"Lonely, Lonely" Spooky Stories (1978, Pickwick Records cereal box record)

UPDATED 11/6/2017: See bottom of post

For a few days in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade, I ran a detective agency with my friend who lived three houses down, Tiffany. We worked out of her backyard playhouse, and our biggest case (in fact, our only case) was The Mystery of the Hidden Treasure at the Empty House That Was For Sale Two Blocks Over.

The big twist in the "hidden treasure" case was that there was no treasure. More accurately, we left the case unsolved after a neighbor threatened to call the police if we kept letting ourselves into the backyard (a later attempt to return to the scene disguised as prospective buyers fooled no one.)

(image source)

So our little detective agency was forced to close its doors, ruining summer for about 5 minutes.

But Tiffany had more going for her than just a backyard playhouse... like an appreciation for ghost stories and spooky Halloween records. Sounds to Make You Shiver and The Story and Song From The Haunted Mansion were prized albums from my collection that were constantly playing in the background at my house. But one day Tiffany showed up with a record that I could never find a copy of myself, and so naturally coveted: Spooky Stories (1978, Pickwick Records), a "cereal box" record, meaning it was pressed to a very thin layer of plastic attached to a piece of cardboard (in this case, to the back of a box of Post Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits cereal).

As was the tradition with these types of records, there were multiple stories available, and it was luck of the draw which one you ended up with. Tiffany's copy contained a story I call "Lonely, Lonely" (I don't remember the actual title being credited anywhere on the record), a variation on the "Dark, Dark" type spooky story where the listener is lulled into a comforting rhythm by slowly repeated phrases, only to be startled at the end by a suddenly loud climax.

Transcript of the story below the video embed.



Lonely, Lonely
Along this lonely, lonely road,
Was this lonely, lonely hill.
Along this lonely, lonely hill
Stood this lonely, lonely house.
And inside that lonely, lonely house,
Was this creaking, squeaking stair.
At the top of the creaking, squeaking stair,
Was this long, long hallway.
And down that long, long hallway,
Was this flapping, clapping trapdoor.
And above that flapping, clapping trapdoor
Was this crying, sighing attic.
And in that crying, sighing attic
Was this shadowy, shadowy corner.
And in that shadowy, shadow corner
Was this big, old chest.
And inside that big, old chest...
...WAS A THING!!!

UPDATE: The background music used here appears to be "borrowed" from Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (queued to around the 15:50 mark in the embedded video below). It also sounds awfully similar to the 1977 Star Wars soundtrack by John Williams, cut no. 4, "The Desert and Robot Auction" (retitled "The Dune Sea of Tatooine/Jawa Sandcrawler" on later editions of the soundtrack). Take a listen--what do you think? Credit to reader TheLibrarySound for recognizing the Star Wars track similarity!

The Dynamite 3-D Poster Book (1979, Neal Adams, Scholastic Book Services)

In grade school, I was a regular patron of the Scholastic Book Club, the children's reading program that let kids order books and records from a catalog once a month and have them delivered right to their classroom.

If receiving a copy of Norman Bridwell's How To Care for Your Monster, or C.B. Colby's Strangely Enough in front of all your envious classmates wasn't incentive enough to place an order, there was sometimes a special offer for a free poster as a bonus. Admittedly these were usually lame "cute animal" posters... kittens clustered in tall grass or a droopy bloodhound wearing reading glasses, the kind of thing you might glimpse on the wall of one of the Bradford children on an episode of Eight is Enough.

But on one occasion there was a truly magnificent piece of art offered with your book order... a huge illustration of Dracula, standing in a graveyard against a full moon and a sky swarming with bats. And better still... it was in 3-D!

Now, the item below IS NOT the same image. I've yet to track down the exact poster that loomed over my bed throughout my formative years only to mysteriously disappear in the wormhole connected to my parent's garage. (UPDATE: FOUND! See bottom of post) But after laying eyes on this beauty, I'm convinced they were both by the same artist.

This specimen comes from the 1979 Dynamite 3-D Poster Book (which would place it around the same time I remember acquiring my poster), and wouldn't you know it, this is a Scholastic Book Services offering too! (Dynamite was a celebrity-focused kids magazine, published by Scholastic, Inc. beginning in 1974. Like People Magazine for the swing-set set.)

The artist is Neal Adams, who has wielded a pen for both Marvel and DC at various points throughout his comic drawing career, which began in the so-called Silver Age and continues today, drawing both superheroes (Batman, X-Men, Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, et al) and monsters, sometimes for illustrated children's records like A Story of Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein (Power Records, 1975).

The Dynamite 3-D Poster Book contains six posters by Adams (The Werewolf, The Horse aka "Run Free", The Vampire, Skateboard!, Clown aka "Look Out!", and The Sorcerer), which fold out to a size of approximately 16" x 22", a pair of cardboard red and blue anaglyph glasses, and a brief article about the history of 3-D (emphasizing its success as a 1950's movie fad, although the 1960 non-3-D William Castle film 13 Ghosts gets an honorable mention.)

These posters are really gorgeous... break out the 3D glasses and enjoy!

On a related note... does anyone happen to have a copy of this little poster visible on the wall of Nicholas Bradford's bedroom? I recognize it as one of a series of funny-caption posters that were about half-page in size and printed on cardstock, this one a baby orangutan caught in mid-screech, with the cartoon bubble reading "How Come I Always Have to Take Out the Garbage?" (or comparable hilarious sentiment.) The one directly above that is another in the same series, a baby with the caption "Bald is Beautiful". UPDATE: Found! See bottom of post.

Oh dear, I have to sit down before I collapse in a heap of mirth. Anyone have images of these things?

UPDATE: I finally found my stupid monkey sign! Turns out its from the Wallace Berrie Company of Van Nuys, California, maker of hilarious signs (most suitable for children, but a few with slightly risque' drug or sex references clearly targeted at older teens and adults), novelty knick-knacks, and cutesy figurines, including, in the early 1980s, Smurf characters. 

Dated 1976 (the year prior to Eight Is Enough's first season), here's sign #7719:

UPDATE (8/2021) The original elusive "3-D Count Dracula" poster turned up in an Ebay auction. It is indeed a Weekly Reader Book Club poster, #6486. Although the artist is not credited, it SURE looks like "The Vampire", above. Here is a picture from the auction.

The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales (1970, Scholastic Book Services)

Here's another Scholastic Book Services entry, The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales (1970, edited by Gladys Schwarcz and Vic Crume, illustrations by Gerry Contreras). This is a collection of spooky poems and short stories from various authors, including a reappearance of Maria Leach's telling of The Cradle That Rocked By Itself.

Some of these stories were performed for an accompanying album (called, appropriately, Selections From the Haunted House and Other Poems and Tales).

Some of the more notable entries include the poems The Haunted House (Vic Crume), A Skeleton Once in Khartoum (author unknown), Dust (Sydney King Russell), The Bat (Theodore Roethke), and short stories The Cradle That Rocked By Itself (Maria Leach)and The Velvet Ribbon (Ann McGovern). Below is a sample of illustrations from the book, some with accompanying audio from the record (hat tip and thanks to Scar Stuff).

THE CRADLE THAT ROCKED BY ITSELF (Maria Leach)

DUST (Sydney King Russell)

THE HAUNTED HOUSE (Vic Crume)

A SKELETON ONCE IN KHARTOUM (Author Unknown)

THE GHOST CATCHER (A tale from India retold by E.B. Chance)

OLD CORNISH LITANY (Author Unknown)

THE OLD WIFE AND THE GHOST (James Reeves)

SPOOKS (Nathalia Crane)

THE BAT (Theodore Roethke)

THE VELVET RIBBON (Ann McGovern)

The Housing Market Is a Real Nightmare!

The Haunted Closet does not typically cover the real-estate market, but a couple items in today's news caught my eye.

First, did you know that someone had a house built whose exterior is a dead-ringer for Disneyland's Haunted Mansion? Well they did, and it's up for sale.

The house, originally built in 1996, is located in Duluth, Georgia, and was designed by a Disney contractor. Here's a pic:

Am I the only Haunted Mansion fan that was completely unaware this place existed? Now where's that $800,000 I had lying around...

Anyhoo, next on the market is a cozy little Colonial with a great lakeside view. With its black-goop toilets, bleeding walls and rickety staircase, it's a.... handyman's dream!

That's right, the original Amityville Horror house is back on the market! Considering the house's troubled history, the realtor may have to hustle a bit to close this sale (they've already had to drop the asking price by $100K).

Which reminds me (sequeway...) of a skit from a 1980 Steve Martin television special in which Martin buys a haunted house. The program was called Comedy Is Not Pretty, a collection of sketch comedy bits by then hot-as-lava Martin (his album of the same name was a hit the previous year).

One memorable sketch (so memorable, in fact, that I actually memorized it as a kid, although repeated plays of the audio from my open-air tape recording of the broadcast probably helped) has Martin playing new homeowner Arthur Fleschman, bragging about what a great deal he landed.

But it quickly becomes clear why the house was such a bargain. While Martin is talking up the property, a demonic voice booms from within the house, "Get out! Get out!" (a direct reference to The Amityville Horror, which was still very much an element of  the popular culture at the time.) Seems this house is haunted!

Martin concedes there are just a few things wrong with the house: "That step on the back porch needs to be fixed. We're getting estimates on stopping the walls from bleeding."

Other drawbacks? The house causes their pet cats to talk, grandma melts at the dinner table, and the kids sometimes turn into bats. Nothing a few trips to Home Depot wouldn't fix, no doubt.

Meanwhile, as Martin talks, his wife screams out an upper window before being tossed off the roof by a gorilla (although I must admit, even as a kid, I never did understand how gorillas became a stock haunted-house element. Is The Murders In the Rue Morgue to blame?)

I've heard of being upside-down on your mortgage but--- (okay, maybe I should leave the comedy to Martin).

The whole skit is played strictly for laughs, and yet witnessing this as a gradeschooler I couldn't help but feel the slight twinge of fear as Martin casually strolls into the house, completely oblivious to the hellfire lapping at the windows (and to the corpse of his wife, laid out in the yard!)

The sound effects playing over the background, a mix of wind, creaking trees and thunder, is a track ripped directly from the Disney sound effect record Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House (the same effects are used on The Story and Song from The Haunted Mansion.) The track is called The Haunted House, and the long out-of-print album is available for download on I-Tunes.

The special Comedy Is Not Pretty was finally released to DVD recently as part of a 3-disc collection of Martin's television work, appropriately titled Steve Martin: The Television Stuff.

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.