The Horror Host Hotel Presents:

Son of Ghoul

For the last 20 years--that is . . . EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND since June 13, 1986--the Son of Ghoul has been on the air.  Serving the fright fan faithful of North East Ohio and beyond, Son of Ghoul has cultivated a fanatic following with his sharp wit and rock and roll attitude.

The Son of Ghoul story began at WOAC, channel 67 in Canton, Ohio,  when the Cool Ghoul (a local take on Cincinnati's host of the same name) decided to call it quits after two years on the air.  Keven Scarpino, the board operator for the show, realized that as long as the station was willing to run a horror movie, he was willing and able to host it and without missing a beat, Son of Ghoul appeared on the airwaves.  And, it ran for 9 1/2 years.

"I made a demo of three segments in my garage and they said, "let's see what you can do with the station equipment.  Honestly, I didn't think it would run past the original 13 weeks, but it did.  Then we went to 26 week contracts, then year long contracts.  And now, it's 20 years later!"

WOAC was eventually bought out by a home shopping network, but before they could ruin a good thing, Son of Ghoul racked up nearly 10 seasons of horror hosting with some fantastic films at his disposal.  At the time, the station had access to the Halloween movies, The Thing, Frankenstein . . . The True Story, and even the colorized version of King Kong. 

"We did everything we could to have fun with the films," said the Son of Ghoul.  "I have always done sound inserts and appearances in the films themselves.  Once we ran the silent version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame with a Merry Melodies sound track in the background, and I swear, if you didn't know better, you would think it was made that way."

"And over the years, we have been able to do a lot of cool things."  Scarpino estimates he has done 20 or more appearances at horror cons like Monster Bash and Cinema Wasteland (you can catch him at both this year).  Also, he did a series of live shows called "Son of Ghoul's House of Games." 

"We would go on live with a call-in trivia show and four contestants would answer three questions.  Whoever had the most points at the end of the show would get whatever came up on our prize wheel.  We'd spin the wheel and it would land on a number and then they got whatever was in the bag with that number on it.  Sometimes they would win something cool like Browns tickets or dinner for two someplace and sometimes it would be a roll of toilet paper or a can of spam or something."

Another thing the Son of Ghoul show did was rock and roll celebrity interviews.  "The very first one we did was Chubby Checker.  But we did a whole bunch of them.  Bands would pass through Cleveland or nearby and we would arrange interviews.  We had the original Monkees once and Weird Al.  And, I got to do an interview with Paul McCartney.  I don't know what he thought was going on, but he was really cool about it."

But the best rock story has to be Stevie Ray Vaughn.

"I had done some interviews with Stevie Ray Vaughn and he requested some copies of the show.  Well, a little while back I was checking Google, just to see what was out there for 'Son of Ghoul DVD.'  I found a posting on the web somewhere of this guy saying he had a copy of an interview with Stevie Ray Vaughn on the Son of Ghoul Show and how he would love a clean copy.  So I got in touch with him and it turns out that the tapes he had we actually owned by Stevie Ray himself!  Apparently. he had gotten this from Stevie Ray's fiancé after he died."

"Stevie was actually a great friend of the show.  He took copies of the show with him on the tour bus and traveled around watching Son of Ghoul!  He'd give us tee-shirts and tickets with passes and whenever he was in town, I'd get him some tapes. "

"I almost lost the first five years.  We were on 3/4 inch tape format and you could reuse that stuff.  At the time, it was my job to manage the tapes and my boss came in and said, we need to recycle all those tapes.  I could see what was going to happen, so I took the whole first five years and just never turned them in.  I just couldn't see a piece of my life being bulk erased."

It's no wonder Stevie Ray Vaughn toured with Son of Ghoul in tow.