My neighbours across the street are installing cobwebs on their house. They have a large spider web draped over their front yard tree, and an inflatable green spider. They also have three ghosts. These ghosts are recognizable as such because the are draped head to toe in white sheets. I’m not sure where this visual … Continue reading Bringing Out the Dead
Ghost Stories
Pepper’s Ghost
Around 1862, John Henry Pepper devised a new theatre lighting technique involving a large angled sheet of glass and figures moving around below stage level. The trick made it appear that actors on the stage were translucent phantasms who could walk through walls and furniture with ease. The technique made possible plays with impressively transparent ghosts. … Continue reading Pepper’s Ghost
Skirting Horror
When I was growing up in Scotland I read the boys’ magazines like the Eagle and Dandy, and, of course, the comic books. In the post war austerity of the time the British comic books were in black and white, with colour only on the covers. Every now and then, though, a tubular package would … Continue reading Skirting Horror
Haunted Spreadsheet
I attended an educational workshop once where they used the old right brain left brain theory as an ice-breaker. Just as a refresher: the left brain is the side that thinks logically and linearly. It’s the Mr. Spock of the bi-cameral world. The right brain is the flakey new age Aquarian who’s all about intuition … Continue reading Haunted Spreadsheet
Here There Be Ghosts
If you write about dragons and elves nobody gives you a hard time. They know that as an author you’ve created a world in which magic and imagination is a given. Nobody wants to know if you really believe in dragons. Such stories spring from a time when fear and mystery were as close as … Continue reading Here There Be Ghosts
Douglas Cockell 