October 26, 2021 • 46 mins
Haunted houses are a big deal in the United States -- like Spirit stores, they seem to spring up every October -- but whence did they originate? When did people start paying to be scared?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I am Ben, and I'm
not just welcoming you back, folks, I'm also welcoming back
our super producer Max Williams, who's on Adventures, and my
co host Mr Noel Brown, who was also on Adventures.
(00:47):
You guys were sorely, sorely missed. Thank you so much
for returning. I didn't know if you guys were just
gonna like start a new show somewhere, Ben, we wouldn't
leave you hanging like that. Dude. Friends don't do that
to friends. I was totally gonna do that, but I
ran out of money as I came back. Well, you're
no friend of ours, Max Williams, Well, I leave and
you get my brother to replace me. No, no, he
(01:09):
didn't he know it was first off, there was no
replacing He didn't fill in as producer. Uh Nolan. I
talked through the twelve friends that we have, and we
of those twelve, we made a list of the five
who might do our show with us, and of the
to who replied Alex was available. That's an important qualification
(01:31):
for guest hosting ridiculous history as being someone we know
and available, right right. So it's basically like Nobel Prize standards.
You know, when you think of it that way, it's prestigious,
is what we're saying. Both of those are prestigious institutions,
more like ig Nobel Prize. Yes, yes, which is the thing.
And no. Saved this one for you, man, because we
(01:55):
are going to talk about something that a lot of
people this time of year consider a prestige just institution
all its own. The idea of the haunted house, the
idea of the recreational haunted house, not amitivial style, but
the one where you like pay It seems like they
get more expensive every year here in Atlanta, but like
you pay for tickets and you go to what's the
(02:16):
one we have another world, another world. I have a
confession to make, fellas, I have never been to a
haunted house because I'm scared of them. That's okay, man,
I'll go. I don't like I don't I don't like
jump scarce, I don't like uh, I don't like spooky
stuff in the dark. I like horror movies, but I
often spoil them for myself in advance of watching them,
(02:37):
so they don't They don't quite spook me as much.
I'm a bit of a whimp. Fellas a bit of
a whimp. Now, you just know what you like and
what you don't like. You know, that's true, Thank you.
I'm not beating myself up. I definitely accept this by myself.
But my daughter is now getting to an age where
she's intrigued by the things, and I'm gonna have to
bite the bullet, guys, and uh and and go and
(02:59):
get get proper spooked, because I'm not gonna wait outside
while my twelve year old daughter goes in. It's just
I can't emasculate myself to that degree. Uh no, sir.
But it turns out the the history of these things
as attractions is very interesting and is wrapped up in
the history of Halloween as we know it itself. Yeah yeah,
(03:20):
like okay, So my objection to haunted houses recently has
been entirely due to the cost. But I will take
a bath on that, and I'll buy a ticket if
if you need or if you want someone to to
come with you and jump in front of the jump scares.
Uh well, as long as you'll as as long as
(03:40):
you'll hold my hand. Of course, of course it's very
very kind of you, Ben, Um, But no, it is.
I love Halloween. I love the spooky season and we
all do. I love the weather, the way you know
it feels outside, and the smells, and you know, all
of the costumes and everything that's all everything around it.
I absolutely love. And so it's sort of shocking to
(04:00):
me that I have this phobia. So I'm gonna try
to face my fears this year. But yeah, I mean,
I don't know, Ben, have you ever if you ever
made good on the trick part of Trick or Treat?
Let's see, I think the statute of limitations has passed,
so yes, to an extreme degree. You guys know, I
believe in justice, and I have at times my own
(04:21):
interpretation of it. I'm very naturally a Halloween person, Folks.
In this an audio show. You can't see it now,
but over the course of the pandemic, I have acquired
as a roommate a life size skeleton which is in
the background of all zoom calls. But but yeah, yeah, trick,
trick or Treat. This is interesting because it helps us
(04:43):
understand that haunted houses as a recreation are a relatively
recent idea. If we traveled back to say twelve hundred
a d. And Max Noel and I were trying to
sell people in some village on the idea of not
just going to a haunted location but paying for the privilege,
(05:05):
they would think we were crazy and they may well
burn us his witches. Yes, it didn't take much, It
did not take much. But this story really starts back
in the Great Depression, which still is a terrible name. Yeah,
his wasn't so great. Um. Also, Black Tuesday, um is
the name of the day that the stock market crashed,
(05:27):
and there was also a corresponding Black Halloween during the
Great Depression, and that was the day when so much
trickery was afoot that like I think, people died. There
were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars of
property damage. And this was a real problem in those
days because there was a whole night uh Mischief Knights,
(05:48):
which I believe is the night before Halloween, that was
purely devoted to just like pranking and you know, cutting
up and doing all kinds of stuff, lots of one
upsmanship that ultimately leads to you know, put people in
danger and some serious property damage and destruction. Yes, yeah,
you're referring to what's also called Devil's Night. Uh. And
(06:08):
Devil's Night has led to some serious chaos stuff way
beyond toilet paper or the throwing of eggs. We know
that parents were very concerned about their kids, especially their sons,
getting too wild on these days or during this time
(06:28):
leading up to the thirty one and so they picked
up a strategy to try to distract these kids. No, well,
maybe we talk a little bit about the origins of
the Haunted House overall, Like the origins of it date
back to nineteen century London, the eighteen hundreds, and they
(06:50):
were a kind of they were a kind they were
kind of a genre of a larger movement of Macaw entertainment,
like Madame Tussaux and so on. Absolutely, in eighteen o
two in London, Marie Tousseau um created quite a stir
with the you know, uptight stuffed shirt British population when
(07:13):
she displayed these wax sculptures of various decapitated French individuals. Uh.
And they were so accurate because she actually created death
masks from folks who were decapitated at the guillotine during
the French Revolution, and she set up this exhibit in London.
(07:34):
It became a permanent exhibit. She dubbed this attraction the
Chamber of Horrors, which we know is almost like a
trophy kind of name. Now that's like, you know, been
used to death pun intended or not, I'm not even
sure anymore, but yeah, it's a name that still is
tied to a particular wing of of that Wax museum
UM today and often times if you go to Madame
(07:55):
Tussau Wax museums across the country or around the world,
even they'll be know the celebrity part, but then they'll
be like a section where it's a little bit more
like serial killers and you know, like um, murdered people
and things like that. But it wasn't until the turn
of the twentieth century UM that a kind of theater
(08:16):
of the macabre sort of popped up UM in Paris. Actually, yes,
grand goody, this this is amazing because they were at
the time notorious for onstage depictions of real body horror,
real splatter punk stuff. You might call it today. The
(08:37):
theaters director and this is described by Rebecca mckindrey and
Fangoria magazine. All horror fans will know Fangoria. The director,
guy named Max Maury, once bragged that he judged performances
not so much by ticket sales as by how many
people passed out from shock in the audience or from schlock.
(09:00):
You could say, this is a cool piece I found
out about activities like this in interview with a Vampire
the film adaptation. You guys, remember how there is this
theater that is doing like a play about them parism
in the Devil. But it turns out that they are
actually grabbing humans and drinking their blood. Right, isn't that
(09:25):
Antonio Bandaris's character, Um, isn't that scene? Yeah, he's there. Yeah, Well,
I mean, you know, they definitely had like all kinds
of revolutionary kind of stage effects that they sort of created,
like knives that would squirt you know, fake blood, and
like you know, they would use like cow intestines or
(09:45):
pig and trails to simulate you know, humans being disembowed.
Um that there were also tho some versions of there
were a little more um stylized kind of where you know,
you would slit somebody's throat and then just like red
ribbons would just shoot out and it's a really cool
kind of um low tech effect that I actually still
see sometimes in depictions of this kind of theater. But
(10:05):
it was largely kind of a revolt against like, you know,
the status quo and against censorship and stuff. And it
really was at the time some of the most kind
of edgy, dangerous, you know theater that anyone had ever seen. Yes,
and theater should be an active revolution. That's at least
that's what that's always been my take. There's a great
(10:26):
description of this theater from Devin Ferraci over at Birth Movies, Death,
which is a fantastic website. Uh, and they point out
something I didn't know, which is the Grand Guigno Theater
is technically the home of the first scream Queen Paula Maxa.
She died on stage like thirty thousand times. Check out
(10:48):
that article. If you have a second it goes in
a different direction. But that's like, that's a haunted house
vibe for sure, even if it was, uh, clearly a
theatrical production. You've fast forward a little bit further. In
nineteen there's this fair ground in lip Hook in England
that debuted what they called a ghost house. This was
(11:10):
one of the first, if not the first. This was
one of the first kind of commercial horror attractions. They
had all this stuff that Noll you're not particularly into
with haunted houses, dim lights, shaking floors, demonic screens. Max, Yeah,
just like that. Just my blood, my blood hath curdled
(11:35):
and highly recommend a Brief History of the Haunted House
by Chris Heller from Smithsonian Magazine, which the sources we
used for this episode. Um so yeah, that would have
been very much one of the earliest examples of a
haunted house attraction, very very low fi, but at the
time would have really freed people out. I'm sure if
(11:56):
I had been around this time, I would have just
as hesitant to go into these as I had to
go into our more hi tech haunted houses today, which
we are about to get to in the form of
the early twentieth century. I do also want to put
in my line before before we roll pass this, I
want to put in my line for those early haunted
(12:18):
houses terror for a tuppence. I'm just gonna write mottos
for uh for institutions of yesteryear A tuppence that's like
a what is that like a penny? Father? Like hey, hey, hey,
penny some sort of some sort of negligible denomination of
British currency. Yes, but this state of Halloween, like you
(12:38):
were saying this, these things didn't exist in the US.
They started in Western Europe first. And the idea of Halloween,
like we explored years back in the origins of Halloween
and stuff they don't want you to know. YouTube and
audio version available now wherever you find your favorite shows Halloween.
(12:59):
That the way it came to the US is fascinating
because we've got Irish and Scottish immigrants bringing a traditional
Celtic end of summer festival to this new land. And
and if you want to sound smart in front of
your friends, are the very least not sound dumb. It's
not pronounced sam Haine, it's pronounced saws going. You see
(13:20):
it printed tho it looks like sam Haynes. Wasn't that
the name for the traditional Celtic kind of proto Halloween celebration.
I think I think Sawin is a Gaelic festival that's
also the end of the harvest season though so it's
supposed to be I think technically held on the first
of November, but the party starts on October thirty one.
(13:43):
There's still really there's still very I think closely related
in the modern secular imagination of the West. I mean,
it was also what Halloween turned into All Saints Day
or all Hallow's Eve. And by the time we get
to the turn of the century in the US, Halloween
(14:05):
has taken the path that so many holidays take in
this country. It's become an excuse to party, to break
some social taboos, to get a little souced and saucy, uh,
to eat too much of something, to make mischief, to
pursue your vices. It was way less, you know, rambunctious.
(14:27):
Oh these kids kind of pranks, right, We're not talking
about just festooning a tree with toilet paper or Jeffer
do the one. You know, I didn't mean to be rude.
I forgot to ask, you know, were you a trick
during your day? Lad? Okay? Well, the statute of limitations.
I don't believe I ever played a trick in my life,
not a day of my life, which probably means I
(14:47):
haven't really lived, to be honest. Scared hunted houses and uh,
a rule follower, That's that's me. Real stick in the
mud over here. But yeah, they they didn't have trick
or treating, because, as we're gonna get to, a trick
or tree is a much more modern invention than I
think either of us realized. But what they did have
was dressing up in these horrifying costumes. Frankly, if you
(15:10):
look at the like you know, historical photos of the time,
they're these like blank stare kind of like death masks
um that just look like they're made of burlap sacks,
like something like a like a like a movie slasher
would wear. You know. They called this tradition guy sing
and they would you know, wear these bizarre masks and
(15:31):
like you know, dance and make merry like you're saying.
And common Halloween tricks in the US these days where
things like taking somebody's wagon and maybe even their livestock
and put them on the roof of a barn, or
tearing vegetables out of gardens, or tipping over outhouses whether
(15:53):
whether or not someone was in them, then also allowing
like livestock to escape. And this happened so often that
in some regions we find October thirty one was known
as gate night because people would remove gates across their communities.
This is all these things were happening before the automobile
(16:14):
became very prevalent, and when the automobile kicked in and
people were able to afford to drive, the range of
their trickery likewise extended. We're seeing people removing manhole covers
from streets, or busting tires, or even making fake signs
to confuse motorists and lead them astray. So there's a
(16:36):
great book to we should recommend by Lisa Morton. It's
called Trigger Treat, a History of Halloween. It is a
fantastic read, and Morton says that at first these pranks
were more or less innocent, and they often occurred in
more rural communities. But then as cities got bigger, kids
(16:59):
took the prank into cities and it became more and
more destructive. What kind of stuff are we talking about
when we say more and more destructive? Oh, I don't know.
Like sawing down telephone poles and utility bowls and things
like that, disassembling people's like wagons and vehicles even and
like putting them on roofs and putting them back together,
(17:19):
which I thought was a pretty awesome one, very very
uh so so much effort that goes into these um.
One of the scariest ones involved like placing obstructions, like
really dangerous obstructions and roadways and covering them up with leaves,
which actually led to a significant traffic pile up. Yeah,
setting fires, breaking windows, uh, splattering people with bags of
(17:46):
flower filled with ashes. Uh. At least there wasn't anthrax. Yeah, yeah,
it was before then. Things really hit a tipping point
in eighteen seventy nine when about two hundred young men
boys really in Kenti, Uckey team up to stop a
training by lane an actual dead body and actual corpse
(18:07):
across the tracks. And then people start stealing bodies too. Yeah,
as med students, so you know how to party. In
nineteen hundreds, some medical students from the University of Michigan
stole a headless corpse from an anatomy lab and they
propped it up against the front door of the building.
Gave people a real shock when they showed up to class.
(18:28):
And as I was sort of hinting out earlier, things
really did start to get super real in around nineteen
o two, when when things just went too far. As
these kinds of things tend to do, it's all about
one uptionship and kind of trying to like outdo everybody
else's pranks and and eventually you crossed the line into
the danger zone. There was a ton of destruction in
(18:49):
Cook County in nineteen o two, um and the Cook
County Herald had a very interesting little kind of editorial,
I guess, encouraging people to defend themselves from this kind
of mischief. Here's the quote is in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
By the way, most everybody enjoys a joke, are fun
to a proper degree on suitable occasions, but when property
(19:10):
is damaged or destroyed, it's time to call a halt.
We would advise the public to load their muskets or
cannon with rock salt or bird shot. And when trespassers
invade their premises at unseemly hours upon mischief bent pepper
them good and proper so they will be effectually cured
and have no further taste for such tricks. They know
(19:32):
how to turn a phrase back down and new paper fold.
You have either of you guys, ever been shot with
rock salt? No, but I've seen in the movies and
it looks very unpleasant. Okay, Yeah, Well, as someone speaking
from personal experience, it is not pleasant, it's still dangerous,
and people did take this advice as the As the
discourse turned towards self defense. In this regard, some folks
(19:56):
were taking up arms. In fact, in nineteen o seven,
the some kids had stretched a wire across the sidewalk
to trip pedestrians in Tucson, Arizona. One guy tripped and
when he fell on the ground. From the ground, he
took out his firearm, a revolver, and he shot one
of the pranksters dead. And then a woman in Indiana
(20:19):
and Logan Sport was scared to death. Literally her heart
stopped after her daughter answered, you know, on the door
and she screamed because a group of boys had a
like a jack lantern and we're just like and put
it in front of her and she you know, that
(20:39):
sounds like a normal jump scare, but she must have
had a pre existing heart condition. Again, Uh, these just
keep going. A guy almost loses his eyes sight two.
A girl nearly loses her arm after being hit with
stones and thirty Yeah, there were kids in fairfaxt count
(21:00):
in Virginia who were setting off dynamite like on their
school grounds. They were causing traffic accidents and stuff. Not
not cherry bombs are like black cats, dynamites, dynamite, that's insane,
Like we know miners, we can We're we're miners who
know miners, we can use dynamite. And then this is
(21:20):
where we get to the Black Halloween of nineteen thirty three,
because before the Great Depression, there were a lot of
people who are like, you know, to quote Biden, they
were like, this is malarkey. But the economic disaster created
this period of widespread social unrest on a profound level
that a lot of people hadn't experienced before. And this
(21:45):
made arguably it made the kids a little bit wilder
with their antics, but also the public was responding they
had had it up to here with so many things
by this point. And this is where we get to
what you were alluding to earlier nol in nineteen thirty three,
where people were flipping over cars, sawing down telephone polls,
and just breaking stuff the way in nineteen eighties rock
(22:08):
band would destroy hotel rooms and America was like, we're
not your hotel room, you whipper snappers. No, we're not
get off my r collective lawn um. And you know,
it's the Great Depression, so it's not like they had
any money to fix this stuff like talk about talk
about uh, let's see, what's a polite way of saying this,
um taking a crap where you eat, you know what
(22:31):
I mean like and then not being able to clean
it up. I'm sorry that's the disgusting metaphor, but it holds.
I mean, this is a very short sighted you know,
this is literally you know, doing damage to infrastructure at
a time where money was an absolute the shortest possible supply.
So you know, they didn't exactly outlaw Halloween, but something
(22:51):
had to give. But thankfully, um, you know, a lot
of the city's realized that prohibition doesn't really work, usually
probably because of lessons learned from you know, that actual
prohibition thing where they you know, wouldn't let people drink
booze and so they just you know made it themselves
and and had illegal speakeasies and all that. This was
probably right around the time that prohibition was was beginning
(23:14):
to uh completely unravel and it was it was about
to be reversed. Um. So instead of you know, outlawing
Halloween outright, they decided that maybe we can pay these
kids off. Uh, so to speak, or at least give
them something else to funnel their you know, rambunctious energy into. Yeah,
they they came up with, Uh, it's almost it's very
(23:37):
similar to the idea of it after school program, but
for Halloween. They said, look, we don't have we we
want to distract these kids. We want to give them
something different and less destructive to do. Maybe we could
throw a party, but they looked around and said, you know,
unless we're the one percent that has extracted all the
value out of American society, we can't. Oh, we we
(24:00):
don't have the scratch to throw a party. So we're
going to have what we'll call house to house parties.
The entire block chips in to do whatever they can.
So if you're if you're a would be prankster, you
go to the first house, you get a costume. Maybe
it's it's some simple usually it's like a sheet boom,
you're a ghost. Next house gives you some candy. That's cool,
(24:22):
and then uh, this sounds a lot like tricker treating,
as Lisa Morton points out, and that's where the idea
comes from. It comes from the idea of these house
to house parties. Because not only were the children given
a purpose, given a series of task that would keep
them from flipping over cars, but they were also going
to be more easy to monitor because you know which
(24:46):
houses they're going to, and you know, you kind of
know their route. So this is this is where Morton
bust myth that I think a lot of people believe in.
She says, one of the most common misconceptions about Halloween
is the trigger treating is some ancient ritual that goes
back thousands of years, but she confirms it really is
(25:08):
less than a hundred years old. And if you when
you get to the end right the end of your
house to house root, you'll see a haunted house situation
set up kind of in the basement. And and this
is people are familiar with this. I'm sure you take
the kids down the stairs. It's very very dark. And
(25:29):
then you would play that game that some people might
be familiar with where you you get a story and
you're like passing around bowls of something in the dark,
and one of them peeled grapes, and they're like, oh,
there's these human brains. It's you know, like spaghetti or something.
A lot of weird uses of food, some of the
(25:51):
stuff sounds very unsanitary, like apparently walls would be hung
with strips of raw liver that you would like feel
as you you know, stumbles are away through the dark,
classics Williams classic total. Yeah, I want to pranks for
that guy ass raw liver, the old raw liver trick um.
But yeah, you know they'd be like weird sounds and
(26:12):
moans and howls, scream Yeah, exactly, a lot of a
lot of very d i y solutions here, damp sponges
and hairnets apparently hanging for the ceiling and picture like, oh,
d get it off me. You don't know it's a
it's a gross damp sponge. Yeah, definitely jump scares someone's
dressed as a dog and then they jump out and
(26:34):
they're barking. This happened to me and I was so impressed.
I was a kid and I was trick or treating
one time where it looked like someone had the the
safe kind of like a lot of parents don't want
to go spooky, so they go with a fall theme
and you've got like some hay bales, some squash, some
pumpkins or what have you. This one had that and
(26:54):
it had like a scarecrow by the door, and there
was a little dish that said honor system, just take one,
and so it walked up and was gonna take one.
And then the scarecrow moved, it ran at us. It
grabbed a kid, and I turned around and tried to
fight it, and then Nicky told me to calm down, man,
(27:18):
you're not cool. No touching. You know that's the rules.
I even know that you haven't never been to a
hunted house. You're definitely not supposed to touch it. But
the other kids all ran. The other kids all ran
except me. I was the only one who tried to
help that other kid. Geez, I'm proud of you, Ben,
I'm proud of you always cheping in helping out the
little guy. Totally. He's a man of the people. No man.
(27:42):
That would have pissed me off to no end. I
would have been like, nope, Calloween is canceled. Going home, um,
And then they would, you know, have a little lo
fi kind of effects like a cat's painted on cardboard
outlined in um glow in the dark paint, which is
a thing. And this also aided a sense of community,
right and get to know your neighbors and all of
(28:03):
that in the same way that the moderntor or treating does.
And so with this stage set, we see that the
story of early haunted houses in the US is a
story of these small kind of nonprofit affairs, their community based.
(28:27):
You know, you probably later know everybody who was involved
in the creation of it. And that's that's kind of inspiring.
How did we get from there to these massive productions
that cost you know, as much as fifty bucks a
ticket in some cases, Well, it's because part of a
civic group called the Junior Chamber also known as the
(28:49):
j c S. I I owe a lot to these folks,
and my child has does, because they're the creators of
something called trails of terror. If you have grown up
in the South, you might be familiar with something some
religious organizations do called tribulation trail. You guys, ever heard
of that one? Not that one specifically, but we're gonna
get to it. I have been to one of these
(29:09):
things called hell houses, where they essentially used spooky Halloween
tactics to you know, teach a less about indoctrinates you
and you know, save your mortal soul or whatever. I also,
when I think of this um Trails of terror the
closest animal that I have growing up with those things
like a haunted hay ride, you know where you'd like
(29:29):
be on the back of a truck and going through
this like hay Field or whatever, and they'd be like
spooky stuff popping out as you go. Yeah. Yeah, I
would love to hear if other people have experienced things
like tribulation trail um. The ones I saw were very
well done objectively, and they were you were walking through
the Book of Revelations and all the the Book of Revelations,
(29:52):
there's a lot of trippy psychedelic stuff in there, and
they're very creative, I would say, grand munual level creative
with depicting these things. And I was like, how do
you how do you get all these burning cars? How
much money is this church putting into this? Oh, that's funny,
you say. I've been the one hell house thing that
I went to had outsid out front just to show
(30:13):
people where it was a totally demolished car, presumably from
a drunk driving accident. That was part of the theme
of that particular hell house. So now organizations have stepped
in and it becomes something kind of like it becomes
a social attraction, sometimes a fundraiser, sometimes just a straight
(30:33):
up business to make some cash for the organization. But
it's still not a cultural icon. It's still kind of
like how local community centers might have a pancake breakfast
or something. It wasn't until the one and only Walt
Disney decided to build a haunted house that it became
a cultural icon. This is Disneylands Haunted Mansion, opened in
(30:59):
nineteen sixty nine, almost twenty years after inception of the
idea took a long time, and our our good friend
friend of the show, Holly Fry from Stuff You Missed
in History Class, has singlehandedly, I think, supported this institution
for a number of years. Oh yeah, she and her
husband go to Disneyland, uh in Disney World like multiple
(31:21):
times a year. But she is also a avid um
Haunted Mansion and just the whole Disney imagineering kind of
world historian. And back when I was the producer for
Stuff he was in history class many years ago, she
interviewed the expert to the the expert in the field
of imagineering who had just come out with a book
on the Haunted Mansion, because it really was kind of
(31:44):
this flagship attractionly, Like you said, it was you know,
twenty years in the making, um and that's because it
almost needed you know, like many of the things that
the Disney Company did, they had to create the technology
to to do the things, to pull off the things
that they wanted to pull off. And one of the
neat tricks that they used for the Hunted Mansion was
something called Pepper's Ghost, which creates these super complex illusions
(32:07):
that almost really stand alongside something like a hologram today.
It uses refracted light to project and kind of shape
these images that really seem to have dimension and scale
and like you know, float right right next to you.
And that's the that's what made it so popular and
so iconic. That's what differentiated it from a tribulation trail
(32:30):
or a community haunted house. It's the technology. You weren't
just seeing sheets hung on a tree or something painted
or someone just jumping out at you, going oh. What
you were seeing instead was something that seemed to be
actual shimmering figures. They spoke, they sang, they moved, which
(32:50):
wasn't just someone in a rubber mask. It was a body.
It could be a bodyless head now floating in a
crystal ball. Right, that's really impressive stuff, super cool and
just really quickly to backtrack, Um, I didn't mean to
come off a sounding as though the Disney Company invented
the Pepper's ghost effect. It actually was developed in the
early eighteen hundreds by John Henry Pepper, uh, and he
(33:13):
used it for theater, and then it was often used
for like you know, phony seances and things like that
or um, you know, theatrical productions. But of course, like
everything they did, the Disney imagineers like fine tuned it
and honed the effect and used it in a way
that had never been seen before. It was just absolutely stunning.
And I have to say that I have been to
the Haunted match as well. Yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah,
(33:39):
I mean it's it's not really scary. Yeah, it's very
very very tame, but super fun and uh and really
you know, well executed holds up to this day. Yeah,
it was that. Gonna count it for you, buddy face man. Yeah,
that's what. There you go. And so this is the
real watershed moment for a haunted houses as an industry
(34:02):
in the US. The success of Disney's Haunted Mansion spreads
across the country those j cs I mentioned earlier are
now legit famous for their haunted houses, so much so
that they eventually create their own how to do a
haunted house guide for other people. Uh. There's a place
called Berry Farm not Berry Farm in California that makes
(34:25):
its own Halloween evening attractions and that turns into this
slate of events that goes across multiple weeks during the season. Yeah,
they call it not Scary Farm actually during that time.
They do it here in Atlanta. Six Flags Over Georgia, UM,
really really fun. They have several different haunted houses and
they have this like you know, folks and spooky costumes
(34:45):
kind of just roaming around the the amusement part. Really
really really Funsants Fair has a haunted village that I'm
quite excited to go to. Right. That's aw. You still
get a turkey leg? Is the thing? You can still
get that ginormous curcula max you get it? Is it
a spooky turkey leg? It is haunted? It is it
is a haunted turkey leg. It'll certainly haunt you later. Yes, yes,
(35:12):
it's cursed. Uh. Also we should mention this is one
of my favorites. There's a guy named Bob Burns, who
was working for a long long time. He became famous
in the late sixties and seventies through the eighties for
these incredibly detailed recreations of horror movies as haunted houses,
and that's a big draw for people to walk through.
(35:33):
I think that one might actually maybe get to me
a little bit if I depending on what I was
walking through. You can see a full list of everything
he did. Probably one of one of the most prominent
ones is the alien recreation he did in nineteen seventy nine.
I'm I'm sure to each your home, but it's really impressive,
you know. Yeah, he did one of John Carpenter's the thing.
(35:57):
Lots of classic like nineteen sixties horror movies, Frankenstein's labuh,
Forbidden Planets, creature from the War War exactly, War of
the World's, all that kind of stuff that would have
been super cool to check out and in the l
A area, if I'm not mistake, Yeah, and then we
we saw you'll you'll see the person in d c
Atkins claims that they're one of the first to open
(36:20):
a professional interactive haunted house business, which called Blood Manner
over Maryland and seventy one. But you know who wasn't
a huge fan of this, Evangelical Christians who believed that
this was spreading, um, it was popularizing unholy things. And
that's where we get the Hell House is n seventy
(36:40):
two Jerry Folwell and Liberty University and then Haunted House
industries are also beginning to move and step with Hollywood's
horror industry. Yeah, they're they're they're a little corny, but
I kind of I quite like them. The Netflix the
movies that made us, I think it's what it's called.
Um there's a new series of that just came out
that's I think horror movies. It does Halloween, does Fright
(37:03):
of the Thirteenth, and it does a Nightmare on Elm Street.
And I didn't quite realize that, like New Line Cinema
was like a super fledgling kind of indie you know,
UM Film studio and they the guy who was the
you know, the main backer, I forget his name now,
but they talked about this in the little series. Um
he staked everything on Nightmare on Elm Street being a
(37:24):
big hit, and of course it was, and you know,
films like that and Halloween, which is also a very
low budget kind of indie that just you know, was
distributed independently, really got Hollywood to like embrace you know, horror,
and and there's this like kind of eighties slasher horror
boom that created this you know, super high demand for
(37:48):
you know, the most splattery haunted houses that you could
you can imagine which people trying to one up each
other with like how much they could handle, Like how
extreme can we get with our haunted house? Um? That
is in many ways can too far to this day. Um,
if you know about we've talked about places like McCamy
manner where you have to sign a waiver um and
(38:08):
they can definitely touch you. They like put you in
a coffin and it's a freaking sadist I who I
talked about this on stuff they'll want you know, I'm
fairly confident that they're making their money through illegal gambling
and Vegas. Yeah, that on it. But uh, what McCamey
(38:30):
is doing is a crime. I completely agree, But it's
not if people sign the waivers. I suppose there's even
ones that like, you know, you can you pay to
have someone kidnap you, even abduct you and then take
you to one of these situations where they like, you know,
mercilessly psychologically torture you for hours and hours and hours.
But that's really not what we're talking about. You're right,
(38:50):
that's something different. It's just kind of of course, everything
tends to end up in the most extreme place eventually.
But we've got Larry Kirshner, the president of the Haunted
House Association UM, because that became a thing, saying that
if you went to a haunted house in the nineties
and nineties, you would have seen a lot of Freddy Krueger,
Jason Pinhead. The haunted house industry really followed the movie
(39:12):
industry at that time, which makes sense. Yeah, and now
we see that the the for profit haunted houses are
quickly quickly outpacing the work of nonprofit groups like the
Junior Chamber j c's. However, this was not all um
a story of a rise to fame and prominence, because
(39:37):
Haunted house has had some problems. In New Jersey, a
haunted house caught fire, trapping and killing eight teenagers within,
and so a lot of these attractions got shut down
as a result. Politicians were saying, hey, if we don't
ban these things, let's at least get some some stronger
safety rules here. Volunteer organizations couldn't deal with the tougher
(40:00):
safety rules, so they got forced out of business. And
then going back to what Larry Kirchner was saying, Uh,
the j c S. The reason you don't see a
bunch of their haunted houses around today is because they
were fairly basic. It was based on the idea that
people would volunteer. But then when you have other folks
running it as a business, tons and tons of advertising,
(40:21):
it's it's hard to you know, keep your slice of
the pie because the whole pipe plate is getting more expensive.
Oh yeah, I mean a lot of these have production level,
you know, on par with you know, what you see
in TV and film. But today there is kind of
a cool little, you know, cottage industry um around haunted houses. Um,
the number of professional haunted houses over the preceding decades
(40:44):
absolutely exploded, and according to our guy Kirshner, UM around
hundred UM haunted houses operated across the nation. And I believe,
um so I can only imagine that's uh, you know,
grown from there though, I would you should see how
the pandemic affected haunted houses, because it is obviously very
close quarters. Um, certainly some folks might be a little
(41:08):
germophobic about them. And I'm sure that you know, masks
will be required now in place. Yeah, they may already
feel a lot of folks already feel like they've lived
through a haunted house. So question more of the same
at this point. Like, so you see them expanding now
past the typical house. There's a really cool and south
of Atlanta which is set in this it's outdoors and
(41:29):
like this pink ball arena kind of thing, and I
have a friend who runs that. I like going to
check that one out. For some reason, I'm more comfortable
with the ones outside. And maybe that's that's pre pandemic,
but I think that's gonna that's gonna be a trend
we see as well. Um, there's the ones, you know,
like I mentioned earlier, with religious groups who want to
(41:50):
find a new creative way to spread their message. There
are even like p s A houses now haunted trap
houses we saw reports of, and they warn you about
the horrors of real life things like opioid addiction. It's
funny because the guy in charge of that trade group
we mentioned earlier, Kirchner, he himself doubts that the haunted
(42:12):
house is gonna be around forever. He says, every business
will eventually fail, so we just want to last as
long as we possibly can. And this is where the
Smithsuanian writer that we mentioned earlier, has this wonderful line
that I quite love. They say, Halloween without haunted houses,
now that's a scary thought. That's journalism right there. Man.
(42:35):
This guy Krishner is a real bummer though. He literally
says every business will eventually fail, so we just want
to last as long as we possibly can't. All right, man,
I guess that's a pragmatic way of looking at it,
but but kind of a downer. But yeah, just like
in the Great Depression, though, we still have these neighborhoods,
you know, you know, bowl of grapes in the dark
(42:56):
kind of situations, which is super cool. Um, it's great,
And honestly, I've certainly seen much more elaborate ones too,
were a folksful band together and like build something out
like in a big garage, or do something maybe involving
multiple homes that are that are next to each other
like um, you know, or or like combining the use
of different yards and things like. Yeah, and folks, we
know This was a bit of a long one, but
(43:18):
we hope you enjoyed going on this journey with us,
because tis the season, as they say. Uh, I had
such a blast with this one. I am man so
glad you guys are back in this haunted house of
ridiculous history. I'm glad to be back man, and and
thanks as always of course, uh, to our pantheon of
(43:38):
fantastic podcast spooksters. We're talking about gay Bluesier, We're talking
about the one and only Max Williams. We're talking about
Alex Williams, who composed our soundtrack. We might even you
know what. It just occurred to me. I bet you know.
I bet you that Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, has
not only been to a lot of houses, but I
(44:01):
bet you he's beformed in some. Oh. I have no doubt.
I have no doubt. Uh. And he definitely the type
of guy that had grabbed you by the shin. Get
get a swift, get a swift kick in the bald
head for me, my friend. They got the voice he
would use Transatlantic, yep, Transatlantic, and the Sinister Quister laugh
would play pretty well in the dark. I just picture
(44:23):
I just walk in the opposite direction. I just picture
him going the Children of the Night. Oh how they
screamed for me. I have on to Sako blog Nah
say yeah, man, we love you, Jonathan. If you're here
at this so but hey, while you're on the internet,
which you presumably are, why not check us out on
(44:44):
Facebook where we have a Facebook group here. The Facebook
is rebranding because they've been taken so much heat lately.
What's gonna be I don't think it's gonna solve the
problems that. Oh no, it's literally like a band aid
where it's like, hey, how about instead of address saying
you know, our role in like you know, all this
proliferation of fake news and all of that good stuff,
(45:05):
that we'll just change our name. Yeah, I mean Facebook.
And you could argue social media in general is itself
a kind of haunted house and function. So they'll probably
name it what they call the metaverse, or it'll refer
to that somehow. That's what they're really trying to build
right now. And yeah, yeah, and it's a neat idea,
(45:26):
but it would be a neat idea in the right hands.
Is the most great thing I could say, And the
means time our little sliver of Facebook is is perfectly pleasant. Uh,
not controversy at all, barely any fake news. It's all
just a bunch of cool history nerds sharing memes and
and and having a good old time, so popping over
to ridiculous historians on Facebook. If you want to be
a part of that, you can also follow us, not
(45:48):
just as a show, but as individuals. Find me on Twitter,
where I am at Ben bull in hs W. Find
me on Instagram, where I have, in a burst of creativity,
named myself at ben bullan o w l I at.
Catch me exclusively on Instagram, where I am at how
now Noel Brown? I think that doesn't? What's the next time? Folks.
(46:17):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I am Ben, and I'm
not just welcoming you back, folks, I'm also welcoming back
our super producer Max Williams, who's on Adventures, and my
co host Mr Noel Brown, who was also on Adventures.
(00:47):
You guys were sorely, sorely missed. Thank you so much
for returning. I didn't know if you guys were just
gonna like start a new show somewhere, Ben, we wouldn't
leave you hanging like that. Dude. Friends don't do that
to friends. I was totally gonna do that, but I
ran out of money as I came back. Well, you're
no friend of ours, Max Williams, Well, I leave and
you get my brother to replace me. No, no, he
(01:09):
didn't he know it was first off, there was no
replacing He didn't fill in as producer. Uh Nolan. I
talked through the twelve friends that we have, and we
of those twelve, we made a list of the five
who might do our show with us, and of the
to who replied Alex was available. That's an important qualification
(01:31):
for guest hosting ridiculous history as being someone we know
and available, right right. So it's basically like Nobel Prize standards.
You know, when you think of it that way, it's prestigious,
is what we're saying. Both of those are prestigious institutions,
more like ig Nobel Prize. Yes, yes, which is the thing.
And no. Saved this one for you, man, because we
(01:55):
are going to talk about something that a lot of
people this time of year consider a prestige just institution
all its own. The idea of the haunted house, the
idea of the recreational haunted house, not amitivial style, but
the one where you like pay It seems like they
get more expensive every year here in Atlanta, but like
you pay for tickets and you go to what's the
(02:16):
one we have another world, another world. I have a
confession to make, fellas, I have never been to a
haunted house because I'm scared of them. That's okay, man,
I'll go. I don't like I don't I don't like
jump scarce, I don't like uh, I don't like spooky
stuff in the dark. I like horror movies, but I
often spoil them for myself in advance of watching them,
(02:37):
so they don't They don't quite spook me as much.
I'm a bit of a whimp. Fellas a bit of
a whimp. Now, you just know what you like and
what you don't like. You know, that's true, Thank you.
I'm not beating myself up. I definitely accept this by myself.
But my daughter is now getting to an age where
she's intrigued by the things, and I'm gonna have to
bite the bullet, guys, and uh and and go and
(02:59):
get get proper spooked, because I'm not gonna wait outside
while my twelve year old daughter goes in. It's just
I can't emasculate myself to that degree. Uh no, sir.
But it turns out the the history of these things
as attractions is very interesting and is wrapped up in
the history of Halloween as we know it itself. Yeah yeah,
(03:20):
like okay, So my objection to haunted houses recently has
been entirely due to the cost. But I will take
a bath on that, and I'll buy a ticket if
if you need or if you want someone to to
come with you and jump in front of the jump scares.
Uh well, as long as you'll as as long as
(03:40):
you'll hold my hand. Of course, of course it's very
very kind of you, Ben, Um, But no, it is.
I love Halloween. I love the spooky season and we
all do. I love the weather, the way you know
it feels outside, and the smells, and you know, all
of the costumes and everything that's all everything around it.
I absolutely love. And so it's sort of shocking to
(04:00):
me that I have this phobia. So I'm gonna try
to face my fears this year. But yeah, I mean,
I don't know, Ben, have you ever if you ever
made good on the trick part of Trick or Treat?
Let's see, I think the statute of limitations has passed,
so yes, to an extreme degree. You guys know, I
believe in justice, and I have at times my own
(04:21):
interpretation of it. I'm very naturally a Halloween person, Folks.
In this an audio show. You can't see it now,
but over the course of the pandemic, I have acquired
as a roommate a life size skeleton which is in
the background of all zoom calls. But but yeah, yeah, trick,
trick or Treat. This is interesting because it helps us
(04:43):
understand that haunted houses as a recreation are a relatively
recent idea. If we traveled back to say twelve hundred
a d. And Max Noel and I were trying to
sell people in some village on the idea of not
just going to a haunted location but paying for the privilege,
(05:05):
they would think we were crazy and they may well
burn us his witches. Yes, it didn't take much, It
did not take much. But this story really starts back
in the Great Depression, which still is a terrible name. Yeah,
his wasn't so great. Um. Also, Black Tuesday, um is
the name of the day that the stock market crashed,
(05:27):
and there was also a corresponding Black Halloween during the
Great Depression, and that was the day when so much
trickery was afoot that like I think, people died. There
were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars of
property damage. And this was a real problem in those
days because there was a whole night uh Mischief Knights,
(05:48):
which I believe is the night before Halloween, that was
purely devoted to just like pranking and you know, cutting
up and doing all kinds of stuff, lots of one
upsmanship that ultimately leads to you know, put people in
danger and some serious property damage and destruction. Yes, yeah,
you're referring to what's also called Devil's Night. Uh. And
(06:08):
Devil's Night has led to some serious chaos stuff way
beyond toilet paper or the throwing of eggs. We know
that parents were very concerned about their kids, especially their sons,
getting too wild on these days or during this time
(06:28):
leading up to the thirty one and so they picked
up a strategy to try to distract these kids. No, well,
maybe we talk a little bit about the origins of
the Haunted House overall, Like the origins of it date
back to nineteen century London, the eighteen hundreds, and they
(06:50):
were a kind of they were a kind they were
kind of a genre of a larger movement of Macaw entertainment,
like Madame Tussaux and so on. Absolutely, in eighteen o
two in London, Marie Tousseau um created quite a stir
with the you know, uptight stuffed shirt British population when
(07:13):
she displayed these wax sculptures of various decapitated French individuals. Uh.
And they were so accurate because she actually created death
masks from folks who were decapitated at the guillotine during
the French Revolution, and she set up this exhibit in London.
(07:34):
It became a permanent exhibit. She dubbed this attraction the
Chamber of Horrors, which we know is almost like a
trophy kind of name. Now that's like, you know, been
used to death pun intended or not, I'm not even
sure anymore, but yeah, it's a name that still is
tied to a particular wing of of that Wax museum
UM today and often times if you go to Madame
(07:55):
Tussau Wax museums across the country or around the world,
even they'll be know the celebrity part, but then they'll
be like a section where it's a little bit more
like serial killers and you know, like um, murdered people
and things like that. But it wasn't until the turn
of the twentieth century UM that a kind of theater
(08:16):
of the macabre sort of popped up UM in Paris. Actually, yes,
grand goody, this this is amazing because they were at
the time notorious for onstage depictions of real body horror,
real splatter punk stuff. You might call it today. The
(08:37):
theaters director and this is described by Rebecca mckindrey and
Fangoria magazine. All horror fans will know Fangoria. The director,
guy named Max Maury, once bragged that he judged performances
not so much by ticket sales as by how many
people passed out from shock in the audience or from schlock.
(09:00):
You could say, this is a cool piece I found
out about activities like this in interview with a Vampire
the film adaptation. You guys, remember how there is this
theater that is doing like a play about them parism
in the Devil. But it turns out that they are
actually grabbing humans and drinking their blood. Right, isn't that
(09:25):
Antonio Bandaris's character, Um, isn't that scene? Yeah, he's there. Yeah, Well,
I mean, you know, they definitely had like all kinds
of revolutionary kind of stage effects that they sort of created,
like knives that would squirt you know, fake blood, and
like you know, they would use like cow intestines or
(09:45):
pig and trails to simulate you know, humans being disembowed.
Um that there were also tho some versions of there
were a little more um stylized kind of where you know,
you would slit somebody's throat and then just like red
ribbons would just shoot out and it's a really cool
kind of um low tech effect that I actually still
see sometimes in depictions of this kind of theater. But
(10:05):
it was largely kind of a revolt against like, you know,
the status quo and against censorship and stuff. And it
really was at the time some of the most kind
of edgy, dangerous, you know theater that anyone had ever seen. Yes,
and theater should be an active revolution. That's at least
that's what that's always been my take. There's a great
(10:26):
description of this theater from Devin Ferraci over at Birth Movies, Death,
which is a fantastic website. Uh, and they point out
something I didn't know, which is the Grand Guigno Theater
is technically the home of the first scream Queen Paula Maxa.
She died on stage like thirty thousand times. Check out
(10:48):
that article. If you have a second it goes in
a different direction. But that's like, that's a haunted house
vibe for sure, even if it was, uh, clearly a
theatrical production. You've fast forward a little bit further. In
nineteen there's this fair ground in lip Hook in England
that debuted what they called a ghost house. This was
(11:10):
one of the first, if not the first. This was
one of the first kind of commercial horror attractions. They
had all this stuff that Noll you're not particularly into
with haunted houses, dim lights, shaking floors, demonic screens. Max, Yeah,
just like that. Just my blood, my blood hath curdled
(11:35):
and highly recommend a Brief History of the Haunted House
by Chris Heller from Smithsonian Magazine, which the sources we
used for this episode. Um so yeah, that would have
been very much one of the earliest examples of a
haunted house attraction, very very low fi, but at the
time would have really freed people out. I'm sure if
(11:56):
I had been around this time, I would have just
as hesitant to go into these as I had to
go into our more hi tech haunted houses today, which
we are about to get to in the form of
the early twentieth century. I do also want to put
in my line before before we roll pass this, I
want to put in my line for those early haunted
(12:18):
houses terror for a tuppence. I'm just gonna write mottos
for uh for institutions of yesteryear A tuppence that's like
a what is that like a penny? Father? Like hey, hey, hey,
penny some sort of some sort of negligible denomination of
British currency. Yes, but this state of Halloween, like you
(12:38):
were saying this, these things didn't exist in the US.
They started in Western Europe first. And the idea of Halloween,
like we explored years back in the origins of Halloween
and stuff they don't want you to know. YouTube and
audio version available now wherever you find your favorite shows Halloween.
(12:59):
That the way it came to the US is fascinating
because we've got Irish and Scottish immigrants bringing a traditional
Celtic end of summer festival to this new land. And
and if you want to sound smart in front of
your friends, are the very least not sound dumb. It's
not pronounced sam Haine, it's pronounced saws going. You see
(13:20):
it printed tho it looks like sam Haynes. Wasn't that
the name for the traditional Celtic kind of proto Halloween celebration.
I think I think Sawin is a Gaelic festival that's
also the end of the harvest season though so it's
supposed to be I think technically held on the first
of November, but the party starts on October thirty one.
(13:43):
There's still really there's still very I think closely related
in the modern secular imagination of the West. I mean,
it was also what Halloween turned into All Saints Day
or all Hallow's Eve. And by the time we get
to the turn of the century in the US, Halloween
(14:05):
has taken the path that so many holidays take in
this country. It's become an excuse to party, to break
some social taboos, to get a little souced and saucy, uh,
to eat too much of something, to make mischief, to
pursue your vices. It was way less, you know, rambunctious.
(14:27):
Oh these kids kind of pranks, right, We're not talking
about just festooning a tree with toilet paper or Jeffer
do the one. You know, I didn't mean to be rude.
I forgot to ask, you know, were you a trick
during your day? Lad? Okay? Well, the statute of limitations.
I don't believe I ever played a trick in my life,
not a day of my life, which probably means I
(14:47):
haven't really lived, to be honest. Scared hunted houses and uh,
a rule follower, That's that's me. Real stick in the
mud over here. But yeah, they they didn't have trick
or treating, because, as we're gonna get to, a trick
or tree is a much more modern invention than I
think either of us realized. But what they did have
was dressing up in these horrifying costumes. Frankly, if you
(15:10):
look at the like you know, historical photos of the time,
they're these like blank stare kind of like death masks
um that just look like they're made of burlap sacks,
like something like a like a like a movie slasher
would wear. You know. They called this tradition guy sing
and they would you know, wear these bizarre masks and
(15:31):
like you know, dance and make merry like you're saying.
And common Halloween tricks in the US these days where
things like taking somebody's wagon and maybe even their livestock
and put them on the roof of a barn, or
tearing vegetables out of gardens, or tipping over outhouses whether
(15:53):
whether or not someone was in them, then also allowing
like livestock to escape. And this happened so often that
in some regions we find October thirty one was known
as gate night because people would remove gates across their communities.
This is all these things were happening before the automobile
(16:14):
became very prevalent, and when the automobile kicked in and
people were able to afford to drive, the range of
their trickery likewise extended. We're seeing people removing manhole covers
from streets, or busting tires, or even making fake signs
to confuse motorists and lead them astray. So there's a
(16:36):
great book to we should recommend by Lisa Morton. It's
called Trigger Treat, a History of Halloween. It is a
fantastic read, and Morton says that at first these pranks
were more or less innocent, and they often occurred in
more rural communities. But then as cities got bigger, kids
(16:59):
took the prank into cities and it became more and
more destructive. What kind of stuff are we talking about
when we say more and more destructive? Oh, I don't know.
Like sawing down telephone poles and utility bowls and things
like that, disassembling people's like wagons and vehicles even and
like putting them on roofs and putting them back together,
(17:19):
which I thought was a pretty awesome one, very very
uh so so much effort that goes into these um.
One of the scariest ones involved like placing obstructions, like
really dangerous obstructions and roadways and covering them up with leaves,
which actually led to a significant traffic pile up. Yeah,
setting fires, breaking windows, uh, splattering people with bags of
(17:46):
flower filled with ashes. Uh. At least there wasn't anthrax. Yeah, yeah,
it was before then. Things really hit a tipping point
in eighteen seventy nine when about two hundred young men
boys really in Kenti, Uckey team up to stop a
training by lane an actual dead body and actual corpse
(18:07):
across the tracks. And then people start stealing bodies too. Yeah,
as med students, so you know how to party. In
nineteen hundreds, some medical students from the University of Michigan
stole a headless corpse from an anatomy lab and they
propped it up against the front door of the building.
Gave people a real shock when they showed up to class.
(18:28):
And as I was sort of hinting out earlier, things
really did start to get super real in around nineteen
o two, when when things just went too far. As
these kinds of things tend to do, it's all about
one uptionship and kind of trying to like outdo everybody
else's pranks and and eventually you crossed the line into
the danger zone. There was a ton of destruction in
(18:49):
Cook County in nineteen o two, um and the Cook
County Herald had a very interesting little kind of editorial,
I guess, encouraging people to defend themselves from this kind
of mischief. Here's the quote is in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
By the way, most everybody enjoys a joke, are fun
to a proper degree on suitable occasions, but when property
(19:10):
is damaged or destroyed, it's time to call a halt.
We would advise the public to load their muskets or
cannon with rock salt or bird shot. And when trespassers
invade their premises at unseemly hours upon mischief bent pepper
them good and proper so they will be effectually cured
and have no further taste for such tricks. They know
(19:32):
how to turn a phrase back down and new paper fold.
You have either of you guys, ever been shot with
rock salt? No, but I've seen in the movies and
it looks very unpleasant. Okay, Yeah, Well, as someone speaking
from personal experience, it is not pleasant, it's still dangerous,
and people did take this advice as the As the
discourse turned towards self defense. In this regard, some folks
(19:56):
were taking up arms. In fact, in nineteen o seven,
the some kids had stretched a wire across the sidewalk
to trip pedestrians in Tucson, Arizona. One guy tripped and
when he fell on the ground. From the ground, he
took out his firearm, a revolver, and he shot one
of the pranksters dead. And then a woman in Indiana
(20:19):
and Logan Sport was scared to death. Literally her heart
stopped after her daughter answered, you know, on the door
and she screamed because a group of boys had a
like a jack lantern and we're just like and put
it in front of her and she you know, that
(20:39):
sounds like a normal jump scare, but she must have
had a pre existing heart condition. Again, Uh, these just
keep going. A guy almost loses his eyes sight two.
A girl nearly loses her arm after being hit with
stones and thirty Yeah, there were kids in fairfaxt count
(21:00):
in Virginia who were setting off dynamite like on their
school grounds. They were causing traffic accidents and stuff. Not
not cherry bombs are like black cats, dynamites, dynamite, that's insane,
Like we know miners, we can We're we're miners who
know miners, we can use dynamite. And then this is
(21:20):
where we get to the Black Halloween of nineteen thirty three,
because before the Great Depression, there were a lot of
people who are like, you know, to quote Biden, they
were like, this is malarkey. But the economic disaster created
this period of widespread social unrest on a profound level
that a lot of people hadn't experienced before. And this
(21:45):
made arguably it made the kids a little bit wilder
with their antics, but also the public was responding they
had had it up to here with so many things
by this point. And this is where we get to
what you were alluding to earlier nol in nineteen thirty three,
where people were flipping over cars, sawing down telephone polls,
and just breaking stuff the way in nineteen eighties rock
(22:08):
band would destroy hotel rooms and America was like, we're
not your hotel room, you whipper snappers. No, we're not
get off my r collective lawn um. And you know,
it's the Great Depression, so it's not like they had
any money to fix this stuff like talk about talk
about uh, let's see, what's a polite way of saying this,
um taking a crap where you eat, you know what
(22:31):
I mean like and then not being able to clean
it up. I'm sorry that's the disgusting metaphor, but it holds.
I mean, this is a very short sighted you know,
this is literally you know, doing damage to infrastructure at
a time where money was an absolute the shortest possible supply.
So you know, they didn't exactly outlaw Halloween, but something
(22:51):
had to give. But thankfully, um, you know, a lot
of the city's realized that prohibition doesn't really work, usually
probably because of lessons learned from you know, that actual
prohibition thing where they you know, wouldn't let people drink
booze and so they just you know made it themselves
and and had illegal speakeasies and all that. This was
probably right around the time that prohibition was was beginning
(23:14):
to uh completely unravel and it was it was about
to be reversed. Um. So instead of you know, outlawing
Halloween outright, they decided that maybe we can pay these
kids off. Uh, so to speak, or at least give
them something else to funnel their you know, rambunctious energy into. Yeah,
they they came up with, Uh, it's almost it's very
(23:37):
similar to the idea of it after school program, but
for Halloween. They said, look, we don't have we we
want to distract these kids. We want to give them
something different and less destructive to do. Maybe we could
throw a party, but they looked around and said, you know,
unless we're the one percent that has extracted all the
value out of American society, we can't. Oh, we we
(24:00):
don't have the scratch to throw a party. So we're
going to have what we'll call house to house parties.
The entire block chips in to do whatever they can.
So if you're if you're a would be prankster, you
go to the first house, you get a costume. Maybe
it's it's some simple usually it's like a sheet boom,
you're a ghost. Next house gives you some candy. That's cool,
(24:22):
and then uh, this sounds a lot like tricker treating,
as Lisa Morton points out, and that's where the idea
comes from. It comes from the idea of these house
to house parties. Because not only were the children given
a purpose, given a series of task that would keep
them from flipping over cars, but they were also going
to be more easy to monitor because you know which
(24:46):
houses they're going to, and you know, you kind of
know their route. So this is this is where Morton
bust myth that I think a lot of people believe in.
She says, one of the most common misconceptions about Halloween
is the trigger treating is some ancient ritual that goes
back thousands of years, but she confirms it really is
(25:08):
less than a hundred years old. And if you when
you get to the end right the end of your
house to house root, you'll see a haunted house situation
set up kind of in the basement. And and this
is people are familiar with this. I'm sure you take
the kids down the stairs. It's very very dark. And
(25:29):
then you would play that game that some people might
be familiar with where you you get a story and
you're like passing around bowls of something in the dark,
and one of them peeled grapes, and they're like, oh,
there's these human brains. It's you know, like spaghetti or something.
A lot of weird uses of food, some of the
(25:51):
stuff sounds very unsanitary, like apparently walls would be hung
with strips of raw liver that you would like feel
as you you know, stumbles are away through the dark,
classics Williams classic total. Yeah, I want to pranks for
that guy ass raw liver, the old raw liver trick um.
But yeah, you know they'd be like weird sounds and
(26:12):
moans and howls, scream Yeah, exactly, a lot of a
lot of very d i y solutions here, damp sponges
and hairnets apparently hanging for the ceiling and picture like, oh,
d get it off me. You don't know it's a
it's a gross damp sponge. Yeah, definitely jump scares someone's
dressed as a dog and then they jump out and
(26:34):
they're barking. This happened to me and I was so impressed.
I was a kid and I was trick or treating
one time where it looked like someone had the the
safe kind of like a lot of parents don't want
to go spooky, so they go with a fall theme
and you've got like some hay bales, some squash, some
pumpkins or what have you. This one had that and
(26:54):
it had like a scarecrow by the door, and there
was a little dish that said honor system, just take one,
and so it walked up and was gonna take one.
And then the scarecrow moved, it ran at us. It
grabbed a kid, and I turned around and tried to
fight it, and then Nicky told me to calm down, man,
(27:18):
you're not cool. No touching. You know that's the rules.
I even know that you haven't never been to a
hunted house. You're definitely not supposed to touch it. But
the other kids all ran. The other kids all ran
except me. I was the only one who tried to
help that other kid. Geez, I'm proud of you, Ben,
I'm proud of you always cheping in helping out the
little guy. Totally. He's a man of the people. No man.
(27:42):
That would have pissed me off to no end. I
would have been like, nope, Calloween is canceled. Going home, um,
And then they would, you know, have a little lo
fi kind of effects like a cat's painted on cardboard
outlined in um glow in the dark paint, which is
a thing. And this also aided a sense of community,
right and get to know your neighbors and all of
(28:03):
that in the same way that the moderntor or treating does.
And so with this stage set, we see that the
story of early haunted houses in the US is a
story of these small kind of nonprofit affairs, their community based.
(28:27):
You know, you probably later know everybody who was involved
in the creation of it. And that's that's kind of inspiring.
How did we get from there to these massive productions
that cost you know, as much as fifty bucks a
ticket in some cases, Well, it's because part of a
civic group called the Junior Chamber also known as the
(28:49):
j c S. I I owe a lot to these folks,
and my child has does, because they're the creators of
something called trails of terror. If you have grown up
in the South, you might be familiar with something some
religious organizations do called tribulation trail. You guys, ever heard
of that one? Not that one specifically, but we're gonna
get to it. I have been to one of these
(29:09):
things called hell houses, where they essentially used spooky Halloween
tactics to you know, teach a less about indoctrinates you
and you know, save your mortal soul or whatever. I also,
when I think of this um Trails of terror the
closest animal that I have growing up with those things
like a haunted hay ride, you know where you'd like
(29:29):
be on the back of a truck and going through
this like hay Field or whatever, and they'd be like
spooky stuff popping out as you go. Yeah. Yeah, I
would love to hear if other people have experienced things
like tribulation trail um. The ones I saw were very
well done objectively, and they were you were walking through
the Book of Revelations and all the the Book of Revelations,
(29:52):
there's a lot of trippy psychedelic stuff in there, and
they're very creative, I would say, grand munual level creative
with depicting these things. And I was like, how do
you how do you get all these burning cars? How
much money is this church putting into this? Oh, that's funny,
you say. I've been the one hell house thing that
I went to had outsid out front just to show
(30:13):
people where it was a totally demolished car, presumably from
a drunk driving accident. That was part of the theme
of that particular hell house. So now organizations have stepped
in and it becomes something kind of like it becomes
a social attraction, sometimes a fundraiser, sometimes just a straight
(30:33):
up business to make some cash for the organization. But
it's still not a cultural icon. It's still kind of
like how local community centers might have a pancake breakfast
or something. It wasn't until the one and only Walt
Disney decided to build a haunted house that it became
a cultural icon. This is Disneylands Haunted Mansion, opened in
(30:59):
nineteen sixty nine, almost twenty years after inception of the
idea took a long time, and our our good friend
friend of the show, Holly Fry from Stuff You Missed
in History Class, has singlehandedly, I think, supported this institution
for a number of years. Oh yeah, she and her
husband go to Disneyland, uh in Disney World like multiple
(31:21):
times a year. But she is also a avid um
Haunted Mansion and just the whole Disney imagineering kind of
world historian. And back when I was the producer for
Stuff he was in history class many years ago, she
interviewed the expert to the the expert in the field
of imagineering who had just come out with a book
on the Haunted Mansion, because it really was kind of
(31:44):
this flagship attractionly, Like you said, it was you know,
twenty years in the making, um and that's because it
almost needed you know, like many of the things that
the Disney Company did, they had to create the technology
to to do the things, to pull off the things
that they wanted to pull off. And one of the
neat tricks that they used for the Hunted Mansion was
something called Pepper's Ghost, which creates these super complex illusions
(32:07):
that almost really stand alongside something like a hologram today.
It uses refracted light to project and kind of shape
these images that really seem to have dimension and scale
and like you know, float right right next to you.
And that's the that's what made it so popular and
so iconic. That's what differentiated it from a tribulation trail
(32:30):
or a community haunted house. It's the technology. You weren't
just seeing sheets hung on a tree or something painted
or someone just jumping out at you, going oh. What
you were seeing instead was something that seemed to be
actual shimmering figures. They spoke, they sang, they moved, which
(32:50):
wasn't just someone in a rubber mask. It was a body.
It could be a bodyless head now floating in a
crystal ball. Right, that's really impressive stuff, super cool and
just really quickly to backtrack, Um, I didn't mean to
come off a sounding as though the Disney Company invented
the Pepper's ghost effect. It actually was developed in the
early eighteen hundreds by John Henry Pepper, uh, and he
(33:13):
used it for theater, and then it was often used
for like you know, phony seances and things like that
or um, you know, theatrical productions. But of course, like
everything they did, the Disney imagineers like fine tuned it
and honed the effect and used it in a way
that had never been seen before. It was just absolutely stunning.
And I have to say that I have been to
the Haunted match as well. Yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah,
(33:39):
I mean it's it's not really scary. Yeah, it's very
very very tame, but super fun and uh and really
you know, well executed holds up to this day. Yeah,
it was that. Gonna count it for you, buddy face man. Yeah,
that's what. There you go. And so this is the
real watershed moment for a haunted houses as an industry
(34:02):
in the US. The success of Disney's Haunted Mansion spreads
across the country those j cs I mentioned earlier are
now legit famous for their haunted houses, so much so
that they eventually create their own how to do a
haunted house guide for other people. Uh. There's a place
called Berry Farm not Berry Farm in California that makes
(34:25):
its own Halloween evening attractions and that turns into this
slate of events that goes across multiple weeks during the season. Yeah,
they call it not Scary Farm actually during that time.
They do it here in Atlanta. Six Flags Over Georgia, UM,
really really fun. They have several different haunted houses and
they have this like you know, folks and spooky costumes
(34:45):
kind of just roaming around the the amusement part. Really
really really Funsants Fair has a haunted village that I'm
quite excited to go to. Right. That's aw. You still
get a turkey leg? Is the thing? You can still
get that ginormous curcula max you get it? Is it
a spooky turkey leg? It is haunted? It is it
is a haunted turkey leg. It'll certainly haunt you later. Yes, yes,
(35:12):
it's cursed. Uh. Also we should mention this is one
of my favorites. There's a guy named Bob Burns, who
was working for a long long time. He became famous
in the late sixties and seventies through the eighties for
these incredibly detailed recreations of horror movies as haunted houses,
and that's a big draw for people to walk through.
(35:33):
I think that one might actually maybe get to me
a little bit if I depending on what I was
walking through. You can see a full list of everything
he did. Probably one of one of the most prominent
ones is the alien recreation he did in nineteen seventy nine.
I'm I'm sure to each your home, but it's really impressive,
you know. Yeah, he did one of John Carpenter's the thing.
(35:57):
Lots of classic like nineteen sixties horror movies, Frankenstein's labuh,
Forbidden Planets, creature from the War War exactly, War of
the World's, all that kind of stuff that would have
been super cool to check out and in the l
A area, if I'm not mistake, Yeah, and then we
we saw you'll you'll see the person in d c
Atkins claims that they're one of the first to open
(36:20):
a professional interactive haunted house business, which called Blood Manner
over Maryland and seventy one. But you know who wasn't
a huge fan of this, Evangelical Christians who believed that
this was spreading, um, it was popularizing unholy things. And
that's where we get the Hell House is n seventy
(36:40):
two Jerry Folwell and Liberty University and then Haunted House
industries are also beginning to move and step with Hollywood's
horror industry. Yeah, they're they're they're a little corny, but
I kind of I quite like them. The Netflix the
movies that made us, I think it's what it's called.
Um there's a new series of that just came out
that's I think horror movies. It does Halloween, does Fright
(37:03):
of the Thirteenth, and it does a Nightmare on Elm Street.
And I didn't quite realize that, like New Line Cinema
was like a super fledgling kind of indie you know,
UM Film studio and they the guy who was the
you know, the main backer, I forget his name now,
but they talked about this in the little series. Um
he staked everything on Nightmare on Elm Street being a
(37:24):
big hit, and of course it was, and you know,
films like that and Halloween, which is also a very
low budget kind of indie that just you know, was
distributed independently, really got Hollywood to like embrace you know, horror,
and and there's this like kind of eighties slasher horror
boom that created this you know, super high demand for
(37:48):
you know, the most splattery haunted houses that you could
you can imagine which people trying to one up each
other with like how much they could handle, Like how
extreme can we get with our haunted house? Um? That
is in many ways can too far to this day. Um,
if you know about we've talked about places like McCamy
manner where you have to sign a waiver um and
(38:08):
they can definitely touch you. They like put you in
a coffin and it's a freaking sadist I who I
talked about this on stuff they'll want you know, I'm
fairly confident that they're making their money through illegal gambling
and Vegas. Yeah, that on it. But uh, what McCamey
(38:30):
is doing is a crime. I completely agree, But it's
not if people sign the waivers. I suppose there's even
ones that like, you know, you can you pay to
have someone kidnap you, even abduct you and then take
you to one of these situations where they like, you know,
mercilessly psychologically torture you for hours and hours and hours.
But that's really not what we're talking about. You're right,
(38:50):
that's something different. It's just kind of of course, everything
tends to end up in the most extreme place eventually.
But we've got Larry Kirshner, the president of the Haunted
House Association UM, because that became a thing, saying that
if you went to a haunted house in the nineties
and nineties, you would have seen a lot of Freddy Krueger,
Jason Pinhead. The haunted house industry really followed the movie
(39:12):
industry at that time, which makes sense. Yeah, and now
we see that the the for profit haunted houses are
quickly quickly outpacing the work of nonprofit groups like the
Junior Chamber j c's. However, this was not all um
a story of a rise to fame and prominence, because
(39:37):
Haunted house has had some problems. In New Jersey, a
haunted house caught fire, trapping and killing eight teenagers within,
and so a lot of these attractions got shut down
as a result. Politicians were saying, hey, if we don't
ban these things, let's at least get some some stronger
safety rules here. Volunteer organizations couldn't deal with the tougher
(40:00):
safety rules, so they got forced out of business. And
then going back to what Larry Kirchner was saying, Uh,
the j c S. The reason you don't see a
bunch of their haunted houses around today is because they
were fairly basic. It was based on the idea that
people would volunteer. But then when you have other folks
running it as a business, tons and tons of advertising,
(40:21):
it's it's hard to you know, keep your slice of
the pie because the whole pipe plate is getting more expensive.
Oh yeah, I mean a lot of these have production level,
you know, on par with you know, what you see
in TV and film. But today there is kind of
a cool little, you know, cottage industry um around haunted houses. Um,
the number of professional haunted houses over the preceding decades
(40:44):
absolutely exploded, and according to our guy Kirshner, UM around
hundred UM haunted houses operated across the nation. And I believe,
um so I can only imagine that's uh, you know,
grown from there though, I would you should see how
the pandemic affected haunted houses, because it is obviously very
close quarters. Um, certainly some folks might be a little
(41:08):
germophobic about them. And I'm sure that you know, masks
will be required now in place. Yeah, they may already
feel a lot of folks already feel like they've lived
through a haunted house. So question more of the same
at this point. Like, so you see them expanding now
past the typical house. There's a really cool and south
of Atlanta which is set in this it's outdoors and
(41:29):
like this pink ball arena kind of thing, and I
have a friend who runs that. I like going to
check that one out. For some reason, I'm more comfortable
with the ones outside. And maybe that's that's pre pandemic,
but I think that's gonna that's gonna be a trend
we see as well. Um, there's the ones, you know,
like I mentioned earlier, with religious groups who want to
(41:50):
find a new creative way to spread their message. There
are even like p s A houses now haunted trap
houses we saw reports of, and they warn you about
the horrors of real life things like opioid addiction. It's
funny because the guy in charge of that trade group
we mentioned earlier, Kirchner, he himself doubts that the haunted
(42:12):
house is gonna be around forever. He says, every business
will eventually fail, so we just want to last as
long as we possibly can. And this is where the
Smithsuanian writer that we mentioned earlier, has this wonderful line
that I quite love. They say, Halloween without haunted houses,
now that's a scary thought. That's journalism right there. Man.
(42:35):
This guy Krishner is a real bummer though. He literally
says every business will eventually fail, so we just want
to last as long as we possibly can't. All right, man,
I guess that's a pragmatic way of looking at it,
but but kind of a downer. But yeah, just like
in the Great Depression, though, we still have these neighborhoods,
you know, you know, bowl of grapes in the dark
(42:56):
kind of situations, which is super cool. Um, it's great,
And honestly, I've certainly seen much more elaborate ones too,
were a folksful band together and like build something out
like in a big garage, or do something maybe involving
multiple homes that are that are next to each other
like um, you know, or or like combining the use
of different yards and things like. Yeah, and folks, we
know This was a bit of a long one, but
(43:18):
we hope you enjoyed going on this journey with us,
because tis the season, as they say. Uh, I had
such a blast with this one. I am man so
glad you guys are back in this haunted house of
ridiculous history. I'm glad to be back man, and and
thanks as always of course, uh, to our pantheon of
(43:38):
fantastic podcast spooksters. We're talking about gay Bluesier, We're talking
about the one and only Max Williams. We're talking about
Alex Williams, who composed our soundtrack. We might even you
know what. It just occurred to me. I bet you know.
I bet you that Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister, has
not only been to a lot of houses, but I
(44:01):
bet you he's beformed in some. Oh. I have no doubt.
I have no doubt. Uh. And he definitely the type
of guy that had grabbed you by the shin. Get
get a swift, get a swift kick in the bald
head for me, my friend. They got the voice he
would use Transatlantic, yep, Transatlantic, and the Sinister Quister laugh
would play pretty well in the dark. I just picture
(44:23):
I just walk in the opposite direction. I just picture
him going the Children of the Night. Oh how they
screamed for me. I have on to Sako blog Nah
say yeah, man, we love you, Jonathan. If you're here
at this so but hey, while you're on the internet,
which you presumably are, why not check us out on
(44:44):
Facebook where we have a Facebook group here. The Facebook
is rebranding because they've been taken so much heat lately.
What's gonna be I don't think it's gonna solve the
problems that. Oh no, it's literally like a band aid
where it's like, hey, how about instead of address saying
you know, our role in like you know, all this
proliferation of fake news and all of that good stuff,
(45:05):
that we'll just change our name. Yeah, I mean Facebook.
And you could argue social media in general is itself
a kind of haunted house and function. So they'll probably
name it what they call the metaverse, or it'll refer
to that somehow. That's what they're really trying to build
right now. And yeah, yeah, and it's a neat idea,
(45:26):
but it would be a neat idea in the right hands.
Is the most great thing I could say, And the
means time our little sliver of Facebook is is perfectly pleasant. Uh,
not controversy at all, barely any fake news. It's all
just a bunch of cool history nerds sharing memes and
and and having a good old time, so popping over
to ridiculous historians on Facebook. If you want to be
a part of that, you can also follow us, not
(45:48):
just as a show, but as individuals. Find me on Twitter,
where I am at Ben bull in hs W. Find
me on Instagram, where I have, in a burst of creativity,
named myself at ben bullan o w l I at.
Catch me exclusively on Instagram, where I am at how
now Noel Brown? I think that doesn't? What's the next time? Folks.
(46:17):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.