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Post by dem on Apr 8, 2008 6:07:36 GMT
Charles Birkin (ed.) - The Tandem Book Of Ghost Stories (Tandem, 1965: Paperback Library, 1967) M. F. K. Fisher - The Lost, Strayed, Stolen
Shamus Frazer - Florinda ( London Mystery Magazine #29 1956) Edith Oliver - Dead Men's Bones (Charles Lloyd [Birkin] (ed.) Quakes, 1933) H. R. Wakefield - The Third Coach ( They Return At Evening, 1928) P. M. Hubbard - Last Time Lucky
Marguerite Steen - Cold In The Night ( The Illustrated London News, November 20, 1935). Charles Birkin - Zara And Zita
Flavia Richardson - Out Of The Earth (Christine Campbell Thomson (ed.) - You'll Need A Night Light, Selwyn & Blount, Sept. 1927) E. M. Delafield - Sophy Mason Comes Back ( Time & Tide magazine, 1930) Arthur Mayse - The Haunted Dancers ( Saturday Evening Post, July 8, 1961) Shamus Frazer - The Yew Tree ( London Mystery Magazine #39 1958) Lady Eleanor Smith - No Ships Pass ( Cassell's magazine, April 1932) Birkin selects Dead Men's Bones and The Third Coach from his Creeps series, and 'Flavia Richardson's Out Of The Earth from the Not at Night's. His own Zara And Zita is new by the looks of things. Published in the US as The Haunted Dancers (Paperback Library, 1967)  Victor Kalimincludes: H. R. Wakefield - The Third Coach: The life and crimes of Rev. Wellington Scott, a con-merchant exposed 74 times by Truth magazine, written in his own hand from his cell at the Royal Portwick Lunatic Asylum. The 'supernatural' element is small but significant. Scott witnesses a train crash in which the third carriage is destroyed. Running off to inform the newspapers and claim his £20 for the scoop (no-one does sardonic quite like Wakefield), he suddenly realises there was something very odd about the tragedy: it took place in complete silence. When he looks back over the hill, all is as it should be. In time the premonition serves him well when he wishes to dispense with the services of Charity, his treacherous partner. Dr. Langton confides to the narrator, Martin Trout, that this confession, which Scott compulsively rewrites with nary a word out of place, is all nonsense. Rev. Scott has been under the delusion that he is an infamous conman ever since he received a head injury in the Panthem rail disaster when he was thrown from the third coach. Lady Eleanor Smith - No Ships Pass: When the yacht The Seagull catches fire and explodes, Patterson is washed up on what first appears to be a beautiful island. The first person to greet him is a simple-minded dwarf, Heyward, who was marooned there several years ago. Then there’s the Cockney, Dicky Judd, a survivor of the Titanic versus iceberg clash, Spanish pirate Captain Micah Thunder late of The Black Joke and finally his prisoner turned mistress the beautiful Dona Ines who looks twenty and is all of one-hundred and sixty years of age. Judd explains that they’re stranded on a mirage island, “floating round the world, picking survivors from shipwrecks in all the seven seas.” There’s no death for any of them, but neither is there any escape and “no ships pass”. They can be injured and pain still hurts so its best not to upset the sadistic Thunder by chatting up Dona. Each of them has gone from sanity to madness and back again many times over, finally deciding that the only way to cope in Limbo is to stop thinking. Patterson finds it impossible to give into this perpetual living death and builds a raft. What will happen when he sets out to sea? Charles Birkin - Zara and Zita: Identical twins Zara and Zita are stranded in the rain when their car breaks down outside Dorking. They're heading for a party back in Chelsea where Zara intuitively knows Peter will propose to her - and she will accept. A handsome young man, Giles Wheatley, pulls up and offers them a lift ... Birkin turns all expectation on it's head with this one, the gentlest of his stories I've encountered to date. A sad, albeit slight, traditional ghost story. Edith Olivier - Dead Men's Bones: When Southover church was under construction, workmen excavated a pile of bones indicating that the site had once been a burial ground. The remains are stored away en masse. A young girl is given the job of locking the vault for the night and walks in on a huge commotion. The bones are trying to sort themselves out. Flavia Richardson - Out Of The Earth: Gloucestershire. Anthony and Sylvia Wayre are attacked by an elemental at their new cottage, A greenish gas seeps under the door and takes the form of a man who gives off a dreadful, fetid stench. When it looms up and threatens to engulf them, Anthony snatches the crucifix from his swooning wife's neck and fends it off. Their home was built on a Roman settlement.
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Post by dem on Apr 10, 2012 9:30:14 GMT
Shamus Frazer - The Yew Tree: Martin, a surveyor, takes a cottage on the outskirts of Halloville, an abandoned Darkshire village, while he plots the course of a new reservoir in the Pennines. Martin takes immediate dislike to a gloomy spinney , in particular, a yew tree that seemingly uproots itself at will, and does his best to avoid the place after dark, even if it means taking the scenic route home. For its part, the yew doesn't think much of him, either, and launches an attack on the cottage. Martin learns from Rev. Veering of the neighbouring parish that, during the sixteenth century witch-mania, a Halloville woman was hanged as a black sorceress and her corpse impaled with a yew stake. On the gallows, she swore to return as a winged demon and exterminate the village, hence this half bird, half tree abomination. Tonight, Martin, Veering and Sykes, the short-tempered foreman, await it with axes .... Another winner from the Fifth Mask man. As we learn from Richard Dalby, who collected ten of his stories as Where Human Pathways End: Tales of the Dead and the un-Dead (Ash-Tree Press, 2001, Frazer was anything but a "welcome newcomer", but Birkin deserves credit for giving four of his macabre tales their first book publication, and, to best of my knowledge, The Cyclops Juju is original to The Tandem Book of Horror Stories. David G. Rowlands' Father O' Connor adventure, The Apples Of Sodom, while very much his own creation, possible owes a little to Frazer's story. P. M. Hubbard - Last Time Lucky: Mr. Marley takes a room at The Five Horseshoes, Fontwell Canonicorum, a village on the South Downs. Pub chat consists almost entirely of Old Joe moaning about his bad back but on a good night you might catch him swearing blind that he's seen the local ghosts, a phantom regiment hunting an escaped prisoner. Marley, whose sleep has been disturbed by the sounds of a woman weeping in the yard, learns from a tramp at the site of the old prison that it all happened 150 years ago. A young Frenchman, Rowl, who was in love with the then-landlord of The Horseshoes' beautiful daughter, killed three Redcoats during a daring escape. He was never seen again. Marley, driving on the Downs after dark, suddenly realises that somehow he's acquired a back seat passenger. Rowls, for it is he, spots the Redcoats up ahead and swerves the car straight into them. No more sobbing for the landlord's beautifull daughter!
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Post by helrunar on Jan 13, 2018 16:11:06 GMT
Wow, MFK Fisher wrote horror tales--I had no idea. Excellent scans and write-up, Dem! For once, I'd love that US edition--gorgeous cover.
Miss Scarlett, that has happened to me several times with Amazon vendor--though I didn't notice if you mentioned that was where you tried to buy the book. In the case of amazombie, I think it's this narrow bit of lag time when another customer has grabbed a book but it's still showing up on my browser as available. That happened 3 times now with books by E.A. St George I tried to purchase.
Best, H.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 13, 2018 16:48:42 GMT
Thanks, Helrunar....
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 22, 2018 19:06:09 GMT
Wow, MFK Fisher wrote horror tales--I had no idea. Excellent scans and write-up, Dem! For once, I'd love that US edition--gorgeous cover. Miss Scarlett, that has happened to me several times with Amazon vendor--though I didn't notice if you mentioned that was where you tried to buy the book. In the case of amazombie, I think it's this narrow bit of lag time when another customer has grabbed a book but it's still showing up on my browser as available. That happened 3 times now with books by E.A. St George I tried to purchase. Best, H. The book just arrived today, despite having received a refund and nobody asking for it back. Don't know what's going on but not complaining! |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 22, 2018 20:06:26 GMT
The book just arrived today, despite having received a refund and nobody asking for it back. Don't know what's going on but not complaining! You must return it, of course. |
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Post by dem on Aug 24, 2019 17:38:21 GMT
E. M. Delafield - Sophy Mason Comes Back: (Time & Tide, July 1930). Narrated by Fenwick, a psychic, though much of the history took place before he first visited 'Les Moineaux.'
1880. Sophy, 20, is employed as live-in nanny to a family in the French provinces when she befriends local chancer Alcide Lamotte and suffers a "lapse in virtue." Finding herself with child, the frightened girl begs the father to do right by them, but he's had his fun. When she surprises him at the family's summer house, Alcide murders her and hot foots it to America. It is assumed locally that Sophy either went with him or returned home to England.
Several years later, with Les Moineaux having passed to Fenwick's friend, Amede, a skeleton is discovered in the neighbouring woods. Amede pays for Sophy's bones to receive decent burial.
Fifty years on from his flight to the States, Alcide Lamotte, now a successful businessman, returns to the village and is received by Amede and his aged father as their guest. As the evening wears on, Amede realises just who this loud mouth ex-pat really is, as does his victim, whose ghost can't resist a glimpse of the man she loved. Fenwick astutely acknowledges to his audience that there was nothing the least unnerving about poor Sophy's spectre, but the same could not be said for Lamott's reaction (or lack of one) to her presence.
Liked this one a lot. Not even sure if I read Sophy ... before, as it's that good it would surely have stuck.
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Post by ripper on Aug 26, 2019 13:47:23 GMT
E. M. Delafield - Sophy Mason Comes Back: ( Time & Tide, July 1930). Narrated by Fenwick, a psychic, though much of the history took place before he first visited 'Les Moineaux.' 1880. Sophy, 20, is employed as live-in nanny to a family in the French provinces when she befriends local chancer Alcide Lamotte and suffers a "lapse in virtue." Finding herself with child, the frightened girl begs the father to do right by them, but he's had his fun. When she surprises him at the family's summer house, Alcide murders her and hot foots it to America. It is assumed locally that Sophy either went with him or returned home to England. Several years later, with Les Moineaux having passed to Fenwick's friend, Amede, a skeleton is discovered in the neighbouring woods. Amede pays for Sophy's bones to receive decent burial. Fifty years on from his flight to the States, Alcide Lamotte, now a successful businessman, returns to the village and is received by Amede and his aged father as their guest. As the evening wears on, Amede realises just who this loud mouth ex-pat really is, as does his victim, whose ghost can't resist a glimpse of the man she loved. Fenwick astutely acknowledges to his audience that there was nothing the least unnerving about poor Sophy's spectre, but the same could not be said for Lamott's reaction (or lack of one) to her presence. Liked this one a lot. Not even sure if I read Sophy ... before, as it's that good it would surely have stuck. Richard Dalby included it in the Virago Book of Ghost Stories in 1987, and I agree that it is a good tale. |
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