Music Monday: Vintage Vibes

The vintage Halloween aesthetic is hotter than ever, and this playlist would make an ideal accompaniment for putting up decorations, carving pumpkins, or a retro-themed Halloween party. It's a great mix of artists like Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Glenn Miller, and more. Enjoy!

 

Playlist by Jake Westbrook on Youtube, who curates lots of other vintage-music themed lists!

Spooky Travels: House of Frankenstein Wax Museum

When I was planning my summer visit to the east coast for a camping trip with friends & family in upstate NY, I did a bit of searching for stuff to do in the area, and was delighted to find this place in Lake George that was nearby -- The House of Frankenstein Wax Museum!

So, a couple of weekends ago, I went! They seem to be open for most of the summer tourist weeks as well as Halloween season. If you're in the area and in need of a Summerween fix, this might just do the trick.

I won't give too much away, but overall this is campy, good fun. It wasn't too crowded when we went, despite the downtown Lake George area being very active with tourists. There was no wait to get in, although there are some fun horror-themed things to look at in the lobby to keep you occupied in case it's busy when you go. I loved this friendly guy who greeted us, he had to have been inspired by Roger Corman's film, The Raven.

 

Once you pay your admission, you ascend a flight of stairs and follow the hallways from scene to scene, many of which are interactive and/or animated. It's mostly campy and endearing in the way that old horror films are (and indeed, some of the scenes involve familiar horror characters), but there are some genuinely spooky moments to be found. One scene actually made me jump -- and THAT is no small feat, I'm not an easy scare when it comes to these things.

 

It's a self-guided tour which you can take at your own pace, but I'd recommend planning at least half an hour to 45 minutes in there, especially if you're with a small group.

 

If you find yourself in the Lake George area, check it out!

 

 

My rating: 7/10 Jackos!

[🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 _ _ _ ]

(All photos by Petrichor & Pumpkins 2021)

Wayback Wednesday: Salem, MA 1998

I recently unearthed some pages of a water-damaged photo album that contained a bunch of old photos I had taken on a weekend trip to Salem in October of 1998.

The Salem Witch Museum, one of the most iconic buildings in the city.

 

The (in)famous Bunghole Liquors shop, Derby St.

 

Artemisia Botanicals, a spiritual and apothecary shop, at its old location at Pickering Wharf.

Salem Tea Room, Pickering Wharf. I'm pretty sure this spot is long gone now, not sure what resides at this address currently.

 

I asked some random kid to pose for a picture and he gladly obliged.

A view from Pickering Wharf

Witch's Brew Cafe, Derby St.

Terror on the Wharf banner and storefront at Pickering Wharf. Terror on the Wharf was a small indoor haunted attraction with some horror themed memorabilia in the lobby.

 

Another view of Terror on the Wharf

 

Crow Haven Corner, one of Salem's best known witch shops (left) and The Fool's Mansion, Essex St. The Fool's Mansion is long gone now, sadly; it had a fantastic selection of gothic and fantasy clothing, most of which was handmade, if I recall correctly.

Two more views of Crow Haven Corner

 

Salem Armory visitor center, near downtown

I can't remember this building or location - if you recognize it, please tell me in the comments.

Black Cat Book Guild, Derby St., now long gone.

An elaborately decorated lobby in the Hawthorne Hotel, downtown Salem.

 

Some graves at the Old Burying Point

(All Photos by Petrichor & Pumpkins 1998)

Halloween sticker stash, part 1

I was rummaging around in one of my desk drawers today and found some Halloween stickers that I totally forgot about. Some I've had for a long time and can't even remember where I bought them initially! Check out some of these gems:

These two designs are both by the same manufacturer and I probably acquired them around the same time (though I have no idea when). They're made of a hard rigid plastic and thicker than your average sticker. No date on these, and the website listed on the back is a dead end.

 

Next up: These jacko stickers by Hallmark. If I had to guess, I'd say I got these sometime in the mid to late 90s, judging from the price tag on the back. The Big Party! was a chain established in New England around 1995 and filed for bankruptcy about 5 years later, and was bought out by another chain called iParty, which was eventually consumed by Party City.

Check out that massive discounted price, too, woooooo

 

 

Next up: These great glittery foil ones by American Greetings, and altho I don't see a date on them or any other clues to their age, I don't think they are very old. I probably got these at a Target.

Next: These fantastically illustrated jackos by a company called Tattoo King. It's a little hard to see from the scan, but these have a light dusting of iridescent glitter accenting the design. The back bar code sticker says these were made in 2018, so another recently purchase. I can't remember where I got these, but I'm glad I did.

 

 

Next: This set of truly vintage stickers - printed around 1984, with a design nod to even older vintage Halloween aesthetics. These are fantastic and I love these illustrations. Classic Halloween in every sense.

 

 

These were made by the B. Shackman Company, which according to their (inactive) Facebook page was established in 1898:

"Manufacturer and wholesaler of vintage-inspired European- and American-made fine paper goods. Established in 1898.

Since 1898 B. Shackman Company has been manufacturing and importing unique gift items. Many remember our famous store in lower Manhattan in New York City.

Now we primarily supply our items at wholesale for other stores and gift shops to stock, but you can also buy our wonderful products direct online around the world! Please contact us for information on how to get your Shackman products."

Sadly, their website is a dead end and they haven't posted on Facebook since January 2018. 

Here's a scan of one of their neat old catalogs from about a century ago, from archive.org.

Halloween memories

Things are pretty low-key here this year on the High Holiday, so I'm reminiscing about one of my favorite Halloweens & also one of my favorite costumes ever, the two-headed monster, back in 1995.

 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

My favorite haunted attractions - Haunted Happenings in Hartford, CT

 In this post about my favorite Halloween/haunted house attractions, I'm featuring one in my top 3:

Haunted Happenings  in Hartford, CT.

 T H R O W B A C K   T H U R S D A Y

TBH, for me, Haunted Happenings was one of the best things that happened in the 90s.

In the mid-90s, Hartford-area millionaire and philanthropist Arnold Chase got to live every home-haunter's dream - he loved Halloween and had the means to build the haunted attractions of his dreams without limitations. It was a pure labor of love for him. He had done haunts at his own home for about 10 years until the crowds became too large. His first off-home Halloween event that was titled as Haunted Happenings was in an old roller skating rink in East Hartford in October of 1993. 

(I didn't go to that one, so I can't speak to what it was like or how good it was, and internet searching brings up almost nothing about it other than it existed: no pictures, no video, no news articles describing it.)

In October of 1994, also the first year I went, the Haunted Happenings I knew and loved so much was relocated to the former luxury department store G. Fox, an historic 11-storey Art Deco building that was a crown jewel shopping destination for not only Hartford but the entire state. 

As I mentioned above, Chase loved Halloween, had money, and wasn't afraid to spend it. I don't know how much he invested in the attraction, but the entire thing was filled with state-of-the-art animatronics, lighting, special effects, and costuming in an over 100,000 square foot space. Even by today's standards, this shit was amazing. Chase was far and away ahead of his time, and went to conventions like Transworld to find the best effects and people in the industry. He had a Hollywood/theme park caliber attraction in a relatively nowhere location on the east coast. Even today, Haunted Happenings (a name now used by Salem, MA as the title of their general Halloween season events) is ranked as one of the best and most influential haunted attractions to have existed. 

The best and purest creations are the ones done for love and not money, and Haunted Happenings was a prime example. Chase took a personal interest in how the attraction was planned & built, and worked on some of the construction himself, as he had a talent for electronics. He didn't intend to make a profit from his event, instead using the attraction as a fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association, a cause near and dear to him as he and at least one of his children were diabetic. He also was one of the first haunt attractions to also offer a Christmas/holiday themed attraction the Nov/Dec after his Halloween event.

And the love & enthusiasm he poured into Haunted Happenings was obvious in the sheer explosion of attendees that came out to see it. My first time seeing it was in October of 1994, its first year in Hartford. It was early in the month, and my friends and I hardly had to wait in line to get in. Each time we went after that, however, there was a multiple-hour wait. (If only we had the contemporary timed-ticket admission system back then...) And of course, the info about the haunt was all word of mouth, no internet and social media as we know them today. It was just that amazing. 

Here's some of the things I remember most about the experience:

When you arrive, your journey began queuing up outside. As Haunted Happenings got more popular, the line would extend down the whole block and wrap around, so you might be waiting awhile. 

(huge skull hanging on the side of the building's exterior)

Once you make it into the building, you find yourself in a wide open area with massive pillars, the remnants of G. Fox's glory days. It has that odd, eerie feeling of an abandoned building, even though there's a lot of activity bustling around you. Rumors abounded that the building was actually haunted, for real; I could absolutely believe it. When it's finally your turn to enter the haunted house, you're taken down an escalator to a lower floor by your group's tour guide, who remains with you throughout your journey. I don't remember these in the correct order, but some highlights are:

• A "subway" ride with a simulated train - basically, a facade that looks like a subway car, but rocks back & forth to make you feel as though you've gone on a journey
• A mine shaft full of black light with shifting floors and neon glowing orange ceiling supports that moved as though everything was about to collapse on you

• A catacomb with glass floors, showing the restless dead writhing below your feet
• A mad scientist/Dr. Frankenstein-esque character with real Tesla coil, Jacob's Ladder, plasma tubes, and other electric effects, plus realistic monster animatronic
• A cornfield full of scarecrows and animatronic werewolves that would jump at you
• A medieval style torture chamber
• A gory dinner/cooking scene 
• Gas chamber and electric chair execution scenes
• Copious amounts of fog machine fog - ahhh, how I'll always love that scent
• Few, if any licensed characters - everything was original.
• And -- the best ending to a haunted house that I've ever seen. The tour seems to come to an end and your guide brings you to the elevator to bring you back up to ground level. However, once activated, the elevator begins to shake, and the room around you crashes and bangs as though you are plunging down the elevator shaft, the emergency lights are flashing and alarms blaring. Suddenly it stops, and the doors open to reveal a vast red room: you've arrived in HELL with the devil there to greet you. THEN you're finally lead back upstairs, where you can peruse their well-stocked gift and Halloween costume & prop shop before you leave.

There were definitely tons more scenes and details that I'm forgetting, no doubt. Most of our visits there ended in a night of drinks and pub food at the now long-gone Brown Thompson bar & restaurant, which went out about the same year Haunted Happenings did.

Sadly, Haunted Happenings lasted only four years. Halloween 1997 was its last run (also the last of Chase's holiday attractions, too). The city of Hartford had made a deal around that time with a development firm which had plans to renovate the G. Fox building into other businesses. Chase hoped he would eventually be able to continue at another location, but that sadly never came to pass. All of the Haunted Happenings assets were eventually sold at auction. 

Weirdly, a video surfaced last year or so, labeling itself as an auction video, but has (very low res) video that's almost a complete walkthrough of the entire tour - which you can watch below. It also contains TV spots and ads for it at the beginning of the video. Needless to say, I was pretty much beside myself when I first found it - so many great memories.

g fox hartford haunted happenings on Vimeo.

Haunted Happenings gets 10 out of 10 jackos, even tho it took hours to get in.

RIP

[ 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 ]

Sources: 

Hauntworld Forums

Hauntworld

Hartford Courant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Haunted House Association

Wikipedia - G. Fox & Co.

Pumpkin scarecrow puppet

Found this guy again last night while taking out some Halloween stuff - a jack o'lantern scarecrow puppet guy. 

Under his robe, he's held up by a plastic stick with 2 levers to press which extend his arms with the long, spindly fingertips.

His face reminds me a lot of Pumpkinrot's jack o'lantern designs but I feel like this predates Rot's work. I *definitely* had this guy before hearing of Pumpkinrot's site because the first time I saw Rot's pumpkin sentinels I immediately thought of this puppet. I wondered for a long time if there was a connection, especially since I found out that Rot had licensed some of his designs in the past. Could just be a coincidence.

I'm can't remember exactly how/where I acquired him. I thought he still had a tag on him, but I was mistaken. I can't remember much about him other than that I'm pretty sure I purchased him at a Media Play in Enfield in the mid to late 90s. I could be wrong about Media Play but I'm pretty solidly sure I did get him in the late 90s. He has no discernable marks or emblems with any sort of company name or date. Anyone recognize him?

 

Old Halloween newspaper ads

When I was a kid, I thought a local store called Super Card Gallery was one of the coolest places to shop. It is long gone now, and I can't really remember when it opened, or when it went out of business. It apparently was a chain, but I'm not sure if it was national or regional (I'm betting on the latter). I remember it being quite large inside, like department-store size, although my memories may have distorted some of those details. 

As the name suggests, it was a Hallmark-esque shop with greeting cards and whatnot, but it carried so much more. It had tons of party supplies, tons of stickers for the sticker-collection enthusiast (this was the 80s, after all), fun novelty stuff like fake dog poop, disappearing ink, and whoopie cushions, a newsstand with a great selection, gift stuff, and more. 

One of THEE best things about it was their Halloween season. They always seemed to have more stuff than anyone else - it was glorious! Recently, I found a couple of newspaper ads featuring Super Card Gallery. Check out this amazingness!

Hartford Courant, Oct 25, 1987

Hartford Courant, Oct 28, 1988

I've been searching for more information about this place, but so far I can't find much -- just some old newspaper ads like these ones, no photos or anything can be found just using Google. Are/were you from the CT area, and do you remember Super Card Gallery? Let me know in the comments!

Halloween shopping at vintage party store!

     Champion Party Supply in the Interbay neighborhood of Seattle, has been in operation for 80 years. Its website offers a little bit of the company's history, including its various location changes over time. The store managed to successfully survive gentrification: it was forced out of its former location of 20+ years after the building it had been in was purchased by real estate developers, reopened in 2015 and has been at its current spot ever since. Fortunately, their larger floor space and dedicated followers helped the store to thrive, where many small businesses who fall prey to gentrification do not, and Seattle has a LOT of it right now. But, I digress.    

    Because of the pandemic, I haven't been going out to the stores to see all of the Halloween stuff like I normally do each year - but I wanted to make at least a couple of trips. Instead of just going to Michaels or other big box stores, I'm choosing to save my excursions for smaller businesses and the hidden gems they always seem to have. A quick search for 'party supply' on Yelp brought Champion to the top of the list, and since we hadn't been there before, that was our Saturday destination.

    

    We got there around 5PM on Saturday. There is a dedicated parking lot there and plenty of spaces available. Face masks were mandatory, but that's not a problem for us. 

    The staff were friendly and greeted us when we came in. There weren't many shoppers when we were there, but it was great to not have to worry about social distancing.

  

    

    They had lots of Halloween props as well, of course, and one of the staff members mentioned they had two more pallets of stuff on the way. Not much in the way of animatronics, but there's so much other cool stuff, it isn't a letdown.

    One of the BEST things about stores like this is that hang onto the older, semi-vintage stuff that hadn't sold, and I saw quite a few things I recognized as being manufactured in the 90s - like this spider. I had one, possibly two of these. Amazing.

"And the skeletons are..."  "Part of it!"

    I wish we'd gotten there earlier, as one hour was not nearly enough to see everything - they have more costumes there than any other costume supply shop I've ever seen. 

Only a fraction of the costume selection.

    And of course they have a wide array of regular party supplies, too. Overall, a great small business to support that has probably everything you need and more for any party, Halloween or otherwise.

Rest In Power

    Needless to say, I bought a few things and will show off my haul in an upcoming post. You can read more about Champion and its history here.