John Henry Pepper and His Ghost

While the ghost illusion he created for theaters dominates his life story, Pepper's life story has a number of twists and turns. It’s got several professional disagreements, world travel, and even an attempt to control the weather. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hell Hell, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh. Today's
topic is near and dear to my heart because it
involves a name we have invoked on the show before,

(00:22):
that being John Henry Pepper, as in Pepper's Ghost, the
famous and much loved stage illusion which continues to be
used today. We'll talk about that at the end. But
while the ghost, as it was called often by Pepper
and during his time, kind of dominates his life story,
there is some other very interesting stuff in his biography. Uh.
There are several professional disagreements, there's some world travel, and

(00:46):
then there's even an attempt to control the weather. So
he's kind of a good off ramp for me to
work on after Halloween times because ghost is in the story,
but it's not the least bit actually, Ghostie. Yeah, we are.
We are recording this in October, but our October episodes
have concluded. Yes. John Henry Pepper was born in eighteen

(01:07):
twenty one in Westminster. His father, Charles Bailey Pepper, was
a civil engineer. Pepper attended the first London Borough House
at Brixton and then the King's College School in London,
and even as a young boy he found chemistry completely fascinating.
He and his friends would conduct various experiments of their

(01:27):
own beyond their school work, and Pepper later recalled that
they broke a lot of lab last where in the process.
He also studied under chemist J. T. Cooper at the
Russell Institution and that love for chemistry and science never
really dissipated, so when he was fresh out of school
at age nineteen, a career in science was Pepper's only

(01:50):
path of choice and initially this led him to work
as a lecturer at the Granger School of Medicine and
he was made a fellow of the Chemical Society of
London at the age of twenty two. Soon he transitioned
to the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London, and the Royal
Polytechnics mission was to offer quote an institution where the public,
at little expense, may acquire practical knowledge of the various

(02:13):
arts and branches of science connected with manufacturers, mining operations
and rural economy. This is basically where the latest science
was showcased through public lectures and displays of things like
diving bells and steam driven machinery, and it was the
perfect place for Pepper, who had started going there as
a visitor before he became a lecturer there. He not

(02:35):
only loved scientific exploration, but he really loved to share
that excitement with others and deemystify concepts that might otherwise
seem elusive, and he felt like the best way to
do that was through showmanship, turning lectures into entertaining visual spectacles.
Working at the Royal Polytechnic was the defining aspect of
Pepper's life and career. He gave his first lecture there

(02:58):
in eighteen forty seven, and just a few short years
he had become the Polytechnics analytical chemist and then the
school's director. Soon he became known as Professor Pepper. For
his engaging lectures, he was sort of like the nineteenth
century Bill Nye of London. Writing about this work in
third person much later in his life, Pepper said quote

(03:20):
The classes Mr Pepper established were for the study of drawing, French,
German arithmetic and mathematics, with of course chemistry and physics,
and pupils were admitted at very low fees in order
to encourage the working men to attend. Yeah. Late in
his life he wrote a book in which he quotes
himself a lot which I find fascinating. Um and that

(03:41):
is why it's in the third person. Very tickled about this.
Pepper soon gained a reputation for his ability to teach
in innovative ways. They were never dull, and as a consequence,
he was also often asked to serve as a guest
lecturer at various schools around England. He also wrote a
book based on one of his lectures, titled The Australian

(04:01):
gold Fields and the Best Means of Discriminating Gold from
Other Medals. He made the case in that book that
moving to Australia offered the working poor of London a
chance to make a better life than they might have
in the overcrowded city. He also happened to have advertisements
in that book. Those advertisements were for travel items that
he listed in the text of the work as necessary

(04:23):
for anyone moving to Australia to become a gold hunter.
So a little bit of savvy business work that probably
wouldn't pass standards today. As a lecturer, Pepper was also
conducting his own experiments and inventing things, often as a
means to illustrate scientific concepts. He was lecturing almost every
day and forever working to innovate and entertain. He reportedly

(04:46):
cooked a piece of meat during a lecture using two
mirrors that were reflecting a charcoal fire to the food,
showing the way that light can be focused. In eighteen
sixty three, he illuminated all of Trafalgar Square and Saint
Paul's Cathedral with arc light to celebrate the wedding of
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, to Princess Alexander Caroline Marie

(05:08):
Charlotte Louise Julia of Denmark. At some point in the
eighteen fifties, Pepper himself had married, Although it's a little
bit difficult to find details about his bride or the
family they started. We know that his wife was named
Mary Anne, but I could not find her maiden name,
and they had a son whose initials were h W,
but I could not find his name, and that happened

(05:30):
in eighteen fifty six. His most famous project, which he
worked on with an engineer from Liverpool, named Henry Dirk's
and if you are looking that up, it is spelled
d I R c K S it's the illusion now
known as Pepper's ghost. This illusion is created with a
plate glass sheet that reflects something from a room that's

(05:51):
out of you of the audience. The glass is angled
in such a way that the object or person out
of you is seen by the audience as a reflection,
and that makes it look pretty ghostly. Lighting is also
used to maximize the effect. In his ninety eight book
This Is Magic, Secrets of the Conjuror's Craft, magician Will
Dexter described Pepper's Ghost this way, quote, have you ever

(06:15):
carried a lighted candle to a dark window and looked out?
What have you seen? Who is that other figure, surprisingly
like yourself, carrying a lighted candle on the other side
of the glass? That is Pepper's ghost. Now, this concept
of using reflections to trick a viewer's eye into thinking
it's seeing something that isn't there was not new in

(06:36):
the mid nineteenth century. A very similar idea was described
by Italian scholar Giambattista de la Porta in fifty eight
in his book Natural Magic with the subheader in twenty
Books wherein our set forth all the riches and delights
of the natural sciences that book was translated into English
in the late sixteen sixties, and it includes a chapter

(06:57):
titled how we may see in a Chamber Things that
are not Dellaporta's description of this illusion reads in part quote,
Let there be a chamber where into no 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.

(07:19):
But let one part be polished, that there may be
a looking glass on both sides. Whence the spectator must
look in. For the rest do nothing. Let pictures be
set over against this window, marble statues and such like.
For what is without will seem within, and what is
behind the spectator's back. He will think to be in

(07:40):
the middle of the house, as far from the glass
inward as they stand from it outwardly and so clearly
and certainly that he will think he sees nothing but truth.
So this illusion, just pretty similar to what was described
in that Italian text, was first shared in nineteenth century
England in eight d eight by Dirk's at a British

(08:02):
Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. He wanted to
sell this idea, which he called the Dirksy and Phantasmagoria
to theaters, but his proposed set up required an entire
retrofit of the building. Pepper would later write of Dirk's work,
quote this paper excited no attention because the explanation of
it was somewhat vague and unsatisfactory. Pepper then further refined

(08:26):
this concept so that it could be used in theaters
without having to do a bunch of heavy construction. The
first play it was used in was Haunted Man in
eighteen sixty two. This play, written by Charles Dickens, was
performed at the Royal Polytechnic, and this use of this
ghost imagery was a triumph, not only because the illusion
worked perfectly, because it also really helped the Royal Polytechnic

(08:49):
when it needed something to grab the public's attention. In
the wake of the eighteen sixty two Great London Exhibition,
the Polytechnic had been flailing a little bit. Is it
just didn't really have any anything new to show the
public that they had not just seen at that x BO.
But the ghost worked like a charm. According to an
account that appeared in an Australian paper much later in

(09:09):
eighteen seventy nine that was written in anticipation of Pepper
traveling there, which we'll get to in a bit quote.
When the ghost effect was first produced at the Royal
Polytechnic Institution, all sightseers were agog to behold the marvelous
effects the newspapers recorded, and those of an ingenious turn
of mind went again and again to try and solve
the problem, including even such physicists as the late Professor Faraday,

(09:34):
who at last had to ask for an explanation. Pepper's
ghosts ended up causing a rift between Dirks and Pepper,
and we will talk about why after a sponsor break.
Though the ghost illusion had become deeply popular as a

(09:57):
stage effect for Pepper, it was also another opportunity to
educate people about science, and specifically about optics. This period
of time was, as we have mentioned many times on
the show, before, a time when mysticism and spiritualism were
very popular in England, and Pepper wanted to use the
enthusiasm for supernatural subjects to get people in so he

(10:18):
could teach them the ways that such interests could be
exploited with tricks of science. The ghost was so popular
that Pepper was asked to recreate it at Windsor Castle,
and ultimately he toured Europe and North America, showing the
ghost too amazed audiences and then explaining to them how
their eyes were being deceived. The work of Dirks and

(10:38):
creating the initial illusion and Pepper adapting it for practical
use led to the two men filing a joint patent
for it that was granted on February eighteen sixty three,
but Dirk signed over financial rights. Here's Pepper's account of things,
given in a book seventeen years later. Quote. Just before
Christmas Day in eighteen sixty two, I invited a number

(11:01):
of literary and scientific friends, and my always kind supporters,
the members of the press, to a private view of
the new illusion to be introduced into Bulwer's romantic and
dramatic literary creation called A Strange Story. The effect of
the first appearance of the apparition on my illustrious audience
was startling in the extreme and far beyond anything I

(11:24):
could have hoped for and expected, So much so that
although I had previously settled to explain the whole modus operandi,
on that evening, I deferred doing so, and went the
next day to Mrs Cartmel the patent agents and took
out a provisional patent for the ghost illusion in the
names at my request of Dirk's and Pepper. The day

(11:47):
after the first evening I showed the ghost. Mr. Dirk's
came down to the Polytechnic, and after saying how much
pleased he was with the manner in which I had
introduced the illusion, ended by handing me a letter in
which he spoke highly up by work in respect of
the ghost and gave me spontaneously whatever profits might accrue
from the invention. If that sounds a little defensive and

(12:11):
self justifying, there's a reason the two men had a
pretty significant falling out. Dirk claimed that he had been
the one to actually invent the ghost. Pepper claimed to
have already seen the idea in an eight thirty one
book called Recreative Memoirs, and the disagreement between the two
men festered, and Dirk's published a book making his case,

(12:33):
which was titled The Ghost as Produced in the Spectra Drama,
and that told his side of the story, basically saying,
like I invented this, Pepper just has a big name
and he popularized it. Pepper published several articles giving his
version of events, and the two men actually ended up
in the chancery court. This was actually a bad move

(12:53):
on Dirk's part because Pepper was a well known and
popular figure and so he had prominent scientists on hand
and to give testimony to the transformative nature of Pepper's
alterations to Dirk's original plans. The court found in Pepper's favor,
but the two men continued to bicker about it even
before the ghost illusion hit the London stage. Pepper wrote

(13:15):
a book titled Boys Playbook of Science and the introduction,
Pepper explains that the idea for the book is to
give kids an introduction to scientific concepts that will enable
them to transition to more advanced reading in the future. Quote.
The following illustrated pages must be regarded as a series
of philosophical experiments detailed in such a manner that any

(13:38):
young person may perform them with the greatest facility. The
author has endeavored to arrange the manipulations in a methodical,
simple and popular form, and will indeed be rewarded if
these experiments should arouse dormant talent in any of the
rising generation and lead them on gradually from the easy
reading of the Present Boys Book to the study of

(14:01):
the complete and perfect philosophical works of Leopold Melon, Faraday, Brand, Graham, Turner,
and Founds. He goes on to explain in the introduction
that the concepts of science are all around us in
the natural world, and notes that one could think of
animals as scientists of various sorts, pointing out that moles
are meteorologists, beavers or architects, and wasps are paper manufacturers.

(14:26):
His opening to the first chapter, which talks about matter
and its impenetrability by way of discussing particulate density, is
indicative of the no nonsense way that he presents information. Quote,
in the present state of our knowledge, it seems to
be universally agreed that we cannot properly commence even popular
discussions on astronomy, mechanics, and chemistry, or on the imponderables heat, light, electricity,

(14:53):
and magnetism without a definition of the general term matter,
which is an expression applied by philosophers to every species
of substance capable of occupying space, and therefore to everything
which can be seen and felt. This book was so
successful that it was reprinted many times, and he also

(15:14):
quickly wrote more to meet demand. In eighteen sixty one
he published Playbook of Medals and Scientific Amusements for Young People.
Eighteen sixty one was a big writing year for Pepper.
In addition to the two books we mentioned, his publisher
Rutledge asked him to update the book Scientific Dialogues Intended

(15:34):
for the Instruction and Entertainment of Young People, in which
the first principles of natural and Experimental Philosophy are fully explained,
that was originally written by Jeremiah Joyce in eighteen fifteen.
Pepper was tasked with making the book current to the
eighteen sixties by editing it to include scientific discoveries that
had happened in the interim after the first came out.

(15:56):
In eighteen sixty nine, he published Cyclopedic Auience Simplified. Yeah.
He actually published quite a number of books, and though
the Polytechnic had been where Professor Pepper became a London
mainstay of science entertainment, in eighteen seventy two, after more
than twenty years of working there, he and the organization
had a falling out. The apparent crux of the matter

(16:19):
was autonomy. Pepper wanted to do as he wished. He
had raised the profile of the Polytechnic and was to
the public it's de facto ambassador. But even John Henry
Pepper had bosses which he didn't particularly enjoy, and the
disagreements between him and the facilities directors led to the
lecturer leaving. His break with the Polytechnic and subsequent move

(16:42):
to the Egyptian Hall was big enough news to make
the papers in London's The Standard. On April eighteen seventy two,
the change was reported as follows quote. For twenty years,
Professor Pepper and the Polytechnic have been almost synonymous words.
The Polytechnic was nothing in most people's minds without Professor Pepper,

(17:02):
and that facile lecturer upon popular science was looked upon
as really at home only in the halls of that
familiar rendezvous in Regent Street. But the best of friends
must part, and Professor Pepper and the Polytechnic have separated.
Twenty years service, pleasant, agreeable, amusing and instructive service will

(17:23):
not be overlooked by a generous public, and Professor Pepper
and his new home will have, we feel sure, not
lack of support. And then that article goes on to
describe Pepper's new theater of popular Science and entertainment that's
being installed at the Egyptian Theater, and how it is
decorated and furnished so that the audience will experience all

(17:43):
new levels of comfort as they hear from the professor,
including areas that are laid out quote in drawing room fashion,
so you can relax on a couch while you hear
him explain things. But the Egyptian Hall arrangement turned out
to be less successful than Pepper had hoped for. It
was expensive to produce his lectures and he wasn't making

(18:03):
the money back. He seemed to slowly pull away from
academic circles during this time, and in eighteen seventy five
he was no longer a fellow at the Chemical Society.
To try to rebuild his finances, Pepper went on tour
with his science lectures, crossing North America, and at the
end of the eighteen seventies, Pepper made the decision to
head to Australia for an extended period of time. And

(18:25):
we'll talk about that and his attempt to make rain
after we hear from our sponsors. So, as we mentioned before,
the break, after several years of the lecture circuit in
Europe and the US, Pepper headed to Australia. This was

(18:47):
intended to be a twelve month tour. Mary Anne and
their son went with him. The family traveled aboard the Lusitania.
Pepper was listed on the ship's record as having quote
no occupation. This may have suggested he was some sort
of down on his luck drifter, but in fact Australia
was very excited to have him. I like that we

(19:08):
got a little confirmation that his wife and son, who
we know nothing about, still exists. Yes, me too. Ahead
of his arrival, one Australian newspaper reported quote. For nearly
a third of a century, the name of Professor Pepper
has been associated with popular science, chiefly in connection with
the Polytechnic Institute of London, but frequently in the list

(19:31):
of new inventors, and not seldom as the champion of
valuable practical improvements such as Bessemer Steele, the electric light,
modernized means of locomotion, et cetera. Who among us whose
school days were passed in England anywhere between the years
eighteen forty five and eighteen seventy does not remember the

(19:51):
Polytechnic and It's wondrous variety of attractions. Chief amongst which
stood the facile lecturer and his brill empt experiments. The
amount of solid good affected by his lectures to working men,
his classes for teaching chemistry, physics, French, German and mathematics

(20:12):
at the lowest possible fees availed of by thousands of
Londoners is not easily estimated. Pepper got right to work
after arriving. He gave a lecture at St George's Hall
on July twelve. That was just a week after the
Lusitania had made port, and this was touted as quote
one of the best scientific exhibitions that a Melbourne audience

(20:32):
had seen. This lecture, which he toured around Australia, was
almost like a phantasmagoria. There were apparitions, dancing, skeletons and
optical illusions, but in Pepper's case, he explained how it
was done as part of the show. One critic wrote, quote,
it is hardly possible to imagine an entertainment more taking

(20:52):
or more interesting, and at the same time so full
of really useful information as that given by Professor Pepper.
Although he started his time in Australia to great fanfare,
over time interest and audience waned, and so Pepper took
a stab at a new venture. He wrote, produced and
acted in a play titled Hermes and the Alchemist, which

(21:16):
he debuted in Sydney. The plot was built to showcase
some of Pepper's trademark illusionary trickery, but this show flopped
soon Pepper went back to lecturing. He took a brief
trip back to England, but returned to Australia, getting to
Adelaide in late August eighteen eighty with the new staff

(21:36):
that he had hired in London into he gave lectures
as he had before, once again touring, but ran into
legal trouble when one of his employees tried to sue
him for unpaid wages. Pepper's response was that the man
had been a very bad employee, but the court found
in favor of the worker, whose name was John Saunders,

(21:59):
and Pepper had to pay what he owed him. Though
he had found the entire business insulting, Pepper tried to
put it behind him by going back to his lecture
tour and trying to drum up attendance. Sorry you feel insulted, Pepper,
but you got to pay your employees. Yeah, apparently as
part of it. Once John Saunders had filed this complaint.

(22:21):
Pepper was actually arrested, and he was mortified that he
was arrested in public. Um. But yes, I feel like
there's so much more to that story than we really
have a record of. But it reminds me a little
bit of Lola Montez. Just that didn't That wasn't me.
That's not my real name. He was supposed to pay

(22:42):
you your pay. During the time that Pepper and his
family were in Australia, a couple of interesting things were
happening back in London. So First, in eighteen eighty boys
Playbook of Science got a significant revision, not from Pepper
but from Thomas Cradock Hepworth, who had taken over Pepper's
position him at the Royal Polytechnic. The title of the

(23:03):
book was also changed to Boy's Book of Science, and
the tone of it was generally perceived as being less exuberant.
That book, incidentally, was revised again in nineteen twelve by
John Maston. Second, the Royal Polytechnic closed its doors. It
had been having financial problems, but then a stone staircase
in the building collapsed and the cost of the repair

(23:25):
was more than it could afford. The equipment and space
were sold off over the course of three days. In
eighteen eighty two it was purchased and reopened, and today
it's part of the University of Westminster. Also in eighteen
eighty two, Pepper attempted a massive feat. The summer of
eighteen eighty two was extremely hot and Southeast Queensland was

(23:46):
having like a minor drought, so John Henry Pepper decided
he would try to make it rain. His plan, which
he advertised as tapping the clouds, involved a giant kite
and explosives. He tended to use the kite to raise
a land mine into the clouds with a steel wire
running from the kite to the earth, and he would,

(24:07):
he said, detonate the mind midair in order to quote
alter the electrical conditions of the clouds. Seven hundred people
showed up at the farm that he had secured for
this cloud tapping, and each of them paid to watch. Uh.
I don't feel like this should come as a surprise,
but things did not go as planned. Here's what happened,

(24:28):
in the words of one of Pepper's assistants, quote, the
professor had the kite constructed so that it could be
easily conveyed through the bush. It was much too heavy,
even for too smart horses, and we could not get
the kite to rise higher than thirty or forty yards.
This part of the experiment was last given up as
a failure. The whole of the guns were loaded, then

(24:51):
the course was cleared, and after firing the mind containing
the dynamite, I fired the guns in rapid succession. Uh
he un described a terrifying misfire with one of the guns,
in which miraculously no one was injured, and then he
concluded with quote that was our first and last trial
at tapping the clouds for rain. Pepper had intended to

(25:13):
try again using lighter materials. It seems like a good idea.
I mean, it's not a good idea, but if you're
going to take it up there by kite, UH probably
should be lighter materials. It seems that that plan was abandoned.
Though he had been onto the idea of cloud seating
with some of this preparation, but inducing precipitation manually wouldn't

(25:35):
really move forward until decades later. Instead of a second
attempt at making rain, he went back to giving performance
lectures and then started an educational endeavor called Professor Pepper's Laboratory,
where he taught classes and practical chemistry and the physical
sciences as part of the Brisbane School of Arts. Among

(25:55):
the lectures he offered he included advice for people intending
to file pat He transitioned away from performance and onto
teaching on a regular schedule, but by the mid eighties
enrollment was down and he was at odds with the
school board and much the same way that he had
butted heads with the directors of the Polytechnic in London. Yeah,
there's a lot you will find written about how he

(26:18):
was just this like very flamboyant showman, and he was
very confident in the way he approached things and when
anyone criticized him or asked him to change it, he
would get very angry about it. I feel like I
know this person. We all do, we all do. I've
probably been that person at various points. Uh. Then he

(26:39):
found himself in another legal battle, but this one was
initiated by Pepper, and it was over an agreement regarding
the farmland that he had been leasing. So when he
started renting it, the owner of the land had promised
that he would eventually sell Pepper the property, and Pepper
had built a home on it. At the time that
he started renting, the owner was panning for gold on
the property, and they had kind me to deal, like

(27:00):
when you're done and you're confident you have panned whatever
there is to get out of this, like, then you'll
finish that and sell me the property. And he was like,
of course I will. But instead of selling to the Englishman,
the owner had mortgaged the property without telling his tenant.
This case was a little bit of a mess. There's
a whole element of spiritualism and testimony that was going

(27:22):
on in the courtroom, happening in this very strange way,
and it was eventually found in Pepper's favor, but it
did not ultimately keep Pepper in Australia. Less than two
years later, after a decade away, he decided to return
home to England. After arriving in London in eighteen eighty nine,
Pepper tried going back to his illusion shows. He trotted

(27:44):
out the Ghost on stage again, but in the years
since he had been gone, the tastes of the city's
audiences had changed. There just wasn't a draw for Pepper's
style of show anymore. And he retired from performing in
eight Yeah. Also, so many of the people that probably
would have been his target audience for like I saw
this when I was in school. I know how it works,

(28:05):
Like why would they pay to go see the whole thing? Again?
There was never that moment of oooh, how is he
doing it, because they'd be like, I don't know how
he does it? Um. And that same year that he
retired eight nine, Pepper wrote a book outlining all that
had happened regarding the Pepper's Ghost illusion in a book
titled A True History of the Ghost and All about
metam Psychosis. And it is from that book that we

(28:27):
quoted earlier when he was talking about Dirk's work. He
seems to have really wanted to make the case at
the end of his life that he had not done
anything wrong by Dirks. And he makes a note that
Dirk's had applied for a patent on his own before
Pepper modified the concept, and that that patent had been denied.
Pepper also noted in the book that so many people

(28:48):
attempted to create their own ghost illusion imitations that he
had to have notices printed in papers warning the public
about the fakes. That we're touring. One such note has
read quote on public grounds. I ventured to call your
attention to the fact that many persons are now going
about the country endeavoring to pirate effects to be produced

(29:10):
by the apparatus patented by Mr Dirks and myself, and
to deceive the public by giving them an exhibition with
which they are certain to be disgusted, and with which
I have nothing to do. I beg to enclose one
of the numerous statements I have received from different parts
of the country alluding to the imposture now so commonly practiced. Yeah,

(29:32):
he was basically like putting these in various papers and
then asking the editor to include additional information. Uh. You'll
note that he mentioned specifically that Mr Dirk's was part
of it and part of the patent, And it seems
like that may have been part of the issue was
that Dirk's got really really frustrated that everybody started calling

(29:54):
the ghost Peppers ghost when he was like and Dirk's um,
and Pepper always said like, I said your same every
time I did it. That's not my fault. And now
you're angry because you're not getting credit in public um,
And that seems like really the crux of that argument.
But in his retirement Pepper moved to leyton Stone in Essex,
and on March dred he died at his home there

(30:16):
on Culworth Road. His obituary in the London Daily News read,
in part quote to the younger generation, Professor Pepper and
Pepper's ghosts are little more than names. But to those
who remember the Polytechnic as it was forty years ago,
the announcement that John Henry Pepper is dead will recall
a form of entertainment that at one time enjoyed immense vogue.

(30:38):
When Pepper died, he thought interest in his ghost delusion
had really died out. But today Pepper's ghost is still
in use. We've mentioned it on the show before. The
ballroom scene and Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction is one massive
execution of the Pepper's Ghost delusion, but more technologically advanced
versions of it continued to be used as well. If

(31:00):
you recall the twelve appearance of the deceased performer Tupac
alongside Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg that was touted by
a lot of people as a hologram, you may know
that was absolutely not a hologram. It was a high
tech iteration of Pepper's ghost. Yeah, and now they're even
like specialized types of glass finishes that people will use

(31:22):
to create really really photo real Pepper's ghost style illusions. Um.
A lot of times they'll reflect not like a physical
person or a statue, but instead like an image that's
on a digital screen in the area you can't see
onto it, which allows those intensive, really really convincing animations

(31:44):
to happen. Pepper's ghosts still alive and well, I think
it's sweet. Um, I have some thoughts about John Henry Pepper.
I was sure they've been the Friday episode, okay, But
in the meantime, I have a listener mail from our
listener Allison, who is responding to another listener mail. It's

(32:07):
quite charming, uh, shrides Dear Holly and Tracy, I was
listening to your episode on William Palmer went to my surprise,
you began reading your listener mail on Grannie Smith from Allison.
And this took me surprised because I Allison was sure
that I had not already sent you my listener mail
on Grannie Smith, who was at the moment sitting in
my drafts folder. It was only when that Allison told

(32:28):
you she is an American living near Ride that our
emails even began two differ in content. My content on
your Grannie Smith uponymous food episode is actually a bit
different than that. I have an ancestor that, according to
a news article of the time of Marie Anne Smith's death,
was part of the lore of the creation of the
now famous apple variety. Mr Lawless of Berrara, I'm gonna

(32:50):
guess that I pronounced that terribly um so my apologies,
which is Allison's ancestor, is credited with giving Maria the
very French crab apple create that went on to produced
the sapling on the Creek Edge. My father keeps a
copy of this news article as part of his genealogy
research for both his and my mother's sides of our family.
I would have loved to have included it in this email, However,

(33:12):
due to various circumstances, it was unavailable. I love binge
listening to your episodes at my job as a sewing
machinist producing betting. Keep up the good work. There's so
much to unpack here that I love. One. How incredibly
cool that your dad has this this piece of information
in his genealogy records too. I love that you're a
professional sewing machinist, although I also know, in case anyone

(33:34):
thinks I'm romanticizing that, that is a hard job. My
mom did that job for exactly one day because she
was very good seamstress, as I've said before, and came
home and said, I cannot do that. That's not sewing
the way I like to do. It's just factory sewing
is a whole different deal. Um. But thank you for this.
It's very funny that to Allison's had a similar relationship

(33:56):
with Granny Smith Apple's. I love it. If you have
relations hips with any of our eponymous foods, or with
Pepper's Ghost or anything else we've talked about on the show,
you can write to us about it. That email address
is History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can
also find us on social media as Missed in History,
And if you haven't subscribed, there's no time like the present.
You can do that on the I heart Radio app

(34:17):
or wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.