A retired civil engineer, Henry Dircks, worked out a concept for presenting a ghost on a theatre stage in 1858, but the designs were impractical. In 1862, presenter of optical wonders "Professor" Henry Pepper, suggested that he and Dircks re-design it. An actor off-stage (below or to one side) dressed as a ghost was illuminated by the light from a lantern, and his transparent image, formed on an angled sheet of glass that filled the stage aperture, appeared to the audience to 'interact' with live performers. The patent was taken out in both their names, but they parted soon after the first show at the London Polytechnic.
Dircks felt cheated, but without Pepper's flair for showmanship and publicity, and his skill at devising improvements, The Ghost would probably have remained simply an interesting notion. It had some success in the theatre, but getting the glass into position was a laborious process, and cut off the stage behind it acoustically. The effect was exploited successfully on the British fairgrounds, and by the 1890s the fairground 'ghost show' or 'bogey' had developed into one of the most successful forms of 'walk up' show. However, within a few years of the introduction of film, the travelling ghost-show had been superseded by the bioscope show.