Chilling, Thrilling
The LP in this illustration is clearly one of the technological ancestors of AGENT STOKER. Back in the 60s, Disney was obviously looking for every way possible to popularize the attractions at their amazing theme park. And the Haunted Mansion was one of the most visionary rides at Disneyland, anticipating the current autumnal rush of Halloween immersive activities by decades. But air travel was still something of a rarity for most families back then, and so most people couldn’t actually make it out to Anaheim. Until that problem could be ameliorated by the opening of Florida’s DisneyWorld, the Mouse empire had to rely on media to spread the word about the marvels they had constructed.
(Side note: that use of the Mouse empire has its own lineage. In the 90s, we heard an executive at Disney say that yeah, the studio maybe could pay better, but the unironic consolation was “but you’re working for the Mouse.”)
ABC premiered a show called DISNEYLAND which then evolved into DISNEY’S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR on NBC. This was a Sunday night attraction for millions of homes. But the weekly show didn’t really have a great way to dramatize many of its rides in scripted adventures. They did manage stories like Davy Crockett which had a synergy with the Adventureland rides. But there wasn’t the budget or even the culture to create horror on TV for a family audience. So the Haunted Mansion wasn’t really on TV.
Luckily for us all, Disney aimed at squeezing out every part of the lemon. They had Big Little Books, they had comic books, they had coloring books — and yes, they had LPs.
This record album, CHILLING, THRILLING SOUNDS OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE, might have seemed like a longshot. Were they really going to fill a whole LP with sound effects of screams, shrieks, creaking doors, howling winds, and the like?
But in an era when there really wasn’t much genre entertainment available for kids beyond comic books and the short-lived BATMAN TV series, this album was a kind of breakthrough. You could play it while reading eerie short story collections like ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HAUNTED HOUSEFUL. You could put it on the turntable when you had your pals over, after the “Creature Feature” matinee ended. You could spin it to give yourself goosebumps during a thunderstorm (as long as the power didn’t cut out!)
A paranormal audio thriller like AGENT STOKER owes a huge debt to this tradition. Where would we be without the bizarre, uncanny sound effects that make Stoker’s world come to life? We are blessed to have an amazing award-winning sound designer, Patrick Hogan, who absolutely loves to think about what can be done with only sound. And we continue to challenge him with the upcoming Season Five — in which characters will live and die in unprecedented fashion, and come back in methods they could never dared to dream! It’s a riot to write something like “a whoosh of energy as Agent Stoker slips back into the fourth dimension” and wait to see how Patrick will sculpt an audio reality for such a stage direction.
At this writing, all the scripts for Season Five have been finished, and we’re getting our ducks in a row to start recording. And as we move into the autumn country again, it feels right to celebrate our sonic forebears like CHILLING, THRILLING SOUNDS OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE. Let’s all SCREAM!!!!!