Pod Insights Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries 156. Lost Media Vol. 2: Missing Holiday Media About this episode What happens when beloved holiday entertainment crosses the line? From Disney's The Santa Clause hiding adult Easter eggs that horrified parents, to the 1997 Macy's Day Parade disaster NBC tried to erase, to Vincent Price's final grief-stricken performance that Disney deemed "unusable". These aren't just missing tapes; they're pieces of holiday history someone decided we shouldn't remember. TW: Graphic Description of injury
Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/lostmediaholidays
Subscribe on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt.
You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts .
Follow on Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=en and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kaelyn Moore? This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure. I feel like every time I run out of a product in my bathroom, I have this moment where I go, okay, do I just order the same thing? Or do I finally make a better swap? And that thinking is exactly what got me into Primally Pure. They're a female-founded brand that keeps it really simple. Fewer, better ingredients, and nothing you can't pronounce. I just got an order from Primally Pure and I am obsessed with their lip oil. I also got Eucalyptus and Lavender Body Butter, which has spa vibes for sure. If you want an easy starting point, their Clean Start Bundle is a great place to start. For under $50, you get three everyday essentials. Their best-selling aluminum-free deodorant, a mini body butter, and the lip oil that I love. It's also a really thoughtful gift
0:44 Kaelyn Moore? if you know someone who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p-r-i-m-a-l-l-y-p-u-r-e.com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order.
1:00 Speaker 01 Some days call for a light jacket, others an umbrella, and occasionally a rowboat.
1:11 Speaker 01 It's good to have options. Your personal protection is no different. It's why Burna offers more ways to defend yourself. Whether it's a night out, a weekend away, or an evening at home with the kids, Burna gives you defensive options from less-lethal launchers to sprays and alarms that fit your life and the situation at hand. Burna launchers deliver serious stopping power against threats from up to 60 feet away, giving you valuable time and distance to respond without getting too close or taking things too far. They're simple to operate, even if you've never used one before, and no background checks or permits are required. Plus, they ship directly to your door. Find the right option for you at B-Y-R-N-A.com. Must be 18 plus.
1:56 Speaker 01 Purchase and shipping restrictions vary by state and municipality.
2:00 Kaelyn Moore? What would cause a piece of media to become lost? Throughout history, before things could really become catalogued on the internet, it wasn't uncommon for a piece of media to just vanish, leaving behind a weird ghost in our memories. Some was just never aired again, some was accidentally damaged, but some of it was intentionally destroyed, all because someone didn't want the public to see it. This is Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your archivist today, Kaelyn Moore. Now, I spend most of my time on this show hunting down information. I have subscriptions to newspapers and languages I can't read. I hunt down old books that were once banned by different governments. I even reach out to journalists and authors for more information a lot of the times. I even sometimes get resources from you guys,
2:44 Kaelyn Moore? which I wanted to give a shout out to Bill, our mountaineering listener, who sent me some really interesting books to check out after we did our episode on Mount Everest. My reading list right now is really all books that you guys have sent me, and I absolutely love that. My point being, it's rare that I can't find something. And I think that's why I'm so obsessed with media that becomes lost, which is what I want to tell you about today. As a reminder, if you like mysteries of the internet disappearances that make you question everything, and if you have an otherwise dark curiosity, you are in the right place because you are just like me. We put out episodes once a week, so make sure you're subscribed, or you're following along, or leaving comments wherever you listen, so you don't miss out. Okay, let's get back into it.
3:32 Kaelyn Moore? It's when your heart starts pounding.
3:36 Kaelyn Moore? Now, maybe you're like me, and you watched Disney's 1994 holiday classic, The Santa Claus, growing up. The movie is pretty wholesome, family fun, I would describe it as. Tim Allen plays this character, Scott Calvin, a divorced dad who accidentally causes Santa Claus to fall off of his roof on Christmas Eve. When Scott puts on Santa's suit, he magically becomes the new Santa. This, of course, allows him to reconnect with his son and learn the true meaning of Christmas. It's very sweet, but what if I told you that there is something cut out of the movie that is not so sweet? Actually, it had parents clutching their pearls in horrors to the point where Disney had to make some scenes disappear forever. See, when The Santa Claus was re-released for
4:20 Kaelyn Moore? its 30th anniversary on Christmas Day 2024, these eagle-eyed viewers noticed something strange in the original theatrical trailer. There were scenes like quick flashes of moments that just didn't exist in the movie that they had watched growing up. There was a voice they could hear saying, "Who's down there?" followed by this unmistakable sound of a shotgun being loaded that they didn't remember from the movie. There was also a part where Tim Allen was grinning maniacally in front of what appeared to be children behind two-way glass. And so people started wondering what happened to those scenes. Why would they be in the trailer and not the movie itself? And most importantly, why was one specific scene that they remembered being in
5:02 Kaelyn Moore? the original version no longer in the re-release? Well, let me tell you a little story. Back in 1994, Shirley Durth, a grandmother in Cleveland, took her young grandchildren to see The Santa Claus in theaters. The kids loved the movie, but there was one scene that they really clung to, and they couldn't stop talking about it. It's a scene where Scott's wife hands him a handwritten phone number, and Scott looks at it and recites a fake number out loud as this like adult joke that's supposed to fly over the children's head. It happened so quickly, you could almost miss it. The number that he recites is 1-800-SpankMe. After the movie got out, the kids kept repeating that number out loud and laughing about it. And when they got home, one of them thought it would
5:46 Kaelyn Moore? be funny to pick up their landline and call it. Shirley walked into her kitchen to see 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. Yes, I'm sure you could maybe guess, but 1-800-SpankMe was an active phone sex hotline, and Disney had just broadcast it to millions of children. And of course, Shirley's grandchildren were not the only children to call this line after seeing the movie. Kids legitimately thought that This was an Easter egg that would allow them to call Santa's workshop. Parents would either walk in on their children making these calls to the hotline, or they would get their bone bills at the end of the month and be absolutely horrified.
6:31 Kaelyn Moore? 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. Shirley was later interviewed by the Associated Press where she was quoted as saying, quote, "I don't think children need to be exposed to that, and I think that's putting it lightly." Now, we've talked about it before on the show, you guys know this, but 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. They changed it to 1-800-POUND?
7:17 Kaelyn Moore? I think that's because they wanted to keep the adult joke in the film without actually linking it to an active phone sex hotline. And so the original scene has become somewhat lost media. But some people do still have the original VHS tapes, the ones from around 1994 that have the original number in it, which, from my research, is actually still active today, over 30 years later. So do with that information what you want. Now, there's also darker moments from the Santa Claus that never actually made it into the movie in the first place. And that's what people were seeing when they watched the trailer and noticed that there were scenes in the trailer that weren't in the actual film. So according to Tim Allen, when he was speaking on The Tonight Show in 2018, the original script for this movie was much, much darker.
8:02 Kaelyn Moore? In the first draft, Scott Calvin didn't accidentally knock Santa off the roof. He shot him. And exec had to basically jump in at the time and say, "We can't show kids a movie where a man shoots Santa Claus in cold blood here at Disney." And so the scene was changed to Santa accidentally falling off the roof and also dying, which is still morbid in its own way, don't get me wrong. And initially, they wanted Bill Murray to star as the lead in the film. Because they thought that he could carry a darker tone in a movie, a more adult tone too. But eventually, it was decided that Tim Allen would be the lead and the script would be sanitized. Though, there are still some adult humor moments, like the phone number, that still made it into the final cut.
8:46 Kaelyn Moore? The Lost Media Wiki has been tracking these deleted scenes from the trailer. The one where Scott hears a shotgun get loaded and the one where he's grinning through the two-way mirror. You can actually see them in the trailer at the 134 and 141 mark of the original theatrical trailer. But it seems like the full scenes are forever lost as well, though it might just be for less nefarious reasons. One theory is that the original cut of the movie was just too long and so they needed to cut a couple scenes from it. It's just a fun reminder that, at Disney, nothing is forever. Unless it's a phone sex hotline that is still active to this day. That apparently is. This episode is brought to you by Prenuvo. When it comes to your health, there's a lot that you can't see or feel.
9:30 Kaelyn Moore? And sometimes, having more information can make all the difference. That's where Prenuvo comes in. Prenuvo offers proactive, whole-body MRI scans designed to help identify potential health concerns, including many cancers, aneurysms, and other conditions, sometimes before symptoms appear. The Prenuvo scan is non-invasive, uses no radiation, and is designed to give people a detailed picture of what's happening inside their bodies. Taking care of your health isn't just about responding when something feels wrong, it's about being proactive and making informed decisions. Prenuvo is helping people take a different approach to understanding their health. To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole-body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/hsp
10:15 Kaelyn Moore? and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply.
10:25 Speaker 02 Do you like scary stories? Think you've heard it all? Well, you've never heard it like this.
10:33 Speaker 02 Radio Rental is a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people.
10:38 Speaker 03 He's tapping, tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door.
10:45 Speaker 04 Then the ner light turns on, and then the ner light turns on in the shape of a triangle. And I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head.
10:53 Speaker 05 She had long, ratted hair. She was wearing a dress. Her ribs were showing, her fingers were long. She looked shriveled, partially decayed.
11:05 Speaker 04 I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with them to just please let me out.
11:10 Speaker 06 These eyes started opening. They were pure white, and I lose it.
11:17 Speaker 02 Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
11:25 Kaelyn Moore? Now, as far as lost media goes, the Santa Claus is mostly harmless. Was it maybe traumatizing for some children? Absolutely. But today, a lot of those kids just look back on it and laugh at the whole thing. But that is not the case with this next piece of lost media that I have for you. This piece of lost media is borderline crime scene footage taken from a very popular Thanksgiving broadcast, the Macy's Day Parade. Every Thanksgiving, millions of Americans tune in to watch the Macy's Day Parade. If you're not familiar, it's a massive parade that happens in New York City that features floats gliding down Manhattan streets, Santa arriving in his sleigh, and giant balloons of various cartoon characters and other icons of pop culture. It is really the perfect start to the holiday season.
12:10 Kaelyn Moore? I watch it every year. But on Thanksgiving Day, 1997, a horrible incident happened that NBC desperately tried to hide from viewers, something that left one woman fighting for her life and honestly changed the parade forever. And here's the thing about it. Despite the fact that cameras were rolling from every angle, despite thousands of witnesses lining the streets, the footage of what really happened that day... Seems to have been scrubbed, edited, and lost to time. Let me set the scene. November 27th, 1997. The morning started sunny. Temperatures were in the 50s. It was perfect parade weather, except for one thing. The winds.
12:50 Kaelyn Moore? Meteorologists called them gale force winds, gusts up to 45 miles an hour. A woman named Kathleen had brought her eight-month-old son to his first ever Thanksgiving parade. She and her husband Massimo had actually met on Thanksgiving years before, so this was also their anniversary. They even brought their video camera to capture the whole thing on tape, titling the tape, quote, "Our First Thanksgiving With The Baby." The family hurried across Central Park that morning. The baby bundled in his brand-new red-and-white ski suit. They found the perfect spot near 72nd Street and Central Park West. It would give them a great view of the whole parade, but it was a very highly coveted spot. So the couple really couldn't leave from where they were seated. Massimo and Kathleen kept switching between who would hold the camera and who would hold the baby,
13:35 Kaelyn Moore? making sure that they both appeared in the footage with their son. But as the day progressed, the wind kept getting worse. Most of the parade was unaffected by this, but the big balloons were starting to get really tossed around in the wind. And then, a little after 10 a.m., the Cat in the Hat balloon came into view. Now, this was a massive balloon. It was six stories tall, and its big red-and-white striped hat was bobbing in the wind. Down on the ground, there was a group of people in charge of holding on to the ropes that were keeping the balloon from flying away, and they were really starting to struggle. The wind was picking up, and they were holding on with all of their might to make sure that the balloon just didn't drift off or become unruly.
14:17 Kaelyn Moore? And what happened next really happened in an instant. A massive gust sent the balloon careening forward towards the crowd. The handlers tried to pull back, but they weren't strong enough, and the giant Cat in the Hat lurched towards a lamppost that was right at the corner where Kathleen and her family were standing. They didn't even have time to react. The impact was so severe, it sheared the top section of the lamppost off. It was this four-foot metal pole that came crashing down into the crowd below. Massimo would later describe the incident to reporters, quote, "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."
15:01 Kaelyn Moore? A young girl named Tracy was also interviewed on the scene. The pole had barely missed her. A chunk hit her foot as she jumped out of the way. Four people in total were injured in this event, but Kathleen definitely got the worst of it. She was on the sidewalk, completely unconscious, in a giant crowd of people after she got hit in the head by the pole. And to make things worse, more balloons were coming down the street. At that point, some of the police officers, who were standing guard by the side of the parade, had actually pulled out knives that they had on them and were charging the balloons that were heading towards the crowd. They were just slashing at them to let air out so that they would come down more gently. There was a Pink Panther balloon that collapsed very quickly
15:45 Kaelyn Moore? onto its handlers when its tail was slashed by an officer. And unconfirmed reports state that a handler was knocked unconscious in the event. Now, probably in an ironic twist, the most unruly balloon at the parade was the Barney balloon, which at one point crashed so hard into a lamppost, it was completely shredded from one side. The lamppost left this huge gash all down Barney's right side, and then it just fell onto the handlers as they used all of their strength to keep him from careening into the crowd. As one handler reported, quote, "Everything went purple." Now, to get the balloon down as gently as possible, officers swarmed Barney and started stabbing the fabric with as much force as they could,
16:30 Kaelyn Moore? really tearing him into bits in front of a crowd of children. Eventually Barney fully deflated and became this puddle on the street. And there was a choir of kids that could be heard screaming and crying that Barney had been killed. And while Barney was being sent to an early death by the New York Police Department, Kathleen was rushed to the hospital. There was a neurosurgeon on call at St. Luke's Hospital that day, who would later call it, quote, "One of the worst crush injuries of the skull I have ever seen." Her nose and her facial bones were broken. The junctures of her skull bones, as one doctor put it, quote, "Had been sprung open." There was damage to her frontal lobe to both Temporal lobes, and those are areas that control memory, speech, and personality.
17:16 Kaelyn Moore? She would go on to remain in a coma for 24 days. Her 34th birthday came and went while she was laying there unconscious. However, she would wake up and start making a recovery. But here's the thing that makes this even more disturbing. So after the Cat in the Hat knocked down that lamp post, after multiple people were rushed to the hospital, after Kathleen was fighting for her life, they let the parade continue on. The deflated Cat in the Hat, its striped hat hanging limp and torn, kept floating down the route to Times Square. You can see it in some of the footage that surfaced from the actual parade. And that's because the way that NBC handles accidents and mishaps that happened during the parade while making it a live broadcast is really interesting.
18:00 Kaelyn Moore? See, when a float doesn't make it into the parade for whatever reason, NBC has this trick they can do. They splice in footage from previous years. So editors work frantically, cutting around disasters, replacing damaged balloons with pristine footage from years past. Most viewers at home never know the difference. And because of that, barely any of the balloon massacre made it into the real broadcast. It was all being edited in real time. People at home could see that the Cat in the Hat balloon was coming down the street with his hat deflated, but they did not see what caused it. And they missed out on a lot of the worst of the balloon disasters. So while a full broadcast was eventually found and it was placed on YouTube, the incident has largely become lost media.
18:44 Kaelyn Moore? Clips from the day have surfaced on the internet over the years. There is footage of the Barney incident that someone captured from a nearby building. And the comments on the video are very funny. It's a lot of millennials saying, "Do you guys remember when we all watched Barney die on live TV?" There's also some camcorder footage of the Cat in the Hat incident that even shows him knocking over the lamp post. However, all of this has to be pieced together. It's not in the original broadcast. A Reddit user claims to have footage from someone in a high-rise who captured a Macy's tragedy right in front of them, right around 10:15. But when you Click the link now. It's been totally removed from YouTube and you can't see it.
19:25 Kaelyn Moore? However, there is one piece of media from the day that will probably be remained lost media forever, even as all of these other clips and camcorder footage comes forward. The police confiscated Kathleen's smashed video camera as evidence. And it seems like this footage not only captured the cat in the hat balloon going down, but Kathleen's accident as well. Her husband Massimo did get the tape back eventually, but he's never watched it. He said, quote, "I'm afraid to see it." I mean, I don't blame him. I wouldn't watch that either. When Kathleen finally came out of her coma on December 21st, right before Christmas, her doctors called it something of a holiday miracle. She remembered the Barney balloon passing by that morning,
20:09 Kaelyn Moore? but does not remember anything else from the rest of the parade. It has, at least to her, become lost media like it's become for many of us. She ended up suing Macy's and the city for $395 million, and she settled for an undisclosed amount in 2001. That wasn't even the end of her story. Because as I was researching Kathleen's story, I found another really scary incident from her life that I thought you guys might find interesting. So nine years after the Macy's Day Parade, Yankees pitcher Corey Lydell's private plane crashed into her building on the Upper East Side. The engine landed in Kathleen's bedroom and set it on fire just minutes before she arrived home with her family.
20:51 Kaelyn Moore? Once again, she narrowly escaped death in New York City, both times on 72nd Street. And I don't know, after reading all of this, if she is incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky. Now, this next piece of lost media is a little different because it isn't actually lost anymore. It was found this year. So if you've seen The Shining, you probably remember the ending image, even if you've forgotten everything else. Jack Nicholson's character, Jack Torrance, has just chased his family through the haunted Overlook Hotel completely unraveled. And then, after all of the chaos, the movie ends in this eerily still way, a black and white photograph of a
21:31 Kaelyn Moore? Crowded party, dozens of people frozen mid-celebration, all dressed in 1920s evening wear. And at the very center of this crowd is Jack, smiling straight into the camera like he's always been there. The caption at the bottom reads, "Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921." Now, this final shot has driven fans a little bit insane for decades. What does it really mean? Was Jack always part of the hotel? Is the overlook some kind of time loop? People have truly picked apart every pixel of this photo. Some people even thought the guests looked suspiciously like members of Woodrow Wilson's family and cabinet. Wilson left office in 1921, so maybe the date at the bottom was a clue. Other people really fixated on Jack's pose in the photo.
22:14 Kaelyn Moore? He has one arm raised and one arm lowered, which is a pose that some people say resembles the demon Baphomet. Was that Kubrick's way of hinting at the fact that there were satanic undertones in the movie? That's all fun, and I've gone down so many YouTube rabbit holes reading into this image. But I will say, the real mystery isn't necessarily the meaning of the photo. It was the photo itself. Because that party scene at the end of The Shining, that wasn't a set. It was a real photograph. And on a 1980 commentary track, Stanley Kubrick had explained that he hadn't staged the image with extras for the movie at all. He said, quote, "They were in a photograph taken in 1921, which we found in a picture library.
22:59 Kaelyn Moore? I originally planned to use extras, but it proved impossible to make them look as good as the people in the photograph." So if that was true, then the question had changed. If this hadn't been created for the movie, if it was not Kubrick's way of putting Easter eggs in at the end of the film, where had this photograph come from? And who were all those people? And who was the man that Jack Nicholson had replaced in the center of the image? And that is where the lost media obsession really kicked in.
23:29 Kaelyn Moore? This episode is brought to you by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla Sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value,
24:13 Kaelyn Moore? built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. This episode is brought to you by SiJoh. A new season always makes me want to reset things, my space, my routine, how my mornings feel. And honestly, upgrading my bedding has made a big difference. And that's why I have been loving SiJoh Home. I have the Aerie Weight Eucalyptus Sheets from SiJoh. They have a lightweight feel, cool-to-the-touch texture. And now my bed feels like a real reset at the end of a long day. I know that every little bit of improvement I can do with my sleep routine makes a huge difference.
24:58 Kaelyn Moore? And so I'm so happy I was able to get SiJoh Sheets. The Aerie Weight Sheets are made with Tencel Liocell. They're doctor-recommended, Ecotec certified, and even HSA and FSA eligible, which I genuinely did not know was a thing for bedding. And if you're someone who prefers a more lived-in texture, their Luxe Weave French Linen Sheets are stone-washed and get softer with every wash. Really beautiful for a bedroom refresh. Go to sijohome.com and use code HSP to get 20% off your first order. That's S-I-J-O-H-O-M-E.com and use code HSP for 20% off at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also...
25:38 Kaelyn Moore? So a big tea drinker. So I've always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil and sweet spices. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City Kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those constant comments actually gave it its name.
26:21 Kaelyn Moore? The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment, curiously different and possible to forget. So hidden inside of this obscure 1985 book called The Complete Airbrush and Photo Retouching Manual. It's basically a how to Photoshop before Photoshop guide. That's where the first clue was. Tucked into one of the book's examples on how to do Photoshop was a big bombshell for Shining fans. It was a side-by-side comparison of the overlook party photo from the end of the movie. On one side was the version that everyone knew with Jack Nicholson grinning at the center. On the other side was the original image.
27:03 Kaelyn Moore? It's the same ballroom, it's the same crowd, but at the center stood a different man. He looked young, maybe mid twenties, a little short. He had dark hair and what appeared to be scars around his nose. The book explained how Jack Nicholson's face had been airbrushed onto this man's using a retouching technique that was new at the time. But the man's name was not included. And then there was one more twist that was found in the book. The caption dated the photo to 1923 and not 1921 like Kubrick had said. So now there were two mysteries. Who was the original man at the center of the photo? And when and where had this party actually been held? Reddit, of course, took that as a challenge, as they always do. There's this user.
27:48 Kaelyn Moore? Named AI89 Nut who posted the image to the Lost Media subreddit and started treating it honestly like a crime scene photo. They zoomed in on the smallest details and the crowd slowly began giving up a few more clues. First of all, no one was holding a drink in the image, not one glass in sight. For a party that crowded, that was pretty odd. Maybe the photo had been taken during prohibition in a place where alcohol was banned in public. That would have pointed to the United States. Okay, so maybe the image was taken in New York or Los Angeles. And then there were the accessories. Several women seemed to be wearing heart shaped pendants in their hair, which made it seem like it was a Valentine's
28:29 Kaelyn Moore? Day event. There was also a big palm frond in the background of the image, exactly the kind of decorative plant that had been really popular in fancy hotel ballrooms in the 1920s. The angle that the shot was taken at also suggested that the photographer was slightly elevated above everyone. So maybe they were up on a stage looking down at a dance floor. And then there was this diamond patterned tiling on the walls, which would make it a lot easier to recognize if someone saw exactly where the picture had been taken. Each of these details was really tiny on its own, but together they started to paint a picture of some kind of formal celebration in a grand ballroom, probably in a major city and most likely around Valentine's Day. But still, that didn't tell you who the man
29:14 Kaelyn Moore? at the center of the photo was. To solve that, another Reddit user ran his face through a facial recognition tool called PIM Eyes. The software spat back, "Only one match." A ballroom dancer born in 1898, whose life story kind of read like fiction itself. Three different names, a military plane crash that had left distinctive scars on his face, and a connection to London's underground dance halls of the 1920s. It was a ballroom dancer named Santos Cassani. The user who ran the search was pretty sure that this was a false positive, but AI89 Nut couldn't shake it. And they started digging into this Santos Cassani person anyways. And what they found-
29:58 Kaelyn Moore? Pretty much lined up to the man in the photo. Cassani was, in fact, a professional ballroom dancer who became quite well-known in the 1920s and 30s. He judged competitions, he owned his own dance clubs around London. He had been born in South Africa and in 1919, while he was serving in the military, he had survived an airplane crash that left scars on his face, especially around his nose, just like the man seen in the original overlook photo. At a certain point, it stopped feeling like it was a coincidence. If that really was Santos Cassani in the center of the frame, then the photo probably hadn't been taken in Los Angeles or New York. It had to have been taken in London. But identifying the man was only half of the battle. Now the hunt became, could anyone actually find the original photograph?
30:43 Kaelyn Moore? So AI 89 Nut teamed up with a visual investigations journalist from the New York Times named Eric Toller. And together they began this kind of archival detective story. They combed through old newspaper clippings and photo archives, looking for images of Cassani. They hoped that they could build a list of clubs that he had owned and hotels that he had performed in, maybe ballrooms he had frequented in the early 1920s. If they could match one of those interiors, the diamond patterned walls, the balcony angle, the palm fronds, to a real place, they might be able to locate the exact place where the photo had been taken. At the same time, AI 89 Nut started reaching out to anyone connected with The Shining, who might remember where production had gotten the image from.
31:28 Kaelyn Moore? There was an interview with a woman named Joan Smith, who was the artist who actually superimposed Jack Nicholson into the photo. She believed that the image had come from a Warner Brothers archive. So AI 89 Nut tracked down another person from the film, Marie Close, the onset photographer who had taken the original picture of Jack Nicholson that eventually got pasted into the scene. And Marie had something surprising to say. He said there was no such thing as the Warner Brothers photo archive, at least not in the way that people were imagining it. But he said that he remembered the photo being licensed from somewhere else, the BBC Holton Picture Library. It's one of those massive historic photo archives. That holds everything from Victorian portraits to mid-century news shots.
32:12 Kaelyn Moore? And if that was true, then the photo was definitely out there, but it was buried amongst millions of other images that this archive owned. And not only that, when they did a search of the Holton Archive for Santos Cassani, nothing came up. It was like the photo never existed. But there was one guy who worked at the archive, this guy Matt Butson. He was the vice president, and once he heard about the mystery, he also became totally obsessed with it, and he did some digging. He confirmed that at one point, the archive had licensed at least one image of Santos Cassani to Stanley Kubrick's production company back in 1979. That was a good sign. They were clearly looking in the right place. But when he pulled the record, the photo attached wasn't the overlooked party image.
32:57 Kaelyn Moore? It was a completely different shot. Good news, though, they had proven that Cassani was in the archive and that Kubrick's team had licensed photos of him from it. But bad news was the specific photo they were looking for might have been misfiled or just gone completely. If it had never been returned after filming or had gotten re-categorized under the wrong name, finding it would have meant manually searching through millions of glass plate negatives one by one, and it was honestly starting to feel like the original overlooked party image might be lost for good. However, Matt Butson just could not let this mystery go. In April of this year, he decided he was going to widen his search. He started looking through another collection, the topical press archive.
33:41 Kaelyn Moore? It's this older trove of photographs that had been partially absorbed into the Holton Archive back in the 1950s. And he ran a new query for images licensed to Stanley Kubrick's production company around the same time. And that is when he got a hit. Sitting in the topical press files was a glass plate negative. And when he held it up so he could see what the image was of, he saw a crowded ballroom, people in evening dress, women with heart-shaped accessories in their hair, a palm frond in the background, and that distinctive diamond pattern on the wall. And in the very center- grinning directly at the camera was the man from the airbrushing manual.
34:24 Kaelyn Moore? Not Jack Torrance, not Santos Cassani, at least not yet. The name on the accompanying note card said John Goldman. And as it turned out, Santos Cassani had been born as Joseph Goldman. And when he had moved to the UK in 1915 to serve in infantry, he changed his name to John Goldman. And later, when he reinvented himself as a dancer, he changed his name again to Santos Cassani. So the archive card had recorded him at this in-between moment in his life, when he was still halfway between identities. The photo itself was labeled, though, as being taken at the Royal Palace Hotel in London during a Valentine's Day ball on February 15th, 1921.
35:08 Kaelyn Moore? So the internet sleuths had gotten a lot about this mystery, right? Just from seeing that screenshot of the image on Reddit. It had been a grand ballroom. It had been a Valentine's Day celebration. The Royal Palace Hotel had been demolished, actually, in 1961. So you couldn't walk into that same ballroom anymore. Santos Cassani had also died in relative obscurity in 1983. But now he has the credit he deserves as being somewhat of a ghost inside of The Shining movie, hidden under Jack Nicholson's face in, honestly, one of the most famous horror endings of all time. But even though they had found the original photos, there's still a couple of things about the image that don't really add up. First of all, no one ever had a satisfying explanation for why no one in the room seemed to be holding a drink,
35:51 Kaelyn Moore? even though there hadn't been prohibition in London at the time. For a Valentine's Day ball in a luxury hotel, the empty hands felt very strange. And some people aren't satisfied with the Baphomet pose that they thought they saw at the end, the one raised arm and the one lowered arm. Turns out that wasn't really a demonic Easter egg that was placed there by Stanley Kubrick. Jack was just mimicking the exact pose that Cassani had struck in the original photo. But 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. People just having a good time. And somehow, when it slipped into the shining, it became something else entirely.
36:35 Kaelyn Moore? Okay, guys, our final piece of lost media comes from another one of my favorite holiday movies. It's the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas. So every year, there is very heated online debate over whether this is a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie. I actually say it's technically a Halloween movie, but I'm gonna let you guys decide in the comments if I'm right or wrong about that. The movie, which is produced by Tim Burton and directed by Henry Selick, was not very popular when it first came out. But over the last 30-odd years, it has become somewhat of a cult classic. The film started as a poem Tim Burton wrote 11 years earlier, back when he was just an apprentice animator at Disney from 1979 to 1984. And the poem was pretty dark, even by Burton's standards.
37:18 Kaelyn Moore? Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, had grown tired of Halloween, deciding to kidnap Santa and take over Christmas for himself. Burton had sketched out the whole story, these twisted characters with their hollow eyes and stitched smiles. But there is a ghost that haunts this film. Not one of the singing spirits of Halloween town, but the actual ghost of horror royalty. Vincent Price's lost performance as Santa Claus. Now Vincent Price was one of the kings of horror. In House of Wax, he's a murderous wax museum owner. In The Fly, he watched his brother transform into a monster. He had also just played Edward Scissorhands's inventor in the movie for Tim Burton.
38:02 Kaelyn Moore? So when he was approached to voice Santa Claus in another Tim Burton movie, Price did not hesitate at the opportunity. Other actors were actually offended by the offer. They thought playing Santa in a Gothic stop-motion film was totally beneath them. But Price had a vision. He understood what Burton was creating. So he went into the studio and he started recording Santa's voice. Filtered through Vincent Price's distinctive theatrical drawl, it would be amazing to hear if only we were able to. Only a handful of people would ever get to hear these recordings because soon after, tragedy struck. Vincent Price's wife Coral, a renowned actress in her own right, passed away while he was recording for Tim Burton.
38:46 Kaelyn Moore? And the grief really, really affected him. When he returned to the recording studio to finish his work, he seemed despondent, according to the director. His voice, which was once booming and proud, had become really frail and weak. The man who had terrified audiences for decades could barely speak above a whisper. Disney heard these tapes and they decided that the recordings were completely unusable. And unfortunately, it just kind of gets more tragic from there. I don't think anyone would have guessed it, but that would go on to be Vincent Price's final performance ever. He died of lung cancer that very same year. So you would think that those recordings would have become memorialized in some way,
39:31 Kaelyn Moore? but they're gone, vanished. Director Henry Selig says that he doesn't even know where they went. And Disney is at least claiming that they don't have them anymore. Eventually, the role was recast and a local San Francisco actor named Ed Ivory went on to play Santa Claus, not knowing that the role was really intended for another actor, one that will never be able to hear the recordings of. To this day, 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 tapes so we can hear the final performance from Vincent. All right, guys, that is all I have for you today in our lost media episode. What media do you remember from the holidays that's been completely lost to time?
40:16 Kaelyn Moore? Producer Matt was just telling me about an Ewok special, apparently from Star Wars that aired. That was so bad, it was scrapped by Disney forever. So very curious if you guys know of any other ones. And as always, you can also join me over on the High Council tier on Patreon to check out some more information that didn't make it into the episode, maybe some other pieces of lost media that didn't make it in. Maybe we'll talk about that Ewok special. I'll have Matt show me some stuff. But I also want to share on that Footnotes episode, a little bit of Mariah Carey lost media that I think I found while I was doing the research for this episode. So join me over there. I will see you next week and until then, stay curious.
40:58 Kaelyn Moore? Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Sound design and mix by Pete Tree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jordan again, the team at WME and Ben Joffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out hearts start pounding.com. This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming.
41:44 Kaelyn Moore? They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. Do you want more darkly curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club.
42:25 Kaelyn Moore? Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heart starts pounding. But whatever you do, stay curious.
Previous 155. Vanished At Christmas: Two Mysteries That Will Make You Question Everything Next 157. "Something Is Mimicking My Sister" and Other Terrifying True Stories From Listeners Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated