1972’s Ghost Story
is a complicated show.
For the first thirteen episodes, it’s what I like to think
of as “relaxedly paranormal” – there’s not a lot of blood or trauma, and the
endings are usually more depressing than ironic. And there are framing segments
featuring Sebastian Cabot as your host Winston Essex, a mysterious author who
lives in a great big mansion full of weirdos who come to be his guests and tell
him spooky stories.
Then, all of a sudden, Sebastian Cabot is gone. The show’s title
is changed to Circle of Fear, and the
promotional materials insist that there’s less emphasis on the supernatural.
Just things like cursed wooden horses, a satanic office cult, more ghosts than
ever before, and some elemental demons trapped in glasswork. Straightforward,
scary situations anybody could find
themselves in.
Producer William Castle – responsible for some of the most
fun you can have with Vincent Price – had decided that a change was needed.
While he’d patterned the host segments on his idol Alfred Hitchcock, he
quickly had second thoughts. The radical changes to the genre brought about by Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 were trickling
into television, and nobody could make up their mind what that would look like.
