Actually Paul, what I believe Rich was referring to in this case was one of Hollywood "schlockmeister" movie producer William Castle's gimmicks he'd use to sell his low budget horror films to the movie-going public back in the '50s and '60s, and in this case he named it "Percepto" and which entailed having a selected number of seats in a few of the larger movie theaters that showed "The Tingler" fitted with little electrical buzzers under the bottom cushion. At certain key points during the screening those buzzers would be activated by a movie usher and making it feel to whoever sat in those particular seats as if something was crawling under the movie patron, and thus with the hope of starling them enough to scream out loud.
(...I think what you are talking about might be more a thing I remember having my first experience with when I watched the movie "Earthquake" during its initial release at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood back in 1974, and an effect which was known as "Sensurround")
