Andrew Lloyd Webber calls priest to remove ghost from London home

The upcoming production of the Phantom of the Opera at the Civic Theatre. Photo / Supplied

Andrew Lloyd Webber had to call a priest to get a poltergeist out of his home.

The Phantom of the Opera composer explained he enlisted the help of the church to rid his 19th-century home in Belgravia, central London, of a mischievous spirit that delighted in arranging piles of paper in different areas of the house.

Asked if he had seen a ghost at any of the theatres he owns, he said he hadn’t but told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: “I did have a house in Eaton Square which had a poltergeist.

”It would do things like take theatre scripts and put them in a neat pile in some obscure room. In the end, we had to get a priest to come and bless it, and it left.”

Lloyd Webber's collaborator, Cameron Mackintosh, recalled a “mysterious” presence he once experienced at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Photo / AP

While the 75-year-old musical theatre guru has never seen a ghost on stage, his sometime collaborator, Cameron Mackintosh, recalled a “mysterious” presence he once experienced at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which is London’s oldest theatre and currently owned by Lloyd Webber.

Mackintosh said: “On the opening night of Miss Saigon in 1989, I walked onto the vast stage and stood with [designer] John Napier. As we gazed into the beautiful empty auditorium, we felt a chill and heard some slight sounds above our heads in the grid.

”Even the light we were in seemed to take on a mysterious tinge. In less than a minute, it was gone, but we both felt some presence.”

But it seemed the “presence” was a positive sign for the production.

Mackintosh added: “Later the theatre’s old manager George Hoare told me, ‘That was the Man in Grey. He always turns up if you’re going to have a big hit!’”