- Title
- Playing the ghost : Ghost hoaxing and supernaturalism in late Ninteenth-Century Victoria
- Creator
- Waldron, David
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/102360
- Identifier
- vital:10795
- Identifier
- ISSN:1832-2522
- Abstract
- On the night of Wednesday 29 May 1895, two young ladies were approached by a spectral figure clad in black robes, with arms and face covered in phosphorescent paint. This individual frequently patrolled the area around Sturt Street and Dana Street in Ballarat attempting to harass young women. A search of newspaper articles from this period indicates a wide-spread proliferation of ghost hoaxing, referred to as ‘playing the ghost’, between the 1870s and World War I, with a particular focus on the Ballarat region in central Victoria. This extraordinary behaviour occurred in the context of the rising popularity of spiritualism, which challenged traditional notions of the role of the dead, as well as a similar proliferation of ghost and monster hoaxing in Britain, perhaps best exemplified by the character of Spring Heeled Jack. This paper examines the phenomenon of ghost hoaxing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Victoria through its reportage in the print media of the era, with a focus on the causes and legacies of the phenomenon in the broader cultural context of central Victoria and the Goldfields region.
- Publisher
- Public Record Office Victoria
- Relation
- Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria Vol. , no. 13 (2014), p.
- Rights
- Copyright © 2016 David Waldron
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Ghost hoaxing; Supernaturalism; Nineteenth-century; Victoria
- Full Text
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