The Red Room Riddle: A Ghost Story (Scott Corbett, 1972)

I first became aware of Scott Corbett's 1972 ghost story The Red Room Riddle when the made-for-TV adaptation decided to crash my regularly scheduled Saturday morning viewing ritual. My fandom for children's horror stories adapted for television had been established years earlier in my stumbled-upon viewing of Once Upon A Midnight Scary (1979), the Vincent Price-hosted anthological trio comprised of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving), The Ghost Belonged To Me (Richard Peck) and The House With a Clock In Its Walls (John Bellairs) (covered previously in a years-old blog post that's not very well written, but hey, at least the screen caps are... adequate.)

For The Red Room Riddle, Price even reprises hosting duties alongside feline puppet regular O. G. Readmore in this ABC Weekend Special presentation which aired just in time for Halloween, 1984.

Grade-school kids exploring an abandoned haunted house with nary an adult chaperone to be found? On paper, this should have been exactly my cup of arsenic. But even with my Expectations-Have-Been-Lowered-For-Television mindset, this version was lacking in atmosphere or scares, and kind of just plods along until it mercifully ends, with our lead explorers, Scott Jacoby (Bad Ronald) and Nicholas Gilbert ("3rd bully" in The Never Ending Story) left unscathed and unchanged by their experience.  For me, the most memorable thing about The Red Room Riddle was its alliterative title in dripping-blood font.  (But don't let my singular pooh-poohing steer you away from checking it out for yourself---there are plenty of first-hand kindertraumatic testimonies singing its praises by viewers other than me.)

That old Red Room Riddle font gives me the creeps!

I've said it before: most mysteries are solved in the library, and that's exactly where I went to investigate The Case of The Ghost Story Adaptation That Wasn't All That. If The Red Room Riddle's premise sounded good to me on paper, maybe "on paper" was the proper place to actually experience it, was my thinking.

Now let's get one thing straight---there is no actual riddle in The Red Room Riddle. Yes, there are mysterious goings-on that beg explanation, but anyone hoping for a what gets wetter the more it dries type plot-revolving puzzler for the characters to solve will find no such satisfaction.

Did I mention I love ex-library copies? This book filed under Mystery, because of all those mysterious goings-on that beg explanation, no doubt.

Framed as a first-person childhood reminiscence, The Red Room Riddle recounts an adventure by our narrator Bruce Cowell and new-to-the-neighborhood friend Bill Slocum on a drizzly Halloween.

Bruce's love of Halloween is expressed repeatedly, described here as "the most exciting night of the year." Apparently trick-or-treating was not yet a common practice when and where this story is set, so Halloween was instead a night of rule-breaking and mischief-making, "... when we were allowed to run loose in the dark. We looked forward to it for weeks."

Regional lore tells of a haunted house in the nearby affluent neighborhood of Mt. Alban, at which a baby's body was supposedly found years ago, chopped up and buried in the garden (unsurprisingly, the TV version leaves this gruesome detail out entirely.)

A timely conversation about belief in ghosts inspires the pair to seek out the house for "research", but really Bruce and Bill are just looking to add a little spice of the non-pumpkin kind to their Halloween gallivanting.  Guided by Bruce's fuzzy memory of having once passed by the place years earlier, the pair venture forth into the labyrinth of lanes, streets and drives that wind their way up Mt. Alban, eventually stumbling upon the house, three stories of dilapidation and jungle undergrowth.

Unlike the TV version, where the kids are left unscathed by their forbidden explorations, Bill gets scathed immediately, brushing against a thorn as they struggle their way through the unkempt grounds, leaving a bloody scar on his cheek.

While still navigating the yard, a third member unexpectedly joins their party: an aloof kid named Jamie Bly, trailed by his menacing bulldog, Major. Jamie claims familiarity with the house and offers to lead them on a tour, but there's something off-putting about his too-cool demeanor that immediately puts Bruce and Bill on edge. After making their way indoors and up a rickety staircase, they are chased out by yet another new arrival, a cantankerous old groundskeeper (who, considering the state of the grounds, should probably find another profession). While fleeing the property, Bruce thinks he sees Jamie's dog digging at a "small, age-yellowed bone...leaning sideways in the hole with the tilt of a disturbed tombstone." Is the legend of the chopped up baby true after all?

Sensing their fear while exploring the house, Jamie taunts them with an offer to experience actual ghosts in person later that evening at his own home. Despite their skepticism, Bruce and Bill appoint to meet him that evening at an intersection a few blocks away.

In the interim, they debate allowing their Halloween evening itinerary to be dictated by this infuriating stranger who obviously won't be able to produce real live dead ghosts--but may just have some other prank up his sleeve.  Ultimately the pair decide to call Jamie's bluff (but secretly, they each hope he won't show up.)

Bruce and Bill waiting for that little twerp Jamie. Illustrations are by Geff Gerlach, working in the I-Could-Draw-That style.

When Jamie does indeed appear at the appointed time and place, Bruce and Bill pivot from dread to bravado and dare him to deliver on his earlier promise. After leading them on a disorienting pretzel path through the neighborhood, the trio finally arrive at Jamie's house, which Bruce and Bill find as uninviting as the abandoned Mt. Alban house. 

Mirroring their earlier experience, Bill's cheek is again scratched as they approach the house, this time accompanied by a mysterious whooshing sound and a cold burst of air.  

And this is the point where we dive head first into the unique weirdness of Corbett's story that is sorely missing from the TV adaptation.

Once inside, Jamie's house proves legitimately spooky. Lit only by intermittent gas lamps, it's a confusing, shadowy labyrinth of lonely corridors and dark corners.  Jamie's parents are supposedly out for the evening, leaving a pair of servants as the only adults in the house. A mute maid emerges unexpectedly from the shadows just long enough to blow out the nearest lamp and then disappear again into darkness.

A huge, horrific tapestry adorns one wall, depicting the Biblical atrocity of King Herod putting children to the sword. This combined with the earlier sight of what might very well have been a murdered child's skeleton casts a foreboding seriousness over what would otherwise seem a harmless Halloween jaunt. This is another colorful detail omitted from the TV version, which ditches the whole infanticide theme entirely.

Again evoking their earlier adventure, they find themselves following Jamie up a staircase, this time to visit (drum-roll) "The Red Room". What's red and red and red all over? This unsettling upstairs chamber in which every wall, fixture and piece of furniture is covered in various shades of crimson that, impossibly, appears to still be dripping wet, prompting Bill to not so helpfully volunteer that old wooden warships used to paint their decks red to disguise blood spilt from battle.  "That's right." Jamie agrees with a knowing smirk.

The other shoe--which Bruce and Bill had been anticipating all evening--finally drops when Jamie springs his prank, locking them in the Red Room and challenging them through the red door to find a hidden red staircase somewhere near the red fireplace.  As they fumble around for a secret panel, crashing metallic footsteps can be heard from outside the room with increasing volume, and Jamie ominously warns they'd better hurry or "you'll see more than you bargained for."  

Admittedly the depiction of the room itself in the ABC Weekend Special is kind-a neat looking, even if it eschews the weirdness of the book for more generic haunted house tropes like floating candles

A tense and prolonged climax finds our heroes fleeing from a sword-wielding phantom Roman soldier down a claustrophobic spiral staircase, and a mysterious final flourish has us questioning whether any human being (or dog) Bruce and Bill have encountered since first stepping foot in the earlier Mt. Alban house is real, imagined, or something in between. It's even possible the Mt. Alban house and Jamie's are one and the same.

In a sad coda, Bruce describes trying to relay the incident to his parents years later, only for it to be dismissed as the result of a child's overactive imagination.

But Bill's scar, we are told, never healed.

The Red Room Riddle is out of print as of this writing.

The Unsettling Simpsons

My name is Brother Bill and I am a Simpsons fan.

I can spout Simpsons quotes off the top of my head the way a revival tent minister can quote the Good Book (and with comparable fervor!) Sure, the show has had its ups and downs--its salad days and dry patches--and the occasional unwatchable episode, but I just can't stay mad at The Simpsons. It gives so much and asks so little in return.

The Simpsons is one of the rare (maybe only? Roesanne is perhaps another) television series to truly embrace the concept of the Halloween special. And while there have been several Christmas-themed episodes, and the occasional story set around Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, or Valentine's Day, only Halloween gets the blood-red carpet rolled out for it every year, consistently and thoroughly.

Titled "Treehouse of Horror" (the debut Halloween episode, first broadcast Oct. 25, 1990, was framed as a trilogy of ghost stories being told in Bart's treehouse, and the name stuck) these non-canon episodes reimagine the first family of Springfield in a wide variety of fantastic scenarios, evoking horror films (I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Amityville Horror, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nightmare on Elm Street), science fiction (Fantastic Voyage, Demon Seed, The Omega Man, The Fly) classic anthology television (The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents), fantasy fiction (Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe), and even Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Even relatively obscure horror radio drama Lights Out is referenced in one episode depicting a mist that turns people inside out.

Sometimes these episodes were actually set on Halloween, with The Simpsons telling ghost stories, throwing costume parties, or going trick-or-treating. The best "Treehouse" episodes captured the spirit of the season with macabre imagery and situations while still retaining the classic Simpsons humor.

But the series did not save all its "scary" content for the Treehouse episodes. Several non-Halloween episodes dealt with spooky subject matter (relatively speaking--it is a sit-com, after all).

"The Springfield Files" (S8,E10), an X-Files themed episode, follows Homer's nightly close encounter with a glowing, supernatural presence lurking in the woods. Contributing to the suspenseful atmosphere is the spine-tingling staccato of Bernard Herrmann-esque strings that, in a truly surreal spectacle, are coming from live symphony musicians riding together on a bus.

Bart carelessly sells his soul (symbolically represented by his autograph on church stationary) to Milhouse, and soon regrets it, in "Bart Sells His Soul" (S7,E4), a genuinely uneasy episode that manages to tap into real anxiety about loss of agency and regret. You can feel the existential desperation as Bart first begs for, then tries to take by force, a replacement soul from a frightened Ralph.

A stage hypnotist using Homer as his subject accidentally unlocks repressed childhood horrors in "The Blunder Years" (S13,E5), sending him into a days-long seizure of non-stop shrieking that manages to be both hilarious and horrifying at the same time. Peer counseling (and some "Yaqui memory tea") eventually help Homer come to terms with a long forgotten incident involving a drowned corpse in a canal.

Sometimes isolated spooky elements would creep their way into otherwise non-scary storylines. "Lisa's First Word" (S4,E10), for example, is a funny flashback episode in which a toddler-aged Bart adjusts to the arrival of his new baby sister, Lisa. But when Homer tries to entice Bart to vacate the crib by building a homemade clown bed, the results are accidentally horrifying...

...even at a distance!

It's Lisa who is afraid to go to bed in "The Girl Who Slept Too Little" (S17,E2), after a cemetery is built next to the Simpson house, casting nightmarish shadows through her bedroom window.

In "The Ziff Who Came To Dinner" (S15,E14), Homer thoughtlessly takes the kids to R-rated horror film The Redeadening when the family-friendly cartoon they hoped to see is sold out. The children cower in their theater seats as the story of murderous possessed doll 'Baby Button Eyes' unfolds.

Sometimes these moments were not scary in a traditional sense, but were funny or weird or strange in vaguely unsettling ways.

Like this uncomfortable moment when the barber, who Bart has been working for part-time, tries to pay him with an envelope of hair, grinning vacantly as a frightened Bart backs out of the store ("Lisa the Tree Hugger", S12,E4).

In "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" (S5,E22), a fight with Marge finds Homer evicted from the house and forced to live in Bart's treehouse. Lisa pays him a visit only to find her disheveled father fashioning a substitute Marge out of a shrub. "You will respect your new mother. Now kiss her!" he insists, while shoving the effigy in Lisa's face.

Homer and Mr. Burns get a severe case of cabin-fever after becoming snowed in during a team building exercise in "Mountain of Madness" (S8,E12). Hungry and freezing, they build snowmen to pass the time. But their complete disconnection from reality comes to the fore when they decide to dress the snowmen in their own clothes, a portrait of madness as they stand shivering before their creation.

In "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade" (S14,E3), Bart becomes so addicted to their new satellite TV that he can't concentrate at school. He hallucinates a giant TV remote while his schoolmates turn into various TV characters, including a clown (not Krusty, ironically) who informs him in a matter of fact voice that will send chills down your spine, "It's finally happened, Bart. You've lost your mind."

In another example of disturbing hallucinations, Homer imagines himself becoming wealthy through pearl diving ("Saddlesore Galactica", S11,E13), waking up in a pearl-encrusted house from a pearl-encrusted bed, being served by a pearl butler who pours him a bowl of pearls for breakfast. But even in this fairy-tale fantasy, the spoonful of pearls shatters all his teeth, causing Homer to laugh like a mad man while staring at his gaping mouth in a pearl-encrusted mirror.

In "I'm Going To Praiseland" (S12,E19), Ned Flanders builds a Bible-themed amusement park to honor the memory of his recently passed wife, Maude. The tribute takes a turn for the creepy when Ned dons a souvenir Maude mask and mimics her voice.

In that same episode, we find out Ned has been preserving the indentation of Maude's body in the bed sheets.

In "Homer vs. Dignity" (S12,E5), Mr. Burns declares war on the town of Springfield, enlisting Homer in a series of cruel and disgusting pranks, which culminate in Burns posing as Santa Claus for the Christmas parade so he can throw buckets of fish guts on the unsuspecting children gathered to see him. The deliberate spoiling with liquid viscera of what should have been a beautiful moment had me flashbacking to Carrie White's prom.

Finally, this vignette from "Colonel Homer" (S3,E20) plays like a ghost story of sorts. Homer is on a long road trip and passes a restaurant sign, "Flaming Pete's; 75 Miles". The sign entices him and he clearly looks forward to arriving there.

A while later, a second road sign, "Flaming Pete's; 30 Miles". Homer is too tired from driving to react this time.

A third sign: "Flaming Pete's; Next Exit!" Homer perks up with excitement. Flaming Pete has been beckoning to him all night and they are finally going to rendezvous.

But there is no Flaming Pete's. Flaming Pete burned down years ago, on a night just like this one. Not sure who you think you saw waving to you out there on the road, but it couldn't have been Flaming Pete.

(Yea, yea yea---I understand the actual punch-line is that a restaurant with "flaming" in its name literally went up in smoke. But I tell you, there's a ghost story buried in there!)

Halloween Treat: Haunted Air (Ossian Brown, 2011)

If I were a rich man, instead of handing out Tootsie Roll Pops and Jolly Ranchers to trick-or-treaters on Halloween, I'd hand out ridiculously awesome goodies like copies of this book, Haunted Air, A Collection of Anonymous Hallowe'en Photographs, America c.1875-1955.

From the collection of musician Ossian Brown (no, I am not familiar with his work...), Haunted Air is a 200+ page album of vintage black and white photographs of children in Halloween costumes. The photos are presented without commentary, and no attempt is made to date or identify them (although sometimes you might find a hand-scribbled date on the photograph itself.)

Oh yea, there's a short written introduction by director David Lynch, and a historical note tracing the cultural origins of Halloween, but the real draw is the photographs. Some of my favorites are posted below.

Be advised the book seems to cycle in and out of availability. You can nab a copy for under $30 when its in stock, but prices can climb four times that when it cycles out of stock again. Buy it here.