Marc Damian Lawler [ed.] - Preparing For a Nightmare

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Marc Damian Lawler [ed.] - Preparing For a Nightmare (Third, revamped edition, 2021: originally published as Before You Blow The Candle Out: Book One, 2019).

Frederick Smallfield; Preparing For a Nightmare

Mark Damian Lawler - The Ghosts of St. James‘ Cemetery:
I. Grave Drawings
II. John and Julia
III. A Hard Day's Fright
Lemuel Caleb Gonzalez - Fear Makes Good Materialists
Lemuel Caleb Gonzalez - The Night Cabinet
A. P. Sessler - Red Eye to Nighfolk
David Little - They Say You Should Never Go Back
Brad C. Hodson - Chiaroscuro
Jim Moon - A Troublesome History
Mark Damian Lawler - The Ghosts of Easthampstead Park
Trevor Kennedy - Cave Hill House
A. P. Sessler - Arsenic and Old Chase
Vince Stadon - Steepe Holm
Mark Damian Lawler - A Creepy Camping Story
Adrian Cole - The Horror Under Penmire

Mark Damian Lawler - My Pillow is a Ship (verse)

Blurb:
Supernatural stories before bedtime:
The Ghosts of St. James' Cemetery...
A stampede of dead Beatles fans...
A bus load of monsters...
A school reunion doomed to fail...
A church that can bring back the dead...
The history of a haunted house...
A demon and a white horse...
A nasty uncle and his even nastier niece...
No young woman is safe from the phantom rower...
Something ancient and evil under Bodmin Moor...

And more creepy content.

Mark Damian Lawler - The Ghosts of St. James' Cemetery: I. Grave Drawings: Burial ground, Liverpool, June 24 1964. Begins with Penny Newton, homoeothermic nurse, sat on a cemetery bench, spending her lunch hour with a copy of The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories. She has just finished Benson's Confession of Charles Linkworth when a pram-pushing ghost appears on the path, closely followed by a phantom gent in artists smock, his ruined face resembling that on the cover of her paperback. William Daniels, artist, requests that she sit for a sketch. Other spectres drop by. It's all very pleasant and civilised, until we learn the circumstances of one little girl's death - her crinoline dress caught aflame, but the tragedy was no accident. The mood darkened, Penny grows uneasy for the first time, but there's no real alarm until the ghosts flinch at the approach of "someone bad."

Mark Damian Lawler - The Ghosts of St. James' Cemetery: II. John and Julia: October 9 1958. Strolling through the cemetery after a visit to the chip shop, birthday boy John Lennon, Cynthia Powell and Stuart Sutcliffe encounter the pram pushing girl and her passenger, Miss Biffin, a middle aged lady with no arms and stunted legs. Lennon, at his most obnoxious, abuses the "stupid, ugly old cripple," which so appals his sainted mother as to call her from the other side to rebuke him. Lennon apologises to the ghosts, asks if he can do anything, maybe say a prayer for them? They've a more exciting idea.

Mark Damian Lawler - The Ghosts of St. James' Cemetery: III. A Hard Day's Fright: July 11 1964. Following the Northern premiere of A Hard Days Night, Lennon returns to St. James' with his bandmates to make good on a promise to the dead, whose number now includes Stuart. Unluckily for the boys, in her excitement, the pram pusher has tipped off the ghosts of all the city's late Beatles fans, now tearing through the stone tunnel for fab four souvenirs. As the group make their escape, phantom Stu informs John to watch himself, he doesn't know when, but someone will shoot him in New York. Three Beatles reach the Limo but inexplicably their chauffeur has run off in the direction of the Cathedral. Ringo takes the wheel, drives to John's rescue.

Author-editor contributes articles and a story to the Phantasmagoria's R. Chetwynd-Hayes Special edition and co-compiled the bibliography for Gaslight, Ghosts & Ghouls. Am particularly pleased that parts I and III cut it as haunted bench stories ...

... while this next qualifies for Humgoo's Photography is Dangerous.

Lemuel Caleb Gonzalez - Fear Makes Good Materialists: Tucked inside a copy of Mrs. Crowe's The Night Side of Nature, a postcard from Miss Beth Mills to elder sister, Hazel Lurton and set of related party photographs which dealer Albert Wheedle hopes will be of interest to Mr. Cabal, connoisseur and collector of occult photographs, genuine or otherwise. One particular picture is not pleasant to dwell upon.

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Lemuel Caleb Gonzalez - The Night Cabinet: Mr. Cabal pays a Christmas Eve visit to pale and sickly Leslie Wilt, who wishes to sell his late, long estranged father's library. Dad's gory ghost is set against the sale. Leslie nightly takes measures to keep it away from him.

A. P. Sessler - Red Eye to Nighfolk: Overworked and stressed, Paul falls asleep at the terminal, misses the last scheduled Greyhound home to his parents. But what's this? Another bus preparing to depart. Paul begs the driver to allow him aboard, only to be told "sorry, we're full." — the passengers demand he be allowed to travel among them.

David Little - They Say You Should Never Go Back: On learning that the hated school of their youth is to be demolished to make way for a housing estate, Charlene, Viv, Lawrence and narrator Kevin arrange one last visit to pre-empt the demolition crew and burn it to the ground.

Petrol cans zipped inside backpacks, the arsonists slip through a hole in the fence, and, once inside the main building, split up. Kevin hits the gym, scene of his most hateful boyhood memories. A movement behind the heavy curtains. He's not alone ....

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Brad C. Hodson - Chiaroscuro: Eleven-year-old Sadie defies her father to cross the creek where she chances upon a gloomy, seemingly derelict church near the locally shunned Rutledge farm. The little girl is fascinated by a row of photographs above an altar, and adds a Polaroid of her late mother to the selection, praying that she come home ...

Jim Moon - A Troublesome History: Personal pick of the stories to date. From 1898 through to 1971 when it was gutted by fire, Malvern House on Warren Road, Wynward, has seen more than it's share of tragedy, successive tenants and the occasional trespasser losing their lives in bizarre and horrible fashion, more often than not by their own hand. The narrator pieces together a grim history of a property which has fascinated him since childhood. See also Diggory & Polly Plummer, Ghosts of Wynward, (privately published, 1960).

Mark Damian Lawler - The Ghosts of Easthampstead Park: Haunted history of a Bracknell secondary school. Claims surrounding a spectral Catherine of Aragon haunting the tennis courts are perhaps too sketchy to convince, but reported sightings of a phantom conkers casualty have the ring of authenticity about them.

Trevor Kennedy - Cave Hill House: A soul-devouring demon preys upon early morning joggers crossing a North Belfast park.

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A. P. Sessler - Arsenic and Old Chase: Anna Whitt lives a life of misery, fetching and carrying after her abominable Uncle Chase, bedridden since a factory accident deprived him the use of his legs. Why can't the terminally ungrateful incontinent old bastard get a move on and and die? But she mustn't think like that. He demands liver and onions for tea. There's a bottle of weedkiller on the shelf. The temptation is too great

The deed is done. He is finally committed to the soil. But Uncle Chase is still less endearing dead than alive. "You won't get rid of me that easy, dear niece."

Vince Stadon - Steepe Holm: Retired DI Tom Matthews returns to Washbourne on the Norfolk coast for his ex-wife's funeral, their happy marriage ended due to his obsession with the case that ultimately broke him; the abduction of a celebrity's wife, snatched from the beach one night, and rowed off to the long uninhabited island by person unknown. Betsy Cook was the eighteenth recorded victim of the phantom rower over several centuries. Legend identifies the oarsman as the ghost of fisherman Julius Ondon, exiled on Steepe Holm - where he starved to death - for the murder of his wife. (See This Spectral Isle: Hauntings of Britain, privately published, 1950).

Mark Damian Lawler - A Creepy Camping Story: Tent of terror vignette. Author's unnerving late night experience in the Lake District National Park.

Adrian Cole - The Horror Under Penmire: (Mary Danby [ed.], Frighteners. 1974). Bonus reprint! Phil Dayton investigates the disappearance of his friend, a keen folklorist, last known whereabouts, Bodmin Moor. What have those hospitable Cornish folk been up to this time?

Mark Damian Lawler - My Pillow is a Ship: A poem.

Also a selection of relevant illo's and photo's at back, one of which - taken by the author - is of the bench in St. James Cemetery as features in the first and third stories.

Very much enjoyed this one. Personal highlights, the first and third of the St. James' stories, Jim Moon's haunted house history, Arsenic and Old Chase, Fear Makes Good Materialists, Chiaroscuro, Steepe Holm, and the Horror Under Penmire revisit. Didn't dislike any.

We'll be seeing more of Mr Lawler and friends shortly.