Hello everyone! Hope you all enjoyed Halloween because I
sure did! We had a big event at the museum to celebrate and educate visitors that
evening called A Night at the Museum: Behind the Screams Tour. The premise was to tell ghost stories that
Civil War soldiers would have known, talk about the different ghost encounters
staff have had in our building (since it is allegedly the most haunted in the
city and there was an embalming business here for over 100 years) because there
have been many. The guides also
mentioned some of the more interesting things relating to the war such as
spiritualism’s growing popularity as people sought to connect with deceased
relatives and glowing wounds from the Battle of Shiloh.
I was
not involved directly with the tours or storytelling so I did not get to walk
around the darkened museum at night with a lantern but I was still here
working. Almost all of the staff dressed
in period attire with only a few exceptions. Because I was assigned to the front desk for
the night I was lent a costume. One
might assume, as I did, that I would be putting on the dress and doing up the
hair then calling it a day but the museum strives for being as authentic as
possible which means all the clothing must be as close to accurate as
possible. Farby is a term used by
reenactors to describe clothing that has modern conveniences or other
non-accurate items such as zippers, incorrect material or patterns, etc. The goal was to dress me with me minimal
farby and boy did we do well for the first time in my opinion.
I wore
pantaloons (think of them as chaps honestly), a chemise (like a VERY large
nightgown that would be tucked into the pantaloons), a corset that goes over
that (mine was a little too big so it wasn’t very tight thankfully), then a
hoop that gives a lovely bell shape and then finally the dress. It was a dashing yellow dress with tiny pink
and blue flowers on it and a nice blue ribbon was used a belt. The collar had a cameo on it and both it and
the belt were straight pinned on (as was accurate for the time). All in all the dress wasn’t horribly
uncomfortable I have to say. It did
start to feel a bit heavy after a few hours but it wasn’t anything
unbearable. April braided my hair as
well so I looked every bit the typical person of the time.
 |
| Audrey, myself and Tracey looking good in our period wear. |
During
the event I stayed up front with Kacie and Meg and we rang up purchases,
checked in visitors and handling anything that came up. I helped Meg created a glowing wound on one
soldier’s face (which kept dimming so we had to “re-glow” him so to speak every
once in awhile) and sometimes I walked outside.
A lot of the visitors seemed to really enjoy the ghost tours so I am
happy we able to give them that kind of unique experience. I didn’t hear about any visitors seeing
anything unusual that night but our staff did.
Meg saw things move of their own accord on the third floor and Jake
along with others saw flickering lights on the second floor. I can promise you it was not us playing
pranks on each other but something that many believe are genuine
encounters. Much of the staff here
believe they have had encounters as do the volunteers so this can be a pretty
spooky place to work. I, myself have not
had experiences or anything thankfully but a lot of these stories have made me
a little jumpy to tell the truth. Every
single room in this building has a story attached to it and the staff are more
than willing to share so it has become hard to not think about it when I walk
around for tours or other business.
The
night was great though and because we got such a great turnout (every tour sold
out) the museum is thinking of doing it again later this month! We definitely
will be doing it again next Halloween though.
Enjoy the pic of me in my lovely period wear because I sure do. Audrey and Tracey and seasoned reenactors and
they were tons of fun to talk to that night.
I hope I get to work with them again soon!
P.S. I’m a docent now! I passed my test so I get to start
giving tours!
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