In an effort to make sure kids don’t have all the fun on Halloween, magician David Parr has created “Haunting History,” a site-specific event at Dawes House in Evanston that is equal parts history, mystery and magic. The show runs for 12 evening performances, Oct. 23-24 and 30-31.
“Halloween is my favorite holiday,” says Parr. “In the past it wasn’t so identified with children. It was a time when social constraints were loosened, and grown-ups could meet and mingle, play parlor games, and indulge in make-believe. On Halloween we can give ourselves permission to embrace the uncanny.”
At its heart, “Haunting History” is a magic show that explores the corridors of the historic Dawes House, built in 1885, intermingling fact and folklore, while moving performance and audience from room to room. Each room offers an intimate encounter with the strange and supernatural, in a magic show where audience members can step into the boots of Wild Bill Hickok for the most infamous poker game in history, learn the skills of an old-fashioned “witch finder,” or sit in on a 19th-century seance, where restless spirits communicate in code.
Parr, 51, relocated to Chicago in 2007, after growing up in Milwaukee, where at the age of 7 he received his first Mattel magic kit, complete with plastic top hat and disappearing rabbit. Reading everything he could find on magic became Parr’s solitary pursuit — and eventually, with his act refined, he spent boyhood summers performing public magic shows at local libraries.
Parr describes every magic performance as a journey. At the Dawes House, as the performance moves deeper into the house, it becomes not only darker thematically, but darker literally, going from light and playful to eerie and strange, and culminating with a seance.
While Parr admits the celebration of Halloween has become a set of playful rituals — dressing up in costumes, carving pumpkins, trick or treating, and the like — what interests him is the tension between the playfulness and the historic iconography and folklore that relates to the mysteries of life and death.
As for the question about “Haunting History” that he is often asked — is it scary?— Parr says, “It’s not the scary of people in masks jumping out at you, it’s the kind of scary you get from reading a very good ghost story.”
‘Haunting History’ with David Parr
7, 8 and 9 p.m. Oct. 23-24 and 30-31
Evanston History Center, located in the Dawes House, 225 Greenwood St., Evanston
Age 13 and older
$20
Tickets at the door or at www.DavidParr.com or www.hauntinghistory2015.brownpapertickets.com/.