Ghost Story/Circle of Fear 01x06: Alter-Ego

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.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents 01x27: Help Wanted

Lorne Greene is a national treasure. We literally learn about him in school here in Canada; it’s not optional. He’s up there with Walter Pidgeon, Christopher Plummer, and Leslie Nielson, all of whom we also learn about in school during a unit called “Northern Lights” – we watch documentaries about their lives narrated by Lorne Greene. (Yes, Lorne Greene narrates his own. Yes, it’s in third person.)

Anyway, LG’s b-day was on February 12, but I was doing Mardi Gras and I’d already stopped in the middle of that for Inventors’ Day and Valentine’s. And yes, we do need a Lorne Green day even though we’re recapping Bonanza in chronological order, because Lorne Greene is important.

And all that is why we’re watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that features TV’s best loved dad in a very different kind of role.