HERE’S a look at the spookiest objects in the National Science and Media Museum’s collections.
With Halloween coming up the Bradford museum has delved into its archives – and uncovered a host of creepy objects to get you into the spirit of the season.
From the iconic fangs of Dracula, a terrifying dummy head used in the early days of television, to supposed photos of spirits and ghosts.
Dracula’s fangs
Specially designed for and worn by Christopher Lee in the 1958 classic film Dracula, these fangs even come with attached ‘blood’ reservoir. Lee would press the reservoir against his palate with his tongue, so the ‘blood’ would run through the tubes and drip off the end of the fangs.
‘Stookie Bill’
This terrifying head is known as Stookie Bill, one of the dummy’s used by TV pioneer John Logie Baird to experiment with broadcasting. Famously, Baird couldn’t use real people as models because the lights were too hot, so Stookie was used instead. He was painted to give him as much contrast as possible to be picked up by the camera equipment - which has also made him rather creepy.
‘Eustace’
Sometimes referred to as Stookie Bill’s ‘girlfriend’, Eustace was another slightly terrifying mannequin head used by Baird in his colour television experiments.
William Hope’s spirit photography
In the mid-19th century, many people believed that cameras could capture spirits invisible to the naked eye. Around 1920, British medium and photographer, William Hope developed some photographic plates where ghostly faces, which had not been visible in the room, mysteriously appeared. Hope and others claimed they belonged to spirits of the dead. Hope’s work was later disproven.
Animatronic gorilla heads
These animatronic gorilla heads were used in the 1997 film flop, Buddy, where a socialite and her husband live in a mansion with a collection of wild animals and adopt a sick young gorilla as their son.
The National Science and Media Museum opened in 1983 and has since become one of the most visited UK museums outside London.
It draws on more than three million objects from its national collection to explore the science and culture of image and sound technologies, and their impact on our lives.
The museum itself is temporarily closed to the public until summer 2024 to undergo a ‘once-in-a-generation’ transformation.
The Pictureville Cinema, which was expected to remain open throughout, has recently been closed temporarily as a precautionary measure due to the presence of RAAC in the building.
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