The effect was first used in an 1862 dramatization of Charles Dickens' novella "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, " staged at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London, according to Jim Steinmeyer, an illusion designer who has written extensively about the history of his craft, including Pepper's Ghost.

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Newcomer Jacqueline (Charlotte Rampling) is also something of an angry ghost: once married to a gay man, she brusquely asks whether Bill is straight before letting him pick her up.

ECONOMIST: New film