Abstract

This article explores the mapping of the lecture theatre onto the theatrical space in Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s Ghost Stories (2010). In so doing, it investigates how such mapping serves to interrogate the agency of the institutionalized lecture theatre as a space to facilitate containment and control over the study and surveillance of the paranormal. Whilst attempting to ‘keep the secrets of Ghost Stories’ as audience members are implored to do at the play’s finale, the article focuses on how the lecture theatre itself becomes uncanny in its theatricality, and how it subsequently reveals the key to reading the twist to the play, offering an understanding of the hauntedness of the play’s academic protagonist.