Mary Danby - Armada Ghost 10

[dem bones]

Mary Danby (ed.) - Armada Ghost 10 (1978)

Peter Archer (?)

Rosemary Timperley - The Sinister Schoolmaster
Margaret Biggs - Misty
Sydney J. Bounds - Hunters' Hill
Joyce Marsh - The Warning
Margot Arnold - The Ghosts of Nisos Trikkeri
John Halkin - Mousey
Terry Tapp - The Doll
Catherine Gleason - The Post Room
Joan Selby-Lowndes - George
Mary Danby - The Grey Lady

Blurb:
Ten creepy tales of fearsome fun!

A terrifying sinister schoolmaster ...
A grisly band of phantom witch-hunters ....
A doll possessed by an evil spirit ....
An island of drowned sailors, hungry for victims ....

Come in and meet them - if you dare!

Interior artwork by Peter Archer


So to Armada Ghost 10, featuring quite the most violent and perhaps, most frighening of the classy cover paintings. Six of the ten returned in The Green Ghost & Others.

Rosemary Timperley - The Sinister Schoolmaster: St. Edmunds on Church Road is haunted by the ghost of its first ever headmaster, John "Old Basher" Bashman, a brutal, cane-happy sadist. New boy Peter Lorrimer 's first day is enriched (!) by a run in with the phantom flogger - how frightfully character building it all is!

I'd not noticed until recently that some of the Armada Ghost authors enthusiastically advocate a return to "Victorian values."

Catherine Gleason - The Post Room: Old Fred's recently deceased work colleague passes on dead cert racing tips - and more - from beyond the grave.

Joyce Marsh - The Warning: Young Philip is walking the moors when he chances upon a broken sign indicating a lonely lane on the moor. The route seems to be guarded by a snarling spaniel who refuses to let him pass without detouring toward .... a coffin with a single white Lily on the lid, lying on the gravel! Something compels him to reach out his hand. The coffin feels slimy and cold to the touch. It vanishes as already has the dog. What can it all mean?

Three years later he discovers the reason for the premonition and saves a life as a result.

Margot Arnold - The Ghosts of Nisos Trikkeri: With their yacht taking a battering during a storm, John Norman leads the craft into the cove of a large but, according to the map, uninhabited island between Spetsae and Hydra in the Saronic Gulf. Once the family have eaten, young Michael sets off up a cliff in search of provisions. Meanwhile his sister Jane reads up on the legend of Nisos Trikkeri in her Bumper book of doom-laden Greek legends. It transpires that the place is shunned on account of it has been colonised by the ghosts of drowned sailors who, jealous of the living, are bent on luring them to their watery graves.

Darkness falls. Mike's not come back. Oh dear.

Sydney J. Bounds - Hunter's Hill: The villagers avoid it as a place haunted by a past evil, and climbers have been known to plummet to their deaths in the valley below, but hikers John and Carol Clark ignore the elderly shopkeeper's warning and set off up Hunter's Hill. As they ascend a mist falls and it's as though the trees are deliberately lashing out at them. John twists an ankle forcing them to camp the night on a patch of barren earth.

At midnight a chanting torch-lit procession emerge from the woods. As John sleeps, his sister is frogmarched at pitchfork point into the trees where a stake has been prepared for the witch-burning ....

[dem bones]

Terry Tapp - The Doll: When dad purchased the wardrobe at auction he was unaware it came with bonus cardboard box-full of Victorian bric-a-brac, including a German china-doll, which, naturally is given the once-over by Anna, his daughter. "Bess" is all vacant eye-sockets, filthy dress, haircut by Dewhurst, so no surprise the little girl is initially unimpressed and opts to bin her, but this is a special, self-healing doll with a history of arson and evil deeds ...

Mary Danby - The Grey Lady: Unrelenting Victorian vileness as we join little orphan Billy in London's West End, peddling tuppenny peg-dolls to affluent theatre goers. Trouble is, now that Sarah, his sister, is dead, there's nobody left to manufacture the merchandise. To make his situation more precarious still, the landlady wants him out. She's had a better offer for his room, and it's not as if he's likely to meet the rent for much longer ("I dare say [the workhouse] would be a kindness to the boy. Poor innocent lamb"). In sheer desperation, Billy paints a new doll, and wraps it in grey fabric. The critics are unkind.

Poverty, starvation, Tuberculosis, destitution, and, in the circumstances, as "happy" an ending as we were going to get. Possibly written as a tribute to her Great-Great-Grandfather?

Margaret Biggs - Fluffy: When a cat trapped beneath a crate for several days eventually pegs out, it's ghost alerts friendly little girl next door to come rescue her starving kitten. Not quite so keen on this one, to tell the truth.

Joan Selby-Lowndes - George: A demolition crew dig up the skeleton of a locally famous jet black funeral horse. Soon George's ghost has taken to lurking beside the churchyard. It soon becomes apparent that the phantom horse takes particular fiendish glee in spooking young Fiona and her pony, Midnight - but why?

John Halkin - Mousey: This is much more like it. 15 pages of unrelenting supernatural unpleasantness from he of Slither, Squelch and Slime acclaim.

Don Phillips, is self-proclaimed leader of a five strong 'gang' of fellow twelve-year-olds, hardly delinquents, though Don is prone to pushing his weight around. As bullies will, Don picks his fights, and who better to persecute than 'Mousey', official school weirdo, an orphan, living with guardians on a condemned street? Depending on who you listen to Mousey is called 'Mousey' either because he keeps one as a pet - he carries 'Whitey' with him everywhere - or because he resembles a rodent.

Don particularly hates it when this freaky kid has the effrontery to set foot on the street where his little crew reside. Time and again he's been warned he is prohibited from doing so!

One day when Don pushes him outside a shop, Mousey's retaliatory shove lands him flat on his arse. Furious at such a public show up, Don steals 'Whitey' and drops him in a pit on the waste ground. He then has his toady, Pete, throw a cat down after it.

Mousey is not seen at school after that. When narrator Alan enquires, he's informed the poor kid has been hospitalised with Meningitis.

Which is when Whitey's ghost takes to maliciously haunting Don Phillips and his lieutenant.

Witch-finders: A mini-Postal war. A possessed doll. A phantom horse. Boy-to-rodent soul transference. Spectral sailors. Basher the mad math's teacher - we certainly get our 50p's worth out of #10. Personal best-of-book contenders: Mousey, The Doll, Hunter's Hill, The Warning, and The Grey Lady.