07/11/2025
INFINITY BLOG
This short taster is the first of a series of regular blogs we'll be posting on the magic lantern and Victorian optical toys. For me, it’s a fascinating subject that shows how far we have come since then and how much we, the audience, have changed in our perceptions and beliefs of what is amazing, frightening or simply out of this world.
In our blogs on the Victorian magic lantern I am trying to go beyond the usual history lesson approach and delve into some of the individuals involved and some of the more unusual aspects of magic lanterns.
The Victorian’s obsession with Projected Spirits.
Victorian magic lanterns often blurred the lines between science and the supernatural. Audiences in Victorian times had never seen animated images and the magic lantern projector and slides made this possible. For the first time people could watch static images move. One famous performance was known as Pepper’s Ghost, an astonishing Victorian stage illusion, which was perfected by John Henry Pepper in 1862.
The illusion used a large sheet of glass, a hidden room and careful lighting to make a ghost appear and disappear in front of a live audience. The illusion was so effective that the Victorians assumed that science had finally found a way to summon the dead and some of the audience were so shocked by the spectacle they fainted! They loved ghosts and anything to do with the dead.
There were travelling performers who used to create shows known as phantasmagoria, where they would project ghost-like or skeletal images, often onto smoke or semi-transparent screens. Another famous animated slide shows a sleeping man with a huge beard, who has rats going down his throat into his stomach. This was Victorian entertainment at its best.
More interesting and amazing facts like these will be following in future blogs and videos I will be posting on the magic lantern and Victorian optical toys, so stay tuned!
