Mary Danby - Armada Ghost 4

[dem bones]

Mary Danby (ed.) - Armada Ghost 4 (1972)

Peter Archer (?)

Mary Danby - Introduction

Julia Birley - Floating Hair
M. R. James - The Haunted Dolls' House
Sydney J. Bounds - The Ghost Train
E. F. Benson - The Bus-Conductor
Ogden Nash - The Three D's
Ruby McMillan - The Little Black Ghost
John Keir Cross - Three Ghosts
Anonymous - Teeny-Tiny
Pamela Vincent - Let's Play Ghosts
Mary Danby - A View of the Sea

Blurb:
Interior artwork by Peter Archer

Ten more teeth-chattering tales to make your blood run deliciously cold! Ride in terror on THE GHOST TRAIN ... Shudder at the weird story of THE BUS CONDUCTOR ... Share the nightmare of THE HAUNTED DOLLS' HOUSE
Here are fearful ghosts and fun ghosts - spooks of all kinds waiting to give you a real hair-raising read!
So what have we in store this time?
Ten go mad in Dorset .... a night at the Fun Fear .... the Sorority of the Dead ....

Julia Birley - Floating Hair: Ten schoolkids holidaying with their parents at a rectory-cum-farmhouse, discover a tree-house. Romily, unpopular with the other children on account of he's a swot, just has to explore it for scientific purposes. Despite the evidence of his own eyes, he refuses to accept that it is haunted - by an old eccentric and a thing covered in weeds that climbs out of the stagnant stream - because "Ghost's don't exist."

Sydney J. Bounds - The Ghost Train: The 'Biggest Travelling Fair in Britain!' arrives on the common, and Billy Trent's saved almost £1 in change to blow on hot-dogs and rides. Trouble is, Big Ed and Fat Higgy, two spotty hooligans in black leather jackets (always a bad sign in Syd's stories), are determined to part Billy from his loot. Billy makes a run for it, slips behind a wooden hoarding and aboard Old Tom's Ghost Train, but he can't shake them off. The skeleton driver takes them into the tunnel ....

Ogden Nash - The Three D's: (Harper's Bazaar, April 1948, as Victoria). Victoria, new girl at the Misses Mallisons' Female Seminary, Salem, seeks to join the Three D's sorority. Membership is only achieved by performing a feat Daring, Deadly and Done-never-before. The girls suggest that, at midnight, she sneak out to the field behind the slaughterhouse and touch the gravestone of the old witch ... "A really terrifying tale of a school 'dare' that gets out of hand. I shudder every time I read it" - Mary Danby.

Anonymous [Mary Danby ?] - Teeny-Tiny : Short-arse steals small bone from the graveyard for her tiny tea. Irate owner pays her a home visit demanding its return. Bizarrely, this is the only story from #4 to make The Green Ghost

[dem bones]

Pamela Vincent - Let's Play Ghosts!: "I hate my life, why don't I die?" His parents away in South America, Hugh is spending the summer holiday at the home of best friend Perry Baxter's family. Difficulties arise due to Hugh's psychic abilities - he's able to communicate with the ghost of a young woman, Lavender, who was murdered here sixty years ago by her guardian aunt. Lavender has been lonely ever since. Perry, Charlotte, and their little cousins, demand to meet her. Bad move.

John Keir Cross - Three Ghosts: (Collins' for Boys and Girls, Jan. 1949). To break the monotony of being stuck indoors during the summer holiday, teenage trio George, Michael and Charlotte troop up the hill to investigate the supposedly derelict Firshanger manor house during a lightening storm. Awaiting them within a strange upstairs room, three peculiarly dressed children, Kannet, Kala and Ken, who take them for ghosts. Oh no, George assures them, we're real, you're the ghosts. But a glimpse out the window proves him wrong.

Sci-Fi crossover. The walls of the room are lined with "stereoscopic" portraits whose subjects and their backgrounds seem to be in perpetual motion.

Ruby McMillan - The Little Black Ghost: Summerlees Cottage, a holiday home near Chichester, comes complete with it's own phantom dog which only certain folk can see. Eight-year-old Emily numbers among the seers, and adopts 'Blackberry' for the duration of the summer. Her family are sceptical, until the ghost hound rescues the little girl from drowning.

[humgoo]

Sept 19, 2019 3:03:09 GMT dem bones said:

Ogden Nash - The Three D's: (Harper's Bazaar, April 1948, as Victoria). Victoria, new girl at the Misses Mallisons' Female Seminary, Salem, seeks to join the Three D's sorority. Membership is only achieved by performing a feat Daring, Deadly and Done-never-before. The girls suggest that, at midnight, she sneak out to the field behind the slaughterhouse and touch the gravestone of the old witch ... "A really terrifying tale of a school 'dare' that gets out of hand. I shudder every time I read it" - Mary Danby.

This one's on The James Gang, so I always wanted to read it. Now with your synopsis, the book has been ordered! (I also like the covers of this series.) By the way, Dem, you're certainly in top form these days! How many stories do you read every day?

[dem bones]

Sept 20, 2019 12:47:53 GMT humgoo said:

This one's on The James Gang, so I always wanted to read it. Now with your synopsis, the book has been ordered! (I also like the covers of this series.) By the way, Dem, you're certainly in top form these days! How many stories do you read every day?

Hope you enjoy The Three 'D's much as I did - it makes me wonder if he wrote any more in the same vein? The isfdb doesn't seem to think so. Have come to appreciate this series far more in later life than I ever did as a young man (I first read an Armada volume in my 'twenties).

It really is unforgivable that the cover artists are so rarely credited. Peter Archer is reputedly responsible for the majority, though Josh Kirby and Gino D' Achille weighed in with at least a couple each.

[dem bones]

M. R. James - The Haunted Dolls' House: (The Empire Review, Feb. 1923). According to a delighted Mr. Dillet, the beautifully realised 'Strawberry Hill Gothic' doll's house is "pure essence of Horace Walpole," so why do you suppose canny Mr. Chittenden was prepared to part with such a treasure for one tenth of its true value? We learn the truth in the early hours of the following morning when the tiny occupants re-enact a cruel late eighteenth century murder and its ghastly aftermath.

E. F. Benson - The Bus-Conductor: (Pall Mall, Dec. 1906). Thinking himself lacking in clairvoyant or mediumistic powers, Hugh Grainger has long accepted that he's not the type of chap to see a ghost - until the night he looks down from his window to see a horse-drawn hearse passing in the street below. The driver, inexplicably dressed in bus-conductor uniform, addresses him with a nasty "Just room for one inside, sir."

A month later, Hugh is about to board a bus in the Kings Road when he recognises the conductor who greets him with the haunting refrain. Hugh, lucky for him, decides he'd rather walk.

Mary Danby - A View of the Sea: Mrs. Barker, funereal landlady of Merry Day's Boarding house, Sandhaven, continues to lay table for the deceased Mr. Quentin Cumberpatch on the grounds that he paid in advance, so why shouldn't he have the best her establishment can offer? Mr. Cumberpatch is not inappreciative, as he demonstrates when a fire breaks out during holiday season. Unusually light for author. Her contributions get spikier as the series progresses.

[humgoo]

Sept 20, 2019 18:41:11 GMT dem bones said:

Hope you enjoy The Three 'D's much as I did

I did! Had a good lunch while relishing that wicked three-pager.

Couldn't help revisiting The Haunted Dolls' House too while I was at it, where MRJ serves as an in-house interpreter for that silent, wicked reenactment. "A new sort of light—not of lamp or candle—a pale ugly light, began to dawn around the door-case at the back of the room. The door was opening again. The seer does not like to dwell upon what he saw entering the room: he says it might be described as a frog—the size of a man—but it had scanty white hair about its head. It was busy about the truckle-beds, but not for long." If someone could write better than this, I would like to read it.