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Post by dem bones on Sept 11, 2020 20:03:46 GMT
My question about the latest tale is--are some of these obviously fiction? There is no such place in Egypt as Amara and there is no such personage as "Prince Sennar." Ancient Egyptian curses weren't phrased in the manner set out in the text you quote ... The books were written to entertain the public and in the end, it really doesn't matter. I think you answered your own question. My guess is that, provided Mr. H. could find a local newspaper account or magazine article concerning this or that strange occurrence - no matter if it were obvious filler - it was fair game for True Mysteries. And if he had to trick the original up a little for dramatic effect .... It should be remembered these books were written for a young audience, though the same holds true for his adult non-fiction. 'The Spring-Heeded Jack' and 'Sweeney Todd' studies are particularly outrageous. And great fun. So to The Screaming Skull. I've messed up the sequence. This was the third book, followed by The Hell Hound, not the other way around. Touching dedication, For Sean Peter who, sadly, may never be able to enjoy a true mystery (Sean was autistic). The Secret of the Wax Museum: Los Angeles, 1972. Peter experiences unease while studying the wax replica of outlaw Elmer J. McCardy in the Long Beach Amusement Park. Five years later, the Six million Dollar Man crew are shooting a scene in same wax museum when an actor knocks down the McCardy model, shattering its casing to reveal a mummified corpse beneath !
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Post by dem bones on Sept 13, 2020 8:37:16 GMT
The Screaming Skull: Beaminster, Dorset. An unidentified ghost-hunting friend of the author investigates a case of alleged supernatural phenomena at Bettiscombe Manor. A series of disturbances throughout the night culminate in an appearance by the floating skull itself, setting the veteran phantom-buster to flight. Haunting dates from the Seventeenth century when John Pinney reneged on a promise that he would return his manservant's bones to the West Indies for burial. The skull has since resisted all attempts to remove it from the house. The Mystery of Alice in the Looking-glass: Christmas 1963, Hampstead Heath. Kathy Hodson, ten-year-old Alice in Wonderland fan, befriends the smiley, white-gowned little girl who lives in her mirror. This second 'Alice' warns Kathy that her classmate urgently requires a stomach pump, thereby saving the child's life. The Pop Song That Can Kill: "It is not that the song is sad. There's a sort of terrible compelling despair about it. I don't think it would do anyone any good to hear a song like that." Such was a publisher's reaction on first hearing 'thirties dance-floor smash, Gloomy Sunday, by Hungarian composer, Rezső Seress. So it proved. From 1932 through to the outbreak of World War II, the miserable melody allegedly persuaded a hundred broken hearted lovers to take their own lives. Rezső bemoaned his tragic genius. "I stand in the midst of this deathly success as an accursed man. The fatal fame hurts me. You see I cried all the disappointments of my heart into this song, and it seems the others with feelings like mine found their own hurt in it too ..."
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Post by dem bones on Sept 14, 2020 17:53:53 GMT
The Story of the Sea Serpent's Head: Somewhere off the New England coast, 13th January, 1852. Whalers Amos Seabury and Samuel Covitt, Captains of the Monongahela and the Rebecca Sims respectively, triumph in a life or death struggle with the 150 ft. creature known and feared as "the Cape Ann monster." As evidence of the adventure, Seabury cuts off and pickles its head. Now no snivelling landlubber can doubt their story! Cruel fate decides otherwise. The Children Who Photographed Fairies: West Riding, summer 1917. Elsie Wright, 16, and Frances Griffiths, 10, borrow Dad's camera to take several pictures of gnomes and little folk frolicking amidst the toadstools of Cottingley Beck. So they say. Joe Cooper's full length study, The Case Of The Cottingley Fairies, would appear to expose the story as a hoax fabricated by attention seekers - although rumours persist it was written under intolerable Mau Mau intimidation. The Dream of Disaster: 27 August 1883. Journalist Byron Some notes down details of a harrowing dream concerning a volcanic eruption among the Indonesian Islands. His editor at the Boston Globe, reading the detailed report and taking it as copy, runs it on the front page. When Mr. Some realises what has happened, he comes clean to his employer who sacks him on the spot. News arrives over the wire of the tragedy on Krakatoa. The Witch Stone of Scrapfoot Green: Essex, June 1944. American servicemen dislodge a large grey rock while transporting armoured vehicles to the Great Dunmow airbase. Henceforth the residents of Great Leighs village is plagued by strange phenomena and cattle mutilation until the stone is righted. Herne The Hunter: Windsor Forest, 1964. A supernatural horror story when you least expect one. The demon horseman and phantom hounds hunt down and kill a lairy London Teddy Boy for vandalising a tree. Almost there ...
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Post by dem bones on Sept 15, 2020 8:18:48 GMT
The Man who was Frankenstein: Broomfield, near Bridgewater, Devon. Early-mid nineteenth century. Potted history of Andrew Crosse, reclusive mad scientist, pioneering electronics wizard with fondness for the macabre. Early experiments saw him terrify fellow pupils by hanging a shrieking skeleton in a wardrobe and zapping his masters with lightening bolts from booby-trapped doorknobs. The alleged inspiration for Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, Crosse's most significant scientific breakthrough occurred in 1837 while attempting to create an artificial crystal from silica. The exercise was an abject failure with a silver lining; fourteen days into the experiment, the electrically-charged stone came out in white blotches. Magnified under glass, these blobs resembled micro daddy-long-legs. "On the twenty-eighth day these little creatures moved their legs. I must now say that I was not a little astonished. After a few days they detached themselves from the stone and moved about at pleasure." Andrew Crosse had created life from inanimate matter!His discovery did not meet with the approval of superstitious locals who, true to form, accused Crosse of having blasphemed against God, sold his soul to the Devil, the usual. He died in 1855, a bitter, broken man. "Although today there are those who believe the insects were simply generated from impurities in the solution, this answer just does not clear up every aspect of the mystery." From Haining's introduction: Peter Haining - The Man who was Frankenstein (Frederick Muller, 1979) List of illustrations Preface
‘The Wizard of the Quantocks’ In Search of the Legend A Boy called ‘Conjuror’ An Electric Romance! A Display of Pyrotechnics The Frankenstein Connection ‘The Thunder and Lightning Man’ The Creation of life Requiem for a Mystery
Appendix I: Andrew Crosse - The Island of Ellattosis Appendix II: F. H. Power - The Electric Vampire Bibliography Blurb: In Switzerland in the summer of 1816, a young woman, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the mistress — later wife — of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote an extraordinary novel about a man who created life. She called her story Frankenstein, and with the passing years it has become the most famous of all horror novels and the subject of numerous studies, films and adaptations.
There have. of course, been many theories as to what inspired that chilling masterpiece, but in this book Peter Haining advances the most fascinating theory of all : that Victor Frankenstein, the scientist who gave life to a creature made from corpses, was actually based on an eccentric English scientist whom Mary had seen and heard lecture on the then mysterious and fantastic medium of electricity.
This man was Andrew Crosse, whose strange electrical experiments at his remote Somerset mansion had earned him the reputation of being in league with the Devil, and the nickname of "The Wizard of the Quantocks" from fearful local people. With its bizarre, home made equipment. Crosse's laboratory seemed forever the centre of great flashes of lightning and tremendous explosions: he became, indeed, just like the misunderstood central figure of Mary Shelley's novel.
Most remarkable of all, however, in later life Crosse apparently achieved in fact what Frankenstein had done in fiction — and what no real scientist before or since has ever done - he created life from inanimate objects. Combining contemporary reports, Somerset traditions and his own investigations, Peter Haining gives us a compelling portrait of a man who was not only a pioneer scientist, but who played a part in the inspiration of a great classic of literature.Have too many books-on-the-go just now, but hope to return to this longer work at a later date.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 6, 2020 15:29:34 GMT
Cover: C. E. Fullagar (?) Interior illustration: Philip Baynes F. H. Power - The Electric Vampire: ( London magazine, Oct. 1910). Taking inspiration from Mr. Andrew Crosse and his pioneering experiments in electro-crystallisation, George Vickers cultivates a horrible, multi-legged mite with ever-twitching proboscis and hypnotic, unblinking eyes. It feeds on live rodent. What happened to Tippoo should serve notice that you do well to stay awake when locked in with this marvel of science. Can Dr. Vane and Charlie (our narrator) gain entry before the terror Tingler drains Vickers' dry?
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Post by ripper on Nov 6, 2020 18:13:29 GMT
Many old classics in those slim Armada 'true mystery' books from Mr Haining, but some accounts of which I was unfamiliar. I do agree with him regarding the fascinating Andrew Crosse. I think it was The Unexplained magazine in which I first heard of him. After such a long time I can't remember what exactly The Unexplained made of Crosse's belief that he had created life, but the illustration of the creatures was intriguing.
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