Happy Halloween from the Room of Voices
I know it’s Halloween, yet I cannot resist nerding out on some sound history. After all, sound is always the key to resonating horror, engaging weirdishness, and pipelining the otherworldly. E.g., from The Twilight Zone:
“I Sing the Body Electric” (1962, written by Rad Bradbury and inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem of the same name), where three children learn to love their new robotic grandmother, who can (but of course!) record and store everything she hears and then play back clips through the palms of her hands! When she becomes obsolete (that is, when the kids go to college), she ventures to the “room of voices” (or robot heaven) and shares everything she’s heard with a network of electric grandmothers just like her. Watch the entire episode. It’s fantastic on so many levels.
And…
“Long Distance Call” (1961, written by Charles Beaumont and William Idelson), where a child communicates with his dead grandmother via telephone:
Now I’m off to see Paranormal Activity… (I know, I know. I fell for it!)
