The Gay Enchanted Forest of Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost

When I was a kid in the 1960s, my favorite comics by far were the Harvey supernatural titles: ghosts, witches, and devils roaming an oddly-Medieval Enchanted Forest where same-sex desire was commonplace.

I preferred Casper, but in a pinch, I would read about Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, a ghost boy with a Brooklyn accent, freckles, and a derby (or, as he pronounced it,  “doiby”).  (Not to be confused with Charlton's far inferior Timmy the Timid Ghost).

But while Casper was a 1960s nonconformist with a gay-coded softness and sensitivity, the hawkish Spooky had no aversion to booing.

 In Spooky’s wild region of the Enchanted Forest, ravenous bears, ogres, monsters, and evil wizards leapt out from behind every boulder, so booing was an essential form of self defense.  But for Spooky, it was an all-consuming passion.  He specialized in complex, artistic boos, creating statements similar to the happenings and guerilla theater of the 1960’s art scene: he might boo a horse and rider into trading places, so that the rider runs off with the horse on his back, or he might boo a lake out of its bed so precisely that the fish remain, swimming in mid-air.

In “Once upon a Scaresday," Spooky explains how he took up booing in the first place.  As a child, he was a coward and a sissy, always running away from danger.  One day he was walking in the hills beyond Spooktown with some friends, when cannibalistic monsters called Ghostcatchers attacked.  Spooky managed to run away, but his best friend Googy was captured and dragged off to be cooked and eaten.  Distraught with guilt and mourning his loss, Spooky asked his grandfather for advice, and the elderly ghost taught him how to defend himself by booing.  He proved to have a great gift for this ghostly martial art, and soon he was able to seek out the monsters and rescue his friend just as the cooking-fire was being lit.

A same-sex relationship originally motivated Spooky to boo, and a heterosexual relationship now compels him to stop.  Spooky and Poil (his pronunciation of Pearl) are quite an adult couple, dating, dining at each other’s homes, and even kissing on couches.  Pearl forbids him from booing.  She claims that it is immoral, but her real reason is class-based snobbery: she considers booing boorish and vulgar, a working-class pastime likely to offend her high-society ghost friends (but they usually turn out to be closet booing fans).

Spooky is constantly promising to refrain from booing, to keep Poil from brow-beating or even leaving him.  Many stories involved his frantic but quite clever schemes to continue booing after such a pledge, either for self defense or to assuage his addiction: he throws his voice, writes “boo” in the sand, spells it out with smoke signals.  But why would Spooky even agree to cease a useful, artistic, socially-praised, and strategically necessary activity, just because Poil disapproves?  Obviously she offers something more valuable than any of these things, more valuable than any love, but what?  I was mystified; I could imagine giving up a bad habit or even an innocuous hobby at the admonition of a friend, but a career, a passion, a veritable calling?

I knew it had something to do with the girls who jumped their ropes and played their singsong games in the shadow of the school.  At recess, we boys were herded far away to fields to play baseball and dodge ball, and if ever once we tried to play jump rope, or merely sit on the steps nearby to avoid the midday sun, a teacher would scream wildly at us to stay put.  What danger lurked there, against the cool bricks?  What threat did girls pose that could force Tommy Kirk to forsake his buddies at Midvale College, or Alec to forsake the wonders of the Earth’s Core, or Spooky to forsake his booing?

Manly P. Hall: Gay Psychic Murdered by His Lover

When I lived in Los Angeles, there was a University of Philosophical Research at 3910 Los Feliz, near the Silverlake gay neighborhood.  But it wasn't a university, and it didn't do any philosophical research, although it had a library of 50,000 volumes.  It was a mystical/occult organization founded by Manly P. Hall (1901-1990), who published The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928).

I haven't read it.  It's a gigantic compendium of occult lore, thick, dense, and impenetrable, with chapters on "The Bembine Table of Isis," "The Hiramic Legend," "Hermetic Pharmacology," and "Fundamentals of Qabbalistic Cosmogony."  But it was immensely popular, on the shelf of everyone from H.P. Lovecraft to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it has never gone out of print.

Hall became one of the biggest celebrities of the era.  In 1934 he founded the Philosophical Research Society, and stocked its library with thousands of rare occult volumes purchased for him by wealthy disciples, notably oil heiress Carolyn Lloyd.

He wrote many more books -- nearly 200 -- some with beefcake covers, like this rather buffed deity with a shining phallus creating the worlds.

He delivered over 7,000 lectures.

For all his erudition, Hall's philosophy was simple.  His Ten Basic Rules for Better Living include:
1. Stop worrying.
2. Don't try to dominate and control other people.
3. Learn to relax
4. Cultivate a sense of humor
5. Reign in your ambition.
6. Don't accumulate more than you need.
7. Believe in something bigger than yourself.
8. Never intentionally harm anyone.
9. Beware of anger.
10. Never blame others for your own mistakes.

Elvis Presley was a fan.  So was Ronald Reagan. He officiated at the wedding of horror movie great Bela Lugosi.

Disciples stood in line around the block on Los Feliz Avenue to hear his advice.  Astrologers, bodybuilders, magicians, actors, writers, philosophers.

A few -- the best and brightest, the most eager, the most muscular (see top photo) -- stayed on, to become his assistants.  Like future paranormal researcher Arthur Louis Joquel.

Hall was gay or bisexual.  He was married twice, but neither marriage was ever consummated.  His wives and disciples turned a blind eye to his interest in attractive male proteges, and quickly put a stop to any hint of scandal. Except for the last one.

In 1988, when Hall had become morbidly obese, almost unable to walk, and showed signs of dementia, he fell in with a salesman-turned-psychic named Daniel Fritz, who claimed to be a reincarnation of a prince from ancient Atlantis, and his son David, who regularly took spirit-journeys to Jupiter.

No different than the hundreds of other psychics, astrologers, occultists, and reincarnated princes that Hall had entertained over the years.  But his disciples suspected that these two were con artists.  

In August 1990 Hall rewrote his will to give Daniel his entire estate, worth some $52,000,000.  Six days later, he was dead.  Daniel and David were alone with the body for several hours.  Disciples believed that the two had murdered him.

An inquest found no evidence of foul play.  But the will was contested, and the estate reverted to Hall's widow.  Daniel and David moved on to other clients.