Helen Paiba - Scary Stories For Ten Year Olds

[dem bones]

Helen Paiba (ed.) - Scary Stories For Ten Year Olds (MacMillan, 2000).

Barry Jones

Redvers Brandling - Mayday! (The Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories, 1994)
Ann Carroll - The Mirror (Chiller, 1995)
Sorche Nic Leodhas - The Man Who Didn't Believe In Ghosts (Gaelic Ghosts, 1964)
Margaret Biggs - The King's Stone
Tony Richards - Someone Drowned (Armada Ghost Book #12 , 1980)
Alison Prince - Can't Help Laughing (Armada Ghost Book #14 , 1982)
Michael Morpurgo - The Giant's Necklace (The Puffin Book Of Ghosts, 1995)
Vivian Alcock - Siren Song (Ghostly Companions, 1984)
Peter Dickinson - The Spring (Touch And Go, 1999)
Annie Dalton - The Coming Of The Wolf (Love Them, Hate Them, 1991)
Terry Tapp - The Green Ghost (Armada Ghost Book #11 , 1979)
Ruth Park - Somebody Lives In The Nobody House
Michael Brown - The Hook (The Oxford Book of Children's Stories, 1992)
Helen Cresswell - A Kind of Swan Song
Maeve Friel - The Hitch-hiker on Blueberry Hill (Chiller, 1995)

Blurb:
A rich and varied selection of deliciously scary stories by some of the most acclaimed and best-selling writers for young people. Perfect for dipping into time and again.

The ghostly pilot of a doomed plane.
The Hitch-hiker who never reached home.
The girl in the mirror.
The dead hand in the dark pool.
The haunting of Nobody House.

Hours of shivery fun that will delight all ten year olds.

More sampling from the Armada Ghost series, albeit not exclusively. Might scan a few illustrations later

Redvers Brandling - Mayday!: A Boeing 747 bound for Australia with 260 passengers aboard - and all four engines pack up! How Captain Ian Sercombe wishes his best pal and co-pilot Mike Payne hadn't died in that car accident! He'd know what to do. What the ... who's that just sat down next to Ian in the cockpit?

If there's one thing I can't abide, it's a phantom do-gooder.

Michael Brown - The Hook: A dark, stormy night on the moors, and John seeks shelter at a gloomy inn. He's almost too exhausted to rise from his bed when he smells ... smoke! John opens his door onto an inferno. The bannisters are all aflame. People screaming, burning alive! Only one hope for it and that's to jump from the window and get help! He reaches a house, awakens the occupants. They look at him like he's a lunatic. Ain't no Inn around these parts, son, just a crumpled ruin.

Vivian Alcock - Siren Song: This is a bit more like it. Roger Kent, eleven, finds his neighbours terrifying, the way they look at him all the time, like he's doomed or something. There's only one other kid in the village, Billy Watson, and he's weird, a bundle of nerves, runs away whenever you talk to him. Even Mum's in on it, always warning him not to go out at night WHATEVER HE HEARS. Perhaps they're witches. He knows they exist because it was in the papers, COVEN OF WITCHES EXPOSED ("They certainly were exposed!There was this photograph of men and women with nothing on. Not that you could see much, only their backs.")

Late one night, Roger hears a bunch of kids chanting stuff in Billy Watson's garden, Typical! The big weed throws a party, and doesn't invite him! That little girl has a really nice voice, sweet and plaintive. Now they're climbing the fence into his garden ....

[cauldronbrewer]

I'll be curious to hear more about your thoughts on this one. Off the top of my head, I've read the stories by Prince (good, as usual), Richards, Morpurgo, and Tapp.

I think that the Biggs story was in the 11th Armada Ghost book, but I haven't read it. I did read some of her contributions to Barbara Ireson's Spooky Stories series, but I don't recall being particularly impressed by them.

[dem bones]

A bit on the spoiler-ish side so avoid like it was one of the diabolical football threads if you're thinking of reading the book! Other than the three we're familiar with from The Green Ghost & Others, would say the Maeve Friel and Vivian Alcock stories have been the pick to date. (and yes, Margaret Biggs' The King Stone is from Armada Ghost #11 , 1979)!

Ann Carroll - The Mirror: First of two from Chris Lynch's anthology of Irish Ghost Stories, Chiller (Poolbeg, 1995). Thirteen year old Sarah's family move from a small village to a suburb in Clanskeagh, South Dublin. As they pull up outside their new home, Sarah spots the ghost of a girl of her own age watching from an upstairs window. She takes that room for her own leaving the basement to brother Tom (Heavy Metal fan and bit of a pain). Tom finds an antique looking-glass inscribed Caroline Eileen O'Connor, 1900, and Sarah intuitively knows that it once belonged to her phantom. Gazing into the mirror, she calls the girls name, releasing Caroline from the glass prison she willed herself into at the moment of her death.

Maeve Friel - The Hitch-hiker on Blueberry Hill: Driving home on a rainy night, Maeve spots a mascara-eyed girl in dark clothes stood by the roadside. A regular hitcher during her Uni years, the author knows what its like to be wet and miserable and, on learning from the chatty Rachel that she lives by the gravel pits, drives her to her front door. Whereupon the thirteen year old promptly vanishes. Her mother wearily explains that this is becoming a regular occurrence. Rachel was murdered three years ago when she thumbed a lift from someone she shouldn't have. Tonight's the anniversary.

[dem bones]

Helen Paiba (ed.) - Scary Stories for Nine Year Olds (MacMillan, 1999)

Tim Jonke

Vivien Alcock - The Sea Bride
Susan Price - Padfoot
Jane Gardham - Bang, Bang - Who's Dead?
Anthony Horowitz - Scared
Ted Hughes - The Coming Of The Iron Man
Vivien Alcock - The Rivals
Kevin Crossley-Holland - The Dauntless Girl
Anthony Masters - The Wrong Bus
Christine Pullen-Thompson - The Ghost In The Top Meadow
Mary Danby - The Red Miller
Paul Jennings - Grandad's Gifts
Sydney J. Bounds - Room At The Inn#
Margaret Biggs - Misty
Phyllis Savory - The Magic Anthill
Ann Pilling - Goosey Goosey Gander
Alison Prince - The Baby-Sitter

Blurb:

A rich and varied selection of deliciously scary stories by some of the very best writers for children. Perfect for reading alone or reading aloud - and for dipping into time and time again.
The ghostly encounter in a graveyard
The haunted windmill
The babysitter's evil eye
The curse of the Sea Bride
Padfoot, the prowling ghost-dog
Hours of shivery fun that will delight all nine year olds

Got this in the Muslim Relief shop on Whitechapel High Street today for £1. Made a start, as you do.

Anthony Masters - The Wrong Bus: (Scary Tales to Tell In The Dark, 1992). A moody bus driver takes Steven Shaw to the cemetery on Halloween as the dead leave their tombs for the night. He and Ellie, a lonely little ghost girl, evade the formidable Death police to seek out the graves of her parents.

Alison Prince - The Babysitter: (Haunted Children, 1984). Mr. Pope the babysitter has been haunted from childhood by old Hacky Basham's glass eye. Approaching death, Pope passes on the curse to a pompous little kid.

Sydney J. Bounds - Room At The Inn: (6th Armada Ghost Book, 1974). Jane and Penny spend the night at a Bodmin pub once notorious as a smugglers' bolt-hole.