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Post by andydecker on Feb 15, 2023 15:36:30 GMT
Philip MacDougall – Phantoms of the High Seas (BCA, 1991, David & Charles; Book Club edition, hc, 192 pages)   Contents: Introduction & Acknowledgements
1 Forewarned
2 Yo, Ho, Oh …!
3 The Pilot of the Pinta
4 The Ghost of the Great Eastern
5 The Transparent Lady: A True Ghost Story?
6 A Malevolent Ghost?
7 Phantom Ships
8 The Ellen Austin Mystery
9 The Headless Mate
10 The Legend of the Damned
11 The Ghost of the Eurydice
12 Smuggling Haunts
13 Into the Teeth of Death
14 The Haunted Dockyard and Other Naval Ghosts
Bibliography
Notes and SourcesThis must have been the quarterly selection of the British Book Club after I forgot to order. Back in the 90s I was a member for a few years. Don't know if this still exists. They did quite a few very nice editions of horror and fantasy, James Herbert, Mervyn Peake, Stephen King and so on, but also non-fiction about history. Some were quite good and a cut above the usual streamlined history channel for the masses approach. Oscar Wilde's London by Eckardt, Gilman and Chamberlin was a nice one, so was Sherlock Holmes in London by Viney, both which I will post later.
This book is one of the very few I own about true hauntings. This is nicely done, with a lot of photos. Written rather business like, which makes some chapters a bit dull and pedestrian, I think. A chapter about the ghosts of Captain Kidd and John Lafitte is a bit reaching, and the less is said about the Titanic one the better. But other are better. |
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 15, 2023 17:16:06 GMT
Just my kind of book; I'm glad you liked at least some of it.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 15, 2023 20:13:53 GMT
This looks class, Andreas. long shot, but I don't suppose The Haunted Dockyard is Wapping? (I'm collecting ghost stories & Co. about the area). Also, does the curse mummy case receive a mention re the sinking of The Titanic?
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Post by Swampirella on Feb 15, 2023 20:46:49 GMT
It can be borrowed for an hour at a time, so shouldn't be very hard to find out that way.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 15, 2023 21:45:59 GMT
This looks class, Andreas. long shot, but I don't suppose The Haunted Dockyard is Wapping? (I'm collecting ghost stories & Co. about the area). Also, does the curse mummy case receive a mention re the sinking of The Titanic? Will look it up tomorrow. Macdougall wrote a lot of books about sea warfare, the navy, Portsmouth, the Chatham Dockyards, Chichester and so on. A new one called The Thames Estuary's Military Heritage is advertised for a September publication. The man must have a tremendous photo archive. |
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Feb 15, 2023 21:54:47 GMT
This looks class, Andreas. long shot, but I don't suppose The Haunted Dockyard is Wapping? (I'm collecting ghost stories & Co. about the area). Also, does the curse mummy case receive a mention re the sinking of The Titanic? In Mysteries by Colin Wilson, the author mentions a ghost that was invented by Frank Smythe in issue 105 of Man, Myth and Magic. The story was that a ghostly vicar was seen by some workmen on Ratcliffe Wharf in Wapping, and that this spectre had in life ran a cheap lodging house and murdered several sailors for their wages. Wilson says that after Smythe ran the story several people claimed to have seen the ghost and it was used in various books as an example of a real story. Wilson in an episode of the BBC series Leap in the Dark organised an experiment in which two women were hypnotised in an attempt to "see" the ghost. I found the episode. |
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Post by andydecker on Feb 16, 2023 11:09:29 GMT
This looks class, Andreas. long shot, but I don't suppose The Haunted Dockyard is Wapping? (I'm collecting ghost stories & Co. about the area). Also, does the curse mummy case receive a mention re the sinking of The Titanic? The Haunted Dockyard is all about Chatham , Plymoth and Pembroke.
The Titanic one is only about psychic forewarnings.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 16, 2023 11:23:43 GMT
This looks class, Andreas. long shot, but I don't suppose The Haunted Dockyard is Wapping? (I'm collecting ghost stories & Co. about the area). Also, does the curse mummy case receive a mention re the sinking of The Titanic? Will look it up tomorrow. Macdougall wrote a lot of books about sea warfare, the navy, Portsmouth, the Chatham Dockyards, Chichester and so on. A new one called The Thames Estuary's Military Heritage is advertised for a September publication. The man must have a tremendous photo archive.  Marion Bondage photo libraryThanks Andreas. I followed Swampi's advice and checked it on archive.org. No mummy case (unless I missed it), but a few paragraphs on Morgan Robertson's The Wreck of the Titan. Wapping isn't included among The Haunted Dockyard(s), but receives a mention in earlier chapter in relation to Captain Kidd, gibbeted at Execution Dock, exact location disputed with three pubs claiming it's behind their premises. Kidd's ghost said to walk the riverside, as do those of Mr. Smythe's Murder Vicar Of Ratcliffe Wharf and Judge 'Bloody' Jeffreys. |
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Feb 16, 2023 12:57:40 GMT
Didn't see that sorry. I usually do a search, but this time didn't.
If you are collecting old items about Wapping, there is an English ballad called Ratcliffe Highway, about a sailor who commits a murder. It can be found in Everyman's Book of British Ballads.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Feb 17, 2023 17:23:42 GMT
I should mention the version of Ratcliffe Highway in the ballad book differs from most of the recorded versions available, it has a missing verse where the sailor obviously kills the woman.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 19, 2023 11:59:50 GMT
 Ivan LapperThere's a short but insightful feature on the Murder Vicar of Wapping in Daniel Farson's gloriously illustrated Hamlyn Book of Ghosts, whose dedication runs: Available to loan via Archive org
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Feb 19, 2023 20:20:20 GMT
Wilson's ghost experiment was filmed at Bristol docks, as it was made at BBC Bristol studios.
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