Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

Episode 156: Lost Media Vol. 2: Missing Holiday Media

Host: Kaylyn Moore
Date: December 16, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Kaylyn Moore returns as your archivist, exploring the shadows of "lost media"—those moments in holiday entertainment that have mysteriously vanished, been sanitized, or faded into myth. Moore combs through infamous scenes, rare recordings, and the lengths studios go to erase (or alter) content from beloved holiday films and broadcasts. This edition features strange Disney mishaps, a chilling parade disaster, the truth behind The Shining’s final image, and the tragic, missing Santa Claus performance of horror legend Vincent Price.

Key Discussions and Insights

1. Disney’s The Santa Clause and the Infamous 1-800-SPANK-ME Scene

[02:21 – 12:53]

• The Setup: The episode opens with a dive into the 1994 Disney movie The Santa Clause, starring Tim Allen. Upon its 30th anniversary re-release in 2024, fans noticed discrepancies between the trailer and the reissued film, hinting at a darker, lost version.
• The Removed Scene:
  • A scene featured Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) reciting the phone number "1-800-SPANK-ME"—an accidental reference to a real phone sex line.
  • "After the movie got out, the kids kept repeating that number out loud and laughing about it...her young granddaughter on the phone, her eyes wide in horror. And through the receiver, Shirley could hear soft jazz music playing in the background and the sound of a woman moaning." (Moore, 06:18)
  • Numerous children allegedly called the number, resulting in shocking phone bills and nationwide parental outcry.
• Disney’s Response: By 1999, Disney meticulously scrubbed the scene from all future editions. The number was changed to “1-800-POUND” in broadcasts and home releases, leaving original VHS tapes as the only artifacts with the explicit gag.
• Darker Origins and Deleted Scenes:
  • Tim Allen revealed the script’s first draft had Scott shooting Santa Claus, later changed for obvious reasons.
  • Lost scenes, glimpsed in the trailer (e.g., a shotgun cocking, manic grins, two-way mirror), live on only in fan memory and fragments. "At Disney, nothing is forever. Unless it's a phone sex hotline that is still active to this day." (Moore, 12:31)
• Lost Media Wiki: These deleted shots are briefly visible at [01:34] and [01:41] of the original trailer.

2. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Disaster, 1997

[13:49 – 25:39]

• Incident Recounted: On Thanksgiving Day 1997, high winds buffeted New York’s famed parade. A gust sent the giant “Cat in the Hat” balloon careening into a lamppost near 72nd St., snapping the pole and sending it crashing into the crowd.
• Testimonies:
  • "One second Kathy was there with the camera, and the next second she was down on the sidewalk, blood coming from her head. The camera smashed. It was instantaneous." (Massimo, paraphrased by Moore, 16:20)
  • Understaffed police and balloon handlers desperately tried to slash, wrangle, or deflate rogue balloons—including a famously disastrous Barney balloon incident (handlers: “Everything went purple.” 19:16).
• Aftermath:
  • Kathleen, the most seriously injured, suffered life-threatening skull injuries and spent 24 days in a coma.
  • NBC editors, poised for parade crisis, spliced previous years’ footage into the live broadcast, scrubbing nearly all evidence of the catastrophe. Full footage became “lost media”—much pieced together only through home video or building camera clips.
  • Kathleen’s own camera tape—seized as evidence—remains unseen, even by her family: “I'm afraid to see it. I mean, I don't blame him. I wouldn't watch that either.” (Moore, 23:46)
  • Kathleen later survived another bizarre near-miss: in 2006, a plane crashed into her apartment building.
• Unsettling Lessons: Broadcast “reality” is easily manipulated and sanitized—what we remember might be remarkably edited.
  • “While a full broadcast was eventually found...the incident has largely become lost media. Clips from the day have surfaced...but all of this has to be pieced together. It’s not in the original broadcast.” (Moore, 21:02)

3. The Shining’s Lost Photograph: Who Was Really at the Overlook’s July 4th Ball?

[27:29 – 35:46]

• Cultural Obsession: The famous closing shot of The Shining—Jack Torrance (Nicholson) in a 1921 party photo—launched endless interpretation and speculation.
• The Real Mystery: For decades, Kubrick fans puzzled over whether the photo was staged, digitally manipulated, or “found.” Kubrick himself claimed it was an authentic 1921 photo over which Nicholson’s face was airbrushed.
• Reddit Sleuths and Archival Hunting:
  • A 1985 photo retouching manual first revealed the original image, with a young, dark-haired man (not Nicholson) in the center. The photo was dated 1923, not 1921.
  • Sleuths discovered the original man may have been ballroom dancer Santos Casani—aka Joseph Goldman/John Goleman—known for facial scars and a postwar London ballroom career.
  • “Kasani was in fact, a professional ballroom dancer...He judged competitions. He owned his own dance clubs around London.” (Moore, 32:09)
• Discovery:
  • Archive detective work, with New York Times journalist Eric Toller and Matt Butson of the BBC Hulton Picture Library, led to the recovery of the glass plate negative labeled “John Goleman” at a 1921 Royal Palace Hotel Valentine’s Ball in London.
  • The original photograph partly debunked fan theories (pose, date, secret Masonic clues, etc.): "Jack was just mimicking the exact pose that Kasani had struck in the original photo." (Moore, 35:15)
• Enduring Unanswered Questions:
  • “For a Valentine’s Day ball in a luxury hotel, the empty hands felt very strange.” (Moore, 35:38)
  • The image’s haunting quality persists almost entirely thanks to its mysterious selection as cinematic lost media.

4. Vincent Price’s Lost Nightmare Before Christmas Santa Claus Recordings

[36:14 – 40:50]

• Backstory:
  • Tim Burton sought the iconic voice of Vincent Price (fresh from Edward Scissorhands) to play Santa in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).
  • Price was eager for the role, recording lines for a Santa with “his distinctive theatrical drawl.”
• Tragedy and Loss:
  • During production, Price’s wife died, leaving him grief-stricken and his voice diminished: “[He] could barely speak above a whisper.” (Moore, 38:51)
  • Disney rejected the tapes as “completely unusable.” Price’s performance, his possible final acting work before dying of lung cancer, was lost and the role recast.
• Current Status:
  • “Disney is at least claiming that they don’t have them anymore…no one really knows how much of Vincent Price’s voice was recorded or where those tapes are.” (Moore, 39:38)
  • Fans still hope the tapes surface someday, to honor Price’s intended parting gift to cinema.

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the effect of lost media:
  “When the mouse wants something gone, it can legitimately be erased forever. So by 1999, Disney had seemingly scrubbed this scene from existence. I’m talking every DVD, every Blu-ray, every broadcast version. The number was gone.” (Moore [08:57])
• On real-world hysteria caused by a movie Easter egg:
  “I read about this one child in Washington who racked up $400 worth of charges from calling the line. And honestly, I remember watching those infomercials growing up. $400 feels like it would be on the low end.” (Moore [07:33])
• On the risks of ‘live’ TV events:
  “NBC has this trick they can do. They splice in footage from previous years...Most viewers at home never know the difference. And because of that, Barely any of the balloon massacre Made it into the real broadcast.” (Moore [20:21])
• On the nature of cultural myth-making:
  “For an image that had launched a thousand theories about demons and haunted hotels and Woodrow Wilson Easter eggs. Turns out it started as a very ordinary photograph of people just having a good time. And somehow when it slipped into the shining, it became something else entirely.” (Moore [35:56])
• On Vincent Price’s lost performance:
  “No one really knows how much of Vincent Price’s voice was recorded or where those tapes are, but we can only hope that one day there’s a version that’s put out using the tape so we can hear the final performance from Vincent.” (Moore [40:18])

Key Timestamps

• [02:21] — Introduction and fascination with lost media
• [03:02–12:53] — The Santa Clause: phone number mishap, deleted scenes, lost trailer footage
• [13:49–25:39] — 1997 Macy’s parade disaster: Cat in the Hat, balloon chaos, NBC’s real-time editing
• [27:29–35:46] — The Shining: the Overlook photo, internet sleuths, identity of the mystery man, archive discovery
• [36:14–40:50] — The Nightmare Before Christmas: Vincent Price’s lost Santa Claus performance
• [40:51–42:10] — Listener engagement; tease of more lost media in Patreon and next episodes

Conclusion

Lost Media Vol. 2 is a chilling, often darkly funny journey through the secrets and scandals of holiday pop culture. Moore’s meticulous research, engaging storytelling, and affection for the bizarre give each case narrative urgency and heart. From phone sex mishaps at Disney to balloon carnage at Thanksgiving, and secret ghosts in cinematic frame, the episode reminds us that nothing in media lasts forever—except perhaps its legends.

"Stay curious."