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An elusive and highly sought-after effects cassette. (At least, as far as I know)

20K views 102 replies 17 participants last post by  JustaBunchOfHocusPocus 
#1 ·
Hello there!

I am currently in search of a halloween sound effects cassette from the 80's.
Apparently people have asked about it before on other sites, but have found very little information on it.

I too seek this information.

Let me begin with a little backstory. I am searching for this cassette in the hopes of owning a piece of my
childhood that was very special to me. In my local neighbourhood back in the 90's, there was a flower shop
that would put up a "haunted castle" attraction every year. It was very elaborate for a family display, and boy,
the levels of creativity were high!

Now the most iconic thing to me personally about the display was the soundtrack, a very ominous
and unique soundtrack of rapid paced sounds, and strange samples.

I loved the soundtrack so much, that as a kid, I'd sneak in a small cassette recorder under my jacket
so I could listen to the sounds at home and re-live the experience...unfortunately, that tape bit the dust
ages ago, and I never could find that recording again...until recently.

I came across this cassette known as "Chamber of Horrors"...a widely sold cassette from 1988
that featured the sounds I was looking for, in fact they were the EXACT same sounds...



Except...the versions I had heard in the past did not have the "Happy Halloweeeeeeeen" guy throughout
and there wasn't an instrumental rip off of Michael Jackson's thriller, or the free form Jazz track "Birds of Fire" by
Don Sebesky layered over top of it.

Yes, all of the above is on that cassette...intentionally.

Why?...who knows...

But my inquiry is this...I know there exists a version of this cassette (perhaps under a different name/manufacturer) that's either
the same year, or older, that is just the sound effects, without the voices or music.

According to another user on a different website, their copy of that tape was black with an orange label (pretty stock) and
started at the sound effect at around 2:22 in the video above, which I remember to be true from my experiences hearing it long ago.

So in conclusion, if you guys have ANY information on the cassette, whether it be the name, a copy for sale, or an mp3 download...

PLEASE let me know. I would VERY much appreciate it!


-Thanks in advance!-
Nostalgiakid125



*Things I know already (Just to save some searching time)

1.I know that there exists 3 versions of this cassette that are widely known about.

*One copy has a story on one side called "The Haunting" and the other side has the Effects*Music*Voice (Basically the Video Posted)

*Another copy has the Effects*Music*Voice on both sides and took out the story mode completely

*The last version was a remake that came out in 1990- which had the same "Chamber of Horrors" Title, but completely different SFX.

2.One or two of the sound effects were re-used in a cassette called "Horrible Sounds of Halloween"...but as far as I've seen in my
research, it's still not the correct tape. However, multiple versions of that may be in existance as well.

3.The "Chamber of Horrors" cassette was sampled in many Halloween CD's later on in its full entirety, examples being the "Scareware Horror Sound Effects" CD, and a couple others of which I cannot remember at this time.
 
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#40 ·
Lol, nope...completely different tape with the same name. THAT one, was released on CD later...of course....THAT one gets a high quality release...


Now here's the weird part..(in relation to the original cassette post) some of these sounds may be even older than they seem. A LOT of the sounds on this cassette come from the Vinyl 12inch called "Halloween Horrors," in 1997, which was later re-released for both cassette and CD. BUT...there's some new info that I just recently discovered, some of the sounds are actually even OLDER than that!



This is the ghostly sounds LP from 1974 released on power records...a record that pre-dates halloween horrors by 3 years...and yes, some of the sounds are the same...The witches brew segment? same bubbling sound as isolated in halloween horrors...so some of these sounds could be waaaaay older than halloween horrors. So the real time frame that this cassette could have been pieced together? waaaay before 1988...So who knows?

All I know is this mystery gets weirder the more I dig into it...maybe one day we'll find answers.
 
#41 ·
I had heard that Ghostly Sounds was picked apart for later recordings. I have Halloween Horrors in vinyl, cassette, digital AND CD. I got all three versions hoping there would be more background info about it. No such luck.

You may want go through the Scar Stuff Blog. He has very extensive background info on all f his shares. Although sadly most of his links are dead. He fell into the same trouble that most of us Music Sharing blog owners had. DMCA and Trolls snitching on us. I even had my entire blog deleted in 2007. Simply because this idiot Troll didn't like me asking for donations one time. Anyway. Good luck!
 
#44 ·
unfortunately no such luck...

on the plus side though, I bought a cassette to digital converter (rather than using aux cords through the mic input) so I re-recorded
the tapes I have, and they sound slightly better now lol. I'll upload if anyone wants them. Still not perfect, but a smidge better.
 
#54 ·
I had an old tape from the 80s that has bits and pieces of all the previous recordings, it looked like the thrillers/chillers tape but had some weird flute-type music in the beginning/end....I guess as a signal for me to flip to the other side. I miss it as well, next time I go to my parents Im going to search for it. Thanks for sharing all of this, really takes me back to my childhood :)
 
#64 ·
I can remember having the ghostly sounds LP as a child in Philly. We had a haunted garage and played that LP on a loop. As a kid my sister and I would get it out just before Halloween each year from the milk crate record storage in the closet to play. That squeaking door....those screams would always bring a chill. I'm not sure if my dad still has the LP or not (probably not).
 
#66 ·
Another note, there was also an LP we had called "SOUNDS TO MAKE YOU SHIVER - Haunted House" (1974) that had many effects for our haunted house. We played this one even more. It has a lot of the same sound effects as the Ghostly Sounds but with a spoken intro, chains and wind.

You can listen to it on youtube watch?v=E8QpjNVZr3Y (I can't post links yet)
 
#67 ·
So, since Halloween is literally right around the corner, anyone got any updates on this tape? anyone hear it lately, or find out anything? I sent a message to FunWorld inquiring about the cassette, and got...well, a bit of a vague reply. And by vague, I mean literally no information at all. I linked them to my upload of the cassette, sent a detailed series of questions, and their response was:

"The sound cloud has nothing to do with Fun World, and this was not posted by Fun World.
The FW version was studio recorded and or purchased through a production house."

So yeah, I'm at a loss here.
 
#69 ·
So the album that they explain was recorded on a studio is that something that can be downloaded off the Internet? Sometimes you just gotta be thankful for what you get it being on a disc or tape.
Not exactly. I uploaded those soundcloud links from copies I've purchased myself, but I was basically looking for a high quality non-bootlegged sounding version of the cassette in question, so I could sample the sounds in a tribute song that I'm putting out for free for halloween. (I'm a producer and DJ) the tape in question was played back when I was a kid at a haunted house attraction locally, the event ended up getting vandalized and the tradition was stopped unfortunately. They got away with the cassette tape (which was in the stereo they stole) and ever since, I had always wondered what cassette it was. The song I did is finished, so I don't REALLY need it in HQ anymore, but after seeing so many others looking for the same tape, I was hoping to bring the mystery to a close, and find the REAL source of the audio. if you read through this thread, it's amazing what's been discovered about it, and how mysterious it's origin is. I am thankful for what I've found/gotten, don't get me wrong, but now the drive is just to solve the mystery for the sake of it being fascinating to me.
 
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