Pepper’s Ghost at the Opera

The literature on Pepper’s Ghost, a Victorian device for creating ghostly illusions on the stage, gives the impression that the device, after a brief life in mainstream theatres, was then only to be found as a fairground attraction. This paper aims to correct this impression and to show that the device was used far more widely. After a brief description of Pepper’s Ghost, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the device, the paper goes on to describe a group of touring theatre companies that integrated the effect into adaptations of popular plays and operas.

The idea behind the “ghost” stretched back to the sixteenth century but a theoretical scheme for its use in the theatre in Britain was first suggested by Henry Dircks in 1858 and then modified in 1862 by Professor John Pepper, director of The Royal Polytechnic, so that it became a practical piece of apparatus that could be used in a wide variety of locations, including a “fit up show of Pepper’s Ghost” being reported in the Scottish Highlands (S.W.). The principle behind it was commonplace. If we look through a window we can see things outside but if it was dark outside then the glass would act as a mirror and we would see a reflection of what was in the room. The device used this relationship of glass and light to simulate a “ghost”. The schematic below shows its final and most sophisticated version.¹

Schematic of the Pepper’s Ghost Installation.

The spotlight, initially an oxy-hydrogen limelight lamp but later possibly gas or electric, lit up the actor who was below the stage hidden from the audience in a compartment completely lined with black cloth to minimise any extraneous reflected light. It was known as the oven because of the heat generated by the lamp (Speaight 22). The actor’s image was reflected first by the mirror and then by the angled glass and was thus seen as a “ghost” by the audience, who could also see other actors through the glass. When the light below was switched off the “ghost” disappeared. Clearly it would have required considerable skill for the stage actor and “ghost” to interact effectively, given that they could not see each other, and they used the music and marks on the stage and in the oven in order to coordinate their actions (Steinmeyer 35). The stage lighting needed to be controlled very skilfully to allow audiences to see both the stage actor and the “ghost” reflection and to ensure that the stage glass was not apparent to the audience. The mirror could be tilted causing the “ghost” to rise and there were other modifications, for example, so that only the apparently dismembered head might be shown floating in space (Speaight 18–19). Pepper and Dircks’ 1863 patent application stated that the glass would remain hidden in a slot in the stage and would only be hauled out when the illusion was required (Pepper 10–11) but it is not clear whether this was done in practice or whether the glass stayed in position for a whole scene. The best seats to appreciate the illusion were nearest the stage and often could be reserved (Glasgow Herald, 31 Aug. 1863: 1) and there must have been a fairly restricted area where one could get a reasonable view.

The device created quite a stir and chimed in well with the Victorian obsession with ghosts. Pepper earned some £12,000 in fifteen months when he used it at the Royal Polytechnic for a variety of effects including playing a scene from Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man² in which he read the text aloud to a series of ghostly goings-on on the stage (Pepper 12). He then toured the country with the show³ while imitations also sprang up in Germany, the US and France, where a more primitive version had been tried some years before. The Royal Polytechnic show was done with the auditorium in complete darkness (Taylor 307), something that would have been...