I had these couple of hippie guy friends who were super broke and living in the attic of somebody's house and they were like, "We don't have any food, man." And so I decided to go to the grocery store and steal chicken pot pie. And I stuck it inside my clothes. I took a couple frozen chicken pot pies and stuck them inside my pants, and I got caught walking out of the store. And they took me in the back room, and - luckily, I was 14, but I had a fake ID saying I was 18, so they didn't call my parents.
Cassandra PetersonLuckily, it's one of my favorite movies [ Night Of The Living Dead]. I never get tired of watching it.
Cassandra PetersonI was probably about 13 or 14, and I went by myself to the City Auditorium in Colorado Springs and saw the guy who wrote and sang "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini." Brian something. And I got to meet him and he signed an autograph for me, a little piece of paper. Brian Hyland! It was so bizarre.
Cassandra PetersonMy first ones were The Young Rascals. I made out with Dino Danelli, the drummer, in the alley behind the City Auditorium. Then I met Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels. This is all way, way back in the day. Later I got in the big leagues, like chasing around The Rolling Stones. And I hid in the bus for Paul Revere & The Raiders. And The Zombies.
Cassandra PetersonI'm driving down the freeway the other day, on my way to Knott's Scary Farm probably, and I hear this report on NPR that the whole lemmings thing was faked in the 1950s. They were shooting a wildlife documentary in the '50s, they found a group of lemmings, and the crew chased them all off a cliff. No lemming has ever jumped off a cliff, purposefully, ever. Isn't that unbelievable?
Cassandra PetersonWhen I was a kid, my favorite after-school snack was hominy and pickled pigs feet.
Cassandra PetersonThe biggest surprise was a picture my mom sent me, just about the time that we were about to wrap up the book, of me as a 5-year-old dressed in my first Halloween costume that she made for me. I said, "What's this? I never saw this photo." And she said, "We made you this black-and-orange Halloween costume out of crepe paper" - we were too poor to have fabric back then - "and you wanted to go as the Queen Of Halloween." And I was like, "What?" And she said, "Yeah, the Princess Of Halloween, the Queen Of Halloween, something like that.
Cassandra Peterson