TELLER AND THE TALE, THE: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (TV)
Summary
An anthology program featuring famous guests recounting their favorite stories and folk tales, hosted by Sally Struthers.
At the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York, writer and storyteller Jackie Torrence recites “The Tale of the Golden Arm,” involving a woman who owned an arm made out of solid gold, her prized possession. The woman requests that she be buried with the arm upon her death, but instead her husband wants to sell the arm and become rich. He is soon assaulted by a supernatural wind seemingly crying out for the arm, and tries to lock himself in a closet to let it pass. However, the man is attacked by the ghost of his wife, who retrieves the arm and runs off into the night. Next, musician David Holt recounts the story of “Wily and the Hairy Man,” about a young boy who runs afoul of a monster while chopping wood in a swamp. His hunting dogs manage to run the monster off, but the next day the boy tricks the monster into transforming into a small opossum and throwing it into the river in a sack, but the monster returns and the boy tricks him into unleashing his dogs once again, chasing him away. That night, the boy and his mother concoct a scheme to throw off the monster; he arrives to kill the boy but he is tricked and run off once again, this time never to return.
Next, storyteller Jay O’Callahan relates the story of “Old Man Danniker,” about Halloween in the small town of Corydon, Indiana. Two children go up to his house on Halloween night on a dare, and pass through a cornfield to get there. Danniker frightens the children by disguising himself as a scarecrow and leaping out at them. They run into his house, where his wife invites them inside. Danniker wants to continue going around scaring people, but his wife doesn’t let him. She passes away and he decides to go through with his dream of frightening people, and prepares for the following Halloween. He has a boy take a photograph of him with a pumpkin on his head, holding a sign proclaiming him dead. On Halloween night a crowd goes to visit Danniker and suddenly his house bursts into flame. The crowd discovers a gravestone marked with Danniker’s name and dig it up, revealing that the casket contains a scarecrow bearing Danniker’s likeness. No one can locate his body, but on the next Halloween carved pumpkins mysteriously appear throughout town, and a young girl has an encounter with what appears to be Danniker’s ghost.
Torrence tells the story of “Tillie,” a young girl living in a log cabin. The cabin is lit with candles each night, but not upstairs where Tillie sleeps, which concerns her due to her fear of the dark. One night she has trouble getting to sleep and hears a mysterious voice claiming that it is coming up the stairs for her. It approaches slowly, and Tillie becomes frightened. With no escape route, Tillie calls out to her parents, but is too frightened to shout for them. The voice finally reaches her room, but it turns out that the entire thing was all in Tillie’s imagination. Next is a segment about a supposedly real haunted locations, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, New York, and the work of paranormal investigator Hans Holzer. Holzer talks about death of the house’s owner in 1832, apparently orchestrated by his wife; their ghosts are said to haunt the mansion. Finally, Vincent Price narrates the classic horror poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, about a man confronted by a talking bird who attempts to gain information about the spirit of his dead lover. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: N/A
- DATE:
- RUNNING TIME: 0:45:46
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:04346
- GENRE: Specials
- SUBJECT HEADING: Specials
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Nelson Davis … Executive Producer
- William H. Smith … Executive Producer
- Susan Galvin-McElroy … Producer
- Tom Townsend … Director
- Bob McElroy … Director
- Andree Lauterbach … Writer
- Sally Struthers … Host
- Jackie Torrence … Narrator, Guest
- David Holt … Narrator, Guest
- Jay O'Callahan … Narrator, Guest
- Vincent Price … Narrator, Guest
- Hans Holzer … Guest
- Edgar Allan Poe