Pepper's Ghost

 

One of my favorite scenes on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland is the main hall complete with spectral dinner guests and multiple ghostly apparitions dancing the night away for all eternity. Not only does it tell a great story in one scene, but it is also a fantastic appearance that has stood the test of time since the ride opening in 1969. The ghosts portrayed in that one room were produced by an effect used in magic, plays, and cinemas for over 150 years.  Although many people are attributed to it and contributed to its fruition, one man will be known for it almost exclusively, John Henry Pepper which is why this effect is known as Pepper’s Ghost.

Before we come to the story of Pepper, we must first talk about a man named Henry Dircks. He was born in Liverpool in 1806 and was a civil engineer, author, and a patent examiner. He was also a wonderful basement inventor.  He constructed a model in which by looking in an aperture you would see figures, such as an actor, through a sheet of glass that was pitched at an angle and that figure would seem to be transparent.  Dircks called them ghosts. Dircks never revealed how he created the effect, but in 1858 he took it to the British Association for the Advancement in Leeds and called it the Dircksian Phantasmagoria. Amongst the natural phenomena, and mechanical devices lectures, Dircks felt out of place there, so he took it to the Crystal Palace and the Royal Polytechnic in London in 1862. The Royal Polytechnic gave a series of lectures each year there and one of the lecturers was John Henry Pepper.

Pepper was an analytical chemist who had a showmanship appeal to his lectures and many people gathered to watch his lectures on fermentation, and the detection of poison (apparently, there was not a lot to do in 1862 in London). It was at this gathering that Pepper got a peek at the Dircksian Phantasmagoria for the first time. As Pepper examined Dirck’s model and saw the transparent figures within, he knew that it could be built for a stage. Pepper had found his ghosts.

The Pepper’s Ghost was on stage on December 24th at the Polytechnic small theatre for Charles Dicken’s Christmas story, “The Haunted Man”. During the production, Pepper made a ghostly skeleton appear on stage. It couldn’t walk or converse, but it was a hit. Pepper gave Dircks five hundred pounds to own the idea and to ensure that Dircks wouldn’t want any royalties.  All Dircks wanted was for his name to be attached to the invention. Unfortunately, that never happened, and Pepper started producing plays such as “The Ghost of Hamlet” and others. He also licensed the device to various music halls and theaters. A decade after its premier in London, Pepper brought it to Boston. And so it goes, Dircks’ invention is brought to a larger platform, and it will take the world by storm, as Pepper’s Ghost.

Now before we clap Pepper and Dircks on the back for their illustrious invention, we need to go back to the 16^th Century when an Italian author by the name of Baptista Porta describes a similar effect in his treatise Natural Magic which was published in 1558, creating an illusion that was called “How We May See in a Chamber Things That Are Not”. And again, in 1852, a patent was filed by Pierre Seguin, an artist. This patent detailed a toy for children that used glass at a 45-degree angle to create small figures as an amusement for children.

I have done a stint in the haunt industry with a friend, and we created our own Pepper’s Ghost illusion, and it came out very well. In the short story, Einsenheim, the Illusionist, which was the inspiration for the movie The Illusionist, the magician uses Pepper’s Ghost illusion as part of his finale. Pepper’s Ghost is a wonderful example of how science can be used for other things such as theater, magic, and even theme parks. So, next time you ride the Haunted Mansion you can appreciate this effect in a new light. Over 500 years of tinkering with optics have brought you this enchanting scene, or as Walt Disney would say, “The magic is as wide as a smile and as narrow as a wink, loud as laughter and quiet as a tear, tall as a tale and deep as emotion. So strong, it can lift the spirit. So gentle, it can touch the heart. It is the magic that begins the happily ever after.”