Carl & Jerry: How to Haunt a House
February 1956 Popular Electronics

February 1956 Popular Electronics   [Table of Contents Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Electronics, published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

Unlike with the Mac's Service Shop episodes that typically were published in monthly issues that jived with the story setting, the Carl & Jerry plots did not necessarily correspond with the month in which they appeared. To wit, this "How to Haunt a House" story appeared in the February edition of Popular Electronics. I saved it for Halloween. As always, author John Frye mixes technical descriptions with the storyline to lend credibility to the teens' escapades. Modern teenagers might use slightly different methods and materials, but the end results are the came. Enjoy the adventure.

Carl & Jerry: How to Haunt a House

By John T. Frye

Bright moonlight bathing the snow-covered landscape made it unnecessary for the two boys to use their flashlights as they trudged up the narrow lane toward the dark and brooding silhouette of the house set well back from the highway. The only sound was that of the snow squeaking beneath their Arctic boots, until the tall one carrying the tape recorder turned his head so that the moonlight glinted on his horn-rimmed glasses as he addressed his short and puffing companion:

"Jer, I'm still a little foggy on why Mr. Arnold is paying us twenty-five dollars, plus cost of equipment, to 'haunt' this old house."

"He wants to get even with a couple of favorite tomboy nieces who really gave him a hard time when he visited them in Florida last spring, Carl. He says that as soon as those two found out he was afraid of bugs and reptiles they really gave him the business. They chased him around the house with a hairy-legged spider that he swears could straddle the mouth of a teacup; they put little chameleon lizards in his bed; and finally, after they had coaxed him to go swimming with them in a little lake near Orlando, one distracted his attention by taking his picture with a movie camera while the other swam under water and clamped a couple of barrel staves around his leg just as the one with the camera shouted, 'Alligator! Alligator.' He vows he could feel teeth in those barrel staves, and he practically splashed the lake dry getting to the bank as the whole thing was recorded on film."

"Say, those two sound like interesting chicks," Carl said admiringly.

"Not really. They are practically old women. One is nineteen, and the other is at least twenty-two," Jerry said disparagingly. "Anyway, they're here visiting the Arnolds, and Mr. Arnold is going to 'con' them into betting they can spend tomorrow night in this old 'haunted house' on his farm without seeing any ghosts. He has run a couple of light wires through the grove that separates this old house from his home so that we can have light down in that hidden cellar room and power to operate the house-haunting gadgets that we installed yesterday afternoon. Tonight we'll check our whole installation to make sure everything works. Mr. Arnold is going to sneak off and meet us if he can get away."

As Jerry finished speaking, they reached the old house and carefully picked their way across the rotting porch to the deeply shadowed front door.

"This place looks a heck of a lot different at night than it does in daytime," Carl muttered. "If you ask me, 'spooking' this place is sort of gilding the lily. I'd not be surprised if there were ghosts in there."

"None of that," Jerry said briskly. "As a young scientist, you can only believe in the ghosts you see on your TV screen when an airplane flies over. Shine your flashlight on this keyhole while I-"

He stopped speaking abruptly, and stumbled backward into Carl as the door suddenly swung open with a loud screeching of rusty hinges.

"What do you know! We must not have locked it yesterday afternoon," Jerry exclaimed, as he stepped cautiously inside and probed the corners of the large, nearly empty room with his flashlight. "Now I know how the girls will feel when we make the door do that for them tomorrow night."

"How do we work this again?"

"The closed door compresses a little spring in the casing up at the top. Throwing a switch in the cellar allows current to flow through the coil of a solenoid mounted in the door casing by the latch. The magnetic field pulls a spring-loaded soft iron plunger down into the coil. This plunger has an extension sticking out the end of the coil so that its movement, produced by the magnetic field, can exert either a pulling or pushing action. In this case, it pushes back the catch, allowing the compressed spring at the top of the casing to shove the door open as if it had been opened by unseen hands," Jerry explained, as he closed the door and tugged at the knob to make sure that it was securely latched. "Hey," he exclaimed to Carl; "quit walking on my heels and breathing on the back of my neck, will you?"

"This place gives me the creeps tonight," Carl admitted in a half-whisper, as he nervously twitched the beam of his flashlight over the dusty floor, the cracked and cobwebbed windows, the peeling wallpaper, and the warped and sagging open staircase.

"You're just letting your imagination run away with you," Jerry said firmly. "Apparently Mr. Arnold couldn't get away; so we may as well get started. You stay here and observe while I go down in the cellar and operate things. Try to imagine you're seeing what goes on through the eyes of a frightened girl."

"That 'frightened' part will be easy," Carl said through teeth kept tightly closed to prevent their chattering. "What all are you going to do?"

"First I'll make the door come open. Then I'll turn the knob on that multiple contact wafer switch so that it activates, one after another, the solenoids fastened to the bottom of the stair treads. As the rubber-covered ends of the solenoid plungers bump their respective steps, it should sound very much as if an unseen person were walking up the stairs."

"Then what?"

"Next I'll make this rocking chair rock all by itself," Jerry said, as he carefully checked the position of the old-fashioned chair. "By sending pulses of current through the coil of the electromagnet mounted just below the surface of the floor, I'll give magnetic tugs to the piece of soft iron concealed in the chair rocker just ahead of the point where its curve now contacts the floor. Timing the pulses of current properly should make the chair rock harder and harder. And all this time I'll be working the solenoids we have hidden under the floor and in the walls and ceiling so as to produce a wide variety of plain and fancy 'spiritual knocking.' "

"Remembering how we mounted this stuff and ran wires to it, I'm glad Mr. Arnold intends to tear down this old house in the spring," Carl said.

"That's right. Having his permission to saw and bore and chisel wherever we pleased made things a lot easier. Now, after the chair-rocking act, I'll run the tape recorder into the concealed speakers and play some of those spooky recordings we made of chains rattling, bats squeaking, and hollow groans."

"My favorite is that echoing-crazy-laughter recording we made in the empty main hall of the fair grounds last Sunday afternoon," Carl remarked.

"That is a doozy," Jerry agreed. "First I'll play it through the speaker in the back bedroom upstairs, then I'll move it into the speaker at the head of the stairs, and finally I'll feed the recording into one of the speakers in this room. That ought to give the impression of the madman moving in on you. And don't forget, I'll be able to switch any of those speakers into the input of our intercom unit so that they'll serve as microphones and let me hear what's going on in any part of the house. You can keep in touch with me all the time through them. Well, here I go."

Carl stood in the middle of the empty room and watched the rotund figure of his chum move off down the hall with the tape recorder, preceded by the bobbing pool of light furnished by the flashlight. It seemed that this had scarcely disappeared from view when Carl felt a cold draught on the back of his neck and turned around to see the door swinging open to the sound of its grating hinges.

"Man, you surely got things warmed up in a hurry," Carl said nervously, as he closed the door with a bang. "You can check off the door business as operating perfectly .... You hear me, Jer?" he called anxiously, after waiting several seconds for an answer that did not come.

"What are you babbling about?" Jerry's voice suddenly boomed from the ceiling. "Just as the intercom warmed up, I heard you say something about the door's working all right, but I haven't even tried it yet. If you're ready, I'll try it now."

"Somebody or something beat you to it!" Carl said hoarsely, "but go ahead."

As he said this, the door once more swung open with its "Inner Sanctum" sound effect.

"You don't need to tell me it worked," Jerry called cheerfully. "I could hear it. Now let's walk the ghost up the stairs."

Immediately there was a muffled thump at the bottom of the stairs; then came another and another and another, each sound emanating from a higher step. The sound was so much like that of the footsteps of a heavy man climbing the stairs that Carl imagined he could see a ghostly figure ascending the worn steps. Suddenly the sound stopped for a few seconds; and then, as Jerry started turning the switch knob backwards a position at a time, the sounds started all over again; but this time the ghostly feet were coming down the stairs, toward Carl!

"Stop it!" Carl called sharply in a shrill voice. "That's a little too realistic."

"Fine, fine!" Jerry's voice came from the speaker concealed in the ceiling. "Now watch the rocking chair. I think I can time the switching by the sound of the rocker if you don't QRM me with those knocking knees of yours."

As if by magic, the rocking chair began swaying back and forth, gently at first and then harder and harder. As Carl stared in fascination at the chair rocking crazily away in the circle of light from his flashlight, it looked exactly as though some ghostly sitter were vigorously entertaining himself.

"Quit opening the door; it's getting cold in here," Carl shouted at the ceiling.

"Who's opening the door?" Jerry demanded.

"I've not touched that switch but once since I came down here." /p>

He broke off as a deep bass chuckle suddenly swelled through the house.

"I didn't know you had a recording like that," Carl said with surprise. /p>

"I haven't," Jerry finally said, in a small scared voice. "That didn't come from me."

All at once the rocking chair began to rock again, wilder than before.

"Are you rocking the chair?" Carl asked in a croaking voice.

"No. I've pulled out all the plugs except that of the intercom unit. Something odd is going on. I'm coming up."

In nothing flat, Jerry came charging down the hall, and the two boys huddled together at one end of the room and watched the chair swaying crazily back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

"I'm getting out of here," Carl shouted as he bolted for the door, with Jerry right at his heels.

"Wait, boys!" the deep bass voice boomed from upstairs. Carl stopped in the open doorway, and the two boys shined their flashlights up the staircase. There at the top loomed a familiar laughing figure.

"It's Mr. Arnold!" Jerry exclaimed.

"That's right," Mr. Arnold said as he came down the creaking steps, still chuckling aloud. "I hope you boys won't hold it against me, but I simply HAD to find out how effective the little entertainment we have planned for my smart-aleck nieces is going to be. If I could scare you two with your own electronic goblins, I knew that we would have a sure-fire bet to straighten out those gals' permanents; and now I'm convinced that we've got what it takes."

"But how did you do it?" Jerry wanted to know.

"Very simply. I just connected switches in parallel with those operating the door-opening mechanism and the rocking chair. I was careful to splice in at a point where you would not notice. My switches are in a clothes closet near the top of the stairs. With them, I was able to take over a couple of your ghosts. For good measure, I stuck my head out of the closet door once and gave that corny laugh. Your imagination did the rest."

"Well, let me tell you," Carl said earnestly, "it gives you a very funny feeling when one of your own ghosts suddenly goes berserk."

"That I can believe," Mr. Arnold said with another chuckle. "If I live to be a hundred, I'll never forget the way you two were staring pop eyed at that rocking chair when I tip-toed to the top of the stairs. I've already got my money's worth out of this prank right now, and we still have tomorrow night to go!"

Posted October 31, 2017

Carl & Jerry Episodes on RF Cafe Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop were two teenage boys whose love of electronics, Ham radio, and all things technical afforded them ample opportunities to satisfy their own curiosities, assist law enforcement and neighbors with solving problems, and impressing – and sometimes toying with - friends based on their proclivity for serious undertakings as well as fun.  - See Full List -  Carl & Jerry, by John T. Frye Carl and Jerry Frye were fictional characters in a series of short stories that were published in Popular Electronics magazine from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The stories were written by John T. Frye, who used the pseudonym "John T. Carroll," and they followed the adventures of two teenage boys, Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop, who were interested in electronics and amateur radio. In each story, Carl and Jerry would encounter a problem or challenge related to electronics, and they would use their knowledge and ingenuity to solve it. The stories were notable for their accurate descriptions of electronic circuits and devices, and they were popular with both amateur radio enthusiasts and young people interested in science and technology. The Carl and Jerry stories were also notable for their emphasis on safety and responsible behavior when working with electronics. Each story included a cautionary note reminding readers to follow proper procedures and safety guidelines when handling electronic equipment. Although the Carl and Jerry stories were fictional, they were based on the experiences of the author and his own sons, who were also interested in electronics and amateur radio. The stories continue to be popular among amateur radio enthusiasts and electronics hobbyists, and they are considered an important part of the history of electronics and technology education.
Lie Detector Tells All - November 1955 The Educated Nursing - April 1964 Going Up - March 1955 Electrical Shock - September 1955 A Low Blow - March 1961 The Black Beast - May 1960 Vox Electronik, September 1958 Pi in the Sky and Big Twist, February 1964 The Bell Bull Session, December 1961 Cow-Cow Boogie, August 1958 TV Picture, June 1955 Electronic Eraser, August 1962 Electronic Trap, March 1956 Geniuses at Work, June 1956 Eeeeelectricity!, November 1956 Anchors Aweigh, July 1956 Bosco Has His Day, August 1956 The Hand of Selene, November 1960 Feedback, May 1956 Abetting or Not?, October 1956 Electronic Beach Buggy, September 1956 Extra Sensory Perception, December 1956 Trapped in a Chimney, January 1956 Command Performance, November 1958 Treachery of Judas, July 1961 The Sucker, May 1963 Stereotaped New Year, January 1963 The Snow Machine, December 1960 Extracurricular Education, July 1963 Slow Motion for Quick Action, April 1963 Sonar Sleuthing, August 1963 TV Antennas, August 1955 Succoring a Soroban, March 1963 "All's Fair --", September 1963 Operation Worm Warming, May 1961	The Electronic Bloodhound - November 1964 Great Bank Robbery or "Heroes All" - October 1955 Operation Startled Starling - January 1955 A Light Subject - November 1954 Dog Teaches Boy - February 1959 Too Lucky - August 1961 Joking and Jeopardy - December 1963 Santa's Little Helpers - December 1955 Two Tough Customers - June 1960 Transistor Pocket Radio, TV Receivers and Yagi Antennas, May 1955 Tunnel Stomping, March 1962 The Blubber Banisher, July 1959 The Sparkling Light, May 1962 Pure Research Rewarded, June 1962 A Hot Idea, March 1960 The Hot Dog Case, December 1954 A New Company is Launched, October 1956 Under the Mistletoe, December 1958 Electronic Eraser, August 1962 "BBI", May 1959 Ultrasonic Sound Waves, July 1955 The River Sniffer, July 1962 Ham Radio, April 1955 El Torero Electronico, April 1960 Wired Wireless, January 1962 Electronic Shadow, September 1957 Elementary Induction, June 1963 He Went That-a-Way, March1959 Electronic Detective, February 1958 Aiding an Instinct, December 1962 Two Detectors, February 1955 Tussle with a Tachometer, July 1960 Therry and the Pirates, April 1961 The Crazy Clock Caper, October 1960
Carl & Jerry: Their Complete Adventures is now available. "From 1954 through 1964, Popular Electronics published 119 adventures of Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop, two teen boys with a passion for electronics and a knack for getting into and out of trouble with haywire lash-ups built in Jerry's basement. Better still, the boys explained how it all worked, and in doing so, launched countless young people into careers in science and technology. Now, for the first time ever, the full run of Carl and Jerry yarns by John T. Frye are available again, in five authorized anthologies that include the full text and all illustrations."