ABSTRACT
The ghost craze that began in August offered civilians a way to deal with the traumatic events that were taking place in New York and nationwide. The Civil War's death toll was already high, and people were beginning to realize that it was certain to grow even more. By providing an 'encounter' with the dead and with the afterlife, J. H. Pepper's ghosts offered people a way of coming to terms with, and processing, this new knowledge. These spectres retained enough of their alarming characteristics to achieve the desired effect on the audience, yet had a scientific explanation. Pepper's Ghost, as the ghost illusion was widely known, was not actually invented by Pepper. In England in 1858, Henry Dircks had demonstrated that a piece of glass, if lit properly, could be 'both transparent and reflective at the same time', just as one can simultaneously see one's reflection in a window and see beyond it.
