SHORT TAKES : Phantom of the Sydney Opera?

Staff members at Sydney’s Opera House say they have their very own phantom--a well-dressed old man who haunts a box in one of the cheapest sections of the auditorium.

Theater Manager David Hensler said today there have been five sightings of the phantom in the past 15 years and many times when doors had been jammed shut and chairs mysteriously moved from their places.

Hensler said the phantom of Sydney’s Opera House could be the ghost of an old tramp known as Paddy, whose ashes were allegedly buried by friends in the foundations of the forecourt in the early 1970s.