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Post by dem bones on Apr 9, 2012 18:17:17 GMT
Aidan Chambers - Haunted Houses (Piccolo True Adventure, 1975: Pan, 1971) Illustrations by John Cameron Jarvies From The Author
The Man Who Did Not Believe In Ghosts The Ghost Of Owd Nance - And The Skull The Artist Who Drew A Ghost The Haunting Of Epworth Parsonage The Man Who Gambled With The Devil Haunted Hotels The Mannington Ghost The Ghostly Skulls Of Calgarth Hall Death's Drummer Boy The Nameless Horror Of Berkeley Square Sid Mularney's Ghost And Other Poltergeists The Grey Lady Of Jarolen HouseBlurb: "We could hear, unmistakably now, a woman's light-footed tread. The soft steps moved slowly and grandly around the room, followed by the whispering rustle of a long, trailing silk gown.
But when the visitor to Creslow manor lit his candle, the room was empty!'
Shun rooms quiet as the grave, distrust dimly-lit silences, and spare an occasional glance over your shoulder as you read these hai-raising tales of ghosts, poltergeists and the supernatural.
The most celebrated haunted houses in Britain reveal their secrets - from the ghostly drummer of Cortachy Castle to the visitations at Epworth Parsonage, from the spectral figures of the Garrick's Head to the grinning skulls of Calgarth Hall ....
Astounding true stories to thrill you — and chill you! It's unfair to blame it all on one lousy paperback, but Haunted Houses has a lot to answer for. To the best of my knowledge, the first book I ever bought - none of your girly, made up fiction for me, you'll note: some of us were dealing with the REAL thing even as toddlers - and you cannot comprehend my delight at finding a copy lying around doing nothing at the market yesterday. Revisiting Haunted Houses after about a century, I'm amazed how many of John Cameron Jarvies simple but effective illustrations burnt themselves into my brain, as did at least three of the 'true' stories. Motor-cycle mechanic Sid Mularney's experience of a spanner-hurling poltergeist provided incontrovertible proof that, not only can such things be, they can be in the here and now, albeit if you live in Leighton Buzzard. The vengeful skulls of Dorothy and Kraster Cook were an even bigger hit because they actually killed some people, but the absolute clincher, the one that fired my brain something crazy, was Mr. Chambers' account of the terrible fates that befell Sir Robert Warboys and two luckless sailors (named here as Edward Blunden and Robert Martin) when they came face to something with The Nameless Horror Of Berkeley Square. Only now do I realise that, in all likelihood, it was Chambers' mention of a d**n tentacled monstrosity bowling along the floor got me hooked for life. It certainly set me to hunting down Bulwer-Lytton's The Haunted and the Haunters (incredible as it seems, I didn't have far to look: the local library had a copy of The 8th Fontana Ghost Stories). Eventually, I'd get to Richard Whittington-Egan's perhaps more sophisticated account, The Horror House Of Berkeley Square in the fab Weekend Book Of Ghosts #5 (1985) and Elliott O'Donnell's typically swashbuckling No - Berkely Square ( Phantoms Of The Night, Rider, 1956) from which the Whittington-Egan and Chambers versions are clearly derived. And all these years later, I still absolutely adore the (uncredited) cover painting, two lit windows and all! Aidan Chambers - Great Ghosts Of The World (Piccolo True Adventure, 1974) Illustrations by Peter Edwards
From the Author The Ghost in Jail : A German Haunting The Bottle-Breaking Ghost of Turin Vampires Around the World The Ghost-Horse of South Africa The Stone-Throwing Ghost of Mauritius A South Seas Ghost Some Australian Apparitions An Indian Phantom Sea-Going Ghosts The Mystery Ghost of Amherst, Nova ScotiaIn an earlier spasm of nauseating nostalgia, picked up a copy of Great Ghosts Of The World from same stall shortly after Christmas. Back in the day, I either skipped Great Ghosts Of The World in favour of Great Sea Mysteries, one of several Richard Garrett contributions to the series, or, more likely, just wasn't aware of its existence. Format much the same as above but this time both cover artist and illustrator receive a credit. There's a warning against Vampires Around The World, "Not to be read by the squeamish", ensuring that every kid who came across a copy would read that chapter if nothing else. Incidentally, if you have a copy of aforementioned Great Sea Mysteries in Piccolo, would be obliged if you could scan the cover painting if it is not too much trouble. That scaly sea serpent is just how I imagine the wannabe Nessie we never get to see in ace The Saint episode, The Inconvenient Monster.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 5, 2013 19:49:04 GMT
Illustration: John Cameron Jarvies (from Aiden Chambers' The Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square Haunted Houses. "The House in Berkeley Square contains at least one room of which the atmosphere is supernaturally fatal to body and mind." ( The Mayfair Magazine, 1879, as quoted in Elliott O'Donnell's The House In Berkeley Square, Foulsham, 1964; FourSquare, 1966) Maggs Brothers catalogue (February 1951) The recent archaeological dig in my wardrobe unearthed this catalogue, bought from a junk shop way back in the late 'eighties, and, in all those years, and for all the ghost-hunting (including a visit the premises in question) never once did the significance of the company name and address register until now. Yes, this catalogue came to us live from the most haunted house in London, the inspiration for such masterly works as Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Haunted and the Haunters: Or the House and the Brain, and Elliott O'Donnell's 'influential "non-fictional" account, The House In Berkley Square, which in turn spawned Richard Whittington-Egan's The Horror House of Berkeley Square in the classy Weekend Book Of Ghosts No. 5. Even ITV's Whitechapel has revisited it. As luck would have it, this particular catalogue includes a section on pre-1800 witchcraft titles . Prices range from £1 10 s for Henry Durbin's A Narrative of some extraordinary things that happened to Mr. Richard Giles' Children, at the Lamb, without Lawford's Gate, Bristol, supposed to be the effect of Witchcraft (1800) to a purse-bursting £85 - 00 for a translation of Ludwig Lavaterr's Of Ghostes & Soirites walking by nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes, and sundry forewarnynges, which commonly happen before the death of menne, great slaughters, and alterations of kyngdomes (Richard Watkyns, 1572). An extremely rare original of Matthew Hopkins notorious 14 page pamphlet, The Discovery Of Witchcraft, (1647) would set you back £65 -00.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 24, 2013 19:36:01 GMT
From the same super series: Richard Garrett - Great Sea Mysteries (Piccolo, 1971) Edward Mortelmans Sailor's Talk Warning To Marines
Why Shoot The Skipper? The Empty Ship Whatever Happened To The Waratah? A Coil Of Serpents The Girl In The Boat Pity The Poor Dutchman The Sunken Gold The Ship That Changed Her Shape The Man With A Pocketful Of Fire The Trouble With Iron The Ghost Of A BattleshipBlurb: 'A horrible, broad, oval-shaped head ..., with two fearsome yellow eyes eyes..... mounted on a thick, sinewy neck ....
Stirring encounters with sea serpents are only some of the exciting happenings brought vividly to life in these fascinating stories of great oceans and strange ships.
Master-spies and mutineers, sabotage and the supernatural, the heroism of of young Grace Darling, and the never-ending mystery of the Mary Celeste...
Amazing exploits, rich in drama and incident - and each one true!
Another very early dem - the paper-round years, purchase, may even have bought this before Haunted Houses, but if not, soon afterwards. It was that glorious cover artwork lured me into the strange and terrible world of marine cryptozoology. A Coil Of Serpents aside, didn't find the subject matter quite as thrilling as Aidan Chambers' book - the House in Berkeley Square takes some beating, after all - but I'm extremely grateful to Mr. Saucecraft for reuniting me with a copy!
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Post by ripper on Dec 28, 2013 11:22:02 GMT
Books like these were great fun to read while growing up and I am sure I had one or two of the Chambers' titles. The one that got me interested in true accounts of mysteries was Margaret Ronan's Strange Unsolved Mysteries (1974), which was probably also my first exposure to Forteana. I remember reading with awe the accounts of the Aurora, Texas UFO crash of 1897, a family's battle with a mysterious fungus that invaded their home and others of the same ilk. Around the same time I read one of the books by Frank Edwards, though the title eludes me. The only accounts from that one (perhaps they impressed me the most) were of a seemingly-normal baby that was discovered not to have a brain after a post-mortem was performed after it died and the tale of a man who was tamping down gunpowder with an iron rod. The gunpowder detonated, driving the rod deep into his head, and he is supposed to have survived with few ill-effects.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 9, 2016 18:41:53 GMT
Aidan Chambers - More Haunted Houses (Piccolo, 1973) From The Author
The Ghost Of Raynham Hall Death At Breckles Hall Some London Ghosts The Ghost Who Saved A Life Ghost Or Guile? The Haunting Of Syderstone Violet Tweedale's Ghosts The Haunting Of Ashley Hall Mummy's Ghost: The Haunting Of Birchen Bower All Your Own GhostsBlurb: "... those eyes, along with the noiseless tread as the figure glided over the bare oak floor, gave me a sensation of such deep, deep fearas I shall never forget all my life, a fear that struck like ice inside me. . ."
Feel the cold sweat of horror, the icy thrill of dread in these spine-chilling stories of hauntings, mysterious ghosts, unknown sounds and unexplained apparitions.. In hundreds of old English houses, ghosts walk the dark passages, striking terror into the hearts of mortals. These are true stories of those ghosts.
Text illustrations by Chris BradburyAfter a miserably lean fortnight had a MASSIVE RESULT at the market on Sunday. GNS's Neophyte, Entombed and Blood Circuit; Dean R. Koontz's The Funhouse and the Demon Seed tie-in. Mark Morris's Toady, Graham Masterton's Revenge Of The Manitou, Wheatley's Gunmen, Gallants & Ghosts (boring owl cover edition), John Buchan's Gap In The Curtain (DW Library of the Occult), The League of Gentlemen's Local Book For Local People, hard-covers of Craig Cabell's James Herbert: Devil In The Dark and Frank Coffey's Modern Masters Of Horror, and scribble-free copies of Aidan Chambers' Haunted Houses and this, the sequel. Cost me a fiver all in. My nostalgia-fueled fondness for Haunted Houses, and the fact that I haven't been a teenager for, like, a thousand years, makes it difficult for me to approach the follow up objectively, so initial reaction - "the cases aren't as interesting, the ghosts aren't scary" - isn't that surprising. It may even be true, because this time we have too many benevolent spectres around to ruin things. It's unlikely that a glimpse of Ignatius the bell-ringer, aka the phantom monk of Elm Vicarage, would compel even the most timid to leap from an upper window for impalement on the row of spiked railings beneath. Madame Bestwick, the mummified and, occasionally, headless ghost of Birchen Bower is an incorrigible prankster, but her little tricks are neither dangerous or spiteful. Even the revenant of Dorothy Walpole, the eyeless brown lady of Raynham Hall (who reputedly so put the willies up Captain Frederick " The Phantom Ship" Marryat that he shot at her) never actually dispenses death. Only the mysterious and very beautiful white lady of Breckles Hall distinguishes herself in that department, killing a drunken poacher stone dead on Christmas Day with just an enigmatic look. The concluding chapter is devoted to the feedback Chambers received from readers aged eight to eighty in response to the initial paperback, many with their own true ghost stories to relate. Phantom nuns will never be unfashionable.
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Post by ripper on Aug 10, 2016 5:56:29 GMT
That's a pretty fair haul for £5, Dem. Plenty to keep you going for quite a while. And if it isn't a phantom nun then it's a phantom monk.
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mauricebendrix
Crab On The Rampage
The Patron Saint of Envy and the Grocer of Despair
Posts: 40
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Post by mauricebendrix on Feb 20, 2018 14:14:51 GMT
These were great. I have the Haunted Houses volume.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Feb 19, 2019 19:35:32 GMT
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Post by ripper on Feb 22, 2019 13:06:10 GMT
What a great find. Many thanks for highlighting it. I wonder if it gave its viewers a few sleepless nights. Nice to see the SPR getting a name check.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2019 5:34:31 GMT
Illustration: Peter Richardson: Photo: Maggs Brothers: Uncredited article on the famous, horribly haunted House in Berkley Square, torn from the pages of The Virginian for Summer 1997. This was a short-lived (?), quarterly glossy magazine, exclusive to smokers of Golden Virginia tobacco.
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Post by ripper on Aug 24, 2019 11:44:52 GMT
I think I read the Sea Mysteries volume at some time, as mention of the Waratah reminded me of this first class mystery. If I remember correctly, the ship disappeared off the coast of South Africa in the early 1900s. A man was either on the ship or due to sail in it when he had a dream in which a crusader knight emerged from the sea with a fiery sword or something like that, and 'Waratah' was written somewhere. The man took this as a warning and either left the ship or didn't sail in her at all, and consequently escaped the disappearance.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 1, 2020 11:04:30 GMT
PS have either published or are about to publish a compilation of Aidam Chambers ghost stories, 'true' or otherwise, and selected by himself as; Aidan Chambers - Dead Trouble & Other Ghost Stories (P.S. Publishing, 2020) Interior illustrations Randy Broecker Stephen Jones - Foreword: The Chambers of Horror Aidan Chambers - Introduction: My Ghostly Companion
The Haunting of Ashley Hall Room 18 The Ghost of Owd Nance-and Her Skull Dead Trouble The Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square Last Respects The Ghostly Skulls of Calgarth Hall Murder Will Out The Ghost in Jail Nancy Tucker's Ghost The Haunted Well Seeing is Believing The Ghost of Grandpa Bull The Ghost, the Girl and the Gold The Mystery Ghost of Amherst, Nova Scotia The House of the Skull The Tower The Grey Lady of Jarolen House
About the Author About the ArtistBlurb: "I saw a face, bloated, much larger than any face I'd ever seen before. It hung in the air above me, and there was no sign of a body, just the swollen truncated head. The eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. Thick stringy hair fell in tangled knots from the crown of the skull. The skin on the face was blotched with festering patches, as though it had been violently bruised. The lips were drawn wide and taut across the mouth, revealing the teeth and gums so that the head seemed to grin in malice."
Aidan Chambers has been collecting ghost stories for decades. For Dead Trouble & Other Ghost Stories the award-winning author and editor has selected some of his favourite supernatural tales of haunted houses and restless spirits. Inside these pages you will encounter 'The Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square', 'The Ghostly Skulls of Calgarth Hall', 'The Mystery Ghost of Amherst, Nova Scotia' and 'The Grey Lady of Jarolen House', to name only a few. But be warned — you may have trouble deciding between which of these tales are "true" and those that are purely fiction . . .
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Post by dem bones on Aug 25, 2022 18:45:35 GMT
Aidan Chambers - Great British Ghosts (Piccolo, 1974) From the Author
The Ghost of Grandpa Bull The Ghost and the Pious Woman A School Haunting Uncle Bert Returns The Haunting of Hinton Ampner A Ghost Pays Its Debts Lighting the way to the Grave Black Shuck and Other Animal Ghosts The Ghost Aboard HMS Asp A Spectral Wedding Party Dancing with the Dead Ghosts at War The Sailor-Ghosts at the Punch Bowl The Old Ghost-Layer The Haunted Bowling Alley
AcknowledgementsBlurb: "The ghastly scream was repeated three or four times, each time fainter than before, as though it were descending slowly into the bowels of the earth...'
The chill hands of fear will grip your nerve-ends as you read these thrilling tales of hauntings and horror...
From the hell-hound of the misty Fens to the spectral wedding party of the Northumberland castle, these stories will bind you with the spell of terror... Slight stories for most part, not a patch on Haunted Houses, though somehow, not least due to cover painting, still adorable. The Ghost of Grandpa Bull: Ramsbury, Wiltshire, February 1932. The ghost of Samuel Bull, chimney sweep, returns to his house on Oxford Street out of concern for bedridden wife and the insufferable overcrowding his family are forced to endure. The offer of a larger property from local council sets him at rest. Haunting investigated by SPR, though author neglects to report their finding. The Ghost and the Pious Woman: Powis Castle, Monmouthshire, 1780. After spending a day at work in the castle, a poor travelling spinner is unexpectedly offered a magnificent bedroom for the night by the steward's wife. It's haunted, of course, but the spinner is so saintly that the ghost reveals to her the whereabouts of hidden box on the understanding she has it sent unopened to the Earl in London. A School Haunting: Beaminster School, Dorset, 1728. After seven weeks in the soil, John Daniels — and coffin — materialise in the chapel before twelve of his school chums during a break in their football match. So uncanny an occurrence decides the authorities to exhume the boy's body, whereupon it is discovered that he'd not died during a fit after all. He'd been strangled! Uncle Bert Returns: Sale, Manchester. The old man's ghost pays his nine-year-old niece a visit while she's playing with her dolls. As reported at length in Sir Ernest Bennett's heavy-going Apparitions and Haunted Houses.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 25, 2022 18:55:08 GMT
That little dancing Piccolo is too dear. The interwebs tell me that Piccolo was a children's imprint of Pan.
I doubt the book amounts to much but the cover is charming.
H.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 26, 2022 17:31:59 GMT
Barry Wilkinson A Spectral Wedding Party: Featherstone Castle, near Haltwhistle, Northumberland. When Baron Featherstonhaugh learned of daughter Abigail's romance with a boy of poor means, he had the youth exiled. Despite her obvious reluctance, poor Abigail was fast married off to a moneyed chap, though the union would not last night. Travelling to the wedding banquet, the happy couple and entourage were ambushed and massacred in a nearby dell, after which their bloodied ghosts continued to the castle. A corpse bride, corpse groom classic. Lighting the way to the Grave: The new parish minister witnesses a late evening two-figure lantern procession through the churchyard. The pair vanish before a certain grave. Following morning the minister is informed of the unexpected death of the buried man's child. Condensed from original account of the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould. The Old Ghost-Layer: Adapted from article by Myra E. Jennings, Old Cornwall, Summer 1934. An impoverished old couple put up a traveller for the night and murder him for his gold, burying the corpse beneath the cottage. They never learned his identity. His ghost haunts the property in the form of a monstrous pig until an old woman removes his bones to consecrated ground. The Haunting of Hinton Ampner: From Mrs. May Rickett's detailed account of an eighteenth century haunting at an Arlesford, Hampshire, manor house over a twenty year period. Among uninvited guests, a woman in a dark silk dress, a man in drab-coloured coat, phantom footsteps, "a shrill, dreadful shriek" ghostly gunshot and accompanying "aaargh," etc.
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