The ghost effect, as seen by the spectators, is somewhat of the following description. Any person from the audience is requested to come upon the stage and seat himself in a chair already provided. He has scarcely taken his seat when a white figure approaches him, passes in front, in doing so showing that it is transparent. Kneeling by his side, it lays a hand—a ghostly white hand—upon his arm, and appears to plead with him in a most touching manner. But the gentleman from the audience is implacable; he takes no notice whatever of his ghostly supplicant, appearing utterly unconscious of its presence.
Suddenly the object of the ghost’s entreaties becomes clear. Fumbling amongst its white robes it produces a ghostly cigar, again begs our friend with most urgent entreaties for a match, and finally, disgusted at his callous indifference, shakes a sepulchral fist at him, throws aside the cumbersome white shrouds, and appears to the spectators as a very well-dressed young man in immaculate attire. He is still a ghost, however, and calmly walks right through the gentleman from the audience, lights his ghostly cigar with an equally ghostly match, pats his friend condescendingly upon the head, and vanishes.
Unseeing and Disbelieving
“Ghost? What ghost? I saw no ghost, but I got very tired sitting up there all that time without anything happening.” So says the gentleman from the audience when he returns to his seat, and it is not until he has seen it all happen to some one else that he will believe anything really did occur.
Fig. 1.—Arrangement of stage for ghost-producing.
He is probably provoked when he finds that the next apparition takes the form of a fascinating young lady who vainly endeavors to make the young man who has taken his place kiss her. Indeed, such indifference is astounding, and all her pretty wiles and enticements are as wasted upon him as though he did not see her. As a matter of fact he does not know what pleasant temptations surround him.
In [Fig. 1] the stage is shown in section, and the phenomenon is explained. C, G is the stage, upon which is a chair, H, occupied by the gentleman from the audience, I. A sheet of plate glass, A, B, rises from the floor of the stage to the flies, and extends from one wing to the other. This sheet of glass is tilted forward at an angle to be determined by circumstances. Between the footlights, D, and the end of the stage, C, is a space or well, to be occupied by the original of the ghost, K.
When the curtain is raised, the glass, A, B, is quite invisible to the spectators owing to its transparency, and the extinguishing of the footlights at D renders the whole of the stage more or less dark. The space, D, G, is also invisible to the spectators, to whom the stage appears to present nothing more exceptional than an ordinary chair.
Mr. I, as he may be called, is brought up from the auditorium, round by the wings and taken to his chair, whence, looking into the theater before him, he sees nothing of the plate of glass intervening.