A Brief Dive Into The Monster Mash

It's that time of year again for horror movies, pumpkin carving, and novelty songs about skeletons-- spooky, scary, and otherwise-- among other spooky subject matter, like the 1960s classic "The Monster Mash." Recently there has been some contention with the song, with some people claiming it's a song about the Monster Mash, and that we don't really know what it sounds like, in much the same vein as The Greatest Song In The World in Tenacious D's "Tribute."

While interesting, I had a thought in the shower that sent me down a really, really pointless rabbit hole that prompted me to dust off my blog and hammer out a theory nobody cares about nor asked for.

The Monster Mash was initially a dance: the monster from his slab began to rise and did the Mash. The ghouls came from their humble abodes to get a jolt from an electrode and did the Mash. It's easy enough to believe that it's just a dance and not a song they're talking about in The Monster Mash.

The song, however, later says they played the Mash, which throws a wrench into the assumption that it's only a dance. Dracula shakes his fists and says, "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?" which, in reply, is stated that it's now the Mash, it's now The Monster Mash, et cetera. Final nail in the coffin (pun intended) for knowing what the song is.

Except it's not. 

The 1962 album The Original Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers does, in fact, have a track called "The Transylvania Twist." It can be inferred that, if they said The Transylvania Twist is now The Monster Mash, that the song played in "The Monster Mash" sounds like "The Transylvania Twist" which solves the mystery of what they played in "The Monster Mash" sounds like.

This, however, leaves the mystery of what the dance might look like. I don't have a definitive answer to what the dance of The Monster Mash might look like, but considering ghouls got a jolt from an electrode, the monster-- who I'm guessing is like Frankenstein's monster-- also got a jolt, and that The Transylvania Twist could be a variation of the original dance, I'd imagine the dance being a jerking type movement like a zombie getting electrocuted while doing The Twist.

That, of course, is all conjecture, but it's something to think about if you want a topic to talk about at the next Halloween party to ensure you're not invited next time. 

Creep it real and have a happy Halloween.