Anon - The Bumper Book Of Ghost Stories (HarperCollins, 1991)
Sydney J. Bounds - House Of Fear Armada Ghost #3 (1970)
Mary Danby - A View Of The Sea Armada Ghost #4 (1972)
Sydney J. Bounds - The Haunted Tower Armada Ghost #5 (1973)
Kay Leith - The Old Greenhouse Armada Ghost #5 (1973)
Mary Danby - The Last Earl Armada Ghost #5 (1973)
Sydney J. Bounds - The Hanging Tree Armada Ghost #7 (1975)
Rosemary Timperley - The Haunted Pillar Box Armada Ghost #8 (1976)
Rick Ferreira - Crusoe's Parrot Armada Ghost #8 (1976)
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Brownie Armada Ghost #3 (1970)
Mary Danby - Time After Time Armada Ghost #8 (1976)
Mary Danby - The Vackie Armada Ghost #9 (1977)
Rosemary Timperley - The Sinister Schoolmaster Armada Ghost #10 (1978)
Christine Pullein-Thompson - A Ghost In The Family Armada Ghost #11 (1979)
Sydney J. Bounds - The Old Siege House Armada Ghost #11 (1979)
Terry Tapp - The Proving Armada Ghost #12 (1980)
Sydney J. Bounds - The Haunted Village Armada Ghost #12 (1980)
Ann Pilling - Gibson's Armada Ghost #14 (1982)
A
School Book Fairs Special, and, again, all content recycled, if i'm not mistaken, from the long-running
Armada Ghost Book (so technically the editorial credit should read Christine Barnard & Mary Danby?). Found it a slight disappointment, to be honest. Whereas
The Green Ghost, the 500 page-plus selection from the same series, reprints several with Vault/ children-of-all-ages appeal,
Bumper Ghost Stories is on the powder-puff side, the emphasis - with, to date, one notable exception: Rosemary Timperley's
The Devil's Swishes shoe-in - on good ghosts and the non-scary hauntings. Thanks to Franklin Marsh for giving me this copy!
Mary Danby - Time After Time: A very gentle tale of reincarnation. After her father died, the narrator's mother secured the post of housekeeper to Sir William & Lady Penderby of Sandings Manor, Dorset. From the first the little girl feels as though she's been there before - but that's impossible as she's spent her childhood in Wembley. Her fascination with a late eighteenth century portrait of Miss Kate Penderbury and her dog leads to a fantastic revelation.
Mary Danby - A View Of The Sea: The Howard family on holiday at Sandhaven. They put up at the
Merry Day's Boarding house whose landlady, Mrs. Barker, is a formidable battle-axe straight from a Donald McGill postcard. The (insufferable) children, Andrea and Philip, suspect she's a murderer. And why is she forever setting a dinner table for the mysterious Mr. Quentin Cumberpatch who clearly isn't around? Shame this wasn't written for the
Fontana Horror series as there is potential for an alternative, nasty ending. As it stands, it's all a bit
nice for this reader.
Mary Danby - The Last Earl: Teenage tourists on a visit to Bardsea Castle witness a ghostly reenactment of the suicide of Papist William, the 6th Earl of Tremayne, at the conclusion of a struggle with Henry VIII's men in 1537. Badly wounded, the Earl threw himself from the battlements to evade capture. His corpse was hung, drawn and quartered just the same, but it's undoubtedly better he'd didn't live through the ordeal. Some nice atmospheric touches, particularly in the dungeon. Another that could have been nastied up a touch for an adult market.
Mary Danby - The Vackie: John Logan is set an essay,
My Home, to be completed over the holiday. Trouble is, he lives in a very dull terrace in Newbury with nothing to differentiate the place from every other house in their crummy street. Help is at hand in the spectral form of a young evacuee from London during the Blitz. Over a period of days, the ghost of Leonard Thompson borrows John's handwriting to pen a fanciful account of the period he and his sister spent working their fingers to the bone for 'kindly' old Mrs. Gedge.
Sydney J. Bounds - House Of Fear: Ten year old Bobby Grier must spend an hour alone in the local haunted house after dark if he is to be accepted into Toby and Dick Prentice's gang. His sister Cathy, four years his senior and not so bad for a girl, won't have him go through the ordeal and creeps inside before he arrives. At first they put the constant tapping on a window and sundry spooky sounds down to the moronic brothers messing about, but when a spectral figure wails at them to "get out! get out!" they decide against sticking around.
Not Syd at his best, most likely because it was written specifically with little kids in mind, but it would take a very hypersensitive child to be troubled by any of his contributions to this book.
Sydney J. Bounds - The Hanging Tree: Roy Jackson, fourteen, is accompanying his father on a business trip to the US. Roy is a Western buff and his dad treats him to a visit to Tombstone Gulch, an authentic ghost town on the border of the Arizona desert. They camp beside a tree on Main Street, Roy climbing to the top to get a panoramic view of the town. As night falls Tombstone Gulch comes to life, and the youngster witnesses a gunfight outside the
Last Chance Saloon and the sombre lynching party which follows.
Sydney J. Bounds - The Haunted Tower: Dick Marsh and his little sister Sue spend the weekend with their Uncle Harry, a forest ranger whose bungalow stands in the shadow of an abandoned telegraph tower. When two hoodlum biker youths carelessly drop their lighted cigs at its base, they set it ablaze. The ghost of young Tom Archer, who fell down the steps and broke his neck, finally gets to transmit his first semaphore signal.
Rosemary Timperley - The Sinister Schoolmaster: Peter Lorrimer's friends are all going to the local comprehensive, but his mother insists on enrolling him at St. Edmunds, a small private school where you have to wear a dead gurly uniform. As he steps off the bus at Church Road on his very first day, a thick fog descends. When he arrives, lessons are already in full swing, and so is the schoolmaster, grinning with insane glee as he viciously canes a boy in front of the class. Peter can't help but yell out "stop that!" whereupon the white-haired maniac drags him in through the window. After a vicious thrashing, Peter comes around in the street where concerned passers by arrange him a lift home. His mother doesn't believe his tale of woe but is concerned enough to contact the school and the head pays his bedridden pupil a home visit. Much to the boy's relief, this is a different, and altogether more pleasant character, Mr. Rennick He shows Peter an album containing a photograph of St. Edmund's first ever headmaster John "Old Basher" Bashman, who died over a century ago! When Peter looks up from the book, he sees the sadistic bully in the phantom flesh towering over Mr. Renwick, poised to strike ....
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Brownie: Another desolate house on the moors - Sinclair Abbey this time: RCH was demonstrably fond of the name Sinclair - and young Rodney and Harry are put into the care of the grim Mr and Mrs Fairweather while their widowed father goes off to fight and die in Afghanistan. Brownie is the harmless ghost of a monk who appears in the boys' room at night. He's entirely oblivious to their presence and the only way the sturdy Mrs Fairweather knows of getting rid of him is to flick his face with a towel. Boring haunting ends when timid tutor Miss Rosie Fortesque comes into her own and releases his tormented soul.
