Theatre on Spring Street in Melbourne has a chapter to itself. The building is famous for its mechanically retractable roof and its ornamental grottoes with real waterfalls. That riot of moving scenery and spectacle created a perfect threshold where illusion and reality could blur—and where a singular tragedy was waiting to happen.

The curse is said to have begun with Anatole Frederick Demidoff Baker, born into an aristocratic family but drawn to the stage under the name Frederick Federici. After arriving in Australia with his company, he began rehearsals for Charles Gounod’s opera Faust. Federici took on the grueling role of the demon Mephistopheles. In theater lore, playing embodied evil is thought to be dangerous—superstition says the part opens a doorway straight to the underworld. Before the fateful performance Federici reportedly said, “I’ll give a splendid show tonight, but it will kill me.”

Opening night played to a packed house and was a resounding success. The opera’s climax—and the birth of the legend—came in the final scene, when the Devil must drag Faust to hell. The production used a “Corsican trap,” a hidden lift that lowered actors through clouds of stage smoke lit a hellish red. Federici wrapped Faust in a blood-red cloak, delivered his last lines, and began to descend. As his shoulders dipped below stage level, he suffered a massive heart attack.

The company carried him to the green room, where the theater doctor fought for an hour to revive him. The cruel irony: the singer literally died during his symbolic descent into hell.

Almost immediately afterward, the Princess Theatre became a center of paranormal activity that has lasted more than 130 years. Most witnesses report a tall, translucent gentleman in a flawless evening tailcoat.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press