For me, this album represents the sounds of Halloween as I knew them in my childhood. Originally released in 1964 with a white border, DISNEY'S THRILLING, CHILLING SOUNDS OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE, played in our home every year when the wind grew chill and the darkness crept in.
It was as scary as hell to a child of my age and I can't remember how old I was when I first heard it. The sounds of the ghosts are what got to me the most. The fact that they not only seemed to be tortured souls, but completely bat-crap crazy and laughing even more wickedly than Frank Gorshin as the Riddler on BATMAN, disturbed me more than a little. It made my first viewing of FRIDAY THE 13TH a walk in the park by comparison.
Needless to say, there have been many re-releases of this album on vinyl throughout the '70s, but I'm unaware of any CD versions. It is finally available for download officially on iTunes, and I'm sure you can find it somewhere in the many twists and turns of the internet. And if you gotta have the vinyl you can't have mine, but I've seen several copies listed over on eBay of course. It really is the cream of the crop when it comes to Halloween sound effects.
Here are some fine blogs and articles on this subject that pretty much say what I just said, but better or with audio:
Haunted-Dimensions
monsterkid
doombuggies
Kindertrauma
Brooklynvegan
Davesworld
SeattleSubsonic
Finally, few examples from the vinyl up on the youtubes:
Today's Halloween Greeting:
4 comments:
Excellent choice! I'd forgotten about this one, but I do remember the version with the crow and skeleton on the cover.
I had this on an album with an audio version of the Donald Duck cartoon "Trick or Treat," and I wore the grooves off of it listening to it so much!
(I liked the Donald Duck side a little bit better, but only because it had a cool theme song...)
Jeff, I grew up with the orange one--probably the '73 printing my oldest brother would've had. I guess it was more common than I knew.
Mark, I'd read that it was lots of Disney's archival sound recordings for their Haunted Mansion and that there was some of this on that old Donald Duck cartoon. I can't say I've ever seen that thing, but I bet someone has it up on the youtubes... may have to go hunting.
And I just saw where the version on iTunes is a white cover. It's like a whole rainbow coalition of colors for this album.
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