A screenshot from the horror movie 'Mystery of the Wax Museum'.
The concept of the uncanny valley was first coined in 1970 by a Japanese robotics professor named Masahiro Mori, and the idea reached the English-speaking world in 1978. It refers to a dip in human affinity towards a replica - in that a non-human looking figure with some vaguely humanoid features will often be referred to as adorable, but it will gradually become less likeable as it becomes more humanlike, until it is eventually indistinguishable from a real human and the levels of empathy displayed towards it by human observers climbs back up to positive levels again. If you have ever been creeped out by a doll, ventriloquist's dummy or a clown then the existence of this feature of human psychology is likely why. You might feel like the dead eyes of that wax figure are watching you, but this is just a trick of the brain - right?
A Taxing Ordeal[]
An eccentric entrepreneur by the name of Richard Turner had recently visited Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition in London, and so when he returned to his home of Sacramento he decided to open up his own museum of wax replicas. Turner's Waxwork Theatre opened its doors to the curious world in 1857 - a perfectly-timed opening set to exploit the wave of newcomers to the town in the wake of the California gold rush which has since been said to have officially ended just two years earlier in 1855. The centrepiece of this new and exciting show was a guillotine and five people who had allegedly been victims of this method of execution during the French Revolution. These five unfortunates were an unnamed aristocratic couple clothed in faded fineries, a young lady-in-waiting, a curé (parish priest) and a pallid figure dressed in black which was identified as one Nicodème Léopold Lépide - who was apparently a notoriously cruel tax collector who had heartlessly taken excessive amounts of money from the poor. I cannot find any other records of such a person existing, but I imagine that many lives were lost without much note during the French Revolution.
A generic creepy waxwork found on Flickr.
The show was an instant success, but Turner's brief winning streak was about to come to a grinding halt when his janitor, a man by the name of Ezra Potter, came to him with a bizarre story about what he had seen after unlocking the door of the vaulted waxwork chamber that morning. The guillotine was clearly eager to work its macabre magic on Monsieur Lépide for a second time, seeing as his wax body had changed position during the night and its head was lying on the floor next to it. In response, Turner took extra precautions to make sure that the door was always securely locked at night, and even had the building patrolled - but the unnerving happening continued unabated. After several weeks of this frustrating strangeness, Turner and Potter decided to spend a night in the room with the wax figures to see what was really going on behind those locked doors. They eventually fell asleep, and when they woke the next morning they found that Monsieur Lépide had once again been unusually active during the night. They elected to repeat their experiment the next night, and this time they managed to both stay conscious. What they saw shocked them.
Turner reported that the wax figure had started to move a little before 2:30am that morning. Its arms and legs had apparently stirred first, before the waxy face slowly started to seem more and more like it was made of flesh and blood. This newly-mobile face frowned in anger and a French-speaking voice was heard across the room. Of course, Turner couldn't understand what it was saying - but he was able to repeat the supernatural speech to a local French-Canadian who was able to translate it to the best of his ability.
Is it not possible to get some peace at night? The people came to see us die, now they come to see our spirits encased in wax. Come here no more during the hours of darkness or you will regret it.
Word of this incredible story spread throughout the surrounding town until it reached a young Sacramento journalist who requested to take the plunge and spend a night in the room with the haunted waxwork. Turner - perhaps reluctantly - agreed to let the man risk his neck and stay overnight in his evidently accursed museum. The journalist was locked in the room and Potter was posted at the door to guard the brave man. It seems that Potter eventually fell asleep - before he was suddenly roused from his slumber by the sounds of pounding on the door and hysterical screams coming from the other side of it. Panicking, Potter swiftly unlocked the door and flung it open - whereupon the terrified journalist fainted into his arms.
Being a journalist by trade, the man was able to write a detailed account of his harrowing experience. He sat in the 'gloom' of the lamps as the orange light flickered across the realistic replicas. They were apparently so lifelike that their stillness felt 'unnatural and ghastly'. He started to long for the comforting sounds of breathing, the minuscule noises like the rustling of fabric one can always hear when in human company even 'when silence has fallen over a crowd'. In spite of his clearly growing discomfort, he sat in the room for a few hours facing the uncanny figures. Either his unease was getting to him, or the taxman's waxwork duplicate was striking a slightly different pose each time he looked away from it. He focused on the taxman - and this time he caught Lépide in the act. Lépide's arm was moving. It shifted slowly and subtly at first, before suddenly increasing in vigor in order to promptly strike off its own head.
The journalist was horrified, gripping his chair with white knuckles. He could see that the waxwork's head had now been replaced with a semi-transparent visage plastered with a 'cruel, rapacious leer'. The nightmarish wax phantom turned to face the journalist and stepped down off its podium, its heavy feet presumably thudding onto the floor beneath it. The journalist jumped up off his chair to face the entity, whereupon the ghost made a beeline towards him. He slowly backed up against the door and tapped on it to try and get Potter's attention so that he too could witness the upsetting phenomenon - but at this time Potter was fast asleep. He banged the door harder this time, but still got no response as the waxy wraith moved ever closer. Panicking now - he desperately hammered on the door with his fists. He screamed in horror as he felt the hideous wax hands of the entity close around his neck. Just before his windpipe was constricted, he let out a final helpless scream before blacking out. When he woke, the first thing he saw was Ezra Potter standing over him in concern.
A cropped image from the poster art of a 2005 horror movie called 'The House of Wax'.
Predictably, the head of Nicodème Léopold Lépide was found on the floor beside the other figures in the morning. However, the waxwork's haunted body was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, and its fingers were allegedly found to be flat and misshapen. The taxman's model was promptly melted down and replaced with another after news of the journalist's ordeal reached Mr. Turner - and the disturbances quickly stopped after this. The museum was a hit in the area until 1885, when it eventually ceased operation. The journalist's tale was apparently suppressed until long after his death, finally being published in the 1930s.
Provenance[]
There are many problems with this story. The first is that I can find no record of the existence of a Sacramento entrepeneur by the name of Richard Turner, neither can I find any corroboration for the presence of a wax theatre bearing his spurious name. Of course, this could well be due to my inability to easily access building records and suchlike - and so perhaps a more fortunate researcher than I could work to verify this aspect of the story. The next is that nobody named Nicodème Léopold Lépide is easily found to have been executed during the French Revolution, but this could well have been because Turner might've had access to genealogy records which a modern researcher would not. The lack of record of Monsieur Lépide is pretty easily excused, in my mind. There are other problems with the narrative as well - namely the lack of any record of the tale existing before 1978 when it was published in a book by Raymond Lamont-Brown discussing ghost stories reported from theatres. There seems to be some degree of murkiness surrounding whether or not this book is fictional according to its review on Amazon, but the way that this same review accuses true ghost stories of being 'not nearly as interesting as fictional stories' seems to imply that they thought the book was boring because of its factual nature. However, I must admit that I am sourcing my assertion that this story does indeed appear in this book from the Reader's Digest book 'Mysteries of the Unexplained' - which has featured a few other dodgy stories such as John Macklin's hoaxed 'Green Children of Banjos'.
In fact, this story itself reeks of something invented by Macklin. The Cryptonaut Podcast covered another Macklin story which they titled The Stone Killers - dealing with two statues that would come to life and were supposed to have killed a woman living in a local house due to her husband's deliberate ignorance to the warnings given to him by the villagers as to the deadly nature of the statues. I live relatively close to the village in question, and a quick search for local folklore like this comes up with no results. The two brothers around whom the statues were allegedly modelled didn't exist, and as far as I can tell neither did the statues. This tale, of an inanimate humanoid object coming to life and attacking someone due to their failure to heed a warning, sounded like the work of Macklin - but seemingly turned out not to be.
It is also concerning to note that the story as retold by Reader's Digest says that the first mention of this unusually aggressive waxwork figure came to light in the 1930s - which obviously begs the question as to why the first confirmed mention of it only makes itself known in the 1970s. I am planning to purchase Lamont-Brown's book and look for the story in question, because I doubt that Reader's Digest would knowingly hoax a story, and so currently I am thinking that the blame for inventing this unlikely tale lies with Lamont-Brown. Overall, I would say that it seems fairly safe to dismiss this tale as an entertaining hoax unless further corroborating details are uncovered...
Source[]
'Mysteries of the Unexplained' for Reader's Digest quoting 'Phantoms of the Theatre' by Raymond Lamont-Brown