Peppers ghost

For other uses, see Peppers ghost (disambiguation).

make one object or person reected in the mirror appear

to morph into another behind the glass (or vice versa).
This is the principle behind the Girl-to-Gorilla trick found
in old carnival sideshows and in the James Bond movie
Diamonds Are Forever.[1] The hidden room may instead
be painted black, with only light-colored objects in it. In
this case when light is cast on the room, only the light
objects reect the light and appear as ghostly translucent
images superimposed in the visible room. This can be
used to make objects appear to oat in space.

Peppers ghost is an illusion technique used in theatre,

haunted houses, dark rides, and magic tricks. It is named
after John Henry Pepper, a scientist who popularized the
eect in a famed demonstration in 1862. It has a long
history, dating into the 16th century, and remains widely
performed today. A notable example of the illusion was
used to project a recording of Tupac Shakur onstage with
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg at the 2012 Coachella Music
and Arts Festival.
In the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, Walt Disney
World, and Disneyland Tokyo, the glass is vertical to
the viewer as opposed to the normal angled position, reecting animated props below and above the viewer that
1 Eect
create the appearance of three-dimensional, translucent
ghosts that appear to dance through the ballroom and
An audience views a stage or room with various objects in interact with props in the physical ballroom. The appariit. On command, ghostly objects appear to fade in or out tions appear and disappear when the lights on the animaof existence in the room, or objects in the room magically tions turn on and o.
transform into dierent objects.

3 History

Technique

3.1 Giambattista della Porta

The basic trick involves a stage that is specially arranged

into two rooms, one that people can see into or the stage
as a whole, and a second that is hidden to the side, the
blue room. A plate of glass (or plexiglas or plastic lm)
is placed somewhere in the main room at an angle that
reects the view of the blue room towards the audience.
Generally this is arranged with the blue room to one side
of the stage, and the plate on the stage rotated around
its vertical axis at 45 degrees.[1] Care must be taken to
make the glass as invisible as possible, normally hiding
the lower edge in patterning on the oor and ensuring
lights do not reect o it.

Giambattista della Porta was a 16th-century Neapolitan

scientist and scholar who is credited with a number of
scientic innovations, including the camera obscura. His
1584 work Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic) includes a
description of an illusion, titled How we may see in a
Chamber things that are not that is the rst known description of the Peppers Ghost eect.[2]
Portas description, from the 1658 English language
translation, is as follows.
Let there be a chamber wherein no other
light comes, unless by the door or window where
the spectator looks in. Let the whole window or
part of it be of glass, as we used to do to keep out
the cold. But let one part be polished, that there
may be a Looking-glass on bothe sides, whence
the spectator must look in. For the rest do nothing. Let pictures be set over against this window,
marble statues and suchlike. For what is without
will seem to be within, and what is behind the
spectators back, he will think to be in the middle
of the house, as far from the glass inward, as
they stand from it outwardly, and clearly and
certainly, that he will think he sees nothing but

When the lights are bright in the main room and dark in
the blue room, the reected image cannot be seen. When
the lighting in the blue room is increased, often with the
main room lights dimming to make the eect more pronounced, the reection becomes visible and the objects
within the blue room seem to appear in thin air. A common variation uses two blue rooms, one behind the glass
and one to the side, which can be switched visible or invisible by alternating the lighting.[1]
The hidden room may be an identical mirror-image of the
main room, so that its reected image matches the main
rooms; this approach is useful in making objects seem
to appear or disappear. This illusion can also be used to
1

4 MODERN EXAMPLES
truth. But lest the skill should be known, let the
part be made so where the ornament is, that the
spectator may not see it, as above his head, that
a pavement may come between above his head.
And if an ingenious man do this, it is impossible
that he should suppose that he is deceived.[3]

live, a 55-minute speech by Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, to 53 locations across Gujarat on December 10, 2012 during the assembly elections.[6][7][8] Narendra Modi broke the record again in April of 2014, when
he appeared live at 88 locations across India.[9]

4.2 Theme parks

3.2

John Pepper and Henry Dircks

The worlds largest implementation of this illusion can

be found at the Haunted Mansion and Phantom Manor
attractions at several Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
theme parks. There, a 90-foot (27 m)-long scene features multiple Peppers ghost eects, brought together in
one scene. Guests travel along an elevated mezzanine,
looking through a 30-foot (9.1 m)-tall pane of glass into
an empty ballroom. Animatronic ghosts move in hidden
In 1862, inventor Henry Dircks developed the Dirckblack rooms beneath and above the mezzanine.
sian Phantasmagoria, his version of the long-established
phantasmagoria performances. This technique was used The walk-through attraction Turbidite Manor in
to make a ghost appear on-stage. He tried unsuccessfully Nashville, TN employs variations of the classic techto sell his idea to theatres. It required that theaters be nique, enabling guests to see various spirits that also
completely rebuilt to support the eect, which they found interact with the physical environment, viewable at a
too costly to consider. Later in the year, Dircks set up a much closer proximity. The House at Haunted Hill, a
booth at the Royal Polytechnic, where it was seen by John Halloween attraction in Woodland Hills, CA, employs
a similar variation in their front window to display
Pepper.[4]
characters from their storyline.
Pepper realized that the method could be modied to
make it easy to incorporate into existing theatres. Pepper An example that combines the Peppers ghost eect with
rst showed the eect during a scene of Charles Dick- a live actor and lm projection can be seen in the Mysens's The Haunted Man, to great success. Peppers imple- tery Lodge exhibit at the Knotts Berry Farm theme park
mentation of the eect tied his name to it permanently. in Buena Park, California and the Ghosts of the Library
Though he tried many times to give credit to Dircks, the exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and
Museum in Springeld, Illinois, as well as the depiction
title Peppers ghost endured.
of Maori legends called A Millennium Ago at the Museum
The relationship between Dircks and Pepper was sumof Wellington City & Sea in New Zealand.[10]
marised in an 1863 article from Spectator:
The new Hogwarts Express attraction at Universal Studios
Florida uses the Peppers ghost eect, such that guests
This admirable ghost is the ospring of
entering the ride through Platform 9 3/4 seem to disaptwo fathers, of a learned member of the Society
pear when viewed from the queue.
of Civil Engineers, Henry Dircks, Esq., and of
Professor Pepper, of the Polytechnic. To Mr.
Dircks belongs the honour of having invented
4.3 Museums
him, or as the disciplines of Hegel would express it, evolved him from out of the depths of
Museums increasingly use Peppers ghost exhibits to crehis own consciousness; and Professor Pepper
ate attractions that appeal to visitors. In the mid-70s
has the merit of having improved him considJames Gardener designed the Changing Oce installaerably, tting him for the intercourse of muntion in the London Science Museum, consisting of a
dane society, and even educating him for the
1970s-style oce that transforms into an 1870s-style of[5]
stage.
ce as the audience watches. It was designed and built by
Will Wilson and Simon Beer of Integrated Circles. Another particularly intricate Peppers ghost display is the
4 Modern examples
Eight Stage Ghost built for the British Telecom Showcase
Exhibition in London in 1978. This display follows the
history of electronics in a number of discrete transitions.
4.1 Political speech world record
The Royal Polytechnic Institute London was a permanent
science-related institution, rst opened in 1838. With a
degree in chemistry, John Henry Pepper joined the institution as a lecturer in 1848. The Polytechnic awarded
him the title of Professor. In 1854, he became the director and sole lessee of the Royal Polytechnic.

More modern examples of Peppers ghost eects can

The Guinness World Record for most simultaneous shows be found in various museums in the United Kingdom
of the Peppers ghost illusion is now held by Raj Kasu and Europe. Examples of these in the United KingReddy and Mani Shankar of NChant 3D, which telecast, dom are the ghost of Annie McLeod at the New La-

3
nark World Heritage Site, the ghost of John McEnroe at
the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, which reopened
in new premises in 2006, and one of Sir Alex Ferguson, which opened at the Manchester United Museum in
2007.[11] Other examples include the ghost of Sarah (who
picks up a candle and walks through the wall) and also the
ghost of the Eighth Duke at Blenheim Palace.

Wanted".[16][17] The use of this approach was repeated in

2013 at west coast Rock the Bells dates, featuring projections of Eazy-E and Ol' Dirty Bastard.

On May 18, 2014, during the Billboard Music Awards,

an illusion of deceased pop star Michael Jackson, other
dancers, and the entire stage set was projected onto the
stage for a performance of the song Slave to the Rhythm
In October 2008 a life-sized Peppers ghost of Shane from the posthumous Xscape album.[18][19]
Warne was opened at the National Sports Museum in Vendors that provide such Peppers Ghost setups (often
Melbourne, Australia.[12] The eect is also used at the loosely marketed as holographic) to concert producers
Dickens World attraction at Chatham Maritime, Kent, include Moon Media (Montreal, QC), Musion 3D (LonUnited Kingdom. Both the York Dungeon and the don, UK) and AV Concepts (Tempe, AZ). Such setups
Edinburgh Dungeon use the eect in the context of their typically involve custom projection media server soft'Ghosts shows.
ware and specialized stretched lms.[20]
Another example can be found at Our Planet Centre in
Castries, St Lucia, which opened in May 2011, where a
life-size Prince Charles and Governor general of the island appear on stage talking about climate change.[13]
The South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town uses
elaborate Peppers ghost video technology in their permanent exhibit. The Artist Group PXNG.LI is showing
evolutionary processes in a Peppers ghost box at the Natural Science Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany.[14]

5 See also
Camera lucida
Head-up display
Schtan process
Reector sight

4.4

Television and video

Teleprompters are a modern implementation of Peppers

ghost used by the television industry. They reect a
speech or script and are commonly used for live broadcasts such as news programmes.

6 Notes
[1] Nickell, Joe (2005). Secrets of the Sideshows. University
Press of Kentucky. p. 291. ISBN 9780813123585.

In the episode of The Magic School Bus that deals with

light, "Gets a Bright Idea", Arnolds mischievous cousin
Janet uses a Peppers ghost illusion to convince the class a
theater is haunted. It ends up helping the class learn more
about how light and reections behave.

[2] Pandora Archive. Pandora.nla.gov.au. 2006-08-23.

Retrieved 2013-01-14.

4.5

[5] The Patent Ghost. The Mercury. 21 July 1863. Retrieved 19 August 2012.

Concerts

At the 2006 Grammy Awards, the Peppers ghost technique was used to project Madonna with the virtual members of the band Gorillaz onto the stage in a live performance. This type of system consists of a projector (usually DLP) or LED screen, with a resolution of 12801024
or higher and brightness of at least 5,000 lumens, a highdenition video player, a stretched lm between the audience and the acting area, a 3D set/drawing that encloses
three sides, plus lighting, audio, and show control.[15]

[3] Porta p. 340

[4] Timeline for the history of the University of Westminster. University of Westminster. Retrieved 2009-08-28

[6] Modis 3-D show enters Guinness Book. Indian Express

(2013-03-15). Retrieved on 2013-08-15.
[7] Shri Modis 3D Interaction enters Guinness World
Records. www.narendramodi.in. Retrieved on 2013-0815.
[8] Modis 3D speeches during 2012 polls enter Guiness
Book. Hindustan Times. Retrieved on 2013-08-15.

The Peppers ghost illusion was used at Vocaloid concerts [9]

in Japan and the United States to project the image of
virtual idol Hatsune Miku and other Vocaloid characters. [10]
During Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's performance at
the 2012 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, a [11]
projection of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur appeared
and performed "Hail Mary" and "2 of Amerikaz Most [12]

India Elections: Narendra Modi leads with massive hologram campaign

museumofwellington.co.nz Museum of Wellington City
& Sea
manutd.com Meet Sir Alex - the hologram
nsm.org.au Shane Warne - Cricket Found Me

[13] ourplanetcentre,planet. Ourplanetcentre.org. Retrieved

2013-01-14.
[14] Dynamics of Life: A scientic, interactive walk-through
exhibition
[15] Johnson, David. Peppaz Ghost. Retrieved 18 April
2012.
[16] Jauregai, Andres (2012-04-16). Tupac hologram: AV
concepts brings late rapper to life at Coachella. Hungton Post. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
[17] Anderson, Kyle. Tupac lives (as a hologram) at
Coachella!". Retrieved 4 September 2012.
[18] Giardina, Carolyn (21 May 2014). Why Billboard Music
Awards Michael Jackson Can't Be Called a 'Hologram'".
Retrieved 22 May 2014.
[19] Vincent, Peter (21 May 2014). Michael Jackson not a
hologram at Billboard Music Awards 2014. Retrieved
22 May 2014.
[20] Shein, Esther (July 2014). Holographic Projection Systems Provide Eternal Life. Communications of the ACM
57 (7): 19. doi:10.1145/2617664.

References
Steinmeyer, Jim (1999). Discovering Invisibility.
London.
Steinmeyer, Jim (2003). Hiding the Elephant. New
York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-7867-1226-7.
Steinmeyer, Jim (1999). The Science Behind the
Ghost. London.
Surrell, Jason (2003). The Haunted Mansion: From
the Magic Kingdom to the Movies. New York: Disney Editions. ISBN 978-1-4231-1895-4.
Porta, John Baptist (2003).
Natural Magick.
Sioux Falls, SD: NuVision Publications. ISBN
9781595472380.

External links
Paul Burns (October 1999). Chapter Ten: 18601869. The History of the Discovery of Cinematography.
Douglas William Ferguson. Help With Pepper On
It. Phantasmechanics. Archived from the original
on 2010-05-05.

EXTERNAL LINKS

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