![]() Here was a “spirit lamp” (helpfully labeled “spirit lamp”): a small metal flashlight, its lens covered with a film of dark red cellophane, used to conjure a sinister red glow in the dark.īut that wasn’t all. With mounting excitement, I continued to search through the case. I had been reading about these sorts of props for years, but I’d never suspected that my father had owned a set of them. Coated with luminescent paint and manipulated by an unscrupulous “spirit medium,” the glowing gloves would seem to float, ghost-like, in the gloom of a shadowy séance parlor. I recognized this peculiar item as a classic séance prop. The first object I pulled out was a black-painted, Y-shaped wooden handle with white gloves fitted on each branch. It was while digging through and itemizing the collection that I discovered what might have been Dad’s most fascinating curio: a “Spook Show,” also known as a ghost show, inside a vintage leather case, measuring 20-by-17-by-12 inches. When my mother decided to donate or auction many of the collection items, I began the task of cataloguing them. I’d inherited some of Dad’s interest in stage magic history, especially the history of “spookology,” the use of magic tricks to create the illusion of the truly supernatural, a practice made infamous during the fake séance craze of the early 20th century. ![]() Row after row of shelves held all manner of tricks and gimmicks: vanishing bird-cages, spring-loaded feather-flower bouquets, mysterious little boxes that could seemingly transform dice into coins and back again. ![]() ![]() Houdini-style manacles and a straitjacket hung from hooks alongside dangling marionettes. In recent decades, Dad’s interests had turned to stage magic props and the studio had become an unofficial museum of New Zealand magic history. ![]()
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