Elliott O'Donnell's Ghost Hunters

[dem bones]

Can anyone provide a table of contents for Elliott O'Donnell's Ghost Hunters, edited by Harry Ludlam (Foulsham 1971). Failing that, perhaps you could let me know if it includes Hauntings in Other Parks and Commons and/ or his recollections of a joint-investigation with 'Cheiro'? Thank you.

[Swampirella]

I've got a copy (dated 1991) and "Hauntings in Other Parks and Commons" isn't there. After a quick browse, the only mention of "Cheiro" is his own recollection of a haunting in the chapter "A Bargain with a Ghost", no joint investigation. Let me know if you'd like the complete Table of Contents.

[dem bones]

Thanks ever so, Swampi! Hauntings In Other Parks And Commons was a long shot, but that "Cheiro" is represented in some shape or form suggests it's the one I'm after. No need for TOC, but if you get a chance, perhaps you could tell me if one of the stories mentions a haunting in a Park?

If it's the book I'm thinking of, it was the first I ever read of his, via a library loan, some time in the late 'eighties. Never seen a copy since! Elliott's extraordinary "true" ghost stories seem to have been recycled over several volumes, and I think some may even have been retitled, making it very difficult to keep track!

[Swampirella]

Oops, my bad! My books is "True Stories from the Great Ghost Hunter" which I confused with the one you wanted. The publication year should have told me it was wrong. For what it's worth, it has "Trees of Fear" containing stories set in either Hyde Park or Clapham Common. In case you need them (you probably don't) I have pdfs of Nights in Hyde Park and Hauntings in other Parks and Commons". Deepest apologies!

[dem bones]

Oct 13, 2018 18:56:18 GMT Swampirella said:

Oops, my bad! My books is "True Stories from the Great Ghost Hunter" which I confused with the one you wanted. The publication year should have told me it was wrong. For what it's worth, it has "Trees of Fear" containing stories set in either Hyde Park or Clapham Common. In case you need them (you probably don't) I have pdfs of Nights in Hyde Park and Hauntings in other Parks and Commons". Deepest apologies!

On the contrary! According to Lesser Known Writers blog, True Stories from the Great Ghost Hunter is Elliott O'Donnell's Ghost Hunters plus three additional stories, so we're definitely on the right track, Trees Of Fear, plus the Cheiro content good as confirms it. So you've done me a huge favour as now I've a choice of two books to hunt down which might make it easier.

Thanks for the kind offer of pdf's but I already have copies.

[Swampirella]

Oh good, I'm glad to have helped!

[dem bones]

Elliott O'Donnell's Ghost Hunters: Edited by Harry Ludlam (Foulsham, 1971)

The Bridge at Midnight
The Mummy of Amen-Ra
The Rectory Horrors
The Haunted Husband
Houses of Terror
The Trees of Fear
The Miller's House
More Spectres From My Notebook
Mr. Wyeth and Mr. Neal
A Bargain With a Ghost
Old Jeffrey
Phantom Dogs and Cats
The Residents of Ramhurst
The Murderer's Return
The Wailing Banshees
The Banshees Abroad
"It Happened To Me"
The Cursing Psalm

Blurb:
Recent discovery of further papers among the effects of the late Elliott O'Donnell makes possible this extra collection of true stories by Britain's renowned ghost-hunter. They are drawn from more than sixty years of active personal investigations; an astonishing record, and one without parallel.
O'Donnell was no armchair ghost-hunter, he believed in going out to see for himself. No trail was too long for him to follow, his inquiries into some hauntings stretching over many years. From haunted houses to phantom animals, from vengeful ghosts to wretched spirits seeking earthly release, the absorbing stories in this collection are the real thing, and all described in O'Donnell's familiar direct style, with a deep understanding of the terrors that leap out at us not only from the dark corners of the night, but also from the brilliant daylight of a summer's afternoon.
Besides bringing to light some of the more notable cases from his bulky files, there are further revealing extracts from the notebooks which Elliott O'Donnell kept every day of his life. In addition we can read O'Donnell's conclusions after years of study and tireless inquiry into the activities of the Banshees, instancing some remarkable cases involving apparitions of this sorrowing harbinger of doom.
As in the earlier ‘Casebook of Ghosts', the stories have been arranged and edited by Harry Ludlam.

"No-one can equal Elliott O'Donnell's quite incredible record in hunting down the thousand ghosts that trouble us."

Oct 13, 2018 18:56:18 GMT Swampirella said:

... it has "Trees of Fear" containing stories set in either Hyde Park or Clapham Common.

Tree ghosts versus vagrants! For some reason I misremembered the location as Greenwich Park, but the opening account, featuring a tree favoured by suicides and the spectre of a woman in battered bonnet and rags who, presumably, hung herself from same has stayed with me since my teenage years. What had completely slipped my mind is that Trees of Fear also includes a terrific haunted bench sequence!

[dem bones]

Trees of Fear and The Mummy of Amen-Ra remain personal highlights, but, for better or for worse, these are well up to Elliott O'Donnell's standards.

The Bridge At Midnight: A fatal chance encounter between down and out actors Basil N. Hill and 'Bert' at Poverty Corner on the Embankment. The starving Thespians decide that, unless their luck changes for the better over next 24 hours, they will throw themselves from Waterloo Bridge the following midnight. Hill's fortune's improve dramatically, but not so those of his friend, whose soggy ghost subsequently haunts bridge and park.

The Rectory Horrors: Begins with Rev. Bren's unspectacular encounter with mundane ghost in Leyton parish church, 1934.
Next, a seventeenth century haunting at Warblington, Havant, Hants., featuring the black gowned phantom of Mr. Pitfield, "a man of very ill-report, supposed to have got children of his maid, and to have murdered them."
Finally, R. Thurston Hopkins researches the terrifying ghost of Rattlesden Rectory (demolished 1892), which his eyewitness, a former carpenter, first took to be some prankster clowning around in a sheet, but: "..... it couldn't be called a face at all, but it was intensely horrible to look at. "It looked like a wizened pigs bladder, and a dried-up, blue-looking tongue dangled from its mouth."

The Haunted Husband: Includes account of a Norwich haunting involving the "spiteful" ghost of house proud, misanthropic Mrs. Julia Sheward, a woman given to "excessive scrubbing." Driven to distraction by these antics, William Sheward snapped, murdered and dismembered his wife in 1851.

Ten haunted years later, William, crazed by Julia's constant persecution from beyond the grave, turns himself in to the police.

[dem bones]

The Residents of Ramhurst: As investigated by ghost hunter Roger Dale Owen in December 1858. Low key haunting of Kentish manor-house by former owners miserable that the property has passed out of the family. Phantom footsteps, voices, screams in the night, etc.

Mr. Wyeth and Mr. Neal: Exploits of clairvoyant-exorcist chums who rose to prominence during 1920's (see The Mummy of Amen-Ra). Haunts investigated include the lonely clergyman of Hampstead; the anguished Cavalier of Lincoln's Inn, victim of a gross miscarriage of justice; a Black Magic circle whose ghosts terrorise a private boarding school in suburban South London; and the Druid Kings, sixteenth century practitioners of the Black Arts and human sacrifice now returned to persecute a Cheshire violinist.

[dem bones]

Oct 13, 2018 17:04:44 GMT Swampirella said:

I've got a copy (dated 1991) and "Hauntings in Other Parks and Commons" isn't there. After a quick browse, the only mention of "Cheiro" is his own recollection of a haunting in the chapter "A Bargain with a Ghost", no joint investigation.

Having now read it, definitely not the story I had in mind. Not at all bad, if a bit slushy for morbid types.

A Bargain With a Ghost: Count Louis Hamilton aka 'Cheiro' rents a superbly gloomy house with overgrown garden in the heart of London, fully aware that it has ... a reputation. Servant's can not be prevailed upon to brave the phantom footsteps, croaking laughter, violent rapping on a door by unseen bony knuckles, etc. As it turns out, the haunting is restricted to a room on the staircase. It was here that, 120 years ago, Karl Klint murdered sex-creep Arthur Liddell, who'd been pestering his wife, Charlotte. Cheiro hears out Klint's mournful tale without passing judgement. The pair become friends and strike a mutually beneficial bargain. Support cast includes Parkins (Cheiro's secretary), Cecil Husk, the blind medium, and a borrowed mongrel dog. Chapter concludes with an account of the bizarre circumstances surrounding Cheiro's peaceful death aged 70 in 1936.