Share a Bookplate.

[dem bones]

Jul 25, 2023 3:50:59 GMT humgoo said:

Gee, I can read about this stuff all day. On the excellent blog Pretty Sinister Books (I don't read detective fiction but the blog features supernatural fiction from time to time) there's a whole series of posts about stuff LEFT INSIDE books. This bookplate is quite lovely, for instance.

These Wormwoodiana posts by R.B. Russell about bookseller labels are also lovely:

wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2019/03/guest-post-booksellers-labels-part-1-by.html
wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2019/03/guest-post-booksellers-labels-part-2-by.html

These are a joy - I particularly like the Edna May Fischer bookplate by 'LCD' on Pretty Sinister Books. Have been lucky quite often. A favourite personal find was what amounts to a bonus mini scrapbook stuffed between the pages of Leon Russell's The Saturday Book 11, Oct. 1951. Other welcome surprises include a letter from the author tucked inside copy of Nicholas Witchell's The Loch Ness Monster and a postcard addressed to Edwin 'Savage Pencil' Pouncey in an issue of Winter Chills bought from the Fantasy Centre.

Jul 25, 2023 3:50:59 GMT humgoo said:

Jul 6, 2023 18:41:50 GMT dem bones said:

Found inside copy of Edward S. Knights, Essex Folk, Heath Cranton Ltd, 1935

So you got the book attributed to the Creeps guy? Good fun?

The Knight book is his fond look at rural life, customs and sayings of his home county. Chaper 11 devotes twelve pages to Witchcraft, Ghosts and Marvels, predominantly the former. I was hoping to find a source legend for Dr. Browning's Bus but nothing doing. Here's some ghost content.

Enthralling as are stories of witchcraft and demons, ghosts and stories of supernatural manifestations are perhaps even more exciting. Many and varied are the stories of Essex ghosts, the Dengie and Rochford Hundreds being particularly rich in ghosts and ghostly traditions. Rochford Hall, which joins issues with Hever Castle in Kent as the reputed birthplace of Anne Boleyn, was at one time reputed to be haunted by the spirit of the unhappy Anne, which favoured a large room called Anne's Nursery for its nocturnal manifestations. Not far from Rochford, at Great Stambridge near the Ferry, a female figure is supposed to wander about carrying her head under her arm, while in the neighbouring parish of Barling there is a lonely haunted tree. An unhappy man one day hanged himself from this tree, and since then his unquiet spirit haunts the spot, and on windy nights it is even said that the sounds of his heels knocking together is to be plainly heard as if his body still hung there. The man had been a baker, and tradition has it that if you run round the tree a hundred times, you will see the deceased baker making bread. A man once decided to brave the dark and the ghost, and see the phantom baker. Nothing daunted, he ran round the tree ninety-nine times one night, but slipped and sprained his ankle at the last time, which was, of course, taken as judgment and punishment for meddling lightly with such a potent thing as a ghost.

In the Essex Chronicle for February 28th, 1908, a curious story is related.

"On one occasion — this I can vouch for personally — I was sitting at home when suddenly a relative shrieked and clutched my arm. 'Did you see that?' she inquired. I had not seen anything remarkable, and said so, but a young lady who was present affirmed that she had distinctly seen a white figure glide across the room. I was quite a youth, and as we were seated in the dusk (the sun had only just set) I felt rather uneasy, but after a time I laughed at the ladies' fears. Now comes the sequel. The next morning one of my two companions received a telegram stating that her brother had the previous evening fallen from the top of an elder tree into a pond, and was drowned."

— E. S. Knight, Essex Folk, Heath Cranton Ltd, 1935

[dem bones]

This pasted inside a copy of E. F. Benson's Spook Stories (Hutchinson, 1926).