Ventriloquism- The Dark Side

Have you ever enjoyed a puppet show? If so, then of course you have noticed that the puppets are dancing and talking which seems to be coming from their own vocal cords. This is done through nothing but the Ventriloquism which has it's root deep in the past. 

So, what is Ventriloquism? Ventriloquism is a practice where a person (or Ventriloquist) creates an illusion that their voice is coming from somewhere else instead of their own vocal cords. Mainly the puppeteers use this technic in  puppet shows as a tool of entertainment which is, in English, also known as "Throwing" one's voice to another place. The name came from the Latin for "To speak from the stomach" where venter refers to "belly" and Loqui to "speak". In Greece, the practice is known as Gastromancy.

Ventriloquism was a religious practice where the ventriloquists were thought to be able to talk to the dead. The noises coming from the stomach were believed to be the voice of the dead, that took residence in the stomach of the Ventriloquist priest. The earliest group of prophets to apply this practice was Pythia, the priestess of the temple of Apollo in Delphi. One of the most successful gastromancers was Eurykles, the prophet of Athens. 

Ventriloquists were called “engastrimyths”. Writes Steven Connor in his book Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism, this was a mashup of “en in, gaster the stomach, and mythos word or speech.” Basically, people believed engastrimyths had demons in their stomachs who belched words from their host’s mouths. Engastrimyths plied their trade for entertainment and as divination. Pioneering ventriloquist Valentine Vox writes in his book "I Can See Your Lips Moving: The History and Art of Ventriloquism" that the art’s roots lie in necromancy—the ancient art of allowing a dead person’s spirit to enter the necromancer and speak to the living. 

In 150 A.D. ,a man called Alexander found a talking snake which head was similar to human head. Later, a writer named Lucian explained the fact that the head was made from Linen and was fitted to the body of a dead snake and the Ventriloquist used a tube way to pass his voice. Thankfully, this "dummy" was used as an stage puppet only.

But there's still connections with supernatural things. A few centuries later, the ventriloquism became a popular practice for voice acrobats , which associated with the demonic witchcraft and black magic. At that time, one of the most famous ventriloquists were Elizabeth Burton. But her fame went down as soon as she delivered her divine speech that the King Henry VIII should not marry 

Anny Boleyn. Burton was arrested and hung to death. 

In 16th century, Christianity took this practice as a fearsome one which was believed "to be spawned by the hell itself" by the Vox. They believed this mysterious voice could come from any holes of the body- from vagina to nostrils. 

Filmmakers haven’t been able to resist musing on the horror of the dummy, either. A ventriloquist gripped with insanity appeared in 1945’s Dead of Night, and in 1964’s Devil Doll, a demonic dummy successfully swaps bodies with his master. Anthony Hopkins played a ventriloquist named Corky who commits murder with his animate dummy, Fats, in 1978’s Magic, and in 2007 the creators of the Saw franchise offered audiences Dead Silence in which an evil ventriloquist turns human victims into marionettes.

But Thankfully, those dark days of ventriloquism are mostly gone and it has now largely confined itself in stagecraft.