New Amsterdam Theatre

Olive Thomas joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1915 and by 1920 was regarded as one of the production's defining performers. She married Jack Pickford, brother of actress Mary Pickford, and the couple traveled to Paris in September 1920 for a holiday. On the night of September 5-6, returning to their suite at the Hotel Ritz around 3 a.m., Thomas ingested a solution of mercury bichloride — a topical treatment for syphilis prescribed to her husband, stored in a blue glass bottle with French labeling. The ingestion was ultimately ruled accidental by the Paris physician who conducted her autopsy, though competing theories of suicide or medication error have circulated since. She died on September 10, five days later, of acute nephritis caused by the mercury.

The accounts of her presence at the New Amsterdam begin in the years following her death, with stagehands describing a figure in a green beaded dress carrying a blue glass bottle in the theater and on the rooftop garden. The bottle is the consistent identifying detail — a specific, documentable object with a specific, tragic origin.

The most formally documented modern account occurred during Disney's 1990s restoration. A night security guard, alone in the theater and positioned center stage, looked up to see a woman in a green Follies costume and beaded headdress cross the stage, turn, blow him a kiss, and walk through a wall onto 41st Street. The guard was disturbed enough to call Disney management at 2:30 a.m. Disney subsequently placed photographs of Thomas at the theater's front and back entrances, and cast tradition evolved to include bidding her goodnight at the close of each performance.

Thomas did not perform at the New Amsterdam exclusively, but her Follies association with the theater and the endurance of the accounts over more than a century have made her one of Broadway's most consistently cited paranormal presences.