Carolyn Lloyd (ed.) Animal Ghosts

[dem bones]

Carolyn Lloyd (ed.) Animal Ghosts: Revised edition (Armada, 1980)

Martin White

Carolyn Lloyd - Introduction

Sydney J. Bounds - The Haunted Cave
Noel Lloyd & Geoffrey Palmer - The Headless Horseman
Victoria Mort - The Sound of the Horn
Genevieve Hawkins - The Owl on the Ledge
Sorche Nic Leodhas - The Old Laird and His Dogs
Jane Langley - A View of the Sea
Christobel Mattingley - Katzenfell
David K. Lloyd - Bill Bull
Algernon Blackwood - Running Wolf
Carolyn Murphy - The Curse
Lafcadio Hearn - The Boy Who Drew Cats
Terry Tapp - Metamorphosis

Blurb:

Animal ghosts - the spookiest phantoms of the spirit world!

The faithful dogs that return from the dead to protect their master ... A white owl in a ruined tower leads the way to a mysterious skeleton ... The ghostly cat that takes a very strange revenge ...
And many more eerie stories from the animal kingdom - and beyond ...

As in radically revised edition, only the Syd Bounds and Sorche Nic Leodhas offerings surviving from the 1971 original. Sadly, stories sampled to date have not been very Brr-rrr-rrr.

Sydney J. Bounds - The Haunted Cave: While spending a camping holiday in the Rockies, Nine-year-old Minnie Jackson she sets free the spirits of a ghostly grizzly and phantom cub by tidying their scattered bones.

Noel Lloyd & Geoffrey Palmer - The Headless Horseman: (The Obstinate Ghost and Other Ghostly Tales, 1968). Charlie Curlaine is riding home from a night in the Harp of Erin pub when he's overtaken by a spectral horse's head pursued by it's body, this ridden by a fellow in scarlet hunting coat carrying his skull under an arm. Charlie challenges him to a race.

As retold by Ruth Manning Sanders in 3rd Armada Ghost Book, 1970) with 'Charlie Dodd' standing in for Charlie Curlaine.

Victoria Mort - The Sound of the Horn: Ghosts re-enact a boar hunt in the woods whenever there is to be a birth in the family.

Genevieve Hawkins - The Owl on the Ledge: "I won't go back, I won't go back. I don't want to die out there in stinking mad. I don't want to be eaten by filthy rats. I want to live and die and be buried in my own country, alongside of Alice." Campers Ivor Barlow and Barry Heffer pitch their tent in a field beneath an abandoned castle. A ghost leads them to the bones of Ivor's grandfather, presumed dead when his ship exploded en route back to France during the First World War.

Christobel Mattingley - Katzenfell: The ghost of Fritz, king of the alley cats, returns to settle scores and regain crown.

[dem bones]

Just as reader has resigned him or herself to an underwhelming reading experience, Animal Ghosts perk up considerably with a thoroughly nasty story.

Carolyn Murphy - The Curse: East Africa. Jim Radcliffe, game hunter and warden at the Nazingi reserve, is condemned by a leper he turned away to be fatally mauled by a lion. Dying breath speech. "My curse is on you ... you who would not help me ... because of my death you will never leave this country alive .... before a year has passed you will be dead ... and your most loved will be doomed."

Sorche Nic Leodhas - The Old Laird and His Dogs: (Gaelic Ghosts: Tales of the Supernatural from Scotland, 1964). They return to protect a lad in the Laird's charge from an evil nephew bent on cheating him of an inheritance.

Terry Tapp - Metamorphosis: Cuthbert Clegg, lepidopterist, delivers a lecture to Miss Morgan's disinterested class of infant reprobates. Cuthbert, an extremely fat, wobbly man with a head like an elongated egg, is a bag of nerves even before before horrible little Gwendoline's outburst. On his proudly producing a display case of pinned specimens, the ghastly little brat calls him a murderer. How would Mr. Clegg like it if someone were to impale him to a cork board? That night, a flutter of wings in the moth man's bedroom ...

[dem bones]

Jane Langley - A View of the Sea: A terrible storm. Nine year old Jamie rises from his his sick bed, mounts Odin's horse and flies through the tempest to rescue a neighbour from a stricken fishing vessel.

David K. Lloyd - Bill Bull: On his death, Jim Drewett, the most bad-tempered man in the village, transforms into a poultry-abusing, cabbage-stomping phantom bull. Ensuing disruption initially blamed on young people whose fault everything always is.

Am glad to have had opportunity to read Animal Ghosts for The Owl on the Ledge, Metamorphosis and, especially, The Curse, but it's not really the most memorable Armada Ghost anthology. Syd Bounds' contribution arguably among his lesser works.

[johnnymains]

Mary Danby's story in the original was called 'Jumo and the Giraffe' - and was the only story Mary wouldn't let me reprint in Party Pieces even though I asked nicely.