Night at the Museum: Civil War Edition

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!