Halloween Mixtape

Okay, the title is a little misleading. But "mix DVD" doesn't have the same ring.

About 20 years ago, back when DVD burners were still standard computer hardware, I made my own two-disc compilation of some of my favorite Halloween TV episodes. Most of the episodes were ones my family had recorded off television onto VHS, and I converted them to digital video. I should add that this was probably a year or two before YouTube even existed.

The first disc contains full episodes while the second is a mix of full episodes with various Halloween-themed segments from other programs.

Disc 1 (menu music: Theme from Disney's Haunted Mansion)

1. Three Stooges: "If a Body Meets a Body"
2. Bewitched: "Safe and Sane Halloween"
3. Brady Bunch: "To Move or Not to Move"
4. Brady Bunch: "The Slumber Caper"
5. Brady Bunch: "Fright Night"
6. Happy Days: "Haunted"
7. Happy Days: "The Evil Eye"

Disc 2 (menu music: "The Skeleton Dance")

1. Little House on the Prairie: "The Monster of Walnut Grove"
2. That's Incredible: Haunted Castle in New Jersey
3. That's Incredible: Haunted Toys R Us
4. Eye on L.A.: "Halloween 3-D"
5. Jack White at the Old Margo Theater
6. Saturday Night Live: Halloween with Matt Foley
7. Our Gang: "Shivering Spooks"
8. Mickey Mouse: "Haunted House"
9. Silly Symphonies: "The Skeleton Dance"
10. 1984 McDonald's Commercial
11. 1985 Vincent Price Commercial
12. McDonald's Commercial: "Scared Silly"
13. Brady Bunch: "Out of This World"
14. Brady Bunch: "Two Petes in a Pod"

In its own way, my amateur DVD compilation helped inspire this blog, The Ghosts of Halloweens Past, which I initiated several years later with posts about many of these same programs. I appreciate the low-fi quality to the VHS transfer, and the fact that I can watch these programs on a TV screen and not have to be connected online. Makes the experience a little more old-school, like when mixtapes were a thing.

What would be on your Halloween DVD compilation?

Thoughts for October 2022

With October here and the promise of another Halloween, I decided to revisit this 13-year-old blog after a long hiatus. Family and work priorities prevent me from giving the site much attention during the year, but the site deserves to remain active. This week I checked old posts and, when possible, updated video links to replace dead ones. I hope to add new posts in the coming weeks.

I originally created Ghosts of Halloweens Past as a way to celebrate my childhood memories of the holiday, by sharing Halloween shows and programs that I remembered from those decades—along with fun and interesting videos that I discovered in more recent years of scouring the Internet.

But it occurred to me that despite its good intentions, this blog is by its very nature somewhat antithetical to my childhood experiences of Halloween. Having been born in the mid-1970s, I grew up in a time when holiday entertainment was more communal. Halloween specials were typically shown only once a year, and network TV stations advertised them accordingly. Catching the annual airing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, for example, was a much-anticipated event. As my sister pointed out to me in a recent conversation, part of what made these programs special was knowing that all your friends were watching them at the same moment. And even though we could pop a videotape into the VCR and record the program for later viewing, or eventually purchase an official VHS or DVD of it, a recording never did justice to the actual broadcast, because the communal event had passed. Watching the program whenever we desired meant that the shared experience rarely extended beyond the walls of our living room.

Today such experiences are even more individualized and fragmented. Halloween fans now have the choice of innumerable sites offering holiday fare—Ghosts of Halloweens Past being one of the humbler ones. Meanwhile, it's not yet clear whether It's the Great Pumpkin will be shown on PBS Kids or any other cable TV station this year.

On the flip side, sites like YouTube allow us the privilege of discovering obscure shows—sometimes including commercials from the original broadcasts—which never benefitted from repeat airings or commercial releases. Communal or not, such sites make it possible to re-experience programs that otherwise might have only existed as a strange memory—such as the "haunted Toys-R-Us" episode of That's Incredible from 1978, or The Search for Houdini, probably the most unusual Halloween program aired in 1987.

Thankfully, TV entertainment is only one part of a holiday that is still very much a communal event, at least in my neighborhood. Costumed children and their families will be seen along the sidewalks, and walking up to houses they otherwise never visit, and speaking to people with whom they otherwise never chat. And despite the potential for glorifying darkness and evil on Halloween night, in my experience the holiday can still bring out the best in humanity.

Here's to a wonderful Halloween 2022!

That's Incredible: Amityville Horror (1980)

I didn't actually see this when That's Incredible! was still on TV, but I knew about the episode because my brother had seen it. For many years I was curious about the episode because it showed the inside of the Amityville house, including the "red room" and the upstairs bedroom with the trademark "eye" windows. I finally found the video on YouTube a few years ago. It was a little surprising that, considering the show's tendency towards sensationalism, the writers of the program chose to document the subject in a straight-forward, objective manner. Rather than playing up the stories of the supposed hauntings, the program consisted mainly of disputing the Lutz's claims and events as reported in the novel. The segment is still a bit spooky, though, and makes for fun Halloween viewing! Also check out the 1979 Amityville episode from the show In Search Of.

That's Incredible: Haunted Toys 'R Us (1978)

This segment from That's Incredible! investigates the story of a haunted Toys 'R Us in Sunnyvale, California. Apparently, the toy store was built on the property where a man died after a wood-chopping accident, and psychic Sylvia Brown claims that this man's spirit is haunting the store. A séance is staged in the toy store for That's Incredible! As Brown attempts to make contact with the spirit, a photographer captures some interesting images.

That's Incredible: Ghost Castle (1981)

That's Incredible! was one of my favorite shows in the 80s because I could always depend on it for tales of strange phenomena. I only remember a handful of segments that could be classified as Halloween-oriented. This particular segment about a haunted castle in New Jersey features testimony about objects being moved around the room and other occurrences. The residents believe the ghost to be William Beatty, the man who built "Castle Utopia" in the 1920s and died in one of the rooms. The current owners of the property have renamed the home Phareloch Castle and are in the process of renovating the structure.