In _The Secret Out_ the explanation of “The Witch of Endor” trick showed
how spectres may be made to appear by aid of the magic lantern.
[Illustration: Fig. 142.]
In the Middle Ages phantoms were called up by that means or by
reflectors, but the inability to procure apparatus in perfection seems
to have delayed the complete achievement of a success.
In 1847 M. Robin, the Parisian prestidigitateur, startled Lutetia with
his presentation of ghosts, almost solid forms, through which,
nevertheless, swords were passed, to prove their intangibility.
Robertson had attempted the same, but with a complication of mirrors,
plane and convex, which were hardly workable.
But, in seeking simplicity, the later inventor left a difficulty
unavoided. In the front of a stage, below it, he places the personator
of the ghost, illumined with a powerful light. A part of the stage is
open, over which leans, at an angle of forty-five degree, a very
smoothly polished plate of glass, as large as the stage from the “flies”
to the boards, and its edges hidden from the audience by trees, &c.
The reflected figure appears on the stage as far behind the glass as its
cause is before it.
The trouble is that, to counterbalance the inclination of the glass, the
actor must stand vertically on an inclined platform.
Professor Pepper and Mr. Tobin place a plane mirror exactly opposite the
plate-glass below it, which reflects an actor who may stand in a natural
position. This suffices for a single figure; but for more than one the
Robin inconvenience has to be endured.
[Illustration: Fig. 143.—An Oriental Magician.]
The phantascope, spectroscope, are other names for this deception.
The Eastern jugglers are spoken of as executing a trick which seems done
by this means.
A chain is seen in the air up which animals ascend; after all have
disappeared, the chain is apparently pulled up by them, for it is lost
to sight. This could be represented by this means, at all events.