Prelude (before 1750) Some ancient sightings of gods and spirits are thought to have been conjured up by means of (concave) mirrors,
camera obscura, or magic lantern projections. By the 16th century,
necromantic ceremonies and the conjuring of ghostly apparitions by
charlatan "magicians" and "witches" seemed commonplace. In the 1589 version of
Magia Naturalis,
Giambattista della Porta described how to scare people with a projected image. A picture of anything that would terrify the beholder should be placed in front of a camera obscura hole, with several torches around it. The image should be projected onto a sheet hanging in the middle of the nascent dark chamber, where spectators would not notice the sheet but only see the projected image hanging in the air. In his 1613 book
Opticorum Libri Sex, Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist and architect
François d'Aguilon described how some charlatans cheated people out of their money by claiming they knew
necromancy and would raise the specters of the devil from hell and show these to the audience inside a dark room. The image of an assistant with a devil's mask was projected through a lens into the dark room, scaring the uneducated spectators. The earliest pictures known to have been projected with lanterns were images of Death, hell, or monsters: •
Giovanni Fontana's 1420 drawing showed a lantern projecting a winged female demon. •
Athanasius Kircher warned in his 1646 edition of
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae that impious people could abuse his stenographic mirror projection system by painting a picture of the devil on the mirror and projecting it into a dark place to force people to carry out wicked deeds. His pupil
Gaspar Schott later turned this into the idea that it could be easily used to keep godless people from committing many sins, if a picture of the devil was painted on the mirror and thrown onto a dark place. • In 1659 Dutch inventor
Christiaan Huygens drew several phases of Death removing his skull from his neck and putting it back again, sketches meant to be projected with "convex lenses and a lamp". This lamp later became known as the magic lantern, and the sketches form the oldest known extant documentation of this invention. • One of Christiaan Huygens' contacts wrote to him in 1660: "The good Kircher is always performing tricks with the magnet at the gallery of the
Collegium Romanum; if he would know about the invention of the Lantern he would surely frighten the cardinals with specters." • Thomas Rasmussen Walgensten's 1664 lantern show prompted Pierre Petit to call the device "laterne de peur" (lantern of fear). In 1670 Walgensten projected an image of Death at the court of
King Frederick III of Denmark. • In 1668,
Robert Hooke wrote about a type of magic lantern installation: "It produces effects not only very delightful, but to such as know not the contrivance very wonderful; so that spectators not well versed in optics, that should see the various apparitions and disappearances, the motions, changes and actions that may this way be represented, would readily believe them to be supernatural and miraculous." • In the 1671 second edition of Kircher's
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae., the magic lantern was illustrated with projections of Death and a person in purgatory or hellfire. Kircher did suggest in his book that an audience would be more astonished by the sudden appearance of images if the lantern would be hidden in a separate room, so the audience would be ignorant of the cause of their appearance. According to legend Kircher secretly used the lantern at night to project the image of Death on windows of apostates to scare them back into church, but this is probably based on Gaspar Schott's suggestion (see above). • In 1672, French physician and numismatist
Charles Patin was very impressed with the lantern show that "Monsieur Grundler" (Griendel) performed for him in Nuremberg: "He even stirs the shadows at his pleasure, without the aid of the underworld. (...) My esteem for his knowledge could not prevent my fright, I believed there never was a greater magician than him in the world. I experienced paradise, I experienced hell, I experienced specters. I have some constancy, but I would have willingly given one half to save the other." After these apparitions Griendel showed other subjects in this performance, including birds, a palace, a country-wedding and mythical scenes. Patin's elaborate description of an early lantern show seems to be the oldest to contain more than frightening pictures. While surviving slides and descriptions of lantern shows from the following decades included numerous subjects, scary pictures remained popular. The magic lantern was a good medium with which to project fantasies as its imagery was not as tangible as in other media. Since demons were believed to be incorporeal, the magic lantern could produce very fitting representations. When magicians started to use the magic lantern in shows, some special effects were thought up. French physician, inventor and manufacturer of conjuring apparatus and scientific instruments
Edmé-Gilles Guyot described several techniques in his 1770 book
Nouvelles récréations physiques et mathématiques, including the projection of ghosts on smoke.
Johann Georg Schrepfer In the early 1770s in
Leipzig, Germany, coffeehouse owner, charlatan, necromancer, and leader of an independent Freemason lodge Johann Georg Schrepfer (or Schröpfer) performed ghost-raising séances and necromantic experiments for his Freemason lodge. For typical necromantic activity, he demanded his followers remain seated at a table or else face terrible dangers. He made use of a mixture of Masonic, Catholic, and Kabbalistic symbolism, including skulls, a chalk circle on the floor, holy water, incense, and crucifixes. The spirits he raised were said to be clearly visible, hovering in the air, vaporous, and sometimes screaming terribly. The highlight of his career was a séance for the court in the Dresden palace early in the summer of 1774. This event was impressive enough to still be described more than a century later in Germany and Britain. Apparitions reportedly raised by Schrepfer over the years included
Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, the beheaded Danish "traitors"
Johann Friedrich Struensee and
Enevold Brandt with their heads in their hands, and the Knights Templars' last Grand Master
Jacques de Molay. During a séance in Dresden, Schrepfer ordered De Molay's spirit to take a letter to a companion in Frankfurt. De Molay obeyed and returned half an hour later with an answer signed in Frankfurt by the companion. Another spirit appeared engulfed in flames begging Schrepfer not to torture him so. In the early morning of October 8, 1774, Schrepfer reportedly committed suicide with a pistol in a park with five friends present. According to legend he was a victim of delusions about his necromantic abilities and convinced he could resurrect himself afterwards. However, there are several indications that he may actually have been murdered. Most spectators of Schrepfer's séances were convinced that the apparitions they saw were real. No clear evidence of deceit seems to ever have been found, but critics have described several suspicions. The techniques that Schrepfer reportedly used for his elaborate effects included actors performing as ghosts,
ventriloquism, hidden speaking tubes,
glass harmonica sounds, aromatic smoke,
camera obscura projections and/or magic lantern projections on smoke,
concave mirror projections, and staged thunder. Schrepfer had been friends with pharmacist and Freemason Johann Heinrich Linck the Younger and regularly held lodge meetings at Linck's garden house. Linck could have been helping Schrepfer with drugs and chemicals and also knew about the workings of optical and acoustic devices. Linck owned a magic lantern which was decorated with a crucifix and a skull with wings. Soon after Schrepfer's death, there was a boom of publications attacking or defending his supposed abilities to raise ghosts, expanding Schrepfer's fame across Europe. Several publications included explanations of techniques he might have used to conjure apparitions, which inspired several people to recreate Schrepfer's séances. Christlieb Benedikt Funk, Professor of Physics at the Leipzig University, was possibly the first to publicly recreate such ghost-raising demonstrations; however, he was ordered to stop by the university's authorities.
Physicist Phylidor The magician "physicist" Phylidor, also known as "Paul Filidort" and probably the same as Paul de Philipsthal, created what may have been the first true phantasmagoria show in 1790. After a first ghost-raising session in Berlin in 1789 led to accusations of fraud and expulsion from Prussia, Phylidor started to market his necromantic shows as an art that revealed how charlatans fooled their audiences. His improved show, possibly making use of the recently invented
Argand lamp, was a success in Vienna from 1790 to 1792. Phylidor advertised these shows as "Schröpferischen, und Cagliostoischen Geister-Erscheinungen" (Schröpfer-esque and
Cagliostro-esque Ghost Apparitions) and as "Phantasmorasi". probably using the term for the first time. It is assumed Etienne-Gaspard Robertson visited one of these shows and was inspired to present his own "Fantasmagorie" shows a few years later. In October 1801 a phantasmagoria production by Paul de Philipsthal opened in London's
Lyceum Theatre in the
Strand, where it became a smash hit.
Robertson Étienne-Gaspard "Robertson" Robert, a Belgian inventor and physicist from
Liège, became the best known phantasmagoria showman. He is credited for coining the word
fantascope, and would refer to various magic lanterns by this term. The fantascope was not a magic lantern that could be held by hand, but instead required someone to stand next to it and physically move the entire fantascope closer or further to the screen. The macabre atmosphere in the post-revolutionary city was perfect for Robertson's Gothic extravaganza complete with elaborate creations and
Radcliffean décor. After discovering that he could put the magic lantern on wheels to create either a moving image or one that increased and decreased in size, Robertson moved his show. He sited his entertainment in the abandoned cloisters kitchen of a Capuchin convent (which he decorated to resemble a subterranean chapel) near the
Place Vendôme. He staged hauntings, using several lanterns, special sound effects and the eerie atmosphere of the tomb. This show lasted for six years, mainly because of the appeal of the supernatural to Parisians who were dealing with the upheavals as a result of the
French Revolution. Robertson mainly used images surrounded by black in order to create the illusion of free-floating ghosts. He also would use multiple projectors, set up in different locations throughout the venue, in order to place the ghosts in environments. For instance, one of his first phantasmagoria shows displayed a lightning-filled sky with both ghosts and skeletons receding and approaching the audience. In order to add to the horror, Robertson and his assistants would sometimes create voices for the phantoms.
John Evelyn Barlas was an English poet who had written for several phantasmagoria shows during the late 1880s. He used the pseudonym
Evelyn Douglas for most of the works written for phantasmagoria. He has written several different works, most of them focusing on the idea of dreams and nightmares. Some of his works include
Dreamland, A Dream of China, and
Dream Music. His work is known for including extravagant descriptions of settings with multiple colors. Most of Barlas' work also mentions flames and fire. The flames are meant to represent the burning of emotions laced throughout Barlas' poems, and fit well within the realm of phantasmagoria. By the 1840s phantasmagoria became already outmoded, though the use of projections was still employed, just in different realms: ==In other media==