Ghostbusters

• To make fun even more accessible this Spring Break, Main Event centers nationwide are also rolling out the All You Can Play Activity Pass for $18.99 when purchased before noon.
• According to Main Event's recent study, nearly all parents (84%) agree that Spring Break is about family time together, regardless of where you are.
• Yet, by day four of Spring Break, more than half of parents (58%) are stressed and have run out of activities for their kids (54%).
• Main Event centers nationwide are also celebrating the new Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire film this Spring Break with limited edition themed flavors and branded cups.

• The Marcus Corporation (NYSE: MCS) today reported results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 ended December 28, 2023.
• Net loss per diluted common share attributable to The Marcus Corporation was $0.05 for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, compared to a net loss per diluted common share attributable to The Marcus Corporation of $0.30 for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022.
• Net earnings attributable to The Marcus Corporation was $14.8 million for fiscal 2023, compared to net loss attributable to The Marcus Corporation of $12.0 million for fiscal 2022.
• Same store admission revenues for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 increased 4.1% compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022.

• Like previous installments, SECRETS OF THE OCTOPUS will premiere in celebration of Earth Day on April 21, and streaming next day on Hulu and Disney+.
• Octopuses are like aliens on Earth: three hearts, blue blood, and the ability to squeeze through a space the size of their eyeball.
• “If you’re going to dive deep into natural history, you have to do it with National Geographic.
• For National Geographic, Pam Caragol is executive producer, and Tom McDonald is executive vice president of Global Factual and Unscripted Content.

• In Dr. Hamilton’s darkened seance chamber, as Doyle would later write, he experienced a luminous table fly into the air.
• Today, Hamilton’s legacy includes an uncanny trove of photographs related to his investigations of paranormal materializations.
• A new scholarly collection of essays and an art exhibit, The Undead Archive: 100 Years of Photographing Ghosts, at the University of Winnipeg use an art historical lens to contextualize these uncanny photographs.

The ‘psychic force’

• Doyle recounted how the table clattered again and again entirely on its own, with no sitter touching it.
• One moment, it was quiet.
• Psychic force, as some scientists believed, would extrude from the body of the medium and manifest as a organic plasm known as ectoplasm, through which spirits could communicate.

Expression of bereavement

• It was not uncommon after the losses of the First World War and the 1919 influenza pandemic for North Americans to participate in seances and dabble in spiritualism as an expression of bereavement, as historians Felicity Hamer and Esyllt Jones have outlined.
• Read more:
  Spirit photography captured love, loss and longing

  Interestingly, Hamilton rejected the popular religion of spiritualism, critiquing it as a cult.

Inspired ‘Ghostbusters’

• They were also praised by researchers, including two who got into a famous public argument with the magician Houdini after claiming to debunk his magic, and Samuel Aykroyd, actor Dan Aykroyd’s great-grandfather.
• The younger Aykroyd’s 1984 blockbuster Ghostbusters brought ectoplasm into popular culture.

‘Undead Archive’ exhibit

• The exhibit, The Undead Archive: 100 Years of Photographing Ghosts, at the University of Winnipeg’s Gallery 1C03, and the University of Manitoba’s School of Art and Archives and Special Collections, similarly focuses on artistic interpretations of this mysterious substance.
• Works include stop-motion videos of ectoplasm morphing into recognizable shapes: one by Shannon Taggart and one by Grace Williams.

Unseen, suppressed spiritual work

• Erika DeFreitas uses crocheted doilies instead of ectoplasm, calling attention to unseen labour mediums carried out to support psychical researchers.
• KC Adams, an Anishinaabe, Ininew and British artist living in Manitoba researched and created a virtual reality artwork for the exhibition that examines Ininew burial rituals suppressed under the Indian Act.

Pandemics and forgetting

• In Burrows’s image, Tam looks upwards, as if in a trance, and is surrounded by green beads imitating the COVID-19 virus.
• In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Tam was constantly on national TV and social media, like a diviner laying out warnings.

Winnipeg as ‘psychic centre’

• After sitting with the Hamiltons in their seance laboratory, in a July 5, 1923 letter to Lillian Hamilton, Doyle described Winnipeg as a “psychic centre,” in many ways divining Winnipeg’s loss of status as “Chicago of the North,” offering an alternative moniker.
• The idea of Winnipeg as a supernatural place has been taken up by artists and authors, exemplified by filmmaker Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, as well as the exhibition art, much of it created during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Serena Keshavjee receives funding from SSHRC.