Ghosts !

Besides “waffle irons” and “bashibazouks”, “blistering barnacles on wheels” hold a prominent place in Captain Haddock’s ever-troubled life. And while the definition of ectoplasm – “visible emanations produced by a medium, materializing in various forms” – only adds to the mystery surrounding its appearance, photographs offer more insight into the phenomenon: those seen in Draguignan have no wheels, yet their manner of appearing is no less startling.

A spongy substance seems to be pouring out of the nose of the medium Margery; it is said to be the vocal apparatus of her deceased brother (ill. 1). The dead manifest themselves in many ways, always with a flair for the dramatic and a mischievous taste for the macabre. “I do not believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them,” Madame du Deffand used to say. Some spirits use the living to write messages that the visitor to Draguignan attempts to decipher, nervously scrawled on sheets of paper; others agree to leave a fingerprint or chin print in a mold. Exiled in Guernsey, Victor Hugo communicated with his beloved daughter Léopoldine through “talking tables.” During these séances, recorded in his “Livre des tables”, great writers of the past appeared – Dante, Shakespeare, Molière – as well as even more illustrious figures, Jesus and Mohammed; the Shadow of the Sepulchre and Death also dropped in, leaving behind their self-portraits (ill. 2). The boundary between this world and the beyond is decidedly porous.

Philippe Charlier is a…