Great Ghost Tales

Having spent a great deal of time in the woods with my parents camping this performance was one of the most unforgettable shows I have ever watched. I can still see the man standing in the campfire trying to explain to his friends he is OK and nothing is wrong, when the wendigo flies over and calls him; "Oh my burning feet of fire". I would love to see it as an adult although I know it was performed live with little chance of any recording. I was 10 at the time it aired. The actors were unknown and to my best recollection I have not seen them in other works. This was one show in a series of great ghost tales we watched regularly. I can recall one other show as vividly Room 13 which explained why hotels/motels do not have a room thirteen and a numbered thirteenth floor.

I was but a lad of 9 years when this series was broadcast. The individual episodes were uneven in quality, but the best (including "Number 13," "The Wendigo" and "Mr. Arcularis") gave me delightful nightmares. They were live broadcasts and at their best had a stark, riveting quality. The source materials included classic stories by Poe, Algernon Blackwood and other masters of horror. In fact, I was introduced to dark fantasy literature through TV shows like this and "Thriller." It would be great if someone could issue these on DVD or video, because their subtlety would be a revelation and an object lesson for those viewers used to the overly-explicit horror of recent decades.

Strange to think these live TV shows are now lost (I've read that taped copies of two unnamed episodes were discovered a few years ago). I must have been only ten or eleven when I saw "The Monkey's Paw" and "Room 13". One show, the name of which I don't remember, took place aboard the Titanic and was not particularly scary (although I can remember parts of it, so it must have impressed me in some way). I know the others scared the stuffing out of me. I can still vividly remember the scene in "The Monkey's Paw" when the moonlight shadow of the boy who was mangled by farm machinery ripples across the front of his father's old house, or the hellish fate that awaited the unlucky hotel guest who stumbled into the supposedly non-existent "Room 13." I would love to view those shows again just to see if they live up to my childhood memories. Alas, they likely only exist in the minds and imaginations of those who saw them in 1961.

I watched this show when I was 10 (I wasn't allowed to watch it, but my mom was at work so...). One episode concerned a mirror that held a lot more than one's reflection. For years afterwards I couldn't look in a mirror without real fear & a sense of dread. And The Monkey's Paw -- terrifying! I would love to watch them again & see if they were truly as scary as I remember. Maybe being "live" made them seem more real.

This show was remarkably similar to Way Out which aired on CBS from 3/31/61 to 7/14/61. They both were televised live on video in New York City. They focused on the ghostly, the unexplainable, the supernatural. Just as Way Out was short lived with 14 episodes so was Great Ghost Tales with 12 episodes. Great Ghost Tales aired on NBC from 7/6/61 to 9/21/61.

Because both were short lived and have become obscure with the passing of time, I doubt if any video company will place them on market to the public. Maybe CBS and NBC could work out a deal with people like myself and others whose heart was big over the episodes of Way Out and Great Ghost Tales.