Pepper's ghost

For other uses, see Pepper's ghost (disambiguation).

Stage setup for Pepper's Ghost. A brightly lit figure out of the audience's sight below the stage is reflected in a pane of glass placed between the performer and the audience. To the audience, it appears as if the ghost is on stage.

Pepper's ghost is an illusion technique, used in the theatre, cinema, amusement parks, museums, television, and concerts, in which an image of an object off-stage is projected so that it appears to be in front of the audience.[1]

The technique is named after the English scientist John Henry Pepper (1821–1900), who popularised the effect with a theatre demonstration in 1862.[2] This launched an international vogue for ghost-themed plays which used this novel stage effect during the 1860s and subsequent decades.[citation needed]

The illusion is widely used for entertainment and publicity purposes. These include the Girl-to-Gorilla trick found in old carnival sideshows[3] and the appearance of "ghosts" at the Haunted Mansion and the "Blue Fairy" in Pinocchio's Daring Journey, both at Disneyland in California. Teleprompters are a modern implementation of Pepper's ghost. The technique was used to display a life-size illusion of Kate Moss at the 2006 runway show for the Alexander McQueen collection The Widows of Culloden.[4]

In the 2010s, the technique has been used to make virtual artists appear onstage in apparent "live" concerts, with examples including Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur, and Michael Jackson. It is often wrongly[5] described as "holographic".[6] Such setups can involve custom projection media server software and specialized stretched films.[7] The installation may be a site-specific one-off, or a use of a commercial system such as the Cheoptics360 or Musion Eyeliner.

Products have been designed using a clear plastic pyramid and a smartphone screen to generate the illusion of a 3D object.[8]

  1. ^ "Science of Pepper's Ghost illusion". cosmosmagazine.com. 13 August 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference University of Westminster was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference secrets was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Bethune, Kate (2015). "Encyclopedia of Collections: The Widows of Culloden". The Museum of Savage Beauty. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference JournalExplainer-Hologs was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference AV Concepts Coachella was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Shein14 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference GizMag-Holus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).