Blaze was Steeltown, the sexy lady was at the first bar inside the “Concert Hall” on the right. Blaze would have me a Long Island Iced Tea after we closed most nights. Great times managing the club from 93-94

I worked for Lucas Bros. 1978-79 in Towson as the stock boy, still remember emptying the dehumidifier in the basement to keep the business envelope’s adhesive dry. It was my first “real” job. Loved every minute but the boss was a mean grinch.

I’m really lookig forward to your site and book, Ann. Is there anywhere I can get a picture of Tom in Dracula costume? I’m writing something small about him on my site. I want to spread the word.

Greetings!
Thanks for your latest comments. I’ve been hard at work on the Thomas S he’ll embedded book projects as well as others. This past July was the 5th anniversary of Tom’s passing. It’s hard to believe. I was just looking at some videos of Baltimore recently on You Tube. I don’t think I could ever cope with revisiting the city. Everything reminds me of Tom. I even left New Orleans because it reminds me of him. So sad that he didn’t live to enjoy more of the things that he loved such as new books and movies, Halloween festivities, and such. We were planning on ghost hunting at The Myrtle Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana and other places across the U.S. such as in Salem, MA and ghost towns of the South West. He always thought he’d pass away at age 68 like his grandfather did and oddly enough that’s what happened. I can’t be sure if he passed on July 17 or 18 since I wasn’t there. However, his nearest neighbor, who spoke with him every day said he didn’t show for the first time on the 17. He missed stopping by on that very day at my home which was my birthday. I knew then something was wrong. In fact, I had been feeling something bad about his health for about a few months prior though he never showed any symptoms of anything. He did manage to stumble and had some swelling with one of his feet. It was after that I started to get a bad premonition about him. His foot got better within a week so I wasn’t thinking it was anything wrong regarding that incident. I just thought it was an ill omen — I really still think it. Somehow I think that place had something to do with what happened. Too many tenants had bad experiences there of the paranormal kind, and so did I. That’s why I sold it. After Tom passed I only went back there to collect some things I had stored plus some of Tom’s stuff. That was 2019 and it didn’t get sold until May 2021. I never thought it would be so difficult to sell a building with 7 apartments plus a huge yard and 10 parking spaces. I lot the realtor handle the whole thing as I just couldn’t stand to go back there. I did pass there once and the new owners remodeled the place to update the architecture. Instead of looking like a place of the 1940s in the front and 1970s in the back it looks more like the 1970s altogether. It was an improvement.
I relocated but I will relocate again. It won’t alter anything I’m doing regarding publishing. I will continue to place messages here. If somehow this website shuts down be sure to do a search online for Thomas Schellenberger and vampire young adult fiction story collection. You might have to search many pages because there are several other individuals with the same name. One is in Canada, another is in Germany, and the others I don’t remember where. Tom did place the story collection in 1960s Baltimore, and the autobiography takes place in Baltimore, Los Angeles and New Orleans. I also added his articles and a lengthy introduction. Once all the work is completed I’ll create a website.
Thanks again for your interest.

Wow even here you have a gift of story-telling, Ann. I really hope that books is still forthcoming. I’ll keel lingering here in case you return. Thanks for the insight. Id love to see your work as well on Dark Shadows and the zines. My mother is a huge DS fan and got me into it around the time of Desert Storm…lol. I have dozens of her recorded VHS tapes off of television from the early ’90s. Vampires have been apart of my life for almost 40 years…

That’s great that you’re (hopefully) publishing Tom’s writing. Id really like to pick it up if you make it happen. Tom and I were really similar, and I think it’s great he lived so close to me and he was such a legend. In really a huge fan (posthumously) of the man. If you see this please reply. Id like to read Tom’s stuff sometime.

Blaze, you made the best Long Island Ice Teas. I know I’m late to this party but I stumbled across it so, I thought I’d chime in. I’m living down the street from the old joint, doing…alright. How you?

There were actually two incarnations of Steeltown, the first one Bob Schmuff and the guy from Memories opened, they had a good run, and Bob was the coolest. Part 2 92-94 when Louie from Hammerjacks and Sam, a rich old guy from VA., Iassac the lawyer owned it, Nick Massoni managed it until 94. I had worked from day one of Part 2, I was a bar-back, the last year or so I became General Manager, we had Ace Frehely, Quiet Riot, Joe Lynn Turner, too many to mention. We had the front bar as the 98 Rock Cafe, the Sports Bar, then what became the concert hall and, the big room became the Dance Hall. Sports bar had the punching bag, games and the Mustang Pizza Shop, it was like, if you couldn’t find an area of that club to, “fit in” You weren’t even trying. Oh, before I go…Who remembers Greggo and Mo from 98 Rock when the had the boxing match between yow girls)? I helped them plan that, I got them a boxing ring and opened up at…8 freakin am, one of our biggest crowds ever.

I was the boy with black hair you remember! My name was Ronnie then but I changed it to my stage name Daniel Rumanos. Tom dated my older sister Cheryl (RIP) for a time in the early 1980s. Later in the 90s he gave Tom Schickner the rights to revive the society. I was the last person elected president before we put it on hiatus, but have often considered reviving it and have occasionally mentioned the society in interviews I’ve done as a stage magician, actor, and sci-fi writer. I would certainly be willing to help out with your projects concerning Tom and the Dracula Society, so please feel free to contact me at drrumanos@gmail.com if you wish.

Ann thank you for your message I wrote for Tom Shellenberger. I hope everything works out for you and Tom writing. Thank you Raymond Szekalsli

Hi! Greetings!
I just discovered that you posted on this website regarding Thomas (Tom) Shellenberger. I’m the one working on his manuscripts trying to get them all organized and published. Quite complicated. It’s taking longer than expected. I hope anyone still interested in Tom’s writings will continue to hang in there. I hope no later than fall 2024 to have some, if not all, of his works available. At some point I’ll put a website up so people can more easily contact me. He was so full of life and looked forward to everything. I just can’t get pass the reality that he’s gone.
I attended some of Tom’s club meetings back in 1984 in Baltimore. I might have met you there if you attended back then. I had red hair and dressed in black. I met with Gary Svehla and Tony Melanowski there. I read online last year something about Gary experiencing ill health. I think he might have discontinued his wonderful annual publication, Midnight Marquee (it was available online). Tony still lives in the Los Angeles area. He’s still involved with the movie industry. He visited Tom and me in New Orleans back around 1987 or earlier on his way to relocate to Los Angeles. He went to work back then for the horror film director, Roger Corman. I met some other older man named Tom, a woman named Teresa, and a boy about 12 yrs. old with black hair at Tom’s meetings. The boy contacted Tom a couple of times and I think I remember replying. That could have been in the late 1980s and in the 1990s. He could have contacted us much later again like after 2005-2009. I really don’t remember. I lost a ton of memorabilia, correspondence, books, magazines, etc. thanks to a real estate agent from hell. He caused me to lose about $200,000 worth of items. However, that’s a whole other story. Tom would have been really upset about that. Of course, it wouldn’t have happened if Tom had still been around to help me get it moved. That agent did it deliberately for sheer meaness. I never met another person in my entire life like that! Anyway I sold all the properties and left town. The place just had too many memories. Tom had operated an organization there in New Orleans called Dracula And Company, and I had my Friends of Dark Shadows dedicated to the series. I also published lots of horror & mystery zines and such (The Vampire Journal, Realm of the Vampires, The Collinsport Record, The Haunted Journal, Baker Street Gazette, Sleuth Journal, Movies Memories, etc.). Incidentally, I was able to work for Jonathan Frid (he played Barnabas Collins on “Dark Shadows”) while living in New York back in 1985. I helped he put together several huge scrapbooks of ” Dark Shadows” memorabilia to put on display at various “DS” conventions. I had to type a lot of entries for the entire collection, too. I really enjoyed that. I also assisted Jonathan when he visited New Orleans in 1986 for a “DS” convention. I remember when Tom, and I plus some of our members were with Jonathan at a restaurant in the French Quarter in New Orleans and Jonathan was autographing a stack of his photos to give to visitors at the convention. The waiter in the restaurant asked who was in the photographs. Jonathan replied, ” Oh, just some weirdo”. The young waiter didn’t even know who Jonathan was.
I came across a horror book series (for Kindle) a few months or so ago about Edgar Allan Poe that takes place in Baltimore. It includes the cemetery setting for Edgar Allan Poe in the churchyard there in Baltimore. I visited that place and took photos. I have one of myself standing next to Poe’s tombstone. I plan to include it in one of Tom’s books that I’ll be publishing. I don’t remember the titles on those Poe horror novels. If I can track down that information I’ll post the titles on this website.
THANKS for remembering Tom.