The Wolf Howls tape
Halloween as a kid was one of the best things ever. And ‘90s Halloween, while probably only looked on fondly by ‘90s kids such as myself, was one of the best decades for Halloween. Horror movies from that decade are not my cup of tea (any horror movie after 1970 or so really), but the ‘90s were chock full of great Halloween specials, cartoons, and kid-friendly TV movies.
One thing about Halloween for me personally was the certain cheap, campy quality about it. Decorations and costumes made of plastic, rubber and cardboard. There’s an intangible charm and mystery to that sort of thing in any decade of Halloween’s popularity. It’s not really scary- and I think the internet came up with the perfect word for it: “spoopy”.
But of course the real core of Halloween is the things that are scary but not enough to really upset you. Just look at any Nightmare Fuel page for a kids’ show or movie on TV Tropes and you’ll see what I mean.
That brings me to this tape. For years, this tape was played in our house on Halloween night during trick-or-treating. Our mom recorded it off of a vinyl album who knows how long ago. We stuck the stereo through the window so that it could be heard outside. The whole thing is nothing but honest-to-goodness wolves not only howling, but barking and growling for about 20 minutes. When the tape got to the end, we rewound it and started it over again.
And believe me, it’s one of the spookiest things you’ll ever hear. The howls are extremely well recorded and are deep, throaty and mournful. Kids and their parents would pass us by because of this tape (and our unusually effective decorations). One of the best things in the world is coming home after our pumpkin buckets were full and sitting on the couch eating candy, watching old black-and-white movies on cable, and listening to this tape and the activity outside. I still get a little spooked listening to it.
But then one year it disappeared. Lost in some box somewhere in the house, we had no Wolf Howls for Halloween for many years. We had to make do with another tape called Howl-o-Ween Sounds, which is also very good, but it didn’t seem as effective, and it certainly lacks that utter simplicity. It seemed like we’d never see it again.
Luckily it turned up years later as teenagers and the tape was again playing on Halloween night, scaring the stuffing out of the neighbors. We were real audiophiles by that point and had discovered the world of vinyl sharity- the idea that you could convert old recordings that weren’t on CD and save them for posterity was a real revelation. I got the idea of rigging a way of digitizing our tapes by using a two-way cable- one end went into the stereo’s headphones jack, and the other into the computer’s mic jack. I converted several of them (including some home recordings of us and family members) and after cleaning up the noise, put Wolf Howls on CD.
But there was always one problem: where in God’s name did the thing come from?
Wolf Howls is only one side of the tape. The other is labeled “Haunted House”. We’d never played it as kids, but after hearing it, it was obvious it was the Disney classic Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. Clearly Wolf Howls must have been another record. But being such a simple, straightforward recording, there wasn’t much to identify it. We didn’t have the record at our house, and I didn’t know where our grandma kept her records at the time. Our mom couldn’t remember what it was called. It was impossible to find anything on the internet with the dozens of wolf sound effect albums floating around. Even after years of collecting Halloween records on mp3, it still didn’t turn up.
Finally, earlier this year, the right combination of search terms and websites (and thankfully an online copy) led me to the identity of the album: The Language and Music of the Wolves, released in 1971. It’s not a sound effects record or even a meditative nature sounds album. Side one actually features a short audio documentary on wolves narrated by Robert Redford! It’s cheesy and more than a little ‘70s, and to say that it surprised me is an understatement. I’ve spent my entire life being creeped out by these sounds, and it turns out it wasn’t meant to be creepy at all.
Even though this long story is close to ending (I still need to get a copy of the original and convert it myself), Wolf Howls still has a little mystery attached to it. And despite its less-than-amazing origins, it’s still a major part of my childhood and one of the spookiest things you’ll ever hear.
Try using it for your own Halloween.
