42. No, She Isn’t Pretending to be Santa Claus
In Victorian England and on the other side of the Atlantic during the 1800s and early 1900s, dabbling in the occult became an increasingly respectable way of spending free time for the wealthy. One means of doing so was hiring mediums who insisted they could contact spirits, enabling those left behind to have a conversation with the dearly departed. This picture is of a medium who tried to prove that she could contact the spirit world by covering herself in “ectoplasm.” However, she looks like she is probably just wearing cotton balls all over her face. Which she probably is.
