|
|
Post by marillionboy on Jan 18, 2011 4:40:53 GMT
Does anyone else know of Supernatural Stories for Boys? It was in my school library and I then tracked down a copy. Collection of stories including Poe's The Black Cat, but in the centre of the book was one mammoth tale, practically a novel, called THE WHISPERING HOUSE by Jeffrey Gaunt.
Aside from the creepy illustrations this was an unbelievably dark tale of a house driving a writer who moves in to murder repeatedly. I remember I told my mum to read it as a child and she did too: she said she was so gripped she took it to the hairdressers and realised everyone was looking at her oddly as they could see she was reading a book for boys!
Re read the story recently and its just as dark: I dont think kids fiction is this brutal know. Murdering elderly ladies and pushing them out of the upstairs windows for instance: hardly wholesome!
|
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Jan 18, 2011 4:50:54 GMT
I think I had that as a kid - it had a picture of a bobby on the cover - and I remember the long story being creepy.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 18, 2011 7:00:06 GMT
Blimey, its a Hamlyn (1969/ 1971) too! is this the full line-up? Christopher Kay - The Red Devil Phantom
Ted Cowan - The Prey
Bill Swallow - Death After Life
Jeffrey Gaunt - The Whispering House
James Garnet - The Ancestor Who Returned
Sydney Philips - The Golden Amulet
Henry Pope - The Phantom Of Cursitor Fields
Edgar Allan Poe - The Black Cat
Dan Wallis - One Foggy Night
Sydney Philips - The Green Feather i think the illustrations are by Reg Gray who provided some striking work for Deborah Shine's Haunting Ghost Stories. |
|
|
|
Post by marillionboy on Jan 18, 2011 14:38:10 GMT
That's the one! I remember I first read it around the time I saw Salem's Lot as a child and it has striking similarities in that the lead character is a writer and it's about an evil house.
|
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Apr 5, 2021 13:24:47 GMT
I had a copy of this one, a hardback with dustjacket showing a ghost menacing a policeman. The only story that rings a bell is the first one, The Red Devil, which had something to do with racing cars, I think. I believe I got it with a book token for my birthday or Christmas, probably 1971, so I would have been 10.
|
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Apr 5, 2021 19:20:15 GMT
I had a copy of this one, a hardback with dustjacket showing a ghost menacing a policeman. The only story that rings a bell is the first one, The Red Devil, which had something to do with racing cars, I think. I believe I got it with a book token for my birthday or Christmas, probably 1971, so I would have been 10. Coincidentally, I, too, was 10 in 1971! This leads me to believe we may be the same age. |
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Apr 5, 2021 21:22:07 GMT
I had a copy of this one, a hardback with dustjacket showing a ghost menacing a policeman. The only story that rings a bell is the first one, The Red Devil, which had something to do with racing cars, I think. I believe I got it with a book token for my birthday or Christmas, probably 1971, so I would have been 10. Coincidentally, I, too, was 10 in 1971! This leads me to believe we may be the same age. I was 11 in 1971. I feel old. |
|
|
|
Post by samdawson on Apr 6, 2021 10:33:04 GMT
Me too
|
|
|
|
Post by humgoo on Apr 6, 2021 13:36:34 GMT
Supernatural Stories for Boys ("Abridged edition", Hamlyn, 1979; first published 1968), illustrated by Reg Gray
Christopher Kay - Diable Rouge—The Red Devil Phantom
Ted Cowan - The Prey
Bill Swallow - Death After Life
Jeffrey Gaunt - The Whispering House
James Garnett - The Ancestor Who Returned
Sydney Philips - The Golden Amulet
Edgar Allan Poe - The Black Cat
Dan Wallis - One Foggy Night
Sydney Philips - The Green Feather Blurb:
A haunted house doesn't have to be a stately mansion with a clock that strikes thirteen, staircases that creak and doors that go BANG in the middle of the night. Your school could be haunted for all you know. And a ghost doesn't have to be dressed in a white sheet and float silently through darkened alleys. The man sitting next to you on the bus could just easily be a ghost.
The mysteries of the supernatural are all around us—as you shall soon see. They don't often show themselves, but when they do ... BRRR!
Here are nine stories, each one showing the great hidden power of the strange forces surrounding us, each one seeming odder than the last. A racing driver battling for glory on a dusty track, two boys off on a boating holiday, three students hard at work ... all are confronted by the supernatural, all are terrified, and yet all are affected in different ways.
A man alone in his desolate manor is not even frightened by his strange discovery—and yet the changes it produces in him are the most extraordinary of all! If you are foolhardy enough to read this book in bed at night, one word of advice ... Don't put it away when you have finished reading, there might be someone else in your room who would like to rustle through its pages while you slumber!
It's one of those books I bought only to get the cover art ... (Yes, I shamelessly admit this!)
|
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Apr 6, 2021 15:39:13 GMT
That cover is hilarious. Brilliant find!
cheers, Hel
|
|
