One of my favorite shows is Beetlejuice, the animated series. I also recall the old Casper comic books from Harvey. Does anyone know of any examples of fiction which show children or adults messing around with the occult, ghosts, etc, not horror movie style, but like it is no big deal?
P.S. Who was casper anyway. According to the Simpsons episode “Three Men and a Comic Book”:
Bart: Well, you know what I think? I think Casper is the ghost of
Richie Rich. [shows comics of Casper and Richie Rich]
Lisa: Hey, they do look alike!
Bart: Wonder how Richie died.
Lisa: Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money really is and
took his own life.
Marge: Kids, could you lighten up a little?
Casper’s a friendly ghost- the friendliest ghost you know. Though grown-ups might look at him with fright, the children all love him so.
With that out of the way, I think the Casper live-action movie elaborated on the character and pointed out that he is the ghost of a child. I have no idea how he died, though. (Simpsons creator Matt Groening says he’s the one who came up with the “Casper is Richie Rich’s ghost” line- there is some similarity. And going really off-topic, why is Richie Rich called “the poor little rich boy?” My mom told me when I was a kid that it was because he has a lot of money, but no friends. But Richie has a lot of friends. If he was friendless, I could see that, but no…he’s got life pretty much figured out.)
Anyway, the reason Richie Rich is so said is that his parents are never around. I know this from reading one heck of a lot of Harvey comics from when I was a kid, and one of my friends was an antique seller’s son.
Thorne Smith wrote several best-selling humorous novels of the occult in the 1920s. Topper is probably his best known these day, since it was made into a couple of movies and a TV show. Most of his works are out of print these days, but I understand they hold up rather well.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Movie and TV)
There was also a subgenre of movies during WWII about ghosts. A Guy Named Joe is an example.
Some illness, I think – scarlet fever or yellow fever or something else that was pandemic in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The comic book, on the other hand, simply glossed over the fact that ghosts are dead people. And Hot Stuff never seems to spend any time torturing the damned or tempting people to sin.
I think it was because the press dubbed Gloria Vanderbilt the “poor little rich girl” during the highly publicized court battle over her legal guardianship in 1934, and the catchphrase lived on.
Thanks for all that has been contributed so far, but…
Gimme, gimme, gimme!
um…Please? I would really love not to have just the name of one movies about harmless ghosts, but all of the one you know of, RC. A straight out list would be just dandy. Also, thanks to everyone, but please, keep it coming.
I always figured that Casper, his classmates (Boil, Ghoul, etc) and the teacher probably all died together in some horrible fire. Why else would you have so many ghosts of children in one place like that?
Yeah, but they’re definitely different people, because they had crossovers in their comic books. The one I remember had the plot that they looked so much a like that Casper could put on a wig, makeup and clothes and impersonate Richie. I believe there was some evilness afoot where bad guys were after Richie, maybe with guns or darts or something that went straight through Casper without hurting him.
And this was before The Simpsons ever came out, way back when I was a youngster.
AtKomikWerks, Keith Giffen has the first few issues of his classic 80s comic book, Video Jack up. It involves the supernatural, but it’s really not on topic, so…
Oh, oh, I’ve got it. Henrietta Hex Jr is on the same site, and it has friendly for kids ghost hunting:
P.S. I meant to put the following words into the name of this Thread, but I forgot. So behold the title of my dreams:
**Children shouldn’t play with dead things, but they do anyway. ** Beetlejuice, Casper, et. all.
…and that’s ignoring the fact that in the Harveyverse, pretty much everybody looked like Richie Rich, so the Casper connection isn’t definitive.
I remember the issue where Casper dressed up like Richie, though (I was quite the Harvey fan in my childhood, owning pretty much every Richie Rich comic published between 1974 and about 1979). I’m pretty sure it was an early issue of “Richie Rich and Casper” (which kinda makes sense) but it might have been an earlier, pre-RR&C issue.
BTW, back in the mid '70s “Crazy” magazine published a “Casper the Friendly Dead Kid” bit which was actually pretty morbid–I think the kid died rather violently (car accident, maybe)? Anybody else remember this? I wish I still had it.
