HGB Ep. 557 - Life and Afterlife of Karen Carpenter

Moment in Oddity - Stonehenge Altar Stone

Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England is a prehistoric megalithic structure. There have been various theories as to its purpose. At one time it was thought to be the remains of a Druid temple, or a burial monument, or possibly a meeting place for the people of the time. The most recent studies have proposed that Stonehenge enabled people to measure the skies like a modern day observatory, allowing the users to predict celestial events and the equinox. This enabled the users to better plan for their agricultural, social and religious needs. Nobody knows how the enormous stones were put into place, with the heaviest weighing over 20 tons and the average bluestones weighing about 2 tons. There is an altar stone that lies near the middle of the stone circle. Through chemical analysis it was recently determined to have not been sourced from Wales like the monument's bluestones. Instead, the grey-green sandstone was discovered to have likely come from northeast Scotland. There are various theories as to how the giant stones were brought to the monument. Some were sourced as close as 15 miles away. The smaller pillar stones came from 140 miles away, but the altar stone traveled a distance of over 450 miles and that, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Panic of 1873

In the month of September, on the 20th, in 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time in its history. The event was caused by the Financial Panic of 1873. The stock market had crashed in Europe which prompted New York to shut down the American Exchange for ten days. These incidents began the first "Great Depression" which lasted from 1873 until 1879. Americans sold their investments, banks failed and the railway industry collapsed. Throughout the time there was a 14% increase in unemployment and almost 20,000 businesses declared bankruptcy. After the Civil War, currency consisted of specie which were metal coins like gold and silver. There were also Greenbacks that were issued by the government and they were not fully backed by gold. Paper money did not have the American peoples' trust behind it and the Greenbacks are thought to have greatly contributed to the Panic of 1873.

The Life and Afterlife of Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter was one half of the Carpenters, a brother and sister singing duo that sold over 150 million records and they had 17 hits. She was an amazing drummer and singer. Her voice had no equal. But despite her amazing talent, she was a tortured soul that suffered from an eating disorder at a time when such a thing was misunderstood and it eventually took her life. And quite possibly that may be why her spirit is at unrest. Join us as we share the history and hauntings of Karen Carpenter.

Some people, especially of the younger persuasion, may think of the Carpenters' music as just being cheesy easy listening songs, but the siblings were musical geniuses. Get ready for me to gush. I have loved the Carpenters from the time I was a kid and I loved the fact that Karen was a contralto because I myself sing at a lower level and when we would take music in school, I hated the choir stuff because the teacher always tried to get me to sing higher and it just isn't me. Karen died when I was twelve and I remember not understanding what exactly an eating disorder was. The made-for-TV movie The Karen Carpenter Story featuring actress Cynthia Gibb in the title role came out in 1989 and I remember watching it and being more familiar with eating disorders at that time because they started talking about them more in school. And I realized at that time what a tragic figure Karen had become. I had no idea at the time how personal, eating disorders would become for me. I'm going to talk about some stuff here that I never have before on the podcast, so bear with me for just a minute. I was in a relationship for 24 years with a person who suffered from both anorexia and bulimia. This is something that people don't just get over and it is probably the most difficult type of addiction/mental health issue to deal with because we have to eat to live. So a person suffering from an eating disorder has to learn how to eat in a healthy way while trying to recover. My ex's eating disorder started at the same time as Karen Carpenter's, which was a time where nobody understood why these people wouldn't just eat. Why would they starve themselves? The medical industry had no idea what to do to help these people. They were only really concerned with getting pounds back on people. Eventually, mental health professionals realized that people with eating disorders don't see themselves in an accurate way and that there were very deep psychological issues. For Karen Carpenter, many of her whys for going this route began with her relationship with her mother and for my ex, that was very much the reason as well. For the most part, my ex was able to live a relatively normal life and would speak at schools about the issue, but there were times she would struggle and I can say that when we split up, it was very difficult for me to make that decision because I was worried that the eating disorder would rear its ugly head and it did. But we can't stay in a relationship that isn't working for us because we are worried what will happen to the other person. Many of you have dealt with people who struggle with addictions and there really is nothing we can do. A person has to get well for themselves. And that was the case with Karen. She had to get well for herself and she just couldn't get there and its so sad because one can only wonder how much more amazing music she could have created through the years.  

Karen Anne Carpenter was born on March 2, 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut. She was the second child of Harold and Agnes Carpenter. Her older brother Richard had been born four years prior. The siblings liked the arts and Karen began ballet and tap dancing at the age of four. She was more of a tomboy and enjoyed playing softball outside, while Richard was quiet and stayed inside learning to play the piano. The piano was something he hated when he was being classically trained, but when he switched to playing by ear and a teacher who gave him freedom, Richard turned out to be a prodigy. The family moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles, California in 1963 because Harold had been offered a job there. When Karen started at Downey High School in 1964, she decided to join the school marching Band and the conductor gave her the glockenspiel to play. This was an instrument that she didn't care for and she longingly watched others playing the drums. One of those people was her friend Frankie Chavez and he convinced Karen's parents to buy her a $300 Ludwig drum set and he taught her how to play.

During these early years, it became clear to Karen that her mother favored Richard. So much so that she didn't feel as though her mother loved her at all. Agnes has been described as a controlling matriarch. It was Richard's talent that the family focused on and the Carpenters did whatever they could to put forward his musical career. Karen's first foray into performing with a musical group was in high school when she and two other girls formed the band Two Plus Two. The band was short lived because when they finally booked their first gig, one of the girls' mothers wouldn't let her go. In 1965, Richard invited Karen to join him and a college friend in a band he formed and named for himself, The Dick Carpenter Trio. They got several gigs in jazz nightclubs and even signed a contract with RCA Records to produce two instrumental records. Those records were never released. Karen and Richard were invited to audition bassist Joe Osborn, who would become part of the Wrecking Crew, a well-known session musician group. Osborn wasn't really impressed with Richard, but he liked Karen on the drums and when he asked her to sing, he got very excited and signed her to his label.

Karen was 5ft 4in when she graduated from high school in 1967 and she was a relatively healthy weight at 150 pounds, but she felt as though she were chubby and so she started something called the Stillman water diet. This was a high-protein, low carbohydrate, low fat diet that called for eight glasses of water a day as well. Basically, a fairly healthy way to lose weight. Karen enrolled as a music major at Long Beach State where Richard was attending and she joined him in the college choir. Karen had also been studying drum technique with Bill Douglass, who was a jazz drummer with Benny Goodman. The choir director immediately noticed the extraordinary instrument that was Karen's voice and he took her under his wing and trained her to have a three-octave range. The Carpenter siblings decided to form a new band at this time that they called Spectrum. They did a lot of experimenting and recording in Joe Osborn's garage studio, but nothing really came out of it record wise. 

The siblings decided to enter a TV talent show in 1968 and performed "Dancing in the Street." It really showcased Karen's drumming talent and the siblings won the finals. And then A & M Records came calling and signed the siblings to a recording contract in 1969. Karen played drums, a little bass and was co-lead singer on their first album "Ticket to Ride." The title song was a Beatles song that became a hit for The Carpenters and it hit No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. The next album "Close to You" was even bigger with two hits: "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun." The latter was a song that was written for a bank commercial by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. Paul Williams was also under contract with A & M Records and Richard ran into him at the studio and asked if there was a full length version of the song. There was and as we all know, that song went on to be one of the greatest hits for The Carpenters and their signature song. It hit No. 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, right behind the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" in 1970. May 1971 brought a third studio album "Carpenters" with the songs "For All We Know," "Rainy Days and Mondays" and "Superstar," the greatest Carpenters song of all time! Fight me! June 1972 featured "A Song For You," the fourth studio album with songs "Hurting Each Other", "It's Going to Take Some Time", "Goodbye to Love", "Top of the World", "I Won't Last a Day Without You", and "Bless the Beasts and Children."

Karen saw herself as a drummer who also happened to sing. She even ranked higher than John Bonham in a 1975 Playboy poll about best drummers. So she liked her spot back behind the drums, but because she was fun-sized like Diane, it was hard for people to see her when she was singing and it was decided that Karen needed to get out from behind the drums. Mouseketeer Cubby O'Brien took over at the drums. This put Karen as the focal point on stage and she was uncomfortable with that. On top of that, now she would see pictures of herself. A photo from an August 1973 Lake Tahoe concert made Karen think that she looked fat, so she hired a personal trainer. He suggested she try a low calorie, high carb diet. She lifted weights and started bulking up, which just made her feel like she was fatter. She and Richard sat down and watched themselves on a Bob Hope television special in the fall and she asked Richard if he thought she looked heavier. He said, "Yes." Karen fired her trainer, bought a hip cycle and started limiting her calories. The Carpenters left on tour and she said of eating on the road, "When you're on the road it's hard to eat. Period. On top of that, it's rough to eat well. We don't like to eat before a show because I can't stand singing with a full stomach… You never get to dinner until, like, midnight, and if you eat heavy you're not going to sleep, and you're going to be a balloon."

Karen initially lost 20 pounds and the sister of an old boyfriend told her that she looked fabulous. And she did and that would have been great had she stopped there, but she didn't. Around this same time, Richard himself started taking Quaaludes and he became heavily addicted. Between the issues both siblings were dealing with, concerts started being cancelled. In 1979, Richard checked himself into rehab and took a year off from touring. Karen decided to try her hand on a solo album and she recorded with producer Phil Ramone in New York. A & M Records shelved the album, even though Quincy Jones came forward and asked A & M Records co-owner Herb Alpert if he could remix the album. A & M wouldn't budge and they even charged Karen $400,000 to cover the cost of recording, which was paid out from The Carpenter's future royalties. The solo album was eventually released in total in 1996 under the title "Karen Carpenter." It was received well.

Karen had many friends and enjoyed going out with them and she often would hide the fact that she wasn't eating her food at restaurants by offering lots of tastes to everybody and by pushing her food around and hiding it. She would wear clothes that were too big so that people couldn't see that she was rail thin. She would wear tighter and sexier clothing on stage and her manager Sherwin Bash was horrified when he saw how skeletal she had become. Audiences would gasp when she took the stage because she was so gaunt. Karen's relationship with her mother continued to deteriorate through this time. When Agnes would be eating with Karen, she would scoop food onto her plate when she noticed her passing off her meal to others. Randy Schmidt shares in the biography he wrote about Karen Carpenter "Little Girl Blue" about a time that a family friend spotted Karen sunbathing topless outside. That friend said, "They put this screen around her so nobody else could see her. She loved to go lay out in the sunshine. I don't know whether it was to get a tan or get away from her mother. Anyhow, I happened to go out to the kitchen for something and I saw her out there. She just had on her little bathing suit shorts. You couldn't tell whether it was a girl or a boy. She had absolutely no breasts."

The occasional friend would encourage Karen to get help, but Karen always said she had no problem. And her family was no help as Agnes insisted that the family could take care of themselves. And she certainly didn't want any shame brought on the family. Anorexia is about control and this seemed to be the only thing Karen had control over. She could control what she ate, which probably eased her pain that she couldn't get her mother to love her and Richard controlled the music. And the only time Agnes seemed to pay any attention to Karen was when she was rail thin and in failing health. Agnes would nurse her back to health at those times. 

Karen was terribly lonely in love as well. In 1980, she met a property developer called Tom Burris and the two began a whirlwind romance that led to them getting married within two months. Before the wedding, a friend asked Karen if she was sure about rushing into a marriage. But Karen was desperate for love and she also wanted to get pregnant. The wedding was almost called off when Karen found out that Tom had had a vasectomy. He promised to reverse the procedure, but Karen told her mother that she was going to cancel the wedding. Agnes told her she would do no such thing because this would embarrass the family and all these people were traveling to come to the wedding. And the wedding had already been paid for. So Karen married Burris and it was an awful union. Burris was broke and he spent most of Karen's money while he emotionally abused her saying that she was an ugly bag of bones. He also informed her that he wasn't going to have children with her. Karen filed for divorce in 1981. A devastated Carpenter fell further into her eating disorder and she withered down to just 90 pounds.

Karen was using a variety of techniques to drop weight from overexercising to taking thyroid medication to taking fistfuls of laxatives, up to 90 tablets a night. The Carpenters left for a European tour in October of 1981. While doing an interview on BBC television, Karen was asked about rumors floating around that she had anorexia. Karen just said she was fine, but tired. The interviewer then said that reports claimed she had gotten down to six stone in weight, which is 84 pounds. Karen became agitated and said that that was untrue. But perhaps this broke through a bit because after returning home, Karen set out on a year long recovery. She started seeing a psychotherapist named Steven Levenkron who had written a book on eating disorders called "The Best Little Girl in the World." He took the thyroid medication away from Karen. She started purging to continue her weight management. The Carpenter family flew to New York to do a therapy session with Karen and Agnes refused to tell her daughter she loved her when prompted by Levenkron. Richard for his part, tried many times to help Karen, but he couldn't understand the disorder. He would try to love on her and then he would try cajoling her and then he would try anger and yelling. But after this meeting, the family returned to California and gave up.

Almost unbelievably, Karen starved herself down to a low of 77 pounds. She was hospitalized in September 1982 with an irregular heartbeat and dizziness. The hospital got her up 30 pounds and she maintained a steady weight after this, but her heart had clearly been damaged by the starvation and medication abuse. She returned to California after being released. Carpenter attended a gathering of past Grammy Award winners in January of 1983 and Dionne Warwick said that she seemed upbeat and exclaimed, "Look at Me! I've got an ass!" She also said she had a lot of living to do and was excited to start working on music. She met with Richard on February 1, 1983 to discuss new projects and this would be the last time the siblings saw each other. On the morning of the 4th, Karen got up early to prepare for the signing of her divorce papers and she collapsed on the floor of a walk-in closet at her parents' house. Her mother found her and called 911. Paramedics found her in cardiac arrest with a heart beat every 10 seconds. She was rushed to Downey Community Hospital where she was pronounced dead. She was 32 years old. The coroner ruled she died from emetine cardiotoxicity, which was basically ipecac poisoning. Ipecac is a drug used to induce vomiting and Karen had apparently been using it to control her weight. That kind of abuse causes the heart muscle to dissolve.

We can never know, but if Karen had suffered from her eating disorder today, she would probably not have died. Paul McCartney said of Carpenter, She had the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive." Many female artists claim to have been influenced by Karen and there is no doubt that she was one of the greatest voices in history. Drummers heap praise on her for her drum skills as well. Her death was not in vain as it brought Anorexia Nervosa onto center stage and her family started the Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation to raise money for research on eating disorders.

One can't miss the Jim Henson Company Lot that is located at 1416 N. La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. Kermit the Frog towers above the front gate and he's wearing a Charlie Chaplin's The Champ suit, holding a cane and tipping his bowler hat. And thers's a reason for that because this property was established as Charlie Chaplin Studios in 1917 by the actor. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography, " I decided to buy land in Hollywood and build one. The site was the corner of Sunset and La Brea and had a very fine ten-room house and five acres of lemon, orange and peach trees. We built a perfect unit, complete with developing plant, cutting room, and offices." Chaplin built his studio in the English cottage style and a large orchard was torn out for a backlot where large outdoor sets could be built. There was already a large home on the property that Chaplin was going to use as his personal residence, but it instead was used by studio personnel and his brother Sydney. Most of Chaplin's classic films were shot here. Chaplin sold the studio in 1953 to a group that planned to tear down the studio, but they decided to lease to television production company Kling Studios. The adventures of Superman with George Reeves was filmed here. Red Skelton bought the studio in 1960. In 1967, this became A & M Records and served that purpose until 1999. Jim Henson's kids bought the studio in 2000 to be the new home of The Jim Henson Company.

For thirty years, the A & M Studios were one of the top studios in Hollywood. Studio 2 was the favorite studio for Richard and Karen Carpenter. Christopher Ward is a songwriter who has written songs for Hilary Duff, Diana Ross, The Backstreet Boys, Wynonna Judd and Alannah Myles, which was her song "Black Velvet." On his website he shares, "A few years before that, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers had been recording in Studio 2 and things just kept going wrong. Nothing major, but enough to derail the process and necessitate a series of calls to studio maintenance. A buzz here, a faulty patch there, funky headphone sound. Death by a thousand cuts. The band didn’t want to abandon the room they were comfortable in but eventually it was beyond nuisance level. And no one had a solution. Then someone suggested consulting a spiritual advisor. 'Karen Carpenter’s ghost is unhappy', they were informed by the consultant and as a remedy it would be necessary to install a sizeable crystal in one of the studio walls. And the crystal had to be lit 24/7. Done! Tech issues solved. Happy Heartbreakers. Recording resumed. I found myself working there because Diana Ross asked me to record a gospel choir for the song 'Hope is an Open Window' which Tim Tickner and I wrote with her and were producing for Diana. Since the album was done and time was tight, Diana wanted the choir recorded by Friday. The call came on Wednesday. Our project coordinator booked us into the Crystal Room at A&M. Fortunately, the session went off without a hitch. The crystal did its job. The choir sang beautifully and Diana loved it. I don’t know if the crystal is still there but somehow I suspect it is. It seems to me it would fit in nicely in Muppet world." A former employee at the Jim Henson Studios said, "...when I worked there I was told specifically never to turn off the light on the crystal in B because Karen's ghost would get mad."

Ghost Hunters investigated the studios in 2007 and one piece of evidence they captured was an EVP of what sounded like a woman muttering. Charlie Chittenden Paranormal did a ghost box session in 2016 and tried to contact Karen. There was a female voice that came through and he said it sounded like "I love them." I heard the love but not sure what the rest was. It could've been her voice and it might not have been. Jim Harold had a listener join him on the Campfire in 2012 and this listener saw the full-bodied apparition of Karen.

Tim Jackson was filming a video at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in which Ksenia Buzina and Leonid & Friends were performing the song "Superstar." Jackson writes, "A very odd thing happened when I was videoing the newest song from Ksenia Buzina and Leonid & Friends, Ksenia appeared to be a ghostly figure while the other members did not! Ksenia mentioned that Richard Carpenter had heard their version and loved it and maybe this was the way of Karen making her presence known on stage with Ksenia!!" It probably was just a lighting thing, but it was very odd looking.

 

Karen Carpenter once said of her anorexia, "It's like being haunted. It's the worst thing in the world." Clearly she was very haunted by the spirit of anorexia. Is that why she may still be around in the afterlife? Is the ghost of Karen haunting places? That is for you to decide!