# 23 Days Till Halloween



## Dinosaur1972 (Mar 28, 2007)

23 Days Till Halloween
10/08/2013

*Shivers - Creepy Stories (1996)
Shivers - Weird Tales (1996)*
Zacherley serves as the emcee for these sets of original spooky stories geared toward tweens. The voice acting is barely serviceable – one woman really strains to sound like a teenage boy and a vampire in the first couple tracks. There are a few sound effects and musical cues. Only Zacherley makes these special (as you might expect). His chuckles and puns add a touch of class. The scripts are pretty good, too … you can’t go wrong with a story called “The Calculator of Doom”. “Weird Tales” tends to present stories with morals … you know, for the kids. It also has a lovely song called “Overdrawn at the Blood Bank”.

*Spirits and Spooks for Hallowe'en Summoned up by William Conrad (1973)*
Conrad was a big-time radio actor in the 40’s and 50’s, later in television. I don’t know much about his work aside from “Jake and the Fatman” (Conrad was the Fatman). But given his radio background, I guess it seems natural to release a spoken word album. There’s one very long track called “Fereyel and Debbo Engal the Witch”, an African folktale. There are a couple of poems – he wails like a ghost on one, and speaks with some sort of accent on another. It’s more good clean Halloween fun.

*Suspense - Original Radio Broadcast (1978)*
I love old-time radio, and Suspense was one of the best old radio shows. Two shows here, “The House in Cypress Canyon” and “Fugue in C Minor”, the latter starring Vincent Price in a very chilling role. Suspense isn’t all spooky horror (like Lights Out or Witch’s Tale), but these two are nice and old-fashionedly scary. And the Roma wine commercials are left intact.

*Tales From the Tomb (1999)*
Ten tales and poems … mostly urban legends. All have musical accompaniment, drawn from classical music (Mussorgsky, Holst). On some stories, it sounds like the reader’s voice was lowered artificially (auto-tuned ghost stories!? What next?), and the music hits crescendos at entirely the wrong times more often than not. Still, the tales are well told – even the “hook hand”, “kidney donor”, and “hand-licking” stories. Wraps up with “The Raven”, which I guess I haven’t heard in awhile.

*Terror From Beyond (1994)*
Yep … Poe again. Robert J. Walsh produced and does the spooky music, read by Bill Roebuck. The background music is nicely gothic and the readings are good. Wraps up with a poem (“Warlock’s Ride”) and some scary sounds. Unspectacular, but at least somebody’s out there introducing kids to Poe.

*The Demented Doctor (1998)*
This one isn’t so much stories as it is imagined drama – and frankly, much of it sounds improvised. It’s got lots of gory descriptions and sounds, and it is all done very tongue-in-cheek. A solid hour of silly fun, and I can say I haven’t heard anything else quite like it.

*The Folktellers - Tales To Grow On (1981)
The Folktellers - Chillers (1983)*
The Folktellers are Connie Regan-Blake and Barbara Freeman. They tell pretty good ghost stories, most of which I’ve never heard anywhere else. “The Calico Coffin” is terrifically spooky. “Chillers” was recorded live on Halloween in front of an audience, and “Tales” … which is less Halloweeny … was recorded in front of a bunch of kids from the sounds of it.


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## stacicali (Sep 28, 2013)

I would love to listen to these! A great audiobook that is unfortunately out of print except directly from the publisher is "A Night In the Lonesome October" by Roger Zelazney. It really captures the spooky, fun ambience of Halloween while paying homage to all the great monsters, H P Lovecraft, etc.


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