Midnight ghost show

What it is

Midnight ghost shows were touring stage entertainments that crossed America's movie theaters from the late 1920s into the 1970s. They grew out of stage magic, and a typical bill blended conjuring, mind-reading turns, staged séances and comic bits, with plenty of help from the crowd. Each show built toward a 'blackout': every light in the theater was killed, and ghostly shapes and monsters seemed to break loose among the seated audience. A horror film usually ran before or after the live acts. The hosts, known as ghostmasters, dressed the whole evening up as traffic with the dead while serving the crowd a night of scares. The form belongs to the history of stage magic rather than to any faith, and it fed later fashions in horror showmanship.

Where it comes from

The first ghost shows appeared in the United States while the Great Depression was at its worst. In 1929 the stage magician Elwin-Charles Peck, working as 'El-Wyn', opened El-Wyn's Midnite Spook Party, counted among the earliest of the breed. He told his crowds he could reach the dead, strange sounds filled the hall, and objects seemed to drift of their own accord; near the end the light died and spirits rose and faded above the seats. Imitators followed fast. Around the turn of the 1940s, Jack Baker, his wife and his adopted brother Wyman built Dr. Silkini's Asylum of Horrors in Toledo, Ohio, and toured it across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. A second boom arrived in the 1950s; television then emptied the houses, though shows ran into the 1970s.

Tools and materials

The chief instrument was darkness. When the blackout came, the entire theater became the stage, and the scares could arrive from any quarter: shapes drifting overhead, figures loose among the seats. Film worked as material too, with a horror picture before the acts and another after, each chosen to hold the mood and the crowd. Later bills leaned on stage pictures of their own, from apparent dismemberments to scantily dressed assistants, and glowing spooks that sailed over the audience once the lights went out.

What it is for

This was entertainment sold as a scare, and the buyers were the young. The 1950s boom came alongside horror and science-fiction pictures pitched at teenage and young adult crowds, and the shows fed on that audience. Thrills were stacked one on another, film to stage act to blackout to film again. Comedy had its place as well, since Baker's Asylum of Horrors mixed gags and skits among the frights. As tastes shifted in later years, the bills pushed harder, adding staged violence and flesh on display to keep seats filled. The bookend films did selling of their own, tying each live show to the horror pictures of the day.

Who does it

Hosts were called ghostmasters, a label the writer Mark Walker gave them. Many were stage magicians by trade, and most took dramatic stage names, often doctor-flavored: Dr. Silkini, Dr. Satan, Dr. Neff, Dr. Evil, Dr. Zomb. Some carried grander billing, such as 'the Great Kirma, the Mystery Man of India'. The established magician Howard Thurston appears on the roll of performers, and John Calvert hosted the Great London Ghost Show as 'Dr. London'. Women figured mainly as assistants, and in the later years as scantily dressed ones. At least one ghostmaster, Philip Morris, moved on to television as a horror host, fronting Dr. Evil's Horror Theatre on the U.S. East Coast from 1960 to 1968.

Peoples and places

The form was American, born during the Depression and played out in movie theaters across the country. Tours carried it abroad: Baker's Asylum of Horrors played the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. Styles differed. El-Wyn's party kept a spooky, séance-like tone, with eerie sounds, drifting objects and spirits on the loose. Baker's troupe went for laughs as much as screams, mocking the spiritualist world and padding the bill with skits, and it grew from the template El-Wyn's show had set. A handful of shows could even put film stars on stage, with Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange among the guests.

How scholars and sceptics see it

The genre's record rests largely with writers close to the craft. Mark Walker's book Ghostmasters fixed the term 'ghostmaster' for the shows' hosts, and Jim Ridenour, who had run such shows himself, set down the ideal running order from film to blackout to film. Commentators have read the format as an early shape of the midnight movie, a late show where the crowd joins in, pointing toward the midnight screenings later attached to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The hosts, in one description, were comic, ghoulish masters of ceremonies, the same mold from which television's horror hosts emerged.

Compare and confuse

The form is a cousin of stage magic, and its séances were stage turns rather than spiritualist services; Baker's show openly mocked the spiritualist world. Billings varied by company: spook show, monster show, voodoo show, midnight spook show. Its nearest kin in later entertainment are the midnight movie and the television horror host.

Law and persecution

One dispute reached the courts: Universal Pictures sued Jack Baker for putting Frankenstein's monster into his performances, and the matter ended in a contract that let him keep the character in the act. The pressure that eventually closed the genre came from television and shifting public taste.

Today

The shows ended by the 1970s, but their habits carried on. Philip Morris, once 'Dr. Evil' of Terrors of the Unknown, moved to television as a horror host, presenting Dr. Evil's Horror Theatre on the U.S. East Coast from 1960 to 1968. Horror hosts generally took their ghoulish emcee manner from the ghostmasters. The participatory midnight screening resurfaced around cult films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which still draws midnight crowds internationally, and the stunt-based horror promotion of showman William Castle also traces back to the genre.

Questions people ask about Midnight ghost show

Good reading and sources

• Midnight ghost show on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data