Episode #23: Halloween Spooktacular

Jennifer loves prowling around and researching old stuff, so it’s only natural—or should we say SUPERnatural —that she would run into a ghost story now and then.  Tonight she takes us on a tour of the murkier regions of Circa19xx Land to meet a few of their less corporeal inhabitants.  

 Tonight's itinerary:

• We take a spin around the phantom ballroom at the Overlook Hotel (you know how Jennifer loves a good ballroom);
• Jennifer then takes us to the creepiest haunted mansion she has actually been to—right near her own hometown;
• We set sail on a majestic, and notoriously haunted, art deco gem: the Queen Mary; and
• We celebrate the season with the Addams Family and get some home decor inspiration from their eccentric creator.

 Jennifer presents a variety of songs (don't be alarmed; she isn't doing the singing) and other spooky novelties as well.

 We wrap up in the Vintage Century Reading Room with the conclusion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, "The Cut Glass Bowl."

Light your candle and settle in for the night.  This one comes at your request.  It's a Halloween Spooktacular, Circa Sunday Night Style!

To Explore
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado
Pics from the Vaile Mansion
Really Excellent Full Tour of Vaile Mansion with Tour Guides
Queen Mary Short History Video
Astonishing Legends Podcast on the Queen Mary
Charles Addams Illustrations:
~ Miss Universe
~ Movie Scream
~ Addams Family
Halloween with the Addams Family (Full Episode)

Circa 19xx Land
Follow Jennifer on Instagram!
Circa19xx.com
Meet Jennifer

Transcript

SCRIPT:  Episode #23, Circa Sunday Night Spooktacular

COLD OPEN

You’ve asked for it—you’ve got it.  Circa Sunday Night is getting into the Halloween Spirit—oh, see what I did there?  Halloween Spirit.  Kinda clever, huh?

Anyway, we love prowling around old stuff, so it’s only natural—or should I say SUPERnatural—that we would run into a ghost or two now once in a while.

I haven’t actually recorded tonight’s show yet, but I feel a “longish” episode coming on.  There’s a lot of ground to cover.  

·       UP first we’ll take a spin around a phantom ballroom at the Overlook Hotel—you KNOW how I love a good ballroom.

·       Then we’re going to visit the creepiest haunted mansion I’ve ever actually been to—right here near my own hometown.

·       We set sail on the majestic—and now entirely empty—Queen Mary.

·       AND we celebrate the season with a motley crew right out of Circa 19xx Land:  The Addams Family.  There’s more to their history than you know.

There’s all kinds of other curiosities and novelties thrown in the mix as well.

Enough with the preliminaries!  This is a Halloween Spooktacular, and it’s time to get the party started.  Q the theme song.

Hello, there.  Greetings to you.  Fall is..sort of…in the air here in Kansas City.  We’ve had a warm autumn…which I love, by the way. I know, I know, everybody is ready for sweater weather—except for me.  I’m ready for pool weather.  Yeah, I’m always ready for pool weather.  But I think I’m alone in that way of thinking.

What have you been up to?  I feel like it’s been a long while since we’ve had a little chat.  My fault…I’m late on this episode.  We’re a little group here in Circa 19xx Land, but even so, I hate to mess up our schedule by not posting on time.  Listen, I follow podcasts too, and when I’m all geared up for a new episode and there isn’t one, that’s really frustrating.  So I really hate doing that to my little audience.  Here’s my excuse:  I’ve been learning Instagram, and like all social meeting, it is a really time-consumer.

I’ve talked on this show before how much I dislike social media.  It’s time consuming, it’s boring, and honestly—and maybe this is truly the heart of the matter right here—I have never been able to attract any sort of following on social media.  My posts just go nowhere, very few likes, no community engagement.  Now, it’s true, I don’t really put forth an enormous amount of effort.  I work a full time job in addition to producing this podcast, so there’s only so much time I can put into it.  But also, my interests may not be particularly exciting to other people.  And, of course, I’m an extreme introvert.  Can an extreme introvert with niche interests make it big on social media?  I’m not sure, but it seems unlikely.  And honestly, that’s OK with me.

So…why have I resurrected my Instagram Account after being off Instagram for over 2 years?  Well, I read an article that was a total downer.  It was about podcasting, and how the podcast space is so crowded with big names and high-dollar production values that the window of opportunity for small-time podcasters to attract listeners has closed.  It’s too late to break in.  Now, I’ve been doing Circa Sunday Night for about 2 years now, and growth has been really slow and very small.  In a way, I like that.  I like the fact that we’re a little group—that this is a “secret show,” an obscure little outpost in the universe of digital entertainment.  At the same time, it’s easy to lose listeners, and I do—especially because I post irratically.  When you need something to listen to, it’s easy to go somewhere else, and I totally get that.   So more than anything, I just want to maintain our little group.

This same article talked about the criticality of social media, that if you are a podcaster without some sort of social media presence, forget it; you’re through.  I took down my Facebook account several months ago, but I did hang onto my Instagram account—though I hadn’t been active on there for years.  I decided to give it another try.  Well, things on Instagram have changed in the interim, so I’ve been re-learning it.  And, I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but it’s been sort of fun.

So, if you like this little show, and are not embarrassed to admit it, would you do me a big favor and follow me on Instagram?  There’s a link to my account in the show notes.  And my handle is Circa19xx_Jennifer.  I’m just posting a bunch of random stuff out there about my life or things I like or things that I find inspiring.  Oh, and if you want to see what I look like, you can check that out, too.  I always like to see what my favorite podcasters look like—they almost never match up to the image I’ve constructed of them in my mind. 

Also, and this is a really BIG ask:  would you mind leaving Circa Sunday Night a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts?  I never like asking that because I’m not really so sure this is a five-star show.  But also because your job as a listener is just to relax, not to market MY little hobby.  It’s more important to me that you come on by and hang out than it is to give the show a rating, but it does help tremendously.  If you wouldn’t mind, I would really appreciate it.  In return, I’ll try to continually improve the show and make it worth your while.

Enough of all that.  How about Halloween?  That’s our focus tonight.  Are you really big into Halloween?  According to USA Today, US consumers are expected to spend a record $10 Billion dollars on Halloween stuff this year.  What???  It’s true.  That includes the candy, decorations, costumes, and “experiences.”  What are Halloween experiences?  Oh, I guess like haunted attractions and parties, or whatever.  This is a huge increase of $2 billion dollars in 2020.  

Wow.  Let me tally up how much I’m spending…hmmm…carry the one…uh…grand total of…zero.  Yeah, that’s right, I don’t spend anything on Halloween.  Oh, wait, I do buy my dad a birthday present.  His birthday is on Halloween.  But I don’t even buy candy, because I’m never home on Halloween.  I’m always with family celebrating my Dad’s birthday.  I probably haven’t been home on Halloween in 20 years.  

What about you?  Do you go all out?  Well, I have good news for you.  You don’t have to spend anything tonight.  We’re going to have a little “Halloween experience” that is totally free.  How about that?

Oh, I almost forgot.  Let’s talk candles.  I have the perfect candle for tonight’s show.  It’s from Bath and Body Works and it’s called “Marshmallow Fireside.”  What does this smell like?  Hmmmm, I’m not sure.  I guess a campfire?  I’m not sure.  I don’t smell marshmallows, exactly.  It is a pleasant scent.  I’ll be honest, I picked it primarily because of the name.  It was too perfect.  This was actually one candle in a big haul I came home with a couple of weeks ago.  If you’d like to see the whole collection, you can go out to my Instagram account and check out a little candle haul video I put out there.  But this candle sort of sets the stage for our show tonight because we’re going to sit around the metaphorical campfire and tell ghost stories. 

We’re going to take a little tour of spooky places in the darker regions of Circa 19xx Land, beginning with a sojourn to 1921.  Now, you’ll need to dress up for our first stop. Gentlemen, black tie is required.  Ladies, grab your tiaras.  We’re heading to the Overlook Hotel, where a ball is already in progress.  The dance floor’s going to be crowded, and everyone there is young, and beautiful…and dead.

[Time Machine sounds]

[Song: “Midnight, the Stars, and You” by Ray Noble and his Orchestra]

That was Ray Noble and his Orchestra with, “Midnight, the Stars, and You,” with vocals by Al Bowlly.  This recording is actually from 1934, and is just one of many Ray Noble songs in my personal collection.  I love Ray Noble, and I have played his music on the show before.  In fact, “Close Your Eyes,” the theme song for the Vintage Century Ready Room, is Ray and Al.  

Anyway, “Midnight, the Stars, and You,” is a beautiful, catchy song, isn’t it?  But, of course, just about everyone knows that song from the incredibly eerie concluding scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 1981 film The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.  If you recall, the story took place in the isolated, empty, and haunted Overlook Hotel, and at the film’s conclusion the camera slowly zooms into a photo of a 1921 ball. Spoiler alert:  in that picture, impossibly, we see Jack Torrance front and center.  “Impossible,” because he was the main character in the story that took place in the 1980s.  There’s no way he could have attended a 1921 ball.  In that shot we, the viewer, float slowly to that picture, zooming into it, and as we do, Midnight, the Stars and You is playing softly in the background, at a great distance, muffled by the passage of time.  That’s a memorable scene.

The backstory of the fictional “Overlook Hotel,” is pretty well known, and you have likely heard it before. But it’s so fascinating that I want to revisit it here.  The Overlook was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.  It was built in 1909 by Freelan Oscar Stanley, the co-founder of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, which built steam-powered automobiles.  Now, when I read that, I thought “Oh!  The Stanley Steamer guy!”  No, not him.  The Stanley Steemer company—Steemer—is a carpet cleaning company that was founded in 1947 by someone else entirely.  

Anyway, Stephen King stayed one night at the Stanley Hotel when inspiration struck.  Here’s the story as written in Wikipedia:

In 1974, during their brief residency in Boulder, Colorado, horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent one night at the Stanley Hotel. The visit is known entirely through interviews given by King in which he presents differing narratives of the experience. On the advisement of locals who suggested a resort hotel located in Estes Park, an hour's drive away to the north, Stephen and Tabitha King found themselves checking in at the Stanley Hotel just as its other guests were checking out, because the hotel was shutting down for the winter season. After checking in and after Tabitha went to bed, King roamed the halls and went down to the hotel bar, where drinks were served by a bartender named Grady. As he returned to his room, numbered 217, his imagination was fired up by the hotel's remote location, its grand size, and its eerie desolation. And when King went into the bathroom and pulled back the pink curtain for the old claw-footed tub, he thought, 'What if somebody died here? At that moment, he recalled, “I knew I had a book.'"

In a 1977 interview by the Literary Guild, King recounted that when they arrived, the hotel was just getting ready to close for the season, and they found ourselves the only guests in the place—with all those long, empty corridors." King and his wife were served dinner in an empty dining room accompanied by canned orchestral music: "Except for our table,” he explained, “all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book in my mind." In yet another retelling, King said "I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of The Shining firmly set in my mind.”

Clearly, the Stanley made quite an impression.  Now, that last scene in the film—the one I described a moment ago with the photo of Jack Torrance at that 1921 ball—is quite bizarre and one of endless speculation.  What is he doing there?  It’s never explained in the film itself.  Kubrick said in an interview that Jack was reincarnated.  Honestly, I think that’s a pretty unsatisfying explanation.  Here’s one I think is more interesting, and this is from a website called The Take:

One theory is that the photo is effectively a collage of all the guests the hotel has “claimed” over the years - when Jack dies, his spirit gets absorbed into the photo, and thus into the hotel’s history.

That’s a fascinating interpretation.  I’m going to go with that one.

OK, so what about the real Stanley Hotel?  Is it haunted?  Well, I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard that they have really played up the tie-in to The Shining.  In fact, coming up later this month is their annual “Shining Ball.”  Now, wouldn’t that be something?  That would definitely be one of those “Experiences” that would make a big impact on your Halloween budget for sure.  

Someone told me that when they stayed there they played The Shining on a 24 hour loop on the in-room resort tv—which is a bit much.  The hotel itself claims to be haunted, and ghost hunter show teams have done investigations there.  The fourth floor is supposed to be particularly active, so the hotel sells Ghost Adventure packages which include a room on that floor.  I did a quick check on the Internet to see if anyone had ever taken a picture of ghosts there, and yes, there are many.  I’ll let you make your own decision as to whether they are real or not.

[Muffled music in background].

I would love to go to the Stanley because it looks beautiful—not because of ghosts.  I’m not into ghost hunting.  I do love a good ghost story.  But you know, I always think its curious that people will go to great lengths and expense to travel to locations where there’s said to be a lot of paranormal activity, and they’ll invest in all this equipment, and they’ll even try to talk to spirits, which is a terrible idea.  But I wonder how many of those folks on those shows ever just sit down and talk to God.  I don’t know.  Maybe they do. But, honestly, in looking at the reviews for the Stanley Hotel online, their pretty mixed.  Some of the bad reviews cite understaffing and “dated rooms.”  Well, it is a historic hotel, so not sure if “dated rooms” is a good thing or a bad thing.  A lot of the reviews mention that the price is not worth the value, so not sure that one is going to make it onto my list of must-sees.

Ok, so that wraps up our exploration of the Stanley/Overlook Hotel. So many spooky places to visit, so little time!

[Halloween Poem 1]

Now we’re off to my neck of the woods—Independence, Missouri, a little town near my own hometown of Kansas City—to a real life haunted mansion that I have actually been to…a few times.  We’re going to step into the parlour of Vaile Mansion, a stunning historic house museum that really MUST be haunted. Having been there, I can tell you that it has a vibe about it that is just eerie.  Now, Vaile Mansion is beyond the Southern Border of Circa 19xx Land.  We trekking into the Victorian era for this one.  This stunning mansion was built in 1881, and tragedy followed soon after.

Vaile Mansion is literally hauntingly beautiful.  When you pass through the little gate to the house from the sidewalk, it sends a chill down your spine even in the middle of the day.  I mean, if ever there was a classic haunted mansion, the Vaile is it.  I’ve always thought the name—Vaile Mansion—is so perfect, too, as it’s said to be a hotbed of ghostly activity—spirits crossing the veil (V-E-I-L) so to speak.

Vaile mansion—spelled V-A-I-L-E—was actually named for Harvey M. Vaile, the wealthy businessman for whom it was built.  

But not only does it LOOK like a haunted mansion, I think is feels like a haunted mansion and sounds like a haunted mansion, it has a history that seems written by a Hollywood screenwriter.  There have been a number of deaths in the home.  The first was Harvey’s wife Sophia, who many believe committed suicide in the house only 2 years after moving in.  Devastated, Harvey never finished the ballroom and billiards rooms that had been planned for the third floor of the home, and they remain unfinished to this day.  He lived in the mansion until his death in 1894.

Following his death there was a legal battle among his heirs that lasted a few years.  Ultimately Cary May Carroll purchased the home.  She turned the mansion into an Inn for travelers.  That venture failed.  She then decided to make the home the offices of the Vaile Pure Water Company.  There was a mineral spring on the property, and the idea was to bottled and sell it.  That was a failure, too.  Cary May was full of ideas, but apparently no business acumen.

Anyway, in 1910 she married a doctor, a Dr. Spraig, and the couple turned the home into a Sanitorium for the mentally ill.  This is when things become really troubling.  The patients there were treated so inhumanely by the staff that the state of Missouri had to come in and shut them down.  Interestingly enough, in a bright room on what I believe was the second floor, where there is now a gift shop, is where surgeries were performed, including—labotomies, at least that the story, and it seems plausible.  That room is sunny and bright, so the lighting was good for some kind of surgery, anyway.  Will you think it’s creepy if I told you I bought a beautiful antique Victorian vase in that shop?  Yeah, I did.  It’s beautiful.  It’s on a shelf in my television room.  I didn’t know when I bought it that that had been a surgery room.  Ew…creepy.  

So, back to the Spraigs.  Interestingly enough, the Spraigs pulled themselves together, so the state allowed them to then use the mansion as a nursing home, and that’s what it was until Cary May died in 1960.

There’s a lot of speculation about that third floor and why it’s off limits to visitors.  Legend has it that some of the less violent mental patients were kept up there until they died.  Supposedly that third floor has a lot of ghostly activity.  So, where were the more violent patients kept?  Down in the basement.  That is a place so scary that the staff won’t even go down there.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.

There have been countless sightings of a woman—thought to be Sophia Vaile on the second floor—particularly in the bedroom where she took her life.  Harvey has been spotted in a quirky little smoking room with small faced inconspicuously painted into the grain of the wood.  Now, that is one weird little room—it’s only big enough for one person.  Harvey has also been seen walking the grounds.  Late at night neighbors have heard screams and cried coming from the house, and voices have been heard throughout the house, particularly in that surgery room!  Again, creepy.

Now, again, I don’t seek out haunted houses.  I went to the Vaile Mansion because it has been beautifully restored and is full of antiques that are original to the period—though not original to the house.  At Christmas time the home is decorated spectacularly.  The first time I went there I took the tour, and, because I was taking a lot of pictures for my blog, I spent a lot of time lagging behind the rest of the group, so I was by myself, and there really is something weird about it.  I don’t know if I had psyched myself out or what.  Maybe it was all in my head.  I don’t know.  I have no great desire to go back, even as pretty as it is.

Anyway, I wrote a story about Vaile Mansion a few years ago, and it remains the post with the highest traffic of all the things I’ve ever put out into the world.  So, in an effort to get even more mileage out of it…I thought I would share it here.  I’m going to read it, but there are also some awesome pictures to go along with this story, so I’ll link the post in the show notes so you can take a look.  Without further ado, here’s my little tale.

Ghost Story at Kansas City’s Beautiful Haunted Mansion

It was long before sunrise when the gentleman tour guide at Vaile Mansion in Independence, Missouri stepped to the front door, key in hand.  It would be a long day.  A special champagne reception was to take place at the mansion that afternoon and there was much to prepare.  It was that reception, in fact, that drew him to the mansion so early on a Sunday morning; it was he who would have to let in the decorators and caterers before beginning his regular slate of tours.  Later the house would be bustling with activity.  But now, before dawn, it was silent and abandoned, and he found that he had approached it with trepidation.   It was so dark.  There was little contrast between the mansion and the sky above it; there was only a pale outline of the place cast by the light of the moon.   As he worked the lock he became acutely aware of his aloneness.  The quiet had weight; it was like a thing that had settled on his shoulders.  He could hear his own pulse.  Then, when the lock gave and the door swung slowly from its casing, the house released an audible sigh that raised the hairs on his arms.

The old gentleman had heard stories of ghosts at Vaile Mansion long before he started giving tours there.  He had never leant them much credence.  Haunted or not, it was a beautiful environment in which to volunteer, and, in his retirement, he discovered for the first time that he was actually really good at telling stories and drawing visitors into the history of the home.  But death was always part of the narrative.  This was a home that knew death.  Mrs. Vaile, wearied and pained by cancer, took her own life with a lethal dose of Opium and Morphine back in 1883.  Later, when the home was converted into a sanitorium, other deaths would follow.  In the daylight this grim plotline was amped up as an intriguing, but benign, bit of theater meant to widen the eyes of tourists.  Now, as the gentleman set foot on the old wooden floor of the entryway and the deep darkness of the immense house stretched before him, he wondered what kind of imprint the passing of disquieted souls might have left there.  

The gentleman stood, planted, just inside the door.  The only light came from faint reflections of the moon on the many mirrors in the parlors to the left and right of the entryway.   The parlors were rather large for the era.  But then, the mansion was huge.  With 31 rooms on three floors, there were many nooks in which to become startled.  He thought of spaces that were currently invisible to him:  the kitchen at the back of the house and the odd little room beyond it; the butler’s pantry tucked behind the dining room; the alcove beneath the stairs with just enough room for a chair and a small table.  Each room suddenly seemed like a threat.  But the spaces upstairs were the ones that now troubled him.  Even when the house was peopled with tourists, the mirror atop the staircase made the old gentleman apprehensive.  More than once, out of the corner of his eye, he perceived strange movements in that mirror that were imperceptible when looking at it head on.  Now he found himself directly beneath it.  The isolation of the scene, and his station within it, brought a wave of dread over him.  Tense and alert, he never felt so sensitive to the air he breathed.

A sharp turn from the landing at the top of the stairs concealed various rooms with unusual or unsavory pasts.  There was the bedroom in which Mrs. Vaile ended her life.  Near it was that crazy little smoking room with hundreds of strange faces painted in the grain of the wood paneling.  And then there was the ballroom on the third floor of the house—a cavernous blank canvas of a space that was never finished. Construction had just begun when Mrs. Vaile died, and Mr. Vaile saw little point in carrying out the project when he found himself alone.  It was ultimately lined with beds of patients at the sanatorium, and now it was used for storage and blocked off from tourists.  Just beneath it, in the space now occupied by the gift shop, was a bright room with lots of windows that had been used for surgery and electric shock treatments.  Yes, thought the old gentleman, these things have an affect on a place.  They leave a residue.

The gentleman shuddered, then snapped into action.  Light would extinguish the gloom and set his heart back to its natural beat.   He would make quick work of turning on the many lamps throughout the place, those nearest to him blazing a safe path to the furthest reaches of the home.  He began in the parlors…

…and made his way toward the back of the house, the light stretching just ahead of him.  The dining room was first, then the kitchen…

…The gentleman looked around and felt satisfied.  He no longer sensed a menace on the first floor.  But the floors above were still dark.  They would always be dark, even when the sun burned bright at its apex in the sky.    Heavy wooden blinds filtered the light, shielding delicate antiques from damaging rays and tamping down the late summer heat.  No one ever saw a ghost downstairs, at least not that he could recall.  No, it was the rooms upstairs that set visitors’ nerves to twitching.  He made his way back through one of the parlors and stood at the foot of the stairs.  He willed himself to look at the mirror above him on the second floor landing.  It was faintly visible, shrouded mostly in darkness.  No movement.  Just glass and shadow.  He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, then jumped into a wobbly, mad sprint up the stairs.   Anxiety, coupled with a desire to vanquish its source, enabled his old body to tap reserves of energy he hadn’t accessed in decades.

He fumbled for the first  light switch.  Where was it?  Panicking, he swatted at Victorian bric-a-brac, something crashing to the floor, before finding the switch that would bring light into the darkness.  With a stiff click of the switch, a lamp came on, and two ghostly, headless mannequins appeared as if by cruel magic.  The gentleman sucked in his breath and clutched his heart before remembering that these old artifacts were staples of a scene he knew well.  One cheerful day the curators thought it would be clever to place these mannequins, each wearing Victorian-era wedding gowns, on display as if they were characters in the colorful Vaile Mansion saga.  Of course, the curators would never come upon them in the dark.  The gentleman moved quickly to the next lamp, when, suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he perceived something impossible and horrible: the mannequin on the stairs had shifted its weight, ever so slightly, like one forced to stand for too long a time.  He stopped breathing.  His heart stopped beating.  He slowly, slowly turned to stare down the ancient spirit.  The mannequin was still as a statue.  

“Come on, old man,” he said aloud to himself.  “You’ve been up here a hundred times.  It didn’t move.  It didn’t move.”

The second floor hallway well lit, he quickly moved to the bedrooms, turning on one lamp—click—then another.

…and he finally came to the place where Mrs. Vaile died.  In the uneven light from the hallway, long shadows distorted the landscape of the room.  He was in the heart of the house now, its inner sanctum.  If a ghost were to take up residence in the mansion, it would be in the bedroom where he now stood.  He found the lamp switch and turned it.  Click.  Light filled the room.  He exhaled, closing his eyes; it was finished.  He had scared himself to the point of madness, but now he could go back downstairs, await the dawn and the caterers, and make fun of himself when the other volunteer tour guides arrived.  

His back was still to the door when he heard it.  Click. 

Silence.  

Click. 

That sound?  What was it?  It was faint, far away; the gentleman strained to identify it. 

Click.  Click.  Click.  It was louder now, coming nearer.

He turned and looked out the bedroom door.  With each successive click, he could see the light beyond getting dimmer.  The lamps!  The lamps were being turned off!  It had started down below, the parlor lights, the dining room, the kitchen.  Then upstairs, the lamps, clicking off, one by one, of their own accord, in the hallway with the ghostly mannequins, in the creepy smoking room with the faces in the walls, in the guest bedrooms—those spaces were in total darkness now.  Only the solitary lamp in Mrs. Vaile’s bedroom remained lit. 

He waited, paralyzed. 

Silence. 

There was a creak in a floorboard an instant before he heard it.  Click.

You might be wondering if there’s any truth to the ghost story I wrote above;  Yes, there is.  Now, I did  do some literary gymnastics here and added a lot of color to what was essentially a throw-away tale told by one of the tour guides.  A fellow tourist asked him about the stories of ghosts in the mansion.  He said that in his time there he had only had one experience that couldn’t be explained.  He came early to open the house and went around turning the lights on in the parlors.   After he turned on the last lamp, it turned off.  He then looked behind him and saw that all of the lights were off.  He turned them all back on again, but he said it really gave him the creeps.  He was glad when his colleagues finally arrived.   The bit about the ballroom, the sanatorium, the surgeries, etc.—all true.

Vaile Mansion is open to the public for tours.  For more information, I’ve included a link in the show notes.  Go head and check it out…there’s always room for one more…

[Rudy Valley Song]

[Story:  The Velvet Ribbon]

[Fog Horn]

Where are we now?  WHEN are we now?  Well, I’m sorry to tell you that we are now on the British ocean liner Queen Mary.  This is bad news not because it isn’t beautiful.  It’s a stunner.  Its Art Deco interior and resort-like amenities has made it an attractive ship for celebrities and political figures.  And it’s not because it is a slow, lumbering sea faring vessel.  No, quite the contrary, it’s fast.  In its maiden voyage it won the Blue Riband, an award given to a passenger liner crossing the Atlantic with the greatest speed.  

Being on the Queen Mary is—well, troubling—because a lot of people have died on it.  And…oh yeah…it’s haunted.

All right, so I’ve told you where we are, now let me tell you WHEN we are.  It’s 1936 and the RMS Queen Mary is sparkling new.  The ship was Christened “The Queen Mary” after Mary of Teck, who was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions from 1910 until 1936 as the wife of King George V.

Let’s tour the ship through this description of its interior from Wikipedia:

The liner features two indoor swimming pools, beauty salons, libraries and children's nurseries for all three classes, a music studio and lecture hall, telephone connectivity to anywhere in the world, outdoor paddle tennis courts and dog kennels. The largest room onboard is the cabin class (first class) main dining room (grand salon), spanning three stories in height and anchored by wide columns. The ship has many air-conditioned public rooms onboard. The cabin-class swimming pool facility is over two decks in height. 

The cabin-class main dining room features a large map of the transatlantic crossing, with twin tracks symbolizing the winter/spring route (further south to avoid icebergs) and the summer/autumn route. During each crossing, a motorised model of Queen Mary indicates the vessel's progress en route.

As an alternative to the main dining room, Queen Mary has a separate cabin-class Verandah Grill on the Sun Deck at the upper aft of the ship. The Verandah Grill is an exclusive à la carte restaurant with a capacity of approximately eighty passengers.  The Grill is converted to the Starlight Club at night. Also on board is the Observation Bar, an Art Deco-styled lounge with wide ocean views.

Woods from different regions of the British Empire have been used in her public rooms and staterooms. Accommodations range from fully equipped, luxurious cabin (first) class staterooms to modest and cramped third-class cabins. 

Remember, we have popped onboard in 1936, the first year in which the Queen Mary carried passengers across the Atlantic from Southhampton to New York.  It would ultimately make 1,000 such crossings before its de-commissioning in 1967.  In the pre-WW II era, though, it was a beautiful, elegant ship that attracted who’s whos like a gigantic magnet.  

As WWII broke out, The Queen Mary was one of the three largest liners in the world, along with the Queen Elizabeth and the Normandie.   All three ships were docked in New York at the time, sitting idle while the Allied Commanders decided what to do with them.  The Queen Mary was ultimately converted into a transport ship that carried Australian and New Zealand troops to the UK.  

The ship underwent a radical transformation.  Gone was the elegant Cunard design elements.  Instead, the outside was painted a dull gray (hence the Queen Mary’s nickname “The Gray Ghost”).  Inside, the stateroom furniture and deco were replaced with wooden bunks.  According to Wikipedia, a total of 6 miles of carpet, and 220 cases of china, crystal, silver services, tapestries, and paintings were removed and stored in warehouses for the duration of the war.  The beautiful woodwork throughout he ship were covered with protective leather.

The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were the largest and fastest troop transport ships in the War, sometimes carrying as many as 15,000 men in a single voyage.  

This ship was much-loved and much honored.  But, as with most things, there was a dark side to the Queen Mary’s history.  (When you’re around as long as the Queen Mary, a few sinister things are bound to happen).  The first was a tragic accident that occurred in October 1942 killing 239 people.  Here is the account in Wikipedia:

On 2 October 1942, Queen Mary accidentally sank one of her escort ships, slicing through the light cruiser HMS Curacoa off the Irish coast with a loss of 239 lives. Queen Mary was carrying thousands of Americans of the 29th Infantry Division to join the Allied forces in Europe. Due to the risk of U-boat attacks, Queen Mary was under orders not to stop under any circumstances and steamed onward with a fractured stem. Some sources claim that hours later, the convoy's lead escort returned to rescue 99 survivors of Curacoa's crew of 338, including her captain John W. Boutwood. This claim is contradicted by the liner's then Staff Captain (and later Cunard Commodore) Harry Grattidge, who records that Queen Mary's Captain, Gordon Illingsworth, immediately ordered the accompanying destroyers to look for survivors within moments of Curacoa's sinking.

Regardless, a LOT of people died.

Those were not the only deaths associated with the Queen Mary.  The ship’s records include 49 on-board deaths between 1936 and 1967—most of which were from natural causes, but there are also tales of murder, drownings in the pool, and one grizzly death due to a young crewman who was crushed to death by a water-tight door.  Ewww.  I also came across a story that just can’t be true—but it did come up in a couple different articles—of a cook who was killed during the war by an Australian soldier (or soldiers) who didn’t like his meal preparation.  According to legend, they pushed him into his own oven and cooked him alive.  Yikes.  Again, that one is hard to believe.

Needless to say, there were deaths on board the Queen Mary, and those deaths—at least some say—have created some sort of wacky vortex into the spiritual realm.  

After the War, the Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service, and in the 1940s and 1950s it proved a very successful line for Cunard.  In 1958, however, the first jet aircraft made a transatlantic flight, which was the death knell for ocean liners.  By 1967, after years of losing money, Cunard announced that it was retiring the Queen Mary and would be sold.  It was purchased by the city of Long-Beach, California and would ultimately be converted into a permanently moored “floating hotel.”  

Before we jump to the present, though, let’s take a little glimpse of that last voyage in 1967.  Guess who was aboard ship?  None other than our friend Joan Crawford, and her daughter, Christina, “No Wire Hangers!” Crawford.  Let’s hear what she had to say about it.

[Last Voyage Clip].

Now, for those of your who are new to Circa Sunday Night, I should probably tell you that Joan Crawford makes random appearances on the show.  I honestly don’t plan that.  It’s just that when it comes to my research on topics for the show, Joan is just EVERYWHERE.  I should probably make a commitment right now to devote an entire episode to her in 2022.  But, I don’t know… I almost feel like I don’t have to, because the just pops in from time to time.

Anyway, I’ve gotten off track.  This last voyage of the Queen Mary was a moving one for the captain, the crew, and even the people of Southampton, who came to see the ship as a member of the family—well, and for the crew, it was their home for many months out of the year.  In one clip I saw as the ship sailed into Long Beach, the captain was brushing away tears.  He described the ship as “a happy one.”   

So, where do the ghosts come in?  Well, as far as I can make out, there weren’t any reports of paranormal activity until the ship was made into a hotel and guests started reporting weird stuff happening.  I didn’t find any reports from passengers before it became a hotel.  That doesn’t mean there weren’t any—I just didn’t come across any.  But hotel guests have reported plenty of sightings.

The Travel Channel has a little article on their website about the Queen Mary, and this is what they say has been reported:

“Today, it’s been said as many as 150 different spirits still call the Queen Mary home. Some notable residents include a crew member who was crushed to death by a watertight door, a woman dressed in all-white who dances by herself in one of the luxury suites, and several adults and children in 1930s-era garb whose apparitions have been spotted wandering the pool decks. If you stay there, watch out for drastic temperature changes, slamming doors, knocking, screams, lights flickering and children crying -- all aboard a ship that’s earned its reputation as one of the most haunted structures in America.”

There’s a podcast that I listen to on my drive from Kansas City to Springfield because their show is usually about 3 hours long, and my drive is that long, so I start listening pulling out of my driveway in Kansas City, and they wrap up around the time I pull into my driveway in Springfield.  Anyway, the podcast is Astonishing Legends, and one of their first episodes (a relatively short one) was about the Queen Mary.  They interview this couple that stayed at the Queen Mary hotel and had a ghostly encounter there.  I have to say, they sound pretty credible.  They were there because of the history of the ship and because it was beautiful.  They checked in, but when they got to their room, it was uncomfortably small, so they requested a bigger room.  They got a new room that was very spacious and beautiful, and they couldn’t believe their luck.  But at one point, while the man’s wife was taking a shower and he was looking at himself in the mirror as he was getting ready to go out, he saw an apparition of a man standing behind him, reflected in the mirror.  The apparition was in white tie and tails grooming himself as if he was getting ready to go out, too.  It totally freaked the guy out.

There’s more to that story, so I’ll put a link to the full episode in the show notes.

Before we leave the Queen Mary, I’d like to play one last clip for you.  This is a local Long Beach news story from a few years ago about what is well known as the Queen Mary’s most haunted stateroom.  This is from the CBS affiliate there.

[CBS News Clip]

Creepy.  Now here’s a fun fact:  At one time the Walt Disney had taken over the lease of the Queen Mary and had planned to turn it into a tourist attraction.  This is from Wikipedia:

Disney pinned their hopes for turning the attraction around on Port Disney, a huge planned resort on the adjacent docks. It was to include an attraction known as DisneySea, a theme park celebrating the world's oceans. The plans eventually fell through; in 1992 Disney gave up the lease on the ship to focus on building what would become Disney California Adventure Park. The DisneySea concept was recycled a decade later in Japan as Tokyo DisneySea, with a recreated ocean liner resembling Queen Mary named the SS Columbia as the centrepiece of the American Waterfront area.

So how does this story end?  Sadly for the Queen Mary, I’m afraid.  The hotel concept has never worked, it has lost money for decades, and the upkeep on it has been too much for the city of Long Beach.  Again, from Wikipedia:

The Queen Mary ceased operations in May 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As overseer for several corporations that operated the Queen Mary, Eagle Hospitality Trust filed a motion in federal bankruptcy court on 9 March 2021 to auction off its lease. Court filings by the city claimed that repair work that had been commissioned was incomplete or not performed correctly and would likely have to be redone. Also, the current condition of the vessel was such that significant safety repairs needed to be performed before it could reopen to the public. In court filings, Eagle Hospitality Trust stated that the lease was their most valuable asset. There were no bidders on the lease after all of Eagle's other hotel properties were sold at a bankruptcy court auction. Eagle Hospitality Trust agreed to surrender its lease agreement back to the city, and Long Beach took back control in June 2021.

An architecture and marine engineering firm hired by the city found that $23 million was needed for urgent safety repairs to keep the ship viable over the next two years. The report by Elliott Bay Design Group reported that the vessel was vulnerable to flooding or possibly even capsizing. On September 21, 2021 (just last month!), the Long Beach City Council voted to turn the Queen Mary and surrounding property over to the Harbor Department.

So, now the Queen Mary really is something of a ghost ship.  It’s a relic of the past, empty—except, perhaps, for a whispy white vapor of a woman dancing alone in the darkened ballroom.

[Replay fog horn]

On that happy note, how about a song from the Queen Mary’s golden era—the early 1930s.  This upbeat little ditty comes to us from Bing Crosby.  “Here Lies Love.”

[Here Lies Love].

[Recorded Story from Record.]

That was a good one, huh?  Had a nice beat, was easy to dance to.  That was by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, again, sung by Bing Crosby.  Those are some melancholy lyrics.  That last refrain:

The end has come and my heart is numb

Twas like a bolt out of the blue above;

I can’t believe it but you’re gone

Darling, here lies love.

I only know that I can’t go on, Darling,

For here lies love.

Goodness.  I can’t leave us in that somber place, can I?  That wouldn’t be right.  Let’s pick things up a bit.

[Beginning of Addams family theme song.]

Ah, there we go.  The Addams Family.

I know you’re familiar with the Addams Family.  You’ve either seen the old 1964 television series staring John Astin and Carolyn Jones, or maybe you’ve seen a recent big-screen adaptation of the Addams Family franchise.  Perhaps you have seen a stage musical inspired by this crazy family.  But did you know that the Addams Family concept did not originate with these shows?  No.  The origin of the Addams Family is straight out of Circa 19xx Land, and takes us back to the 1930s, when illustrator Charles Addams drew cartoons featuring the family for the New Yorker.  The characters we now know as Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, It, Lurch, and Uncle Fester didn’t have names in these early days.  They were only named as the TV show was being developed.  But the subject matter of the cartoons were similar to the themes featured in the show:  He took ideas about the normal, every day American Family and turned them upside down.  In the pictures, the Addams Family seem odd and ghastly to those around them, but they themselves are completely oblivious to their oddness.

Irony and surprise are common themes of his illustrations.  As an aside, as I was reading about Charles Addams I looked at as many of his illustrations as I could—Addams Family illustrations and others.  I think my favorite of all of them is not an Addams Family illustration at all, but an illustration from 1954 called “Miss Universe.”  In it, a young woman in a bathing suit and sash is on an outdoor stage about to be crowned Miss Universe.  But no one is looking at her;  everyone in the crowd and on the stage have their eyes glued to the sky with their mouths agape, watching a flying saucer hover over head.  I love it.  This is the quirky type of stuff common to his subject matter.

Oh, and there’s another one I just love called “Movie Scream,” from 1947.  There is a crowd seated in a movie theater, and we, the viewers of this scene are at the back.  We see the movie screen up front, and the actress on film is wide-eyed and screaming, and it appears that she sees something terrifying at the back of the theater.  The movie goers have turned their backs to the screen to look in horror at what is behind them…which is us.  It’s really clever and well done.  I know it’s hard to picture as I describe it.  I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

Anyway, back to the Addams Family… 

Charles Addams drew the first Addams Family cartoon in 1938.

Now, here’s the interesting thing about Charles Addams—a bit of a legend about his eccentricities has emerged over the years.  There are many stories about his macabre interests.  He liked to visit snake farms, for example, because he purportedly feared them.  He also had a rather dark sense of humor.  He was said to have a weird habit of laughing at funerals.  His home was also a little on the creepy side.

Here's a description of his home from a story NPR did on Addams back in 2006:

The Addams dwelling at 25 West Fifty-fourth Street in New York was directly behind the Museum of Modern Art, at the top of the building. It was reached by an ancient elevator, which rumbled up to the twelfth floor. From there, one climbed through a red-painted stairwell where a real mounted crossbow hovered. The Addams door was marked by a "big black number 13," and a knocker in the shape of a vampire.

The apartment consisted of the top two floors of the building. It stood under a leaky ten-thousand-gallon water tank which had flooded the bedroom at least once, destroying the drawings, photographs, papers, and other mementos Addams kept in boxes under the bed, as well as on closet shelves. The layout was equally eccentric. The bedroom, where Addams worked most of the time, was upstairs, accessible to the downstairs living room and kitchen only by outside service stairs.

Inside, one entered a little kingdom that fulfilled every fantasy one might have entertained about its inhabitant. On a pedestal in the corner of the bookcase stood a rare "Maximilian" suit of armor, which Addams had bought at a good price ("a bargain at $700") from the Litchfield Collection from Sotheby's thirty years earlier. There was also a collection of warrior helmets, perched on long stalks like decapitated heads: a late sixteenth-century German helmet; a German trooper's lobster tail pot helmet, circa 1650; and the pointed fore-and-aft helmet from a sixteenth-century Italian suit, which was elaborately etched with game trophies, men-at-arms, monsters, birds. There were enough arms and armaments to defend the Addams fortress against the most persistent invader: wheel-lock guns; an Italian prod; two maces; three swords. 

Above a sofa bed, a spectacular array of medieval crossbows rose like birds in flight. "Don't worry, they've only fallen down once," Addams once told an overnight guest. The valuable pieces of medieval weaponry, which would ultimately fetch $220,113 at auction, mingled with books, framed cartoons and illustrations, photographs of classic cars, gruesome artifacts, and such inexpensive mementos as a mounted rubber bat.

Everywhere one looked in the apartment, something caught the eye. A rare papier-mâché and polychrome anatomical study figure, nineteenth century, with removable organs and body parts captioned in French, protected by a glass bell. ("It's not exactly another human heart beating in the house, but it's close enough," said Addams.) A set of engraved aquatint plates from an antique book on armor. A lamp in the shape of a miniature suit of armor, topped by a black shade. There were various snakes; biopsy scissors ("It reaches inside, and nips a little piece of flesh," explained Addams); and a shiny human thighbone -- a Christmas present from one wife. There was a sewing basket fashioned from an armadillo, a gift from another.

In front of the couch stood a most unusual coffee table -- "a drying out table," the man at the wonderfully named antiques shop, the Gettysburg Sutler, had called it. ("What was dried on it?" a reporter had asked. "Bodies," said Addams.) The table had holes in each corner for draining the fluids, a rusted adjustable headrest, and a mechanism for raising and lowering the neck. There was also, Addams genially pointed out, "a rather sinister stain in what would be the region of the kidneys." The table was covered with the usual decorative objects -- a Baccarat goblet, a couple of plates, a miniature castle, and a bowl of ceramic nesting snakes.

OK, so Charles Adams was an odd bird.  He was also exceedingly nice, and, at least according to some who knew him well, not nearly as deranged as you might think.

The Addams Family television show debuted in September 1964 (the same week, by the way that the Munsters debuted on another network).  Let’s wrap up our spooktacular by popping in on the Addams Family as they celebrate Halloween, 1964.  When we join them, Gomez is carving the family jack O’Lantern.

[Addams Family Halloween].

The hour is late, the moon is high, and our eyes are getting heavy.  It must be time for us to step into the Vintage Century Reading Room.  Right this way…

[VCR Theme Song, “Close Your Eyes.”]

Tonight we are going to conclude our story from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Cut Glass Bowl.”  You’ll remember that the bowl of the title was a wedding present of Harold and Evylyn Piper, given to them by one of Evylyn’s former gentlemen friends.  It seems cursed, because the story tells of the gradual disintegration of the Piper’s marriage through a series of events that pertain to the bowl.  When we left off a disastrous dinner party had just concluded, and the Piper’s daughter cut her hand on the bowl.  Now the hand is infected.  Things look very bad indeed.  Some time has passed, and now Evelyn is well into her forties as the story continues.

Part 4

If Evylyn’s beauty had hesitated at her early thirties it came to an abrupt decision just afterward and completely left her. A tentative outlay of wrinkles on her face suddenly deepened and flesh collected rapidly on her legs and hips and arms. Her mannerism of drawing her brows together had become an expression—it was habitual when she was reading or speaking and even while she slept. She was forty-six.

As in most families whose fortunes have gone down rather than up, she and Harold had drifted into a colorless antagonism. In repose they looked at each other with the toleration they might have felt for broken old chairs; Evylyn worried a little when he was sick and did her best to be cheerful under the wearying depression of living with a disappointed man.

Family bridge was over for the evening and she sighed with relief. She had made more mistakes than usual this evening and she didn’t care. Irene shouldn’t have made that remark about the infantry being particularly dangerous. There had been no letter for three weeks now, and, while this was nothing out of the ordinary, it never failed to make her nervous; naturally she hadn’t known how many clubs were out.

Harold had gone up-stairs, so she stepped out on the porch for a breath of fresh air. There was a bright glamour of moonlight diffusing on the sidewalks and lawns, and with a little half yawn, half laugh, she remembered one long moonlight affair of her youth. It was astonishing to think that life had once been the sum of her current love-affairs. It was now the sum of her current problems.

There was the problem of Julie—Julie was thirteen, and lately she was growing more and more sensitive about her deformity and preferred to stay always in her room reading. A few years before she had been frightened at the idea of going to school, and Evylyn could not bring herself to send her, so she grew up in her mother’s shadow, a pitiful little figure with the artificial hand that she made no attempt to use but kept forlornly in her pocket. Lately she had been taking lessons in using it because Evylyn had feared she would cease to lift the arm altogether, but after the lessons, unless she made a move with it in listless obedience to her mother, the little hand would creep back to the pocket of her dress. For a while her dresses were made without pockets, but Julie had moped around the house so miserably at a loss all one month that Evylyn weakened and never tried the experiment again.

The problem of Donald had been different from the start. She had attempted vainly to keep him near her as she had tried to teach Julie to lean less on her—lately the problem of Donald had been snatched out of her hands; his division had been abroad for three months.

She yawned again—life was a thing for youth. What a happy youth she must have had! She remembered her pony, Bijou, and the trip to Europe with her mother when she was eighteen——

“Very, very complicated,” she said aloud and severely to the moon, and, stepping inside, was about to close the door when she heard a noise in the library and started.

It was Martha, the middle-aged servant: they kept only one now.

“Why, Martha!” she said in surprise.

Martha turned quickly.

“Oh, I thought you was up-stairs. I was jist——"

“Is anything the matter?”

Martha hesitated.

“No; I——" She stood there fidgeting. “It was a letter, Mrs. Piper, that I put somewhere.

“A letter? Your own letter?” asked Evylyn.

“No, it was to you. ‘Twas this afternoon, Mrs. Piper, in the last mail. The postman give it to me and then the back door-bell rang. I had it in my hand, so I must have stuck it somewhere. I thought I’d just slip in now and find it.”

“What sort of a letter? From Mr. Donald?”

“No, it was an advertisement, maybe, or a business letter. It was a long narrow one, I remember.”

They began a search through the music-room, looking on trays and mantelpieces, and then through the library, feeling on the tops of rows of books. Martha paused in despair.

“I can’t think where. I went straight to the kitchen. The dining-room, maybe.” She started hopefully for the dining-room, but turned suddenly at the sound of a gasp behind her. Evylyn had sat down heavily in a Morris chair, her brows drawn very close together eyes blanking furiously.

“Are you sick?”

For a minute there was no answer. Evylyn sat there very still and Martha could see the very quick rise and fall of her bosom.

“Are you sick?” she repeated.

“No,” said Evylyn slowly, “but I know where the letter is. Go ‘way, Martha. I know.”

Wonderingly, Martha withdrew, and still Evylyn sat there, only the muscles around her eyes moving—contracting and relaxing and contracting again. She knew now where the letter was—she knew as well as if she had put it there herself. And she felt instinctively and unquestionably what the letter was. It was long and narrow like an advertisement, but up in the corner in large letters it said “War Department” and, in smaller letters below, “Official Business.” She knew it lay there in the big bowl with her name in ink on the outside and her soul’s death within.

Rising uncertainly, she walked toward the dining-room, feeling her way along the bookcases and through the doorway. After a moment she found the light and switched it on.

There was the bowl, reflecting the electric light in crimson squares edged with black and yellow squares edged with blue, ponderous and glittering, grotesquely and triumphantly ominous. She took a step forward and paused again; another step and she would see over the top and into the inside—another step and she would see an edge of white—another step—her hands fell on the rough, cold surface—

In a moment she was tearing it open, fumbling with an obstinate fold, holding it before her while the typewritten page glared out and struck at her. Then it fluttered like a bird to the floor. The house that had seemed whirring, buzzing a moment since, was suddenly very quiet; a breath of air crept in through the open front door carrying the noise of a passing motor; she heard faint sounds from upstairs and then a grinding racket in the pipe behind the bookcases-her husband turning of a water-tap——

And in that instant it was as if this were not, after all, Donald’s hour except in so far as he was a marker in the insidious contest that had gone on in sudden surges and long, listless interludes between Evylyn and this cold, malignant thing of beauty, a gift of enmity from a man whose face she had long since forgotten. With its massive, brooding passivity it lay there in the centre of her house as it had lain for years, throwing out the ice-like beams of a thousand eyes, perverse glitterings merging each into each, never aging, never changing.

Evylyn sat down on the edge of the table and stared at it fascinated. It seemed to be smiling now, a very cruel smile, as if to say:

“You see, this time I didn’t have to hurt you directly. I didn’t bother. You know it was I who took your son away. You know how cold I am and how hard and how beautiful, because once you were just as cold and hard and beautiful.”

The bowl seemed suddenly to turn itself over and then to distend and swell until it became a great canopy that glittered and trembled over the room, over the house, and, as the walls melted slowly into mist, Evylyn saw that it was still moving out, out and far away from her, shutting off far horizons and suns and moons and stars except as inky blots seen faintly through it. And under it walked all the people, and the light that came through to them was refracted and twisted until shadow seamed light and light seemed shadow—until the whole panoply of the world became changed and distorted under the twinkling heaven of the bowl.

Then there came a far-away, booming voice like a low, clear bell. It came from the centre of the bowl and down the great sides to the ground and then bounced toward her eagerly.

“You see, I am fate,” it shouted, “and stronger than your puny plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control, the condiment in the dish of life.”

The booming sound stopped; the echoes rolled away over the wide land to the edge of the bowl that bounded the world and up the great sides and back to the centre where they hummed for a moment and died. Then the great walls began slowly to bear down upon her, growing smaller and smaller, coming closer and closer as if to crush her; and as she clinched her hands and waited for the swift bruise of the cold glass, the bowl gave a sudden wrench and turned over—and lay there on the side-board, shining and inscrutable, reflecting in a hundred prisms, myriad, many-colored glints and gleams and crossings and interlaces of light.

The cold wind blew in again through to front door, and with a desperate, frantic energy Evylyn stretched both her arms around the bowl. She must be quick—she must be strong. She tightened her arms until they ached, tauted the thin strips of muscle under her soft flesh, and with a mighty effort raised it and held it. She felt the wind blow cold on her back where her dress had come apart from the strain of her effort, and as she felt it she turned toward it and staggered under the great weight out through the library and on toward the front door. She must be quick—she must be strong. The blood in her arms throbbed dully and her knees kept giving way under her, but the feel of the cool glass was good.

Out the front door she tottered and over to the stone steps, and there, summoning every fibre of her soul and body for a last effort, swung herself half around—for a second, as she tried to loose her hold, her numb fingers clung to the rough surface, and in that second she slipped and, losing balance, toppled forward with a despairing cry, her arms still around the bowl . . . down . . .

Over the way lights went on; far down the block the crash was heard, and pedestrians rushed up wonderingly; up-stairs a tired man awoke from the edge of sleep and a little girl whimpered in a haunted doze. And all over the moonlit sidewalk around the still, black form, hundreds of prisms and cubes and splinters of glass reflected the light in little gleams of blue, and black edged with yellow, and yellow, and crimson edged with black.

And so ends Fitzgerald’s Cut Glass Bowl.  Yes, this is a big downer.  It’s interesting to think about this in the context of when he wrote this.  This was very early in his career; in fact his big breakthrough came the same year this story was published; 1920.  That’s when This Side of Paradise came out and made him a household name.  He was 24 years old, and yet he knew of the possibility of marriages to dissolve over time.  Fitzgerald also sensed the dual nature of the 1920s; it was one of decadence and frivolity, but despair and aimlessness, too.  We tend to think of the 1920s as an endless party—but there is always the morning after, isn’t there?

Except for us.  We ventured into the darker regions of Circa 19ss Land tonight, but we have come through the other side, and soon it will be morning!

I’m so glad you joined me for this crazy Halloween show.  Remember, if you like this little show to give it a good review on Apple iTunes or whenever you listen.  And, hey, follow me on Instagram, too.  I’d love to see you over there.

I have a feeling—a really overpowering feeling—that you’re going to have a great week, so rest up for a fresh start, and Friday will be here before we know it.  By for now, and I’ll see you soon.