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Post by Swampirella on Oct 2, 2019 13:59:55 GMT
An interest in unpleasant and slow moving things must have run in the family - according to wikipedia A.E. Ellis was a biologist and an expert on British land snails. It also says he had just five ghost stories published; these seem to be them (from another website) - The Haunted Haven. The Eighth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, edited by Robert Aickman, 1972. The Chapel Men. The Tenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, 1974. If thy right hand offend three... Frighteners, edited by Mary Danby. 1974. The Life-Buoy. The Thrill of Horror, edited by Hugh Lamb. 1975 Compartment 1313A. The Second Star Book of Horror, edited by Hugh Lamb. 1976. All of which (and Dead Man's Barn. The Seventeenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, 1981) are collected in The Haunted Haven & Other Ghost Stories, Phantasm Press 2016. From Richard Dalby's Library: richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/a-erskine-ellis-a-haunted-haven-other-ghost-stories-phantasmpress-2016-limitedOr of course at Phantasmpress itself, where the overseas shipping is significantly less although the thrill of owning a book from Richard Dalby's library is of course absent.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 30, 2020 22:21:23 GMT
Little Old Lady - Michael Davis (London Mystery Magazine #54 Sept. 1962)
Insurance salesman Henry Goldsmith is about to start his train journey home after a wasted trip. He hasn't made many sales lately due to his nerves; "had he turned the gas off; what about the water-tap; was the parrafin heater alright?" He boards the train & finds an old lady sitting opposite. "He noticed that she had strange, piercing blue eyes. Powerful, ruthless, relentless eyes, completely and totally out of character with the rest of her. Somehow the damp fog and a strange, sweet smell fills the compartment. The ending really is different and not pleasant at all.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 31, 2020 18:33:42 GMT
Little Old Lady - Michael Davis (London Mystery Magazine #54 Sept. 1962) Insurance salesman Henry Goldsmith is about to start his train journey home from a wasted journey. He hasn't made many sales lately due to his nerves; "had he turned the gas off; what about the water-tap; was the parrafin heater alright?" He boards the train & finds an old lady sitting opposite. "He noticed that she had strange, piercing blue eyes. Powerful, ruthless, relentless eyes, completely and totally out of character with the rest of her. Somehow the damp fog and a strange, sweet smell fills the compartment. The ending really is different and not pleasant at all.
The thing that bothers me most about that story is that Henry seems to have been wearing trousers that zipped up the sides. Was that a thing in the early 60s? Why, for God's sake?
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 31, 2020 18:55:17 GMT
Little Old Lady - Michael Davis (London Mystery Magazine #54 Sept. 1962) Insurance salesman Henry Goldsmith is about to start his train journey home from a wasted journey. He hasn't made many sales lately due to his nerves; "had he turned the gas off; what about the water-tap; was the parrafin heater alright?" He boards the train & finds an old lady sitting opposite. "He noticed that she had strange, piercing blue eyes. Powerful, ruthless, relentless eyes, completely and totally out of character with the rest of her. Somehow the damp fog and a strange, sweet smell fills the compartment. The ending really is different and not pleasant at all.
The thing that bothers me most about that story is that Henry seems to have been wearing trousers that zipped up the sides. Was that a thing in the early 60s? Why, for God's sake? I noticed that too, but to be honest, thought it was kind of "cool". Strange, since I've found that type harder to zip up than the regular kind....
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 31, 2020 23:31:28 GMT
It Could Happen to You - Richard Pownall (London Mystery Magazine Dec. 1962)
Charles is on the 8:23to Waterloo, actually enjoying the commute until a Mr. Meredith Mortimer implores him to "stop using this train until it's too late" - "the 8:03 is alright and so is the 8:43" "It" always happens at Clapham Junction and apparently two other commuters have had something happen to them. "It happens without any warning. Silently. It creeps like a...like a...It's....it's...." and the words were lost as the man was hustled out with the crowd. Charles doesn't know what to make of it and wonders how the man could have gotten into such a state.
The next day he reads a horrific story in the newspaper about the death of Mortimer. Despite his landlady having brought him breakfast less than an hour before, he was found tied to his bedstead and strangled with one of the ropes. "When the police discovered his body it was in a state of decomposition so advanced that physical identification was impossible." Charles barely has time to take this in before he finds something in the carriage with him "writhing on the floor and squirming under the seats; it was heaving on the luggage racks and throbbing in the smoky air. And then he felt it soaking through the pores of his skin and pulsing up through his veins". Charles could feel it inside him "gathering strength for the morrow", ready to guide him onto the 8:23 and "feed and fight for those few minutes between Clapham Junction and Vauxhall Station." After a while Charles knows there's nothing he can do, except to one day to say to the man on his right "Excuse me, may I speak to you? It's very important". As if rail travel wasn't scary enough...
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 2, 2020 3:33:22 GMT
Odds of 18,144 to 1 - Lionel Luckhoo (London Mystery Selection Sept. 1968)
Unmarried, 50-something assistant accountant John Ebeneezer Fauld (or J.E.F. as his friends referred to him) is on the morning train from Whitford to London to work at Reilley and Sampson, Chartered Accountants. Although not chartered himself, Fauld loves figures. He happily finds a seat in an empty compartment and starts to read The Telegraph "without fear of any interruptions or inane remarks about the weather". As the train speeds up, he realizes he's no longer alone. "opposite him was a decrepit old man"...."He looked so insignificant yet his presence was commanding." But how did he get in? The door was closed and "Jef" would have heard the squeak of the door if it had been opened. When Jef tries to catch his eye, the man pulls out a newspaper and starts to read. But when Jef next looks up, he's gone! The newspaper, however is still there. The Evening Standard, final edition, dated Friday May 13th. Since it's still morning, he picks up the paper and looks through it, finding the day's racing results. Hmmm, a 1 pound accumulator would bring him 18,144 pounds! "This was not the time to inquire, this was the time to act!"
Jef writes down the names of the horses in a little notebook and rips up the newspaper. Arriving at Victoria, he hails a taxi. He ask the driver to take him to the most reliable betting shop he knows and is soon in Old Bond Street. He places his bet and goes to work. Not bothering to check the results, he returns to the betting shop after finishing work at 5pm. After head office is rung, he's given a cheque for the expected amount and heads to Victoria. He starts making plans; he won't quit work but will invest the money at 6.5%. At the station he buys a paper & finds it identical to the one of the morning. Boarding the train, he settles down to take a nap, but suddenly notices the same old man "the same unwashed face, the same ragged spring coat." Once again, the old man takes out a paper, this time dated for the next day, Saturday May the 14th. This time, it's bad news. Very bad news.
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 2, 2020 23:51:42 GMT
A Ghost on the Train - Dinah Castle (London Mystery Selection #79 Dec. 1968)
An unnamed female narrator gets on the last train back to Brighton after a date at the Festival Hall (London?). Just before the train moved off, a man gets in and takes the opposite corner seat. Noticing the dim lighting, she sees that the lamps have been vandalised and only one is working.
The man appears to be in his 40s and, despite a hot day and stuffy night, is wearing a raincoat with his hands in the pockets. He informs the narrator that he'd attended his first funeral that afternoon, and asks the narrator if she'd been to one. She replies that she had been to an aunt's funeral some years ago. She's then asked if it was burial or cremation, and whether she believes in life after death. The narrator replies that she supposes she does. The man then asks her if she'd be surprised or disturbed if she saw "the shade of someone, whom you knew to be dead?" The narrator replies that she'd just think she was imagining it. What if two people saw the ghost? asked the man. Telepathy or autosuggestion, replies the narrator.
While they're talking, a small woman dressed in black enters from the corridor and sits down opposite the narrator. The man suggests the narrator has the gift of seeing ghosts, to which the narrator replies "A gift I could well do without!" He then asks if she thinks the woman is flesh and blood. She notices the woman's all black, mostly dusty, shabby clothes and dull yellow skin. The man asks again if she really thinks there's a real leg or human foot inside those clothes. The narrator rightly wishes he'd shut up. She looks more closely at the woman and notices her face is gleaming with drops of moisture. She also notices a warm, damp smell, "like a room that has long been unoccupied." She's overcome with terror but unable to move a muscle. The man tells her not to worry, the woman can't hurt them. The narrator realizes the man isn't afraid, that he knows the woman. He explains she's his mother. She's disgusted to hear him describe how his mother abused him as a child. Even as a grown man, she dominated him, made her go everywhere with her. Yet she was the only person who understood him and loved him.
One day in a train heading to London to see a doctor, he kills her. The woman dares a glance at the old woman, who's head suddenly lolls forward as if not properly attached to her body. Then it jerked back into place. The narrator cowers in her seat and somehow falls into "a kind of nightmarish sleep".
At the end of the line, she's roused by the bright lights and people and jumps from the train. But it's then that the woman in black springs to life. She's real! The narrator turns to upbraid the man but of course, he's not there. The old lady denies seeing any man but explains she'd just come from the funeral of her son, who tried to kill her once on a train, and was in a home for 20 years until his death.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Feb 3, 2020 7:56:18 GMT
A fine tale, and yes, the Royal Festival Hall is in London.
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 7, 2020 0:27:48 GMT
The Ever-Buried - Rosemary Timperly (London Mystery Magazine #41 April 1959)
Two-page story of a young woman throws herself under an underground train after she's jilted by her boyfriend. She "wakes up" to find herself surrounded by the ghosts of others who've died in the same way. She wants to go back to the world of the living but is told she's not one of them anymore, she's "one of us".
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 7, 2020 12:36:40 GMT
Into the Tunnel - Patrick Simpson (London Mystery Selection #41 April 1959)
John Cartwright is feeling happy with his routine life and even with the commute to and from work. Today his train goes into the tunnel as usual, apart from the usual light not coming on. Yet when it emerges, it's going back the way it came! Naturally unnerved, he gets off where he got on and speaks to the station manager. While polite, naturally the man "has no time" for Cartwright's complaints and after a short exchange, walks off. Cartwright takes a taxi home to his beloved wife Melanie. His street seems different, somehow, but he puts that down to not usually being there at that time of day. Before entering he notices the curtains are different and once inside, other changes have been made. He calls to his wife but an old lady appears. Has she hired a cleaner without mentioning it? No, the old lady, in tears, whispers "John!" and collapses. Of course Cartwright calls a doctor who diagnoses a stroke. It seems she was never the same after her husband was killed in a tunnel collapse twenty years ago. But she never quite gave up hope that he'd walk in the front door....
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Post by dem bones on Nov 13, 2020 21:21:16 GMT
J. A. Brooks - Railway Ghosts (Jarrold, 1987) Preface Introduction
The Sword in the Sky The Lullington Poster Dead on Time The Dobwalls Sorcerer Gentle Geoffrey The Man in the Corner Seat Judgement Day The Happy Children Turning the Table The Strange Occurrence at the Victoria Hotel The Monster of the Marshes The Platform Dog The Jinxed Jubilee Privett Tunnel South Kentish Town The Phantom Train
Acknowledgments Blurb: Railways were born early in the Victorian era. It was an exciting, violent time, and even at the event inaugurating passenger services an accident led to the death of a participant. As the opponents of this new form of transport feared, such events were to become common in the early years, sudden death coming both to patrons of the railways, and to those building them. The fashion in architecture duly reflected in station and other railway buildings, held the Gothic style in high regard which gave to the railways an atmosphere of gloomy romance which even survives in this age of diesel and electric motive power.
Strangely there have been few notable ghost stories written concerning our railways (apart from Dickens' masterpiece, The Signalman). These tales deal with many different aspects of the supernatural, and the way that unworldly happenings affected railwaymen and passengers of different generations. The author, John Brooks, has already written Ghosts of the Cotswolds, and London Ghosts (two volumes) in this series, and has had a lifelong interest both in the supernatural and in railways.Herbert's "Railway Ghosts & Phantoms" was apparently put together by Mr Herbert after he got agreement on the deal from the publishers. Unfortunately for him, his trawl of railway employees and passengers didn't produce anything like enough material, so he made up the deficit by simply inventing a lot of the tales himself. Two years earlier, Railway Ghosts & Phantoms, J. A. Brooks ( London Ghosts & Co.) met with a similar paucity of material while compiling his own Railway Ghosts although ('Richard Peyton' had no such difficulty assembling The Ghost Now Standing on Platform One). The Lullington Poster: Each morning on the commute to work, a fresh poster appears on the platform of the disused Lullington station, depicting the face of a person who will die within 24 hours. Said poster is only visible to our narrator, who soon learns to manipulate its clairvoyant powers to destroy enemies and business rivals. Our man is not wrong when he wryly informs us his Yvonne, token despised wife of the piece, "chose a novel way to die." Dead on Time: Professor Tobins, eminent lawyer. His pride and joy is the intricate model railway system installed in the shed of his Victorian Edinburgh home. Tonight he's planning to follow an authentic London & North Eastern timetable from the winter of 1937. The Monster of the Marshes: Whitlingham, Norfolk. A suicidal poet opts to bow out in dramatic fashion, mangled beneath the wheels of a passenger train. A monstrous face appears out of the mist to dissuade him from such a course. Devil or coypu?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 14, 2020 19:32:27 GMT
The Sword in the Sky: For their 1955 convention, The Ghost Hunters Society of New Jersey book an exclusive month-long tour of Scotland's most haunted sites. They get their money's worth - at least the men do - while staying at a railway cottage beside Cullendon Moor. Ghosts reenact the bloody massacre of 1746. "Quarter to none!"
The Jinxed Jubilee: The cursed engine Lynx is doomed to rust harmlessly in a scrapyard siding, until some fool at the Cwm Avon steam Trust decides she's worth restoring to full working order. Did Brooks write any more supernatural fiction?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 16, 2020 19:24:44 GMT
Privett Tunnel: Hampshire. It's haunted by the ghost of a chapel man buried alive in a cave in during excavation work on the Meon Valley line in January, 1889.
John Betjeman - South Kentish Town: (BBC's Home Service, 1951). Mr. Basil Green, income tax official, finds himself stranded overnight in the disused station. His attempt to escape via the lift shaft comes to nowt. Based on a true incident in 1924. Can't recall any ghost participation in this one.
Alphonse Courlander - The Phantom Train: Not a great one for poetry, but this chugs along nicely.
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 12, 2021 4:43:00 GMT
Contents
Introduction
Uncle Ben
Young narrator's Uncle Ben, formerly cheerful but now morose at having lost his farm, comes to live with the family. Tragically our narrator soon finds him hanging from a plate-layer's hut. Can the skull of Dickie of Tunstead Farm, stolen by Uncle Ben, be held responsible?
Retribution
Two commercial travellers find themselves together in the freezing first-class carriage of the Whitby train. Each has a story to tell involving murder.
The Colonel and Old Shuck
The Colonel (surname unknown) gives a lecture on "Old Shuck" at the Mechanic's Institute. Afterwards, he relates his encounter with the demon dog to William Marriott, young engineer of the Midland and Great Northern Railway.
The Secret Accident
Train enthusiast old Tom tells another young narrator about his friendship, before and after death, with a young American 'lootenant" Pete G. Forster, in Devon to help set up railways with regard to D Day.
The Spotter
Ghost look-alike of "Just William", clad in grey shorts, striped blazer and Fair Isle pullover, ruins film shoot.
Trouble With Alice
67yr old former schoolmaster and volunteer Wainwright (at least we get a surname) encounters the ghost of little Alice and her even littler brother on the Santa Special picnic car of the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.
Marmalade Tom
John Murdoch, stationmaster of West Hoathly in the 1920s, is disliked by all for his cruel ways and vicious temper. His children grow up & leave, but his wife has no escape. At least she has her cats to cheer her up when husband's not around. Her favorite, Lucky, will be lucky for some...
Gwrach-y-rhibyn - The Hag of the Night
William Davidson hosts some bigwig railway customers after the war at the Royal Hotel in Llangollen, Wales. Unable to sleep after a rich meal, he looks out the window and sees "a strangely hunched shape" on the station platform. It opens an enormous pair of wings and glides off along the river. In the morning he finds there's been a train derailment down the line, with the driver dead. Years later, Davidson's Welsh son-in-law Gareth has his own encounter with the weird creature, some time after informing his father-in-law that it was a "gwrach-y-rhibyn", a Welsh version of a banshee.
The Black Crow
Story of a jinxed train.
The Red Dawn
Lord Kitchener travels to Scotland on his way to Russia. As he and his Scottish bodyguard pass through the Pass of Killiecrankie, site of a bloody battle, the sky is a dreadful red. What does this portend for them?
Arley Castle
Another unknown youthful narrator describes his visit to an abandoned castle named after it's town, Arley, in the Severn valley near Shrewsbury. After trespassing inside to try to get some atmospheric photographs, he suffers a horrifying unexpected past-life regression.
The Nightmare of Stefan Weiss
Now well-off and living happily in Britain, German-born Stefan Weiss suffers from horrible nightmares after he and his wife take their grandchildren on the Santa Special run by the Nene Valley Railway. As the train appears, it seems to look like "an anatomical drawing where the skin is stripped away to show the veins and muscles beneath." Suddenly he's transported back in time, to his infantry platoon in the freight-yard outside Warsaw...
Spent today reading "Railway Ghosts " and "Supernatural Steam". Both "meh" for me, unfortunately.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Feb 12, 2021 8:36:35 GMT
"Supernatural Steam" is about 90% padding, 3% covers and 7% actual book. By a country mile, the best book about The Other Side of the Tracks is Paul Screeton's "Crossing the Line - Trespassing on Railway Weirdness":- Anyone who enjoyed this collection would do well to check out Paul Screeton's "Crossing the Line - Trespassing on Railway Weirdness" which collects and discusses railway folklore. Everything from the world of gricers to haunted engines to the strategic steam reserve (that's the urban legend that circulates in railway circles that not all BR's steam locos went to the breaker's yard, actually a secret fleet of them was spirited away and is hidden somewhere (Box Tunnel?) to be resurrected for use in time of war when imported diesel dries up and electricity can't be generated and/or distributed for these new-fangled engines) to the "maniac on the platform"...
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