Although nothing can remove the spirit of Tom Hooper's Cats from our collective memory, storied composer and dog person Andrew Lloyd Webber apparently had to have a priest bless a very tidy poltergeist that was similarly living rent-free in the 19th century property he once owned in London's Belgravia district.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, the Phantom of the Opera maestro revealed that he doesn't believe he's ever seen a ghost, but he definitely witnessed some unusual organizational activity in his non-opera house.
"I did have a house in Eaton Square which had a poltergeist," Webber told the publication's Gordon Rayner and Dominic Cavendish. "It would do things like take theatre scripts and put them in a neat pile in some obscure room."
He continued, "In the end we had to get a priest to come and bless it, and it left." Hopefully that priest was promoted, unlike the one recently demoted for allowing Sabrina Carpenter to film her "Feather" music video in his church.
All in all, it sounds like Webber's put-together phantom was at least mildly less obsessive than the one in his hit 1986 musical adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel, which closed on Broadway in 2023 after a 35-year run.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, the Phantom of the Opera maestro revealed that he doesn't believe he's ever seen a ghost, but he definitely witnessed some unusual organizational activity in his non-opera house.
"I did have a house in Eaton Square which had a poltergeist," Webber told the publication's Gordon Rayner and Dominic Cavendish. "It would do things like take theatre scripts and put them in a neat pile in some obscure room."
He continued, "In the end we had to get a priest to come and bless it, and it left." Hopefully that priest was promoted, unlike the one recently demoted for allowing Sabrina Carpenter to film her "Feather" music video in his church.
All in all, it sounds like Webber's put-together phantom was at least mildly less obsessive than the one in his hit 1986 musical adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel, which closed on Broadway in 2023 after a 35-year run.
