The 29th annual Port Townsend Victorian Heritage Festival is celebrating “The Spirit of Innovation” from Friday, May 2, through Sunday, May 4, a title which festival chair Kathy Knoblock explained allows them to do a dual theme.

“It’s a play on words,” Knoblock said. “Not only are we featuring ideas in technology and fashion that were new to that era, but we’re also spotlighting the Victorians’ fascination with the occult, and their customs around mourning.”

The festival’s featured event on Friday, May 2, will be a pair of Victorian seances, dramatized by presenter Matthew Bell and festival volunteers, complete with special effects, at the Adams-Pragge House in Uptown Port Townsend.

Knoblock credited Bell with devising this year’s topics of interest for the festival, but also emphasized that the nonprofit Port Townsend Heritage Association is in no way looking to compete with the Port Townsend Main Street Program’s “Haunted Histories and Mysteries.”

“What we’re exploring instead is why things like seances were popular, and some of the stagecraft that was used by these false spiritualists to prey on the wealthy and grieving,” Knoblock said. “There were reasons why people were open to the idea of communication with the other side.”

Bell is set to devote Saturday, May 3, to explaining those reasons, as well as revealing the tricks of the trade that such traveling mediums used to make a business out of their chicanery, through another presentation, this time at the Pope Marine Building.

“Ironically, Harry Houdini exposed a number of these frauds because he wanted to contact his mother in the afterlife, and he realized they were con artists,” Knoblock said. “They used techniques ranging from magic and knocks on the table to ‘magic chalkboards,’ on which writing would appear, seemingly without the intervention of any human hands.”

Transitioning from false spirituality to genuinely somber remembrance, this year’s Victorian Heritage Festival will also cover Port Townsend’s historic cemeteries, including stories about their founders, the working families and famous residents interred in those grounds, and the cemeteries themselves.

Knoblock noted that a good deal of research was devoted to this subject, as she pointed out how cemeteries are typically originally sited on the outskirts of a given town, but like so many towns, Port Townsend eventually expanded to encompass its cemeteries.

Other presentations on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4, will touch upon the “innovation” in the festival theme of “Spirit of Innovation,” through fashion and technology.

Fashion show coordinator Hazel Sanders will show how Victorian ladies dressed, going through each layer of clothing and its purposes, while highlighting a “reform dress” and exploring what was then considered the “shocking” innovation of “bloomers.”

On a less racy note of fashion, the Puget Sound Lacemakers will be giving a free lace-making demonstration Saturday, May 3, at the Cotton Building, the same day as the festival’s annual fashion show, spotlighting the fashions of each decade from the 1850s forward.

The invention of the typewriter will serve as the centerpiece of the festival’s review of the era’s technological innovations, presented by Tyler Zwirtz at his “Type Townsend” shop on Sunday, May 4, but festival-goers can also check out a presentation on the history of the Jefferson County Courthouse’s bell tower and clock mechanism. 

The festival coincides with tours of the Rothschild and Starrett houses, as well as St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, plus activities at Fort Worden and walking tours of historic Uptown Port Townsend and the gardens of Chetzemoka Park. 

“The demographics of Port Townsend are changing, with a good percentage of our current residents only having just moved here within the past few years,” Knoblock said. “A number of them are unfamiliar with our wonderful history, so we consider it an honor to educate folks on why this community is special. They might become invested in helping us keep it special.”

More information can be found at the Port Townsend Victorian Heritage Festival’s website.