There Might Be Cupcakes Podcast Spooky Story: Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death, for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and the Imagination,” Chicago, 1895-96, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, drawing (MET, 2021.16.17). This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy

Bummer Halloween: Awful Things That Happened on October 31st

Continuing with the project I began after seeing Jordan Peele's Nope. Content warning for death, child death, drug overdose, murder, fire, explosion, car crash. 

On Today's Date

October 30, 2015: A fire inside the Colectiv night club in Bucharest, Romania kills 64 people, including four members of the band Goodbye to Gravity, whose pyrotechnics display had initiated the blaze. Guitarists Mihai Alexandru and Vlad Telea die at the scene; drummer Bogdan Enache and bassist Alex Pascu die in the hospital. Lead singer Andrei Gălu is badly burned but survives. 

Many of those who die in the hospital do so from infections, possibly because of inadequate disinfectant measures used in Romanian hospitals.

On Halloween

October 31, 1926: Harry Houdini dies of peritonitis due to a ruptured appendix. Houdini had visited Canada’s McGill University on October 22, when a student asked to punch Houdini in the stomach (which Houdini was famously able to withstand, when properly prepared), but then did so before the magician was ready. 

October 31, 1963: Spectators gather to watch a Holiday on Ice performance at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana. A natural gas explosion starts in a storage area that food vendors use to store pre-popped popcorn. The explosion kills 81 people and injures an additional 400. 

For additional detail by a firefighter who lived in Indiana, listen to this podcast episode. 

October 31, 1974: Ronald Clark O’Bryan gives Pixy Stix candy straws laced with cyanide to his two children, two neighbor children, and a fifth child he knew from church. Only one of the children, O’Bryan’s 8-year-old son Timothy, eats the poisoned candy. After Timothy dies, police confiscate the other contaminated Pixy Stix, which O’Bryan claims to have gotten from a neighbor. 

O’Bryan is convicted of the murder, which he appears to have planned to collect insurance money, and executed by the state of Texas in 1984.

October 31, 1990: Magician Joseph “Amazing Joe” Burrus, age 32, attempts a Halloween night stunt at Blackbeard’s Family Fun Center in Fresno, California. He’ll attempt to escape from a coffin made of plastic and glass and buried under mud and wet cement. The weight of the cement and mud crushes the coffin, burying Burrus alive. Although he is quickly dug out of the grave, he can’t be revived.

October 31, 1993: 23-year-old actor River Phoenix is pronounced dead at 1:51 a.m. at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, after collapsing from an overdose of cocaine and morphine.

October 31, 2006: 18-year-old Nicole Catsouras dies immediately upon impact when the Porsche belonging to her parents, which the teenager is driving without permission, strikes a toll booth at over 100 miles per hour. 

The accident is terrible enough, but Catsouras’ family suffers further when gruesome crash scene photos taken by the California Highway Patrol are leaked on the Internet, allegedly by people who worked in the 911 call center. 

October 31, 2016: Natalie Babbitt, the author of Tuck Everlasting, dies of lung cancer.

Sunday, October 18, 2009: Treehouse of Horror

Sunday, October 18, 2009: The highlight of my day was watching the new Simpsons episode, “Treehouse of Horror XX (LABF14).” The first segment parodied an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Better still, the second story parodied I Am Legend. Krusty Burger’s new sandwich turns everyone into cannibal zombies. The Simpson family manages to survive and discover that Bart is immune to the disease. They get him to the safety zone, where Bart transfers his immunity to the other survivors by bathing in their soup.

The last segment was a musical one based on Sweeney Todd. After a gruesome accident, Moe the bartender discovers his beer is greatly enhanced by Homer’s blood. Moe schemes to get on Marge’s good side; he tells her Homer turned gay and ran off. Homer’s “The Gay Song” is rather funny:

“While turning gay the other day,

A thought occurred to me.

I'd like to try most every guy

From here to Timbuk-tee.

Oh, there's so many men around the world

Of every shape and size.

I want to nibble on Jamaican jerks

And teriyaki thighs.

I want to French-kiss a Frenchman

And spoon an English duke.

'Cause frankly, dear

To not be queer

Just makes me want to puke.

So find yourself a man

Who'll want you in the sack.

I recommend our dear old friend...

Bartender Moe Szyslak!”

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