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!)

FOR SALE: A Piece of LisaBug's Soul...

...interesting trades considered.

I love finding old children’s books with inscriptions in them.

Knowing that someone bought this book—this EXACT COPY—to give to a youngster, hoping it would enrich their life, somehow makes the book more desirable to me than some random copy that maybe nobody ever loved. Who knows, the giver may have even passed down the treasured tome from their own personal library!

"Brett from Colleen Jeffrey Annette Jeremy '78"
Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Monsters But Were Afraid To Ask!, Tony Tallerico, 1978.

But happening upon these personalized books is also kind of sad, considering the gift has since been abandoned to the shelves of an uncaring thrift store.

It's downright bittersweet when the inscription is dated. The giver presumed the book would be held onto long enough to have forgotten exactly WHEN it was received, so recorded this very important date for posterity, right there on the page for the recipient's eternally grateful old eyes to behold.

"To Tony Ferro from Brian Bonic Oct. 1, 1979"
Horror Tales: Spirits, Spells & The Unknown, Roger Elwood, 1974.

Why do I find a book inscribed from one stranger to another so appealing?

If I still believed in the paranormal, I might theorize that an object absorbs positive emotional energy from its owner, energy that can be transferred to other people once they assume possession of the article.

I'm reminded of a circa-1980's SNL skit about an unusual pawnbroker that prices items based on their sentimental value... (full transcript)

"The other day I had a lady come in, and she dropped off all her kid's drawings! They're selling like hotcakes!"
Or this moment from The Simpsons (S12E3, Insane Clown Poppy) when Krusty the Clown, in the midst of a high-stakes poker game with Fat Tony, calls the bet with his daughter’s worthless, yet priceless, violin.

"Well, it won't bring much cash, but its sentimental value is through the roof!"
Looked at spiritually, a gifted book contains a little bit of both the giver's and the recipient's soul.

Following that line of thought into a darker place: I just acquired a piece of your soul! It's mine now, and you'll never get it back...

"To Amber Love U.Drew & A.Synette May, 1990"
Whales, Jane Watson and Rod Ruth, 1978.

Of course I'm not the first to envision books as vessels of a person's energy or essence.

Ray Bradbury probably wasn't the first either, but in the film adaptation of his Something Wicked This Way Comes, Mr. Dark steals years from the life of Charles Halloway by tearing at one of Halloway's books. Each torn page deducts a year from his lifespan and aggravates the painful pounding of his heart.

On that note, here's a recent second-hand find, a beautifully preserved copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful (1961). This is a book that was well taken care of and, other than a few cracks in the dust jacket, looks as fresh today as it must have when it was originally purchased.

It was a Christmas present to Lisa, or "LisaBug", as her parents affectionately called her, and is inscribed thusly:

To: LisaBug
Hope this gives yuh the spooks!
Love from
Mom + Dad
Merry Christmas Hon
December 1969

But there's more. Sitting right next to it on the same shelf was this copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery (1962), also pristine.

It's another present, given two Christmases later. Lisa is no longer "LisaBug", perhaps having outgrown the pet name.

Merry Christmas Lisa - December 1971
Hope you like this one too!
Love from Mother + Dad

Perhaps she had also, by this time, outgrown books of this kind -- her parents oblivious to their maturing daughter's changing tastes? All we know for sure is, many Christmases later, both books ended up sitting on the shelf of a used book store, orphaned.

Much of this blog is the celebration of "stuff" that contributed something to my youth and seemed somehow, years later, important. But despite the name in the banner, most of these things were not sitting carefully stored in the a closet all these years like cherished treasures.

In fact, many were lost in the folly of youth, only to be reacquired years later after their absence gnawed at me for reasons irrational. A jigsaw puzzle, an activity book, finger puppets, a record, a comic. I've probably clocked hundreds of hours haunting thrift stores and auction web sites chasing this junk.

What drives me to pursue these things? The fleeting pleasure of shallow nostalgia? A vague attempt to reconstruct some lost aspect of myself? Am I writing my autobiography in artifacts?

And more importantly, does it ever end?

Is there one final item, perhaps unknown even to me until I've stumbled upon it... a missing keystone that finishes the quest forever?

In "Adrift off the Islets of Langerhans" (1974, Harlan Ellison, from the book Deathbird Stories) the intersection of childhood ephemera and eternity is explored in the person of one Larry Talbot, who commissions, from otherworldly cartographers, a map detailing the geographic coordinates of the eternal soul within his own body. (The Islets of Langerhans, for those who slept through biology class, are not found in any ocean but refer to a feature of the human pancreas.)

With the help of a scientist friend, a microscopic clone ("mite") of Talbot is created and inserted into his own full size body, beginning a months-long quest that is as much metaphysical as it is anatomical. As Talbot's mite, travelling by tiny boat, finally closes in on the corporeal estate of his soul, he suddenly finds himself amidst a cache of lost childhood treasures.

"When at last he reached the shore of the pancreatic sea, he found a great many things he had lost or given away when he was a child. He found a wooden machine gun on a tripod, painted olive drab, that made a rat-tat-tatting sound when a wooden handle was cranked. He found a set of toy soldiers, two companies, one Prussian and the other French, with a miniature Napoleon Bonaparte among them. He found a microscope kit with slides and petri dishes and racks of chemicals in nice little bottles, all of which bore uniform labels. He found a milk bottle filled with Indian-head pennies. He found a hand puppet with the head of a monkey and the name Rosco painted on the fabric glove with nail polish. He found a pedometer. ... He found a box of radio premiums: a cardboard detective kit with fingerprint dusting powder, invisible ink and a list of police-band call codes...

But there was something missing.

He could not remember what it was, but it was important. ...

Whatever was missing was very important."

I wonder if LisaBug has any regrets about her own lost childhood treasures.

Is she missing something very important, but cannot remember what it is? Is there a hole in her soul, an empty space perfectly fitted to a copy of Ghostly Gallery?

And if I were to start tearing pages out of her book, will she suddenly, inexplicably, clutch her heart..?

The Chicken Heart That Ate Up New York City

Fat Albert and the gang have left their inner city junkyard to spend two weeks in the fresh forest air of Camp Green Lane. On their first night, sitting around the campfire, Bill tells the scary story of The Chicken Heart That Ate Up New York City.

(thump-thump... thump-thump...)
"The chicken heart was kept alive in a vat, in a laboratory, in a special solution."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"One day a careless janitor knocked the vat over."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"The janitor went to get a rag to clean it up. The chicken heart grew six foot five inches!"
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"He went out in search of things to eat. It went out the hallway and rang for the elevator."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"It ate up all of the cabs."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"Ate up the jersey turnpike."
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

"It’s coming through the woods—he’s right behind you! Ahhhhh!!!"
(thump-thump... thump-thump...)

This telling of the Chicken Heart story appears in the October 1972 episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, "Fish Out of Water". If the whole thing seems more silly than scary, that's because this is a story that is meant to be heard, not seen. It's based on a sketch from Bill Cosby's 1966 album Wonderfulness.

But the Chicken Heart story doesn't originate here. Rather, that sketch is the humorous telling of how Cosby first heard the story, as a frightened 7-year old, on the late night radio program Lights Out.

Lights Out was hosted by playwright turned radio personality (and later, film director) Arch Oboler. The show first aired in 1934, but was rebroadcast in reruns as late as the early 1960s. The stories were unique and scary enough to warrant several pages of coverage in Stephen King's non-fiction survey of the horror genre, Danse Macabre. The Chicken Heart story, according to King, exploits "the mind's innate obedience, its willingness to try to see whatever someone suggests it see, no matter how absurd" to force your imagination to confront the impossible, grotesque, hungry heart that eventually expands to cover the entire Earth. (thump... thump...)

Some of Oboler's Lights Out material wound up on a 1962 album Drop Dead (available as an Amazon download here).

You won't find the usual ghosts, vampires or werewolves here. Aside from the Chicken Heart story (played straight, with tongue nowhere near cheek), you also get Taking Papa Home, in which an elderly couple, driving home from a retirement party, finds their car stuck on the train tracks, the wife desperately trying to remove her husband, drunk from celebrating, as the train barrels toward them.

In A Day at the Dentist's, a patient realizes too late that the dentist about to apply sharp tools to his pearly whites is the husband of the woman he's been having an affair with.

If you aren't already squirming in your chair, try listening to The Dark, about a mysterious black fog, seeping from behind an attic door, that turns anyone it touches inside out--without immediately killing them!

"It's a man! But the skin is the inside, the raw flesh is the outside. Organs hanging... A man turned inside out, the way a glove is turned inside out."

The Dark may have inspired the final gag of The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror 5 (aka The Simpson's Halloween Special V) in which a fog turns the Simpsons family inside out before they break out into song.


Buy the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids featuring the episode "A Fish Out of Water" here.
Buy Bill Cosby's album Wonderfulness here.
Download Arch Oboler's album Drop Dead here.
Buy Stephen King's Danse Macabre here.
Buy The Simpsons Season 6 (featuring Treehouse of Horror V) here.