Scar Stuff

A pair of LPs released in a few different formats over the years (as stand-alone albums in the ’50’s, and then as a double record set in the ’60’s & ’70’s), these recordings are culled from the popular NBC radio show that Olmsted narrated from ’52 to ’56. Largely excellent and highly literary adaptations of famous works that are allowed to unravel in 8 to 9 minute vignettes, I think Olmsted’s voice and tone will seem especially well suited to the medium among OTR enthusiasts (who will also find a familiar and more languid sense of pacing evident here). Cool stuff!

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The last installment in the “Old Witch” trilogy from Wende and Harry Devlin, “Old Witch Rescues Halloween” followed 1963’s “Old Black Witch” (sometimes remembered as “Blueberry Pancake Witch” and adapted for television in 1969 by Gerald Herman as “Winter of the Witch”), and 1970’s “Old Witch and the Polka-Dot Ribbon”. While it’s a lightweight children’s story really (and at about 9:10 or so you’ll find a skip that I missed when I was doing my audio reconstruction of side two (there were a LOT of skips), perhaps if you pretend that it’s an incantation of sorts you’ll be able to get past it more easily), I’ve run into a number of people over the years with fond memories of the series. To give you some visuals, here are a couple of representative images…

…and here’s the story in all its glory:

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Somewhat in the tradition of “Georgie”, here’s a 1977 audio reading from the “I Can Read About” series from Troll (“I Can Read About Ballet”, I Can Read About Good Manners”, etc). I confess that the post is a bit of a cheat since I didn’t scan each & every page along with the sound, but I think you’ll be able to follow the story easily enough all the same — in fact the Alibris description of this title sums it up succinctly; “Andrew is just a little ghost who is afraid of the dark, but he must be brave if he doesn’t want to be a ghostling forever”. As with all glimpses into ghostly life there are oddball touches here & there (ghosts always seem to have very specific job demands when it comes to haunting and scaring humans, don’t they?); personally I just hope I’ll be able to present myself successfully to the “Ghost Counsel” when the time comes.

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Amazingly not available on CD (though throughout the ’70’s it was released on vinyl in a variety of formats; long playing 12″, book & record 7″, etc), this is the shortened-for-LP adaptation of the beloved Halloween special from 1966. Recently the subject of a “making of” book (and readily available on DVD), its return to the yearly Halloween television lineup was always welcome for me as a kid (well, aside from all of that “World War I Flying Ace” stuff which just made me impatient for the most part). Just like tons of kids I can remember liberally quoting the “I got a rock” line while Trick or Treating, and the less said about the time I tried to cut up one of my bedsheets in an attempt to emulate the ghost costumes worn by many of the characters the better.

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…and hey, while we’re at it; here’s the whole damn teevee special right offa youtube:

Another fantastically spooky Caedmon Halloween LP from the early ’70’s, this time with the narrative duties ably handled by William Conrad, then in the thick of his popularity as the private eye “Cannon”. This was another public library childhood favorite of mine, and I can recall being quite frightened by the music in “The Secret Commonwealth” for some reason. I’ll just quote copiously from Paul Kresh’s evocative liner notes and then get along to the downloading:

“Hallowe’en — All Hallow’s Eve — the eve of All Saint’s Day — a night for mischief, when the goblins all are out playing pranks, when witches and warlocks cavort through autumn air, when dark clouds scud across the moon’s scared white face and the wanton October wind strip the branches of trees bare leaf by leaf…

Just listen, as William Conrad, that master spieler of spooky tales, inhabits the grooves of this disc for a spine-tingling session of storm-tossed rhymes and tales. Children, especially, will love to be frightened by him: ‘After all, it’s only a story.’ Or is it?

This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb affrighted shall
come,
Called out by the clap of the thunder.

With this record in your collection, mischief need know no season, Any night can be Hallowe’en. Spin it at your risk.”

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Heya folks. Well it looks like the server that’s been so capably hosting the Scar Stuff files was getting hit kinda hard (or at least there was something hinky that was creating a bottleneck of sorts — initial research points to someone hotlinking the files & everything going haywire), so for right now all of the files are temporarily inaccessible. A solution & some clarification is forthcoming I’m sure, but the main thing is that archives are totally safe. Just sit tight & we’ll see what we can see (probably sometime on friday morning).

Apologies,

Jason

Recorded live on Halloween by cousins Barbara Freeman and Connie Regan (now Connie Regan-Blake), this 1983 LP (an American Library Association “Notable Record”) has some genuinely creepy moments to it. Through both the live audience format and their folksy skill, both Connie & Barbara end up weaving a vividly intimate spell with these tales (which are both traditional and penned by other authors; Molly Garrett Bang, Lee Pennington, Julia Ruth Richardson, Jack Prelutsky), and there’s ultimately a more mature feel here than I’d initially expected. At turns funny, gruesome and grim, the longer pieces (Connie’s mostly) might be particularly well suited to fireplace or candlelight listens should you find yourself being aurally seduced.

Note: Connie Regan-Blake also has a more recent CD of frightening tales that’s worth checking out, and it includes studio re-tellings of two of these stories.

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Apparently reissued in the mid ’90’s on a now OOP CD, this Canadian-born Halloween sound effects LP might be exaggerating things a bit when it comes to that “Music and Effects of a Terrifying Nature” subtitle. Things get started off near the right foot with tracks like “Two Headed Monster Devouring Raw Flesh” and “Growling, Snarling, Slobbering Monster In Chains, Maniacal Laughter”, but after a brief torture tangent (“Sharpening The Pendulum Axe”, “Tightening The Thumbscrew”, etc) you’ll find that side two is completely taken up with the rather dubious theme of “Hallowe’en in Space” (even their liner notes seem apologetic on this point, claiming that “Since Hallowe’en is very difficult to define, we found that we were carried away by the space and fantasy feeling that now exists as side 2…”). Now maybe it was thanks to the post-Star Wars world we were all living in, or perhaps the Halloween traditions in Vancouver are more varied than those with which I’m familiar, but whatever the genesis, the end result is that when the listener drops the needle down here in search of scares, they’re treated instead to sonic concepts like “Plutonian Ice Caves”, “Cosmic Lunacy”, and that ol’ Halloween fave “Honing the Light Sabre”.

“This is an absolutely horrible record album that no collection should be without”… “equally useful for professionals and sound and home movie buffs alike”. Well hey, fair enough!

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Representing a real throwback to glorious hucksterism, there are at least two records in this cut-rate series from Ball which combined inept storytelling on the vinyl and cheap novelty toy giveaways on the packaging. This volume featured a Free! Magic WITCHES WAND that GLOWS in the DARK attached to the front, and a slew of liner notes on the back which the content of the grooves could never live up to:

“A HALLOWE’EN HIT that puts life into your party. This 12 inch, long playing, ‘SPOOKTACULAR’ album gives you a ‘haunting’ 44 minutes of scary, spooky, Hallowe’en Stories. Mysterious things happen when a Hallowe’en party scavenger hunt ends up inside ‘THE EMPTY HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL’. Even more spine tingling is the dramatization of the most famous monster story of them all ‘FRANKENSTEIN’. In addition to these two exciting stories, you get a sensational series of frightening, spine-chilling sounds: weird groans, moaning winds, clanking chains, creaking stairs, were-wolf howl. . . all kinds of spooky sounds for special effects and party fun. This high fidelity album provides fun and entertainment for all ages the whole year ’round. At Hallowe’en time or at any time of the year, guests can, for example, participate in ghost-story telling using pre-selected ghostly sounds to make their story more effective. Party contests can be built around the telling of the best spooky story based on the two stories dramatized in this album. Variations of party fun from this album are endless and entertaining. Buy it now, and enjoy it all year around.”

Naturally then, what you actually get is one of the most hilariously inept intros I’ve ever heard (they manage to tie in the “magic witches wand” though, which I thought was impressive), a poorly acted “Scooby Doo” type haunted house story with the voice actors regularly stumbling over their lines, and a barely audible transcription of a “Frankenstein” radio dramatization that must date back at least 20 years before this record was pressed.

So: cheapo crap designed to quickly rake in as much money from the kiddie market as possible? Yes! With a little dime-store “home-made feel” sprinkled on top to boot! Personally speaking, I could probably spend an hour or two just listening to “intro guy” as he tries to be menacing (as long as he has his pal make a “were-wolf howl” in the background now and then that is). Just great.

Ghost Stories “2 Complete Halloween Ghost Stories” (192 kbps)

A three and a half minute Kraft promotional flexidisc from the late 1970’s which throws together a round of safety tips (“Don’t go into a stranger’s home, wear a bright reflective costume so that you can be seen at night”, all also printed on the back of the flexi and included in the zip file) under the guise of a short and somewhat non-linear haunted house story (the “secret of Halloween” is revealed in an old trunk? Huh?). Waiting until the very end to sneak their commercial message in, a vampire’s voice finally reminds all the kids listening to “wait ’til you get home to try Halloween treats, and eat Kraft wrapped candies“. Interestingly enough, it was around the time of this flexi’s release that I stopped getting homemade popcorn balls, cookies & cupcakes on my neighborhood Halloween rounds as a kid (still thankfully “pre-Tylenol Scare” on the Grand Halloween Timeline though, now there was a bleak year for Trick-or-Treaters.)

Kraft “A Spooky Sounding Halloween Story” (192 kbps)