I was trolling around youtube, and don’t ask me how but I wound up finding this “classic” bit from the Gilligan’s Island episode “Ghost-a-Go-Go.”
Then suddenly it occurred to me – how did the trope ever start of a ghost being depicted as a figure in a long white sheet (with or without eye-holes) and going “Whoooooooooooo” ?
I get that it could have caught on just because it was a pretty easy effect to achieve. But where did it come from?
One of the best ghosts EVER! Richard Kiel was just right for that.
99er thread on the subject.
Unfortunately that thread failed to explore the intricacies and nuances of the innovative, pioneering “long hair” approach of Cousin It.
I got a rock.
Playing straight man in this dog-and-pony show … because bodies are buried in winding-sheets, right? So when the soul comes back it’s wearing the thing it was buried in.
Which brings us back to one of my favorite pieces of advice: dress every day like you’ll be murdered in those clothes.
I have no evidence to say that this is the origin, but I am going to hypothesize that it dates to the stage performance of The Haunted Man. This is where the “phantasmagoria” illusion first became popularly known (aka Pepper’s Ghost), where a glass reflection is used to make it seem like there is a ghostly form on the stage with the other characters.
The pictures I can find which date from the show, all depict a ghost in a sheet. And one can surmise that with mid-19th century technology, it would be hard to light everything as well as we can today, so something like a white sheet would perhaps be necessary, or else the figure might be too dim to show. And, in the story, the figure is supposed to look exactly like the main character. Minus an actor with a twin brother, wrapping the ghost in a sheet would be a handy way to disguise the fact that the actor looked nothing like the main character.
But the lighting is probably the key aspect that makes me think that this is likely to be the invention.
^Do you think that somehow ties in with The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come from “A Christmas Carol”?
Don’t know where it originated, but in addition to those examples already named, I love the dead couple pulling it on Lydia in Beetlejuice, and Mort’s appearance in the webcomic Questionable Content. In both cases, the person they’re trying to scare completely no-sells it.
If the ghost is supposed to be the soul of the departed, not the body, why is it wearing anything at all?
I gotta rock, too. \m/
How else would they show a ghost, an invisible or nearly-so being, especially pre-CGI? Throw a sheet over an actor, and you instantly get something that “could be” immaterial, if only making the sheet bulge.
How do you know that the associated of “wispy, floaty, and pale” with ghosts didn’t come after the usage of sheets?
Look at the Headless Horseman or Zombie Jesus. In literature, ghosts are generally fully formed and solid.
A fair point, I guess. It would need some serious look into the history. Though each probably feed into each other.
If restless spirits manifest in whatever they were wearing at time of death, then these persons were hiding under their sheets in bed when they had a heart attack.
Shit. The first thing I thought of was the M.R. James story, which was the first thing I thought of in October, 1999.
I’m in a rut.
Let’s not forget that the ghost in a sheet image originated in an era when putting white sheets over furniture was a common way to keep dust off of it when you were gone or just not using rooms. (And in an era where everyone burned coal, this was a necessity). White sheets have both the burial shroud and the abandoned house vibe working for them.
MR James was the first thing I thought of too.
There was a fairly recent but not very good film made about a ghost that employed a bedsheet to become visible: An American Ghost Story (2012) - IMDb
No, way way earlier than that. Satua nailed it, the ghost wears a winding sheet, a shroud. There are illustrations in Elizabethan books showing the ghost in a shroud. John Dee, the famous Elizabethan conjurer has a well-known picture in one of his books showing him in a cemetery at night invoking a spirit from the grave. The ghost is attired in the usual white shroud from head to foot.