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Post by ripper on Aug 27, 2022 14:50:48 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. There's a pretty comprehensive account of the Grandpa Bull case in one of Andrew MacKenzie's books, probably Hauntings and Apparitions. It's very interesting and unusual in the length of time that the apparition was seen, not to mention that it was supposed to have spoken on one occasion, and it also touched a percipient. The case was investigated by members of the SPR, very shortly after the haunting ceased.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 27, 2022 16:53:03 GMT
Thanks Rip. Just checked and it's included in Gallery of Ghosts, the only one of McKenzie's books I've a copy of. Barry Wilkinson, Black Shuck Black Shuck and Other Animal Ghosts: Nineteen pages of devil dog, phantom feline, headless horse and spectral coach (see above), etc. Featured entities include Gwyllgi, the monster mastiff, Mauthe, the long-haired spaniel of Peel Castle, the "hateful thing" of Geldeston, a human-headed Cornish wolf pack, a donkey-size, fiery-eyed black hound of Leeds, and the were-witch murderer of Tring. A Ghost Pays Its Debts: How the ghost of Mrs. Webb (d. 1851, aged 67), rich widow and miser, settled with her creditors. "She may have been a skinflint, but she wasn't a thief." Source, Frederick Lee's Glimpses of the Supernatural (1875). The Sailor-Ghosts at the Punch Bowl: Contemporary haunting (1973) of pub in Sefton, Lancs., built on the site of a vicarage-cum-makeshift mortuary and overlooking a churchyard haunted by a ghostly gravedigger. According to staff member Mrs Peggy Wilding, the evil-tempered ghost is dressed in a sailor suit. Victims of his violent outbursts include a barmaid pushed downstairs and a customer dragged from his bicycle in the car park by "someone or something that I couldn't see." W. V. Clevely - The Haunted Bowling Alley: Late night one-off (?) incident at the Brook Street Bowl Centre, the former premises of Cheshire's Gaumont Cinema, during the winter of 1964. Weird lights, a phantom ladder-climber, and a room whose evil aura so overwhelmed a policeman and his dog, that neither could be induced to enter. Account submitted by Mr. Clevely in response to author's request in More Haunted Houses for readers to share their own ghostly experiences.
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Post by ripper on Aug 27, 2022 19:16:21 GMT
Hi Dem, Thanks for letting me know about the Bull case being in A Gallery of Ghosts. I felt sure it was in Hauntings and Apparitions, so I had a look and it is in there as well. I had forgotten it was also in A Gallery of Ghosts. I remember the setting was a house that was in very bad condition--the family living in squalor. I think the SPR investigated just after the family had been moved into a better house. It is also covered in MacKenzie's The Unexplained.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 28, 2022 12:54:52 GMT
Hi Dem, Thanks for letting me know about the Bull case being in A Gallery of Ghosts. I felt sure it was in Hauntings and Apparitions, so I had a look and it is in there as well. I had forgotten it was also in A Gallery of Ghosts. I remember the setting was a house that was in very bad condition--the family living in squalor. I think the SPR investigated just after the family had been moved into a better house. It is also covered in MacKenzie's The Unexplained. McKenzie's version is far more detailed. Chambers keeps this and other cases concise and very much to the point. Some of the cases are so slight, you wonder why anyone would bother writing them up, but it doesn't seem to matter. For some, that four book series — Haunted Houses, More Haunted Houses, Great Ghosts of the World and Great British Ghosts — sparked a life-long love of the supernatural. Barry Wilkinson, Dancing with the Dead Ghosts at War: Sombre chapter referencing phantoms of the trenches, the Angels of Mons, Civil War ghosts, eternal re-enactment of the battle of Edge Hill, the butchered fugitive of Marlpits Hill, a spectral army marches at Inverary, & Co. The Ghost Aboard HMS Asp: Account of the ship's commander, Captain Aldridge RN., concerning the disruptive haunting of his ship by "the transparent figure of a lady pointing with her finger up to Heaven." The ghost — believed to be that of a young woman murdered in her cabin — so spooked the crew that several simply deserted should Aldridge refuse to discharge them from duty. The haunting ceased when the Asp docked at Pembroke and the ghost disembarked, glided to the churchyard, and vanished in the ruins of Pater old Church. Dancing with the Dead: "Crisis Ghosts." While studying at Edinburgh, Lord Broughton and G_______ made a pact in blood that whichever of them died first would appear to the other. Several years later, having lost contact with his old University pal, Broughton was taking a bath when who should materialize in the chair he was using as a clothes rack? Also, Augustus 'Croglin Hall Vampire' Hare recalls a young lady's death waltz with the ghost of her fiancé.
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