Though they were popular in the mid-1900s, spook shows—and Rocky Horror itself—have roots in 1800s séances. A steady, spooky line throughout history shows how Victorian séances were incorporated into magic shows, which were then taken to the movie theaters as spook shows, where live performances were paired with horror films, which led to the audience-interactive Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s a long, rewarding journey through time, with many spirits and monsters along the way.
If you enjoy jumping out of your seat to dance the Time Warp, you can thank Maggie and Kate Fox. In 1848, the Fox sisters convinced their neighbors that they were in contact with a spirit who was making strange knocking sounds. Within a few years, they had sparked a cult movement. Thousands of people flocked to séances where mediums manifested progressively flashy phenomena that purported to indicate the presence of the dead. Tables turned, furniture floated in the air, and mysterious messages appeared on slates.
Magicians at the time had mixed reactions to the popularity of séances. Harry Houdini famously led a crusade against psychic mediums, announcing in the Los Angeles Times, “It takes a flim-flammer to catch a flim-flammer.” Other magicians, among them Thurston and Harry Kellar, began to incorporate ghostly elements into their conjuring repertoire. “By 1896, there was hardly an illusionist in Europe or America who was not including at least one spiritualistic séance as part of his act,” notes historian Mervyn Heard in Phantasmagoria: The Secret Life of the Magic Lantern.
One magician named Elwin-Charles Peck was the first to bring the performance to movie theaters. In 1929, Peck (whose stage moniker was El-Wyn) approached a theater and asked if he could put on a magic show after the last screening. Vaudeville was on the wane by then, and there were fewer venues in which magicians could perform. Meanwhile, movies were rising to dominate popular entertainment. Peck’s idea to pair a spooky magic show with a supernatural picture show at midnight was a stroke of entrepreneurial genius. He became the first spook-show operator or ghostmaster.
Calling his production “El-Wyn’s Midnite Spook Party”, Peck took spiritualism in a devilish new direction. Yes, messages appeared on slates and tables floated in the air, but Peck did away with the dramatic sob fest connecting a grief-stricken mourner with their dearly departed (the part that most invited scrutiny). Instead, El-Wyn’s Midnite Spook Party played the séance for cheap thrills and jump scares. Peck’s coup de grâce was a climactic blackout in which he pelted the audience with three minutes of supernatural effects in the dark.
