SPEAKER_04: 0:16

Hi everyone, welcome to a little Halloween bonus from your favorite lonesome ghosts, Kelly and Pete. It probably comes as no surprise to all of you good people out there, but Pete and I often have more to say about a topic than seems reasonable to try and fit, you know, into our already lengthy podcasts. So, as your humble editor, I have to murder a lot of babies. Oh, stop, it's a figure of speech. And sometimes, as with our not scary farm episode, the babies I murder are really juicy. That might have been too far. Now, he won't toot his own horn, but I will. My podcast partner Pete has spent a significant portion of his life both creating and studying the history of haunted houses. And this is a segment from the current episode where he goes deep into their early history, as well as in discussing the influence of Japanese Bhutto and Obakiashiki. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. Now, before we launch into it though, could I ask you a favor? I know you hear this over and over, but we'd love to get more people on the low-down bandwagon. Low down, lowrai, low whatever. We'd love to get more people to listen. And the only way this kind of show spreads is by word of mouth and online reviews. It's the only way to get a signal through the noise. Would you mind helping us out and reviewing the show on iTunes or Spotify or, you know, wherever you get your podcasts from, and maybe some of the places you don't get your podcasts from. Or maybe telling some friends about it. It would mean a heck of a lot to us. We'd really appreciate it. And now, sit back, relax, and join us for Pete's Haunted House History.

SPEAKER_00: 2:04

This is the Yes, that they were the first to really tackle it. They were not the first haunted house. Nope. That honor goes to a British walkthrough in the 1930s. Tell me about that. There was a haunt in Great Britain that was basically a fun house where they decided to add ghosts and a few other things, and it was just actors in this kind of darkened maze. Uh-huh. And it was right next to a helter-skelter slide.

SPEAKER_04: 2:33

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 2:34

So very British. Yeah. Very, very British. It was called the, you know, it was like a haunted castle or something like that. Very, you know, very, very simple. It was not anything major, but that was in the 1930s. Wow. So as far as the actual like haunt approach, that's the 1930s. Yeah. And then by the 40s, 30s and 40s, you had this phenomenon that were called spook shows. And spook shows, what they were, it was a way for movie theaters and vaudeville circuits to make some extra money during downtime.

SPEAKER_01: 3:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 3:05

When when theaters were not getting motion pictures fast enough or they were suffering financially, they would throw a spook show. Yeah. And what that entailed, uh, sometimes it would involve a movie, like some sort of monster movie, Frankenstein, Wolfman, whatever. Yeah. But nine times out of ten, it would feature a uh magician. And these were spook show racket guys. And a lot of them, this is all they did. They did not do legitimate magic shows, you know, for birthdays or in Vegas or anything. That they went town to town. Uh, they would send movie trailers to movie theaters ahead of them saying, Come and see fabulous Karakum, and Karakum will be performing his Chamber of Terror. And you would go, I'm in. Yeah. See Francisco performing the crawling thing. You know, and you had very famous guys like Neff, uh, Jackrabbit Slim, all these guys who were doing spook shows. And there was an element of it where they would do bizarre magic, usually involving cutting somebody in half, yeah, decapitating them, putting through a buzzsaw. Yeah. They would usually have some sort of gimmick or promotional gimmick of somebody buried alive or a monster that would come out and attack you. But the big thing that spook shows were known for were these blackout seances.

SPEAKER_03: 4:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 4:18

And they were playing around with luminescent paint at this point. They were playing with glow in the dark paint, which was fairly new. They would make ghosts appear, or they would use chemical effects to make the ghost of James Dean appears in the theater right in front of your very eyes. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Yeah. And that would be the show. And they would usually start around midnight. So it would run from midnight to 2 a.m. And these things would be packed. There are photographs of audiences, and they surround the block of these theaters. I'd go crammed in. Yeah. I I and it's a weird art form. And there was a guy whose name was William Morris. And William Morris is important here because William started off as a spook show magician. Yeah. I think he ran Dr. Terror's House of or Dr. Evil's House of Terror or Dr. Terror's House of Evil. I can't remember which one right now. I'm sure we'll have an air. Terror, there's evil. Terror's evil. It's probably 3D. Whatever. He was this kind of squishy guy from Tennessee, right? You know, like, but he was phenomenal. And he started doing things with his blackout with his spook shows and his blackout seances where he'd make the audience get up and walk around in the back parts of the theater and they would have scenes. So you would go backstage and see like a mad scientist dissecting somebody or a gorilla in a cage, and the gorilla would get out and attack people.

SPEAKER_04: 5:38

Um yeah, I experienced one of those because they used to when I was growing up, they still had sideshows at the Texas State Fair. And they they had one of those, like the woman turning into a gorilla, and the gorilla escapes and chases you out of the theater.

SPEAKER_00: 5:54

It's great fun. Yeah, that effect actually goes all the way back to the 1890s. Wow. And it that's it's related to the Pepper's ghosts. It's it's an effect called the Blue Room. And we talked about that before. We did, yeah. Um, but it's a very similar mechanism to do that. And those were actually tied to the Scopes Monkey trial. It was all like a commentary. They were very popular in in the the below the uh Mason Nixon line. Yeah. Because it was, you know, where the Scopes Monkey trial. Yeah, a lot of sideshows back then were like very focused on like abortion or you know, the miracle of birth, which is actually an excuse to see a naked woman.

SPEAKER_04: 6:28

Right, or anti-evolution.

SPEAKER_00: 6:30

Or anti-evolution or you know, see the see the car of the man who like killed three people because he was drunk, you know, right, yeah. And hit it with a baseball bat or whatever, you know, that kind of stuff. But William Morris was actually pretty interesting because he said, Well, wait a minute, why do I have to rent a theater anymore? Like the spook shows really started dying out right near around 1969. Yeah. And the reason is that movies were actually getting so good that the theaters weren't having problems put packing them in anymore.

SPEAKER_04: 7:02

Yeah, and there was probably so mu many more movies available that there was plenty of programming.

SPEAKER_00: 7:07

Yeah, the the economics of it was a uh a lawsuit against Paramount. Uh and it was a class action lawsuit that basically was a monopoly buster because most pr movie production companies owned the theaters. So that's why you will occasionally still to this day you'll see a movie theater that says The Paramount or The Fox, right? Or you know, Warner's Cinema, you know, that kind of thing. It's because that they were originally erected by the production company. Right. And they wouldn't let anybody else's movies in those theaters. And now that's illegal. Now that's a monopoly. Yeah, it's because of that lawsuit that that that broke down, and it affected so many different things. That was one of the big steps that almost that killed the old Hollywood system. Yeah. And one of the byproducts was Spook Show started to die out. Right. But you had all these showmen who had all these monster masks and buzzsaws and all these gags, and you actually started seeing people like William Morris say, We can continue doing this. Yeah. Just find an empty space. So you would find an empty retail spot or an old derelict house, you take it over, and you would put together a haunted house. Yeah. And Morris got so good at this. He actually wrote a book that got me started with that when I was five years old. It's the reason I did that is because of his book. It's called How to Design and Build a Financially Successful Haunted House. Right. And it is a step-by-step guide. It's very simplistic.

SPEAKER_04: 8:34

Yeah, I'm I'm assuming it was probably useful for m mostly amateur haunted houses.

SPEAKER_00: 8:40

Right. It's a great place to start, especially if you're a kid trying to figure this stuff out. But ultimately, it is for um kids, you know, or or tea preteens, like middle schoolers.

SPEAKER_03: 8:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:51

It's about that level of reading, but the ideas in it. There was an illustrator named David Lady, who is still around. He actually does his own podcast about uh monster masks. Uh huh. But he was the illustrator of that of that book. Right. And the and the the drawings are really, really charming. Like it just has this wonderful look. Uh, and he goes through uh both Morris and Lady go through illustrating and describing all these different haunted house prototype rooms. Yeah. There's the bad scientist lab, there's the pit in the pendulum gag, and it shows you how to make a fake body so that the pendulum blade can go through the back of the body. Oh, neat. All the stuff, the black zoo gag. Yep. And a lot of these gags are old carney, and uh, you know, the the head on the sword routine, all that kind of stuff is there. And they explain how it works. And when you're a kid, you're just like, this is the secrets of the universe.

SPEAKER_04: 9:41

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:42

You've been led into a totally secret society. Right. Now, while when this was happening, something else happened on the other side of the Pacific. Yeah. Uh the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Oh, yeah. Okay. And that was the end of World War II. Yes. And you that caused a tremendous trauma to the Japanese people. Yeah. Regardless of how you believe uh what what you believe in, etc. Yes, the Pacific conflict was tough for everybody. It caused a tremendous amount of trauma. Uh in my opinion, Japan is the one and only society that can truly be classified as post-apocalyptic.

SPEAKER_04: 10:20

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 10:21

Because it was brought to the absolute brink and then came back and flourished. Yeah. And by our standards, a lot of us go uh in the West, like, well, that tradition's a little weird, or that business proc practice is kind of odd to me. And not to sound too weird about it, but it's like, yeah, because they're actually thinking, how do we make our society better for where it was when everybody got killed? Yeah. And let's let's actually if we're gonna have to start all over, let's actually make it something that we want and something that's beneficial. Right. So kudos to them for that. That's no, there's no bashing that at all. Yeah. But another art form, two art forms started in Japan because of the bombing of Hiroshima, especially. Yeah. One is a dance medium that's based loosely off of traditional flower flower dancing and um kabuki, uh-huh. But it's an extension of trauma.

SPEAKER_04: 11:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 11:18

And it's called uh uh Bhutto. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm familiar with that. Bhutto Dancing was founded by two different guys roughly about the same time. Um I cannot remember their name specifically, because I would just butcher their Japanese names, and I don't want to do that because I have a tremendous respect for them in their art form. But they founded two different schools of thought. One was Bhutto dancing isn't as the deepest expression of trauma and pain and just raw emotion personified. And and usually Bhutto dancers are painted very stark white colors, yeah, and they're widely distorted expressions on their faces and contorting their bodies in very strange ways. Right. The other person who founded Bhutto uh took it a different direction where he said it was actually closer to a seance in which you were allowing elemental forces or spirits that have not been alive for some time to return to earth through a body. And when you're seeing their dance, there it's the spirit trying to operate the body again. Yeah. And not 100% knowing how to do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:26

And and reacting badly to the like death hurts, like death is weird. I'm back. Like, how do I deal with this? And it's disturbing. It was disturbing for the Japanese people, it's disturbing for Western eyes. Right. I find Bhutto to be absolutely fascinating. I love Bhutto dancing.

SPEAKER_03: 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:42

And a lot of acting techniques that are used in haunted houses, even in the West, are derived from the teachings of these Bhutto masters. Okay. If ever you go to a haunted house and you see the typical character of the spooky dolly character, right? It's the girl, she's in some sort of like pigtail outfit, but she's got a cracked mask or she's got some spooky makeup, and she comes at you with her head with her body kind of twitching and her head kind of twitches the side, those are Bhutto maneuvers. Hmm, interesting. The way that that is presented. And a lot of haunt actors, usually the base paint of their face paint is white, black, and red. That's all comes from Bhutto.

SPEAKER_04: 13:22

Oh, that's really cool. That's interesting. Yeah, so we and we see a lot of that kind of move movement in modern horror films, too.

SPEAKER_00: 13:28

100%. If you see Silent Hill, you watch The Room of Nurses and they're they're moving. Yeah. Some of them were actually trained in Bhutto. Right. So that's one art form start in Japan. The other one is an art form uh called Obakiyashiki. And Obakiyashiki literally means ghost house. And they were usually set up in and they still exist today.

SPEAKER_03: 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:52

Uh they're everywhere. They're very, very popular in Japan.

SPEAKER_03: 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:55

And you go in and you experience a ghost story. Right. And it's interactive because you're going from room to room. Yeah. And usually the figures are a little on the cheesy side, but there's a lot of gore.

SPEAKER_03: 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:06

Because a lot of Japanese ghost stories are very gory. Yes. There's one where there's a woman who was poisoned, but it didn't quite kill her instantly. It gave her a slow death, so her hair fell out in bloody clumps and her eyes started to bug out of her skull in those horrible ways. And then she gave birth to a child and she murdered the child before she died. And so she and her child are a ghost that tortures the samurai who wronged her. It's a very, I forget the name, it's very, very famous. Yeah. Um, but that's represented. And over time they have evolved. Uh so like today there are zombie Obakiashikis. Okay. Big one in a theme park over there that is a three or four-story hospital that you go through. Oh, jeez. And it's in this happy, happy theme park, and you go through this gate and it's like this derelict hospital. And it is creepy. Apparently, this the experience is very, very unsettling.

SPEAKER_04: 14:56

You know, there's I don't know how related this is, but you know, in in Tokyo Disneyland for a long time, they had uh uh like horror maze. Yes. In in the middle of it, and it kind of c seemed black cauldron themed, which is fascinating.

SPEAKER_00: 15:10

That's as close as you could get Obakiashiki, because yeah, I mean that's apart from doing because like that's the creepiest of ghost stories that they've got. Yeah. Like you can't do lonesome ghosts. Right, no, it's like you know that's a little silly, yeah, you know. But um but yeah, so Obakiyashiki is actually used almost as a psychological treatment by the citizens of Japan.

SPEAKER_04: 15:31

Usually they go exposure therapy for trauma.

SPEAKER_00: 15:35

Well, sort of, yeah, or or at least, if nothing else, a pressure valve for their pent-up emotions. So, like, you know, the the the old adage of the squeaky nail in the floor gets nailed down.

SPEAKER_03: 15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:46

So like at this point, you could just let it all hang out. And whenever you see Japanese patrons of uh Obakiyashiki, they usually come out smiling, giggling, and laughing and feeling like a million bucks.

SPEAKER_03: 15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:59

It's they just let it out. Yeah. And it was Walt Disney who actually saw some Obakiashiki. Oh. And he goes, I don't want that in the Haunted Mansion. Oh, yeah. I don't want it super gore. Like he made that like a a dictum. Like he was talking to uh the guys who are designing the haunted mansions like I don't want that.

SPEAKER_03: 16:18

Yeah, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:19

Okay, so you've got all those influences. All I'm I'm I'm totally I'm working on a book about the history of this, so I really kind of know a lot of this this garbage.

SPEAKER_03: 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:28

Uh but it really kicks in in the early 70s. Right. There are haunted houses already, they do exist. And most of them are amateur. A lot of them are thrown on by organizations like the YMCA, the JCs. Yeah. There are even churches that are putting on haunted houses.

SPEAKER_04: 16:45

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Ups. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at boardwalktimes.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I at Lowdown on the Plus Up on Blue Sky, Mastodon, Instagram, and all the other socials. Or you can send us a message directly at commons at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.