"It hasn't escaped my notice that holding a fake seance in a haunted house is kind of the intro to a horror movie, but I really hope that the spirits will understand," she said. She hopes any spirits haunting Beaconsfield, a historic house originally built for the Peake family in 1877, will understand that these re-enactments are being done with the "utmost respect for them. The Sance Circle Part One: A Real Fake, Not a Fake Fake. "Death was just a very real presence for people, and I think that that idea of talking to the dead became very appealing to them." Seance Scene, Seance Room, Madame Leota, Talking To The Dead, Disney Rides. "Pretty much everyone living in the Victorian period had someone close to them who died, probably recently, because the death rate was so much higher than it is today," said Paxson. Sometimes people would channel ghosts and speak in their voices and their accents." Talking to the dead 'very appealing'įor Victorians, the draw of seances was connected to the fact that death surrounded them at every turn. "People would practice automatic writing, where they're writing messages from the spirits in a sort of trance-like state. "You would ask a question and then you would hear an echo come back like a knocking sound," said Paxson. Guests attending the seance re-enactments get a chance to enter the double drawing room at Beaconsfield, which is usually behind ropes. "You would experience everything from … levitation and miraculous, you know, untying of knots and things like that, to more direct communication with spirits." "He actually wrote a book where he debunks a lot of the tricks that people were using," she said. However, if we look at the context of Victorian seances, we do know that there were proven cases of fakery going on." Houdini wrote book on seancesįamous magician Harry Houdini was interested in seances, said Paxson, and wanted people to know they included magic tricks. "I don't want to cast any question over people's beliefs. "People have different beliefs about seances, and about communication and the afterlife," she said.
Paxson was careful to point out that some people do believe that you can communicate with the dead through a seance. So that line of what's magic, what's real, was very blurry during this period." Holding a fake seance in a haunted house is kind of the intro to a horror movie, but I really hope that the spirits will understand. "So many things were being developed scientifically and discovered scientifically at the time that were new, and that seemed like magic to people. "These people … were sort of standing on a precipice of changing thought about how the world worked," said Paxson. Paxson, who works as the assistant education and programming officer for the foundation, said she's always been fascinated by Victorian seances. 'There have been both staff members and visitors who have encountered eerie presences here in the house,' says Paxson.
Beaconsfield Historic House was built in 1877.
0 kommentar(er)
