Episode 73 of the podcast kicks off with the horrifying true story of the scariest place I have ever visited, Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts. For a century patients were kept there, through various iterations of the property. Though it was used for the backdrop of a few movies the reality of this long standing hospital is stranger than fiction.
There are a few places in New England that feel like home to me. One such place is Mid-Coast Maine. The town of Camden, Maine is a big part why. Mountains, lighthouses, harbor views, a classic Main Street, and so much more. This week's Road Trip should be one that gets you ready to pay Camden a visit.
Today many people have unlimited and easy access to the internet, some through their smartphones. A quarter-century ago the internet was a vastly different place. Modems, dial-up, different search engines, primitive websites, and more. We go way Back In the Day to reminisce with a Part 1 of Internet in the 1990's.
This week's Top 5, by special request, dives into some of the scariest television show themes that scarred your childhood. Which ones made the list?
There is a new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the very first Major League Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
Helpful Links from this Episode(available through Buzzsprout)
Listen to Episode 72 here.
Episode 73 of the podcast kicks off with the horrifying true story of the scariest place I have ever visited, Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts. For a century patients were kept there, through various iterations of the property. Though it was used for the backdrop of a few movies the reality of this long standing hospital is stranger than fiction.
There are a few places in New England that feel like home to me. One such place is Mid-Coast Maine. The town of Camden, Maine is a big part why. Mountains, lighthouses, harbor views, a classic Main Street, and so much more. This week's Road Trip should be one that gets you ready to pay Camden a visit.
Today many people have unlimited and easy access to the internet, some through their smartphones. A quarter-century ago the internet was a vastly different place. Modems, dial-up, different search engines, primitive websites, and more. We go way Back In the Day to reminisce with a Part 1 of Internet in the 1990's.
This week's Top 5, by special request, dives into some of the scariest television show themes that scarred your childhood. Which ones made the list?
There is a new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the very first Major League Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
Helpful Links from this Episode(available through Buzzsprout)
Listen to Episode 72 here.
Intro
Hello World, and welcome to the in my footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. Coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 73. This week's episode starts off with a deep dive into the scariest place I've ever been in my travels Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts, we're going to take a road trip up north to a spot that is near and dear to my heart, the small seaside town of Camden, Maine. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at what it was like to be on the internet in the 1990s. There's going to be a brand new top five that is the top five scariest TV show theme songs that ruined your childhood. There'll be a brand new this week in history and Time Capsule all coming up right now on episode 73 of the in my footsteps podcast. Can you feel it? It's almost here. Summer starts this week. Well, after this podcast drops it will be within a few days. So hopefully you've gotten to enjoy some of the nice weather. Hopefully, the pollen starts to die down. It's been so bad this year. I've had times when I've been out for a walk or a run on the bike trail near me. And if I step off and walk into the grass, it turns my blue sneakers a really gross orangey-yellow color because of all the pollen. And it's a killer for people like me that have allergies. Before we get too deep into this episode, I wanted to make sure that I give a special shout-out Happy Birthday to one of my oldest friends, one of my favorite people, my buddy Steve, you've heard him on the podcast before. You've heard me mention him many times on here. He's one of the two people along with my high school photography teacher, Mr. Murphy that taught me basically everything I know about photography. So if you follow me on Instagram, and you like any of my photos, you can thank Steve for a lot of that. And hopefully, we'll have another great photo adventure soon or just any sort of hangout adventure, because of timing and schedules. As you get older, they don't always work out. So make the most of the time you get with the people that matter to you. Because you don't get a lot of it sometimes. For those that are curious, the lady of the dunes book that I'm working on, I'm doing my rewrites, hoping to pitch it to agents and publishers, likely the end of next month or early August. There's no rush because I believe in this project, and I want it to be seen by the biggest possible amount of eyes. But as far as the documentary, which premiered back the first week of April, you're in luck if you want to see it. I don't have the exact dates and times and such. But Frank, the producer has told me that we're going to run the show, likely in Provincetown, around the time that the lady of the dunes body was found in Provincetown. So we're looking at late July for probably a week-long stay. Naturally, when I have more details, I will share them with you on here on social media, so that a lot of you that have not gotten the chance to see it can come and see the movie. I'll be at probably one of the showings. So then you can say hi, and it's a great documentary, which is why I've worked so hard on the book. So you'll get to see the fruits of Frank's labor, and then get an idea of what the book will be all about. But that is next month. Right now we have got episode 73 to dive into Halloween might be five months away, but I'm going to turn up the scary right here with an in-depth look at easily the creepiest place I've ever been to in my travels. And luckily you can go there too. So sit back and relax. If you need to turn the lights off to add to the mood Be my guest. But here coming up now is the story of the Medfield State Hospital on episode 73 of the in my footsteps podcast.
Medfield State Hospital
The town of Medfield. Massachusetts is home to roughly 7000 people as of the 2020 census and sits 17 miles southwest of Boston. It contains several beautiful hiking areas shops and restaurants. Mixing a touch of the city with the layout of a mid-sized town. Medfield is also home to what might be the creepiest place in all of Massachusetts. For a century a campus existed in town but this was no college. A hospital existed in town but it was not purely medical. It was the Medfield state hospital. It was a spot to became an inspiration for film and television and this has its story. Facilities to treat the mentally ill had been around in America for centuries. The first such operation opened in 1752 in Philadelphia, it was part of the Pennsylvania Hospital. The basement of the hospital provided beds with shackles attached to the wall to house a small number of the mentally ill. In Massachusetts, the first facility helped give the future ones their name. In 1818. McLean Hospital opened, it was first called the asylum for the insane and was a division of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The hospital was renamed McLean asylum for the insane in 1825. Most of the similar hospitals in the future would often be referred to as insane asylums or mental hospitals, even if it wasn't directly in their name. The Medfield insane asylum became the third such facility in Massachusetts when work began on it in early 1891. The initial plans were to have 25 buildings 18 of them housing 1000 patients in a self-contained cottage-style campus. It was to be the first asylum strictly for the long-term care of high-need chronic patients. The money appropriated for the project about $500,000 or close to 14.5 million dollars today was not seen to be enough. The Massachusetts State Inspector feared the buildings would be built on the cheap and could be fire traps. In February 1893. The asylum in Dover New Hampshire burned to the ground, killing 44 of the 48 patients there, which only exacerbated fears the project was temporarily put on hold to further iron out the plans. The buildings of the Medfield asylum have red brick with walls 12 inches thick. In addition to the dormitories for the patients there, there was an administration building, laundry, kitchen, dining room and more, making the 425-acre property more like a small village than a mental hospital. After a long legal wrangling over the trustees of the property, and securing that the buildings would indeed be safe for the patients. The Medfield insane asylum opened in May 1896. There were initially about 600 patients at the asylum, including 178 immediately transferred there from the Danvers asylum upon Medfield's grand opening. In the beginning, Medfield would be used to help ease the overcrowding and other nearby facilities. By the time the property had its first name change to the Medfield state asylum in 1905. There were a total of 1554 patients living there. The staff of the asylum initially lived on the property as well, often sleeping in the attics of the buildings which housed the patience. In 1914. The property underwent a second name change to the Medfield State Hospital. The property superintendent Edward French said at the time that the name change was necessary. As any intelligent patient there might feel hopeless living in an asylum. Name Changes aside, there was a problem that needed correction and that was the lack of restraints on some of the violent patients. In 1912 alone, several nurses on staff were injured via attacks from violent patients not properly restrained. Not all the people living at the Medfield hospital were dangerous though. In fact, many would only be there for a respite and be released and even find jobs in the private sector. Despite that positive news, the small town of Medfield was continuously at odds with the facility. A suspicious fire that burned the laundry building in June 1924 got the town's attention as though the fire was controlled, it theoretically could have put the town at danger. Patient-on-staff crime vice versa and patient-on-patient incidents were frequent. The first incident to make the news was the September 1916. Beating death of patient Camillo Strazullo by attendant Wesley Linton. Linton would be found guilty and spent three years in prison in Dedham. As incidence increased over the rest of the decade, staff encouraged swift prosecution for violence against patients. At the end of the 1910s the property expanded to a total of 609 acres of land abutting the Charles River. On the west end of the property, a cemetery was built to accommodate the remains of the many inmates who died during the Spanish flu pandemic at the end of the 1910s. And that cemetery still exists today. Eventually, the campus swelled to 58 buildings including a chapel. The incidents of violence inside the Medfield state hospital were exacerbated during the 1930s and 40s. When the facility's population was at its highest. It became a problem of overcrowding as the number of patients top 2300 incidents of murder increased, as did the escaping of patients. This included three men stealing a car in November 1935 and making it to Dedham before being apprehended. Otherwise, it became routine for patients to wander off and into town as the hospital was basically an open campus with no outer walls and no guards. Shock Therapy came into use in 1938, initially killing two test patients. World War Two strain the staffing at the hospital, leading to more competent patients helping out to care for the less inclined people and the property itself. Major changes for the Medfield State Hospital began in the 1950s. The reintroduction of lithium as a psychiatric medication in 1949, led to a revolution in terms of medications and treatments of those suffering from mental illness. Lithium used for mania got the ball rolling, but it was chlorpromazine (brand name Thorazine), which came along in 1949 that changed the game. It was popularized in the early 1950s. Other drugs like emit bromine was one of the first antidepressants and that came along shortly thereafter. These medications then allowed more patients living at the asylums to be sent home. Those that did stay in the facilities were far calmer, and the campus at Medfield began to resemble a college rather than a busy subway station. Medfield garnered praise for its rehabilitation program under the leadership of Dr. Harold Lee during the later 50s and early 60s. Change continued as Congress in the early 1960s passed a law stating that asylum patients needed to be kept under as little restraint as possible. changes in policies coupled with more patients being allowed to lead relatively normal lives outside of the walls of an asylum eventually led to the closure of some such facilities. During the 1970s, some asylums began seeing a little use as correctional facilities, and some fear that Medfield might follow suit. However, it was a far worse fate that began to be discussed. The choice was bandied about of either closing Medfield or the Westboro hospital, the population dropped at Medfield and some of the buildings on the campus closed. calls for reform of policies that Medfield had begun in 1966 and came to a head in 1984 from the Massachusetts Mental Health Department. The population continued dropping until it was at 200 in 1989. It was at this point that the property finally became fenced in a major reason was an influx of patients from the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane to Medfield, which worried town's residents. During the 1990s the campus was deteriorating, the properties wells were taken out of service and the town supplied it with water. Also, mothballs were used in some of the buildings to try to stem the deterioration. The writing was on the wall though slowly parcels of land were donated to the state for conservation. talks of closing Medfield State Hospital have been ongoing for years long before word officially came down in 2002. April 13 2003, saw the hospital close and the remaining patients transferred to Westboro. For the first time in 107 years, the campus and its red brick building stood silent. The former Medfield State Hospital sat in limbo for 11 years before it was used for scenes in the 2009 movie the box and the 2010 movie Shutter Island. The town officially bought it in December 2014. A total of 127 acres was purchased for $3.1 million. Though it might eventually end up as subsidized housing, retail space or something else in the not-too-distant future. Currently, it is possible to walk the grounds among the creepy yet beautiful old buildings of Medfield State Hospital. There have been numerous accounts of paranormal activity on the grounds and the property as a whole lends itself to something out of a horror movie. I can tell you the first time I ever went there in 2010, it was like being in a nightmare scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street. It really is like an abandoned old neighborhood. And when I walked down that road into and among those buildings the first time, I remember it being so eerily silent. No wind, no animals, no birds. The only thing I ever saw was this beige sedan driving up and down the roads, almost like it was a security detail. But it looked like something out of a nightmare. The red buildings and the white shutters the paint would run down. So it looked like the windows were crying white tears. It was like I was so excited and then thralls by these buildings, but I also couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. By the second time, I went back there in 2019. It wasn't different, but it had been repurposed. So they were kind of promoting people to come and see it. The first time it was like there was a trailer, the guard said no cameras, but I still brought mine anyway, secretly. The second time it was promoted, come on in and see Medfield state hospital there were people in their walking their dogs, not a ton of them, but enough that it didn't feel as isolated. But the second time was when I heard the noises inside the old vocational building. The building was locked. There was no one in there, no one working in there. But yet when I got close to the building, it sounded like one of the saws was on inside like sawing something a saw or a drill. And I actually have a video of it. And I say at the end of the video, please tell me you heard that. It is definitely the creepiest place I've ever been to in my trips. And I've been to Gettysburg, the battlefield after dark. But if you're into paranormal if you're into creepy, if you're into scary, visit the Medfield State Hospital, even in the middle of the day, it's scary as hell.
Road Trip: Camden, ME
When it comes to the road trip segments on this podcast, I'm never going to talk about a place that I either didn't enjoy visiting or wouldn't want to go to if I haven't been there. But that being said, there are obviously places that I enjoyed more than others. And there are certain areas of New England that just speak to me and feel like home, if that makes sense to you. There's got to be places that you've gone where you just feel you belong more than others. And so this week is one of those Mid-coast, Maine and specifically the town of Camden, always felt somewhere that, like my soul belonged. It's a beautiful seaside town, but it's got that slice of quintessential Maine, a beautiful, homey, classic Main Street. It's bordered by other amazing towns like Rockland, and owls head which I've spoken about before on the podcast. For those looking to travel there, Camden, it's a little less than 200 miles northeast of Boston. So for those of you living in southern New England, it could be a hike, but that's why you make this trip, a day trip a week trip. And if you do, you'll be glad you did. As of 2019, the population of Camden was right around 3500 people, so it's a small town, but in summer, it gets packed with people. If you've never been to Camden and you're looking for a place to kind of start, I would say mount Battie. That's what I really enjoyed when I first went. It is part of the larger Camden Hills State Park, which is 5700 acres, including over 30 miles of hiking trails, so you can go in there and just get lost. But mount Battie itself it says mount it's not that tall. It's roughly 800 feet so it's small for a “mountain.” But while the view when you get up there is spectacular. You get up there and you look down to the east. There's Camden Harbor, and Penobscot Bay. And if you look to the north, you can actually see Acadia National Park and Cadillac Mountain way off on the horizon. You can get up there and park and just look down at the harbor and the boats coming in. For those of you from Cape Cod or who know Cape Cod, if you've ever been to Scargo tower in Dennis, you're going to love mount Battie because there's this stone tower at the top at the summit that looks just like Scargo tower. So you can go and climb that. It was first erected in 1921 and it's 26 feet tall. So you already have a great view at the top. This just makes it even better. The irony is that from there you can see Curtis Island below in the harbor. And there's Curtis Island Lighthouse, which is one of those that I never was able to get a great photo of, because you kind of needed a boat to go out to the island. And I drove down along Bayview Street, trying to find a way to see the lighthouse as best I could through the trees. There's an overlook there. But I ended up I didn't find out about it until long after I had returned home the first time so that was a fail. Check out Camden, Maine vacation.com. To get all you need to know about this area and even the surrounding towns. Because obviously like I always say with the road trips, I can only give you so much, which is why I always give you websites to check out homework for you to check out. If you're looking to stay closer to sea level and not go up to Mount baddie, there's Camden's Harbor Park and amphitheater. It's located on Atlantic Avenue right in front of the public library. The amphitheater and Harbor Park are popular spots for not only photography and picnicking and people watching and boat watching but weddings. There's McGinty, cook falls going to cook River, which waterfalls and such are always fun. When it comes to Camden, I would say find a parking area around Main Street and just get out and walk. You're right by the water and like I said Main Street is a classic small town Main Street. If you head north on Route, one heading towards Camden eventually becomes Main Street. So if you're on route one, you're going to go right through it. There's the opera house right there. You'll find yourself probably easily getting in your 10,000 steps for the day when just walking around the Main Street area and around the harbor. Check out Franny's bistro at 55 Chestnut Street, and Franny's bistro.com. It's an interesting mix because it's affordable fine dining, I guess you would say. They got seafood, steaks, lamb, crab cakes, all that good stuff. And if you go to their website and check out their menus, they got pictures of the food, which will really get you in the mood to go up there and visit. And after you've had some fine dining, at Franny's, you can take a quick walk up the road to river ducks ice cream, at 19 Mechanic Street. They've got a Facebook page, and it's got a list of all of their flavors of ice cream, including main inspired favorites, like black bear, caribou, caramel, and lobster tracks, obviously, these are not made of the animals that they referenced. There's no caribou-flavored ice cream, but it's just cute names. I would recommend the Maine maple walnut, maple walnut is one of my favorites anyway. And there's this great up there. Camden is more than just a small town, it's the whole thing, it's greater than the sum of its parts. And the sum of its parts is great. I love all these places, as I mentioned at the top of this segment, but I have my favorites and I try to parcel them out. So I haven't run through many of them, because as you can tell, I just gush over it and just want you to go and experience it. But I couldn't just have this segment be go to Camden, I have to give you an example. Still if you go, you need to stay overnight, you need to soak in all of the times of the day. So check out the Grand Harbor in. It's at 14 Bayview landing, right there near Main Street, you can't miss it. All these places I've mentioned are within walking distance of each other. They're at Grand Harbor inn.com. And it's a bit of a luxury resort. So if that's not your thing, there are other places to stay at. But the view from your deck of the harbor will make it all worthwhile. Camden is just a feast for all of your senses. And you can't go wrong with any season to go there. It's summertime now. But if you go in the fall for the foliage or in winter, when it's all snow-covered, there's really no bad time to go check out Camden rockland.com, which is the Chamber of Commerce shows you everything you want to see in Camden and neighboring Rockland, and owls head. One of my first really big vacations that I did for traveling was to mid-coast, Maine, and my home base was in owls head. So I will say Rockland and Camden I was right there. And I just fell in love with the area. There are a few places in New England when I visit where I could say I could see myself moving there and loving it. And one such place is this Midcoast Maine. If you can tell I love it. I couldn't give it enough of a recommendation for you. So even though it's 200 miles from Boston, and for me to get there from Cape Cod, it's close to five hours, but it's worth it. Take your car drive up there and just explore walk Main Street, go up to Mount Battie and look around. There are so many places that I didn't have time to mention. And I'm not just saying that as a teaser, I'm not getting sponsored by Camden, Maine. I'll try to post a couple of photos from my time up there on social media so you can see it. Although you can find them yourselves. I gave some sites. I'll put the websites in the description of the podcast. It's a jewel of Maine's sea coast. And I could keep going on and gushing about it. Like that famous Saturday Night Live sketch where Chris Farley meets Paul McCartney and just gushes over him. That's how I feel like I am with Camden, Maine. So check out the links into the description of the podcast for the sites to visit, then go visit Camden, Maine, and then let me know what you think I know you'll love it.
This Week In History
This week in history, we are going back at three years ago this week to June 12 1939, and the first-ever Major League Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The ceremony naturally was held in Cooperstown, New York, where the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame is located. But an interesting fact about this story is that the very first Hall of Fame inductees were announced February 2 1936, three and a half years earlier. In 1937, and 1938. More people were elected before 1939 I guess they deemed it enough people that they get to hold a proper Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The first five that were named to the Hall of Fame in 1936 were Ty Cobb Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. Other legends of the early years of baseball that ended up going into the Hall of Fame in that ceremony in 1939, included Tris speaker Cy Young, Grover Alexander, Cap Anson, and Lou Gehrig. As of the present day there are 340 members of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame for the original ceremony and every year since the players that are selected are chosen by the Baseball Writers Association of America. And any candidate has to have been retired for five years and receive at least 75% of the vote, all except for Lou Gehrig, who he retired in 1939, with complications from ALS. And once it became obvious that he was not ever going to play again, they broke the rule and put him right in. The reason that they had basically four years' worth of selections for the Hall of Fame before they had a ceremony was that they wanted to have at least 10 players from the 20th century get voted in. And it took that long. For decades and decades, there was controversy with the voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame, because no player would get 100% of the vote, despite being the greatest to ever play the game. With the old-time baseball writers' rule basically saying that if Babe Ruth didn't get 100% Why should anyone else that rule was finally broken in 2019. When New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera got 100% of the vote. And despite him being the only one to get 100% of the vote, there have actually been 16 players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with a higher percentage than Babe Ruth gut. And that very first Major League Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony, which included Babe Ruth occurred at three years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going back 39 years ago this week, June 12 1983, where my brother Matt would have been one week old to see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Flashdance by Irene Cara. This was off of her album what a feeling and also was part of the soundtrack for the movie Flashdance. The song spent six weeks at number one, and one Irene cara a Grammy and an Oscar. This was actually Irene Cara second Oscar award which she also won in 1980 for the song fame from the movie Fame. So she was a dance movie queen. The number one movie was Return of the Jedi. This was the final film of the original Star Wars trilogy. where Luke Skywalker Han Solo Princess Leia, and everyone defeat the Empire and Darth Vader has his big Redemption at the end where he becomes Anakin Skywalker again. I clearly remember seeing this at the drive in a huge part of my childhood. It has an 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which made it the lowest out of the original trilogy. It didn't matter though the movie made $475 million at the box office, or just under $1.4 billion when adjusted for inflation. The movie ended up being number one for six non-consecutive weeks, with Superman three debuting in the middle there to knock it to number two, but only briefly. The number one TV show was Newhart. It starred Bob Newhart in the lead with Mary Fran as his wife, Tom Poston, Peter Scolari, and others. The couple relocated from New York to a small town in Vermont, where they run the historic Stafford in The show ran for eight seasons and a total of 184 episodes between 1982 and 1990. And it ended up being nominated for 25 Emmy awards during its lifetime but didn't win any, which is actually really surprising. And if you were around back then June 12 1983, getting ready for summer you need some new summer wardrobe. You could get some Oxford button down shirts for $9.99 and polo shirts for $4.99. Women's tops and skirts for $5.99 and $6.99. Whoo, a lot of good deals. Where could you get those? At one of the five Clothes Quarters stores located on Cape Cod. Falmouth, Hyannis, West Yarmouth, West Harwich, in Orleans, they all had Clothes quarters. Do you longtime Cape Cod is remember Clothes quarters? That's going to wrap up another this week in history, another time capsule. And now it's time for a brand new top five time to get the scary on as we look back at the top five TV show theme songs that scared you as a kid. This was by special request. So hopefully Crystal and Adam listen and enjoy and agree. But let's see if you all agree as we dive into the top five right now.
Top 5: TV Show Theme Songs That Scared Kids
This will be a fun one to give some of you some PTSD from your childhood. As we go over the top five, TV show theme songs that used to scare you as a kid. Now I guess it all depends on when you were a kid for some of these shows. As you know, I'm a child of the 80s teenager of the 90s. So you'll see where my fear goes. But I tried to be fair and find other shows that might have scarred some of you that are a little bit older, a little bit younger. So the criteria for this, I guess the theme song itself could be scary the music, but it could also be the imagery that came up when the show was starting. I'll give you a few honorable mentions here to kind of give you an idea. And if you don't know some of these shows in their themes, you can go on YouTube and find any of them I found all of them just to remind me which ones were really scary. Honorable Mentions include Tales from the dark side, the outer limits, are you afraid of the dark? And Tales from the Crypt? Are you afraid of the dark? That's the show there were i i was thinking more of my younger sisters as far as being scared of that. So that's why I put that one in there. But let's dive right into the top five as I always say these are in no particular order. But here we go. Number one is Unsolved Mysteries. And I guess if these were to go in order, this would have been number one anyway. If you don't know Unsolved Mysteries, I don't know where you've been the last 35 years. Robert Stack hosted the original and it had some creepy music, but it was also the intro where he would talk about what was coming up on the show. His voice was very haunting and scary especially being 10-11-12 years old watching unsolved mysteries and praying as a kid that when they got done describing whatever happened if it was murder, or supernatural, kidnapping, you were hoping for the update that it was solved so you could sleep at night. I'm sure a lot of you would have that on your own list of the scariest TV theme songs. Number two was rescue 911. Here's one where it had a kind of a piano theme. But this is what I mean by the imagery to start the show also added to the scariness of it because it would be 911 calls police sirens people frantically begging for help. And also scenes that they obviously they must have shot on a soundstage but of people like doing rescues because they would recreate what would happen so you'd have actors and actresses playing people that were hurt, but you knew it was based in reality, and I believe rescue 911 always had “happy endings.” I don't think there was a lot of death on there. Whereas Unsolved Mysteries, it was pretty much always death, and they were looking for murderers. But that shows rescue 911 was the late 80s, early 90s. So you can kind of see my wheelhouse here. And we'll keep that going with number three, the X Files, that electric piano synthesized keyboard beginning, you can hear it in your head. If you don't know The X Files theme, I'd be shocked. This was a mid to late 90s show about paranormal activity. And again, it had the creepy imagery of alien spaceships and potential monsters and such. So it added to it when the show came out. I was 15. So it wasn't as scary as it would have been if I was a few years younger. But still, you knew when you started that show, and you heard that theme and saw the imagery that you were in for a pretty good scare most of the time. Number four is the Twilight Zone. And we're talking about the original Twilight Zone, Rod Serling from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. This is really the OG of scary theme songs, scary sci fi horror type TV shows. And the Twilight Zone theme itself is iconic. If you've never heard it again, I don't know where you've been. But it's easy to find. And they have marathons of the show on the Sci Fi network. Typically, like monthly you can find marathons of the show because it's one of the best shows ever made. But that theme song and the imagery of some of the stuff not just outer space, but there'll be just these weird random dolls floating through the air and blinking eyes and such. So that was an easy one to make this list. And finally, number five was Freddy's Nightmares. This was a pretty short-lived horror show based around Freddy Krueger and some of the tales were of him. But most of them were other horror stories kind of like the Tales from the Crypt with the Cryptkeeper. But the intro music was a take-off of a Nightmare on Elm Street and the Freddy Krueger rhyme. You know, one, two Freddy's coming for you. So if you were a fan of the movies, when this came out the theme and the imagery and such was enough to get you scared before the show even started. Now granted, the show wasn't that great and it didn't last that long. But still the theme was good and most of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are great. The funny thing is when I was putting this list together, I had an another show that was going to be in here was the show before Unsolved Mysteries it was called In Search of it was from the late 70s to the early 80s. And it starred Leonard Nimoy and it literally was like the precursor to Unsolved Mysteries. And the show segments itself had just creepy music like synthesized sounds. And Leonard Nimoy his voice was pretty haunting. But when I looked back, the theme itself was this cheeseball 70s synthesizer that really didn't set up how scary the show would be. And none of the imagery was really scary. It was just pictures of people and things so I couldn't really put it in there. But I wanted to mention at the end because in search of the original is really good. But there you have the top five scariest TV show themes from your childhood. Hopefully one of the spoke to you. Unsolved Mysteries, rescue 911 X Files, the Twilight Zone, Freddy's Nightmares, and special thanks to Krystal and Adam, who recommended this topic. So they if you enjoyed it, you can thank them for it. Because it was a fun one to research. And hopefully, I don't give you all too many nightmares with these TV show themes from your childhood no PTSD.
Back In the Day: 1990s Internet
In 2022, I can literally grab my smartphone, it's in my hand right now. Open it up and be on the internet, no big whoop. It's so easy and convenient. And I take it for granted to the point where when I'm in a spot where I don't get really good reception, I get upset that I can't just go on the internet. And it got me thinking about way back in the day. And what it was like when the internet was first made readily available to the average person. And that's what it made me realize how good we actually have it today. I am old enough, the later part of Generation X, where we are old enough to remember what it's like to not have had all this technology, but also young enough to actually appreciate it and be pretty good at using it. Me, my family, we first got internet at the end of 1995, beginning of 1996, it was so much different. We had a giant gateway computer with a huge modem. And being a huge family with five of us kids and two adults, it was almost like we needed one of those sign-in sheets to schedule time to be on the internet. Because no one had ever seen anything where all of this entertainment and knowledge and information and research tools are at your fingertips. I remember in the time, before we got our gateway computer, we had a word processor. And it was obvious it didn't have internet, it was kind of like the generic cousin of a personal computer. And it was fun. I got to type up a lot of stuff for school, but it was no Internet. In the beginning, and people that are my age a little younger, a little older will remember when America Online first came out, and it had the CDs where you would basically get like 400 free hours of AOL. And that was what we would do. A lot of the time was getting those free trials. Because when you've got five kids, two adults that all want to be on the computer, and you've got to pay for the actual internet service, you need all the free trials you could get. You'd get them in the mail, sometimes they'd have them in stores. I don't know when we stopped using those. But eventually, it got to the point where you became kind of an expert at the Internet. I always had an AOL email. I had a Hotmail one, do you remember Hotmail? You basically got your email through a search engine. So AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo. And sending email back then was different because nobody knew what the hell it was. So today, everybody in the world from age 10, up to age 100, has email. So you can just send it to anybody back then you had to make sure they actually had email, otherwise, it was pointless. But the big thing at the beginning was the dial up internet, the fact that you had to attach a phone line to your computer to get on to the internet, which meant God help you if someone needed to use the phone, you had to get off the computer, which is just I know, for the young people today, it's a foreign concept because your phone has the internet. So like I said, with five of us kids, and at the time that we got the internet, I was 18. And my youngest sisters, they were probably 11. So all of us were in school, all of us had friends, all of us had school projects we had to do so getting the time to just surf the internet was not a real thing. It was like you got to half hour then get off. And I can't I think if people picked up the phone, they could throw you off the internet like there was a way to mess with your siblings. Almost like when I talked about way back in episode one, the Nintendo Entertainment System, that if you were pissed off at someone, you could stomp your foot and it would eject the video cartridge. I think you could do the same thing where if you were pissed off, you could pick up the phone and it would throw you off the internet, which I mean that caused a lot of headaches. So in those early days, websites were of a premium. There wasn't everything in the world had a website, you would have to know it by WWW dot instead of just the name today. But the old search engines are different from what we have today. Today, basically everything is Google. Maybe you do Microsoft Bing. But back then we had different ones Yahoo was there. We had Magellan Lycos infoseek. Does everyone remember Ask Jeeves? And some of the websites looked like they were made by 10 year olds, because it was all kind of new. I have no computer programming skill web design skills. That's why I always say, my buddy Barry made my website. But even I today if I wanted to, I could make a good website because it's made so easy now. So what would I do in my 30 minutes of allowed time on the internet? I mean, I guess you would check emails, if you had any. You could check if people were on instant messenger aim. You could go into the chat rooms would watch out for predators that were even in there even then. In the very beginning. There wasn't any file sharing as far as music goes when Napster would come out or Limewire. That was a few years away, but you could listen to songs. And God help you if you wanted to download a song or download a photo with the bandwidth of those computers, I mean, it took forever. And it would take up a lot of space. I don't know how much room the hard drive had on the Gateway computer. But it's nothing like what I've got now is probably as big as my phone. Looking back to 1996, the first full year I had access to the internet, the most popular websites were AOL, Yahoo, Geocities, Lycos, and excite. And those are basically all search engines. But that's an order. If you go to medium.com, they have this amazing article that shows the top five most popular websites every year beginning in 1995. So it's a nice trip down memory lane. The major major companies had websites, ESPN, and MTV, they all had sites. When it came to videos and music and such, it wasn't until real.com. And the real player came around, which I believe was 1997 End of 1997. Then you could start to get your own music and watch videos. But at the beginning, it was like you had to find people that had recorded it off their TV or something and uploaded it. mp3 came around when amp was one way to get the mp3 player. I mean, there was no YouTube no Google amazon.com came out late in 96. I plan on doing a deep dive into the beginnings of social media in a coming podcast episode. But there was no social media, there was chat rooms, like I said, in 1996-97, we were still in that time where the internet was new. So people were still doing things outside rather than just being on the internet or even on their phone on the internet like today. So those early days of the internet, it was basically the bare bones. It was news, search engines, email, maybe some instant messaging, maybe some sports sites. Nothing like what it is today. That dial-up modem that dial-up internet sound. And if you had AOL, the welcome you got mail and all that stuff. Oh my God, the more I've dived into the internet of the 1990s hear, the more I realized we may have to do a second segment back in the day on 90s. Internet. Because I'm doing research, I'm checking websites, and I'm literally finding things where I'm like, Oh, I gotta talk about that. But there's only so much time on the podcast. We haven't even talked about the terrible screen savers or the original gifs or GIFs, depending on how you pronounce them. So how does that sound? Everyone out there should I do a second internet in the 1990s segment? Because this, there's just scratching the surface, it's amazing to think I'm looking back 25 years ago, to things that don't exist anymore on the internet. If you go to archive.org at the top of that page, it will have Wayback Machine. If you click on that, you can go back to those days. So for example, say you wanted to go to aol.com. You type it in aol.com on the Wayback Machine, and it will have all these timestamps of dates you can go back to so I could go back right now to aol.com in June of 1996 and see what the page looked like. That's a fun rabbit hole to go down. If you can remember websites that were around back then that's the other hard part is remembering them. I had to look up Lycos, or geo cities and ones like that. But those of you that are old enough to remember what do you remember about 1990s Internet, being on the computer, dial up all that stuff? Give me a shout on social media and shoot me an email. And we'll revisit this later down the line. We'll do a part two of this because there's so much to unpack with 90s Internet that'll be a fun deep dive coming up again at some future episode of the podcast.
Closing
That'll do it. That'll wrap up episode 73 of the in my footsteps podcast. As I say at the end of all these episodes, thank you so much to everybody who's been listening, sharing rating the podcast wherever you listen to it. positive reviews and word of mouth which means more than anything. You can always make donations to the podcast to support it if you go to buy me a coffee.com and find the in my footsteps podcast. Anything that I get on there. I use for advertising the podcast, and I appreciate everyone who does that. But like I said, not everyone can afford to donate and I understand that. That's why listening and sharing and word of mouth. That means more to me. Find me As always all over social media, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, find the in my footsteps podcast blog, visit my homepage, Christopher setterlund.com. pay me a visit at Mind Body spine chiropractic if you're in need of my skills as a personal trainer, and you can always send me an email Christopher setterlund@gmail.com. With any questions, comments, or suggestions of things you might want to hear. I said it a few times the top five this week was suggested by a couple of friends Crystal and Adam. So there's proof right there, you never know what I might want to share with you. Just in case I forget on next week's episode of the podcast, I wanted to give a shout-out to my oldest niece Kaleigh. She'll be graduating from college on the 25th We're all so proud of you and everything you've done and everything you will do. And it's going to be so much fun to get so much of the family together to just have these gatherings. As I get older, it's the family gatherings like this that mean so much more. So I can't wait to see the college graduation and try not to embarrass you but I cannot promise anything. And again, happy birthday to my buddy Steve. My inner circle has gotten smaller and smaller. Over the years, I have a few really good friends that I consider more like family and you that are listening probably know who you are. And Steve, you're definitely one of them. You're more like my brother than a friend. But I'll stop before I get too choked up talking about it and embarrass myself and you. So next week is going to be episode 74. It is the monthly bonus episode. And this is going to be something that I have wanted to talk about for a while but couldn't figure out where to exactly stick it in among the itinerary of the podcast. I was diagnosed with migraine headaches when I was two years old. So this week, the next episode will be all about migraine headaches, my experiences, what they're like what you can do if you suffer from them. I'm no doctor, I'm no scientist, but I damn sure know what migraine headaches are like. So I can share a lot of that with you next week. Those of you that know me, those of you that listen to the podcast, you know, I always end these off with talking about your own mental health and leaning into things that make you happy and making time for those that matter to you. I always say because you never know what tomorrow brings. So not too long ago, I had a client of mine that I trained one of my favorite people that I've ever trained even though I only trained her for a short while. She was always so grateful and enthusiastic and just a ray of sunshine coming into work with me. And all she would talk about was how excited she was for her baby girl, her youngest daughter's wedding. And she ended up passing away suddenly, at her daughter's wedding on the dance floor. It's a horrible, horrible story. That's even worse than I'm making it sound. So when I say make the time for people that matter, and enjoy every moment I mean it because examples like this drive home the point that you don't know what tomorrow brings. And she was all smiles and laughs right up until the end is what I was told. But it still leaves a huge traumatic hole in the lives of everyone that was there. So make time for the people that matter because you don't want to have that regret that you didn't when it's too late. And I thank you all for listening, and indulging me if this gives you a little bit of those good feelings. I really am grateful for that. And I'm gonna keep pumping out the content. I am nowhere near running out of ideas. But until next time, remember in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can like I said because you never know. Until next time, this has been the in my footsteps podcast. I have been Christopher Setterlund and I will talk to you all again