LAST Thursday’s page carried images of the former Palace and Plaza Cinemas in Port Glasgow.
Shown today is what once was one of Greenock’s most imposing buildings.
The black and white image depicts it as the Odeon Cinema on the site now occupied by the Aldi superstore car park. It was likely taken around the time of the cinema’s closure in 1969.
Opened as the Alexandra Theatre in 1905, the colour image shows the building after it became the King’s Theatre around 1910.
Legend has it that the theatre was haunted by the ghost of a young woman murdered in one of its private boxes.
A Telegraph story from some decades ago stated it had been said strange footsteps could be heard in passageways, but nobody actually admitted to witnessing the apparition.
The article prompted a reader to recall a report that a night watchman ran screaming from the building at 3am - claiming he had seen the ghost.
It is thought the alleged incident dated to the mid-1950s when the Rank Organisation bought the property to turn it into the Odeon Cinema.
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