THE "VAMPIRE" TRAP
Is of ancient invention. When "Frankenstein," on account of its great
success, with Wallack as the Student and T. P. Cooke as the Monster,
was translated to the Parisian stage, the Vampire Trap was brought into
action for the first time there, for, strange to say, ingenious as the
French are, our stage mechanism is much admired among them for its
novelty and excellence. By this trap, a person can pass through walls
and the stage, without leaving any trace of an aperture.
The trap is simply an opening (generally a parallelogram a little
more than of man's height), in which works a frame of two shutters or a
double door. Each of the shutters is divided horizontally into a number
of slats, kept in place by the application of canvas glued to the back
; on this back is again applied a series of whalebone strips (or thin
steel laths, very flexible), with the ends fixed firmly in the frame.
The two shutters are thus kept level with the frame and the scene in
which it is set.
Now, any heavy body dashed against the centre of this trap with
violence will pass clear through it, though the spring of the strips
will make them fly back into their first position again so rapidly that
the eye will not often detect the opening. A man can leap through, or,
on a smaller scale, a heavy object be hurled through.
The common "vampire" is simply a double door, with the two flaps
held in place when shut by weights, sand-bags, or leaden cylinders, so
that after an object forces them open by its passage, they fly rapidly
shut.
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