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Post by dem bones on Mar 26, 2012 8:55:40 GMT
Mary Danby (ed.) - The Fourteenth Armada Ghost Book (1982) Catherine Gleason - The Longest Journey Terry Tapp - The Junk Room David Langford - Under the Bedclothes Ann Pilling - Gibson's Geoffrey Palmer & Noel Lloyd - The Ghost of Simeston Hall R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Third Eye Frances Thomas - In Flanders Fields Alison Prince - Can't Help Laughing Sydney J. Bounds - The Train Watchers Mary Danby - The Ghost Writer Blurb TEN SPOOKY TALES REACHING OUT TO YOU WITH FEAR-COLD FINGERS...
A cloaked fiend, rising from a dusty tomb... A herd of death-black, phantom horses... The Eater of Souls that comes in the night.. A mad spirit woman, wading by a well... The evil eyes in a house of nightmares...
A feast of creepy terror!
Interior artwork by Eric Kincaid
The Syd Bounds, Mary Danby, Chetwynd-Hayes, Catherine Gleason, Ann Pilling, Terry Tapp and Alison Prince stories all made it into The Green Ghost, an unofficial 'best of' series by any another name. By now Mary Danby was commissioning the same stable of authors for the adult and children's' books which goes in the latter's favour. Terry Tapp's The Junk Room, while not quite up to his mini-masterpiece The Day I Died in #13, benefits from a grim conclusion, but its the Danby and Bounds entries have done it for me so far. David Langford - Under the Bedclothes: Despite the promising title, there's no spectral disembodied penis in this one, nor is it quite in the same league as his truly horrific 'children's story 3:47 AM . Much to his grumpy mum's displeasure, young Jon Harvey persists in reading spooky stories under the bedclothes when he thinks everyone's asleep. His secret pleasure comes to an abrupt end when he opens a library copy of Best Ghost Stories and begins a black magic chiller about a boy named Jonathan whose appetite for night-reading summons the Eater of Souls from his cold and clammy vault. Terry Tapp - The Junk Room: That rarest of the rare, an estate agent who will do anything in his power to prevent unwary house-hunters taking one of his properties off the market. Granston House, Dartmoor, stands vacant and fast running to ruin since the disappearance of Mr. Carter ten years ago. While redecorating the junk room, Carter removed a block of wood nailed to the wall revealing the pair of bloodshot mascara eyes painted beneath. Amytyville Horror style poltergeist activities commence. Notch up the violence a touch and this one could hold its own in a mid-late period Fontana Book Of Ghost Stories .... Sydney J. Bounds - The Train Watchers: .... as could this, on account of its grim pay-off line. Brian Lester, twelve, spends the summer holiday train-spotting in the countryside where he befriends old Mr. Kemp who lives in a caravan and is always good for a decent cup of tea. Several years ago, Mr. Kemp lost his grandson, Davy, when the boy tried and failed to prevent a train crash. This afternoon there's another terrible storm, and a length of track has been buried under a mudslide with the Inter-City Express due any minute. Right on cue, Davy's ghost appears on the track swinging his ghostly lantern ..... a couple i made earlier; R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Third Eye: Uncle George fancies himself another Sherlock Holmes and lectures nephew Michael Carrington about the wonders of EOP - extra ocular perception. Michael develops the skill of seeing more than appears to be there - he even rightly identifies an escaped convict - but things take a turn for the sombre when he realises that the lodger, Mr. Manfield, is being pursued by a ghost which is forever punching him, "an old woman with a big nose, wearing a shabby green dress - someone who doesn't like you." Manfield's dead mother-in-law has returned to avenge the murder of her daughter. Mary Danby - The Ghost Writer: The editor in EC comic mode as we join Vernon Prewett - 'Damon Darke' to his fans - as he sets to writing his latest for Creepy Tales magazine. He calls this one Tomb Of Evil, the story of young Chris who, visiting the cemetery to place flowers on granddad's grave, comes to grief inside the shiny black stone tomb of Lord Sebastian Slade (died 1847), "May he rest in peace. Take care if he do not". Chris contrives to get himself trapped under a stone slab and locked in for the night with legion restless dead, including a thug in a leather jacket and the skull-faced vampire, Lord Sebastian himself! Disappointingly, Vernon/ 'Darke' pulls his punch at the climax but he certainly has the knack, and its fun getting there. When he's done, the author takes Bones the dog for a late evening stroll to the cemetery before it shuts, hoping it will inspire another story. A figure shuffles toward him from a shiny black stone tomb ...
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 26, 2012 11:02:22 GMT
The Syd Bounds, Mary Danby, Chetwynd-Hayes, Ann Pilling, Terry Tapp and Alison Prince stories all made it into The Green Ghost, an unofficial 'best of' series by any another name. By now Mary Danby was commissioning the same stable of authors for the adult and children's' books which goes in the latter's favour. Terry Tapp's The Junk Room, while not quite up to his mini-masterpiece The Day I Died in #13, benefits from a grim conclusion, but its the Danby and Bounds entries have done it for me so far. Terry Tapp - The Junk Room: That rarest of the rare, an estate agent who will do anything in his power to prevent unwary house-hunters taking one of his properties off the market. Granston House, Dartmoor, stands vacant and fast running to ruin since the disappearance of Mr. Carter ten years ago. While redecorating the junk room, Carter removed a block of wood nailed to the wall revealing the pair of bloodshot mascara eyes painted beneath. Amytyville Horror style poltergeist activities commence. Notch up the violence a touch and this one could hold its own in a mid-late period Fontana Book Of Ghost Stories .... By coincidence, I read "The Junk Room" last night--I've been working my way through Danby's excellent The Green Ghost. Of the dozen stories I've read so far, it's one of the best and certainly the darkest. Based on your comments, I'm looking forward to "The Day I Died," "The Train Watchers," and "The Ghost Writer."
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Post by dem bones on Mar 26, 2012 21:04:41 GMT
that is indeed some coincidence! hope i didn't spoiler the other stories too much. What i like about Sydney J. Bounds is the sheer economy of his style. The ghost & horror stories are stripped down to the point where they're almost comic strip storyboards (i find much of August Derleth's hackwork similar in that respect). Most of them are played for macabre laughs but occasionally he'll go really dark on you. Not all the child-specific ones deliver but i reckon he hits the mark here. Catherine Gleason - The Longest Journey: Catherine Gleason is also ½ of the scandalously under-rated 'Roger Malisson' who, but for the odd appearance elsewhere, came and went with the Fontana ghost, horror & co anthologies. That said, this story is a little mawkish for my warped tastes. Joan Simpson suffers brain contusions when her pony, Cameo, collides with a transit van. Her body bandaged like a mummy and the life-support machine sending gloomy forecasts, her spirit guides Cameo to horsey heaven before expected miracle recovery. Now, if a massive great concrete stallion had dropped out of the sky and impaled her to the bed before horrified parents, we might have had something to write home about .... Geoffrey Palmer & Noel Lloyd - The Ghost of Simeston Hall: Squire Henry Hewgill refuses to allow rebellious daughter Bella to marry that useless waste of space Tom Bristow and locks her in a darkened room until she sees sense. This takes far longer than he'd anticipated, so next a trip to Mother Colton, friendly neighbourhood witch, for a dangerous spell that will rebound horribly if the powers of darkness don't like what's being asked of them.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 26, 2012 22:53:56 GMT
that is indeed some coincidence! hope i didn't spoiler the other stories too much. What i like about Sydney J. Bounds is the sheer economy of his style. The ghost & horror stories are stripped down to the point where they're almost comic strip storyboards (i find much of August Derleth's hackwork similar in that respect). Most of them are played for macabre laughs but occasionally he'll go really dark on you. Not all the child-specific ones deliver but i reckon he hits the mark here. Nope, not too spoiled at all. Bounds is reliably enjoyable. I especially like "The Circus."
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Post by dem bones on Mar 27, 2012 9:47:47 GMT
The Circus could well be Syd Bounds' (for want of a better word) classic, it's certainly very popular, but the first of his horrors to make an impression on me was his bizarre 'Syd goes pop' moment, Young Blood in Fontana Horror # 4, wherein a teeny-bopper is invited backstage by her favourite rock group. Other personal favourites would include The Pauper's Feast, The Mask, A Complete Collection, Hot House, No Face .... yeah, just about everything, really! It's such a pity his supernatural & macabre work has yet to be collected and even now, it wouldn't be quite the same, as he's no longer around to enthuse over the results. will try update his thread shortly as some more horrors have since turned up ....
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Post by noose on Mar 27, 2012 10:42:21 GMT
it has been, by his agent as a couple of POD titles, seemingly...
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Post by dem bones on Mar 27, 2012 11:18:24 GMT
Is that the Phil Harbottle 2 volume Best Of'..., or is there a horror & supernatural specific pair? if the latter, then it's about time!
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Post by noose on Mar 27, 2012 15:15:26 GMT
yeah, the former.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 27, 2012 18:38:11 GMT
thanks for checking, Mr. M.
the rest.
Ann Pilling - Gibson's: "Think of all those silly people who decided not to buy it. Lucky old me.They must have been mad." Or maybe, unlike Aunt Mildred, they knew. Knew that the pleasant little cottage was too near to Edgehill, where, every October 23rd, phantom regiments re-enact the first bloody battle of the English Civil War. Knew about the wounded fifteen year-old cavalier whose friends adopted desperate measures to prevent his falling into enemy hands. Knew about the windowless box-room .... That's just me being a drama queen. The truth is, after setting itself up to deliver a properly horrible ending, Gibson's suddenly remembers it's target audience, changes course, and we're denied at least one agonizing child death. But it's still one of the best in the book.
Frances Thomas - In Flanders Fields: The ghost of Millicent Elizabeth whose father went "missing" during the Battle of the Somme. Her grieving mother hadn't the heart to tell her he was blown to pieces, so the little girl haunts 21 Parkwood Drive, wailing for him to return. Having suffered the persistent phantom brat for weeks, young Laura, whose own father ran off with another woman, finally snaps, tells her to go look for him in the poppy fields at Flanders. Harsh!
Alison Prince - Can't Help Laughing: Sophie Mayhew is forever in trouble with her form teacher Mrs Webb for giggling in class, and now she's acquired a ghostly friend of the same dispossession. 'Laughing Lil' Barnum, school cleaner, suffered a fatal stroke after an argument with the maths mistress, and, back from the grave, she's intent on disrupting lessons. Mrs. Webb fails to see the funny side and, once the novelty has worn off and she realises the full implications of having unfunny Lil chuckling over her shoulder for the rest of her life, so does Sophie. Not for the last time, an Alison The Looney Prince story ends in insanity.
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Post by redbrain on Mar 28, 2012 10:20:37 GMT
I may be absurdly prejudiced, but two things (quite apart from the cover picture) would put me off the Armada Ghost Book 14. One is that Armada was a paperback imprint intended for children, and I'd expect the horrors to be toned down. The other is that it's volume 14. In my experience of numbered series of anthologies, declining standards set in well before the 14th volume.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 28, 2012 11:33:48 GMT
Not in this case: i think the series improves as it goes on, and Mary Danby may even share that opinion if the contents of The Green Ghost are anything to go by. The Armada Ghost books have their moments, but if you want something darker, would unreservedly recommend you try some John Gordon, Robert Westall, Anthony Horowitz, Chris Priestley, Ramsey's excellent The Gruesome Book ...... like so many of our regulars, including a few genuine Birkin and/ or shudder-pulp fans, you might find yourself more appreciative of 'children's' horror & ghost stories than you ever expected.
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