Enigmarelle, The Creepy Vaudeville Automaton

Meet Enigmarelle: a ghoulish, lumbering, wax-faced "automaton" that gave early vaudeville patrons bladder-evacuating nightmares for decades.

Suitably, Enigmarelle's fate is a mystery, but what we do know is that the clown-suited golem had an astonishing thirty year career in early 20th century vaudeville, during which time she delighted audiences by walking, riding a bicycle, writing her names, "turning corners of her own volition" and plays the piano.

It seems pretty clear that Enigmarelle was actually a man in a nightmare-inducing costume, who awkwardly rode a bicycle around while someone backstage made loud gear-clanking noises. No one knows what happened to Enigmarelle...

For all we know, the wax husks or shells of both Phroso and Enigmarelle may still be slumped in a dry attic's chair --- or tucked into a forgotten steamer trunk in a damp basement, where their once brightly festooned velvet and gold-braid costumes have long decomposed into a black, velvety mass of nothingness --- leaving behind only two bright glassy eyes set in a grinning waxen face.

But what a eulogy!

Enigmarelle & Co. [Vitaphone] (via Boing Boing)