You’ll also see it in some cars that reflect the speedometer’s reading onto the windshield. If the light is moved back and forth, the reflection will disappear and reappear, giving it a hologram effect.īesides entertainment, the Pepper’s ghost effect is used for teleprompters, allowing public speakers and newscasters to read from a scrolling reflection. If there is something behind the glass that the light can pass through, like a white sheet or scrim, you will see your reflection in it. The light waves hitting the glass from below will be reflected up towards you. Now imagine that the glass is being held at a 45-degree angle and you’re looking down onto it from above. When you look at your reflection in a window, you’re seeing yourself as though you were on the other side of the glass. The transparent reflection you see in a plate of clear glass is created when light waves bounce off the surface and pass through to the other side. Dre at Coachella in 2012.Īll these impressive illusions use the same basic principle of reflecting light from an angled surface and, sometimes, through another object. In recent years, the Pepper’s ghost effect has resurrected famous performers from the grave, like when Tupac Shakur performed alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. If you’ve ever been on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, you’ve encountered Pepper ghosts dancing in the ballroom, sitting together at dinner, and floating in midair. No longer a Victorian parlor trick, Pepper ghosts have been used in amusement park attractions, cinemas, museums, television, music videos, and theaters since the turn of the century. Ever accidentally catch a glimpse of yourself in a window pane? Well that ghostly reflection is actually the basis of an illusory stage effect that dates back to the 1500s when playwright Giambattista Della Porta described an apparatus allowing the theater audience to “see in a Chamber things that are not.”ĭecades later, this illusory technique-known today as the “Pepper’s ghost”-was refined and popularized by John Henry Pepper (1821-1900), an inventor and lecturer at London’s Royal Polytechnic Institution.
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