Obscure book: "Gabby's Magic Brooms" take on U.S. car culture

Happy Halloween! Here's one final treat for spooky season. Gabby's Magic Brooms, written and illustrated by Marietta Caldwell Schumacher and published in 1968, was really difficult to track down. Fortunately, when I did find a copy it was very inexpensive, due to the fact that it's a library-bound edition in poor condition, with stains and multiple tears. 

That suits me just fine. This is a beautifully illustrated, fascinating and somewhat depressing (more on that in a bit) children's book, and I'm thrilled to be able to document it here. I'm almost certain it was the only published book by Schumacher, who lived from 1925 to 2012. It's a shame she didn't have more books published, though it seems she worked consistently as an artist and had numerous gallery showings.

This hardcover copy measures 7.5 inches by 10 inches, is 48 pages (almost every one illustrated), was published by Little, Brown and Company, and had an original price of $3.50. It is a stated first edition and was once in circulation in the King County Library System in Washington state, which is prseumably where it got all of its wear and tear.

The book's dedication reads "For the father of Shirin, David, Paul and John." That would be Marietta's husband, Paul John Fortuyn Schumacher (1924-1995) and those are their four children. Paul was the chief of archaeological investigations for the Western Service Center under the aegis of the National Park Service from 1956 until 1972.

Here's my summation of the plot of Gabby's Magic Brooms: A witch named Gabadale (her friends call her "Gabby") lives with a bunch of ghosts in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. One day, they learn that the house is standing in the way of a new eight-lane freeway and will be demolished. In a deal to save her home, Gabby uses magic to turn all cars into flying brooms. No cars, you see, means no need for freeways. It goes great at first. People love the freedom and convenience of traveling by broom instead of by car. But not everyone is happy. Schumacher writes: "Meanwhile, in a town named Detroit, men who make automobiles took notice." Alas, the witch has run afoul of automakers, road builders and, perhaps worst of all, "the oil men down in Texas." The supernatural is no match for Big Oil and the auto industry. So Gabby reverses the spell and turns all of the magic brooms into little red cars. Then she makes the only deal she can: She promises to never again use her magic to turn cars into brooms, if the builders promise never to bulldoze her home. The final illustration shows car-filled freeways winding all around Gabby's house. 

A bit dystopian, no?

I'd also note that it was published three years before The Lorax. 

In a July 1968 review for The Fresno Bee, Patricia Miles Martin wrote: "Gabby's ingenuity in saving her house makes a delightful story, in which one learns in this laugh-aloud book that even the least of us have inalienable rights. The is the author-artist's first book for children, and may we see many more."

The Oakland Tribune noted in August 1968: "This is the literary venture of Marietta Caldwell Schumacher, an artist and portrait painter. She views her book as emphasizing 'the precious right of the individual to maintain his identity in an increasingly complex society.'"

The only recent review I came across was by "Abigail." Here's an excerpt from her review on Goodreads that was posted in 2021: "While I'm not sure just how I feel about the resolution of the central dilemma here — the idea of living in a house surrounded on all sides by a busy freeway fills me with horror — I liked pretty much everything else, from Gabby's can-do attitude, to her creative solution to the problem. ... The depiction of Gabby herself, with her extremely tall hat (bent at the top), her ruffled dress with its poofs, and her buzzard-like companion, was the best part! She somehow managed to be both cute and just a bit spooky."

I'm going to close by posting numerous images of the book's pages (way more than I usually do) for posterity, as this is a very difficult book to track down and there's not much about it or Marietta Caldwell Schumacher on the internet.

The ghost photo that haunted Gen X

Ghost-nerd Gen Xers such as myself had some great ghost photos to scare ourselves with as kids. There was the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, the ghost faces floating in the water beside the SS Watertown, the ghost(s) ascending the Tulip Staircase and some others.

But for me, and a lot of others I reckon, the scariest ghost photo of them all was what's known as the Chinnery Backseat Ghost. And it was right there in our middle school library, with the apparition's unforgettable glowing eyes sure to give us nightmares. It was one of the photos inside The World of the Unknown: Ghosts, which was written by Christopher Maynard and published by Usborne in 1977. We had this book in the amazing C.E. McCall Middle School library in Montoursville. In later years, the book became extremely difficult to find on the used market, probably because no one ever let go of it. But Usborne finally issued a reprint edition in 2019, allowing many middle-aged folks to revisit cherished spooky memories of their youth. 

And one of those spooky memories is the photo that shows a person who should not, could not, be there. As the caption states: "This picture is one of the most puzzling ghost photographs ever taken. The woman in the back seat was supposed to be in her grave when the photograph was taken. The driver's wife took this picture of her husband sitting in the car. She claims there was nobody in the car except her husband. Yet the photograph clearly shows the figure of a woman — her mother — who had died a week before. Experts say that the film has not been altered in any way."

Of course, like every other paranormal or cryptozoological phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s that brought me joy and wonder, this photograph has been pretty thoroughly debunked, with a double-exposure being more likely than deception through fakery. Just one example: Blake Smith penned an excellent piece for Skeptic in 2015, concluding "This particular image has been in 'top ghost photo' lists for years now, but I think we can now take down this exhibit in the gallery of ghosts with some confidence, and put it to rest."

An essay on the website Anomalies tries to keep a more open mind, asking, "But what if there is no explanation? After all, if the spirit of a dead person decided to impress its own image onto a frame of film, what would that look like? And would it be fair to expect such an attempt to look perfect on the one and only time that spirit tried it?"

Personally, I've come to the firm conclusion that ghosts don't exist. Or, at least, they don't exist in any way that's capable of making their presence known to living people through visual, auditory or physical means. That's a bummer, because I want to believe there are supernatural things out there that we can't fully comprehend. And ghosts and hauntings are a lot more appealing than much of the stuff going on in the (scary) real world right now. But, in good news, being a nonbeliever hasn't changed the pleasure I still get from reading ghost stories and looking at ghostly images that seem unexplainable.

Related links

• 1979 middle school book: "The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401"
• Book cover: "Haunted Britain"
• Who wants to join me in buying a crumbling, haunted British estate?
• Saturday's postcard: Ghost toddler
• 1928 headline and spooky article: "Radio 'Ghost' Balks Experts"

And that's just a sampling. Who knows what you'll find if you dust off the spooky corners of Papergreat's archive of 3,800-plus posts.

Well-loved library copy of "Gallery of Ghosts"

This is the well-worn, well-reinforced cover of the 1965 Grosset & Dunlap hardcover edition of Gallery of Ghosts, written and illustrated by James Reynolds (1891-1957). The book was originally published in 1949, with that first edition by Creative Age Press being fairly rare and pricey when found in the wild with its dust jacket.

This copy resided in the Central High School Library in Manchester, Tennessee, for many years and was checked out often. It features ghost stories from around the world, as retold by the author. In the introduction, Reynolds explains that he has chosen 19 tales from England, France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Saxony, India, Norway, Hungary and the United States. "The appearances and manifestations of ghosts are as varied as the lives they lead while alive," Reynolds writes. "Choosing carefully from every phase of phenomena, I have selected that stories that seem to me to vibrate with action, color, and design, as does a cloak of motley. That classic ghost story is infinite in variety."

The nod to color and design is relevant, and Patterson was more than an author and illustrator. He worked as a set designer for Broadway productions in the early 20th century and also worked in costume design.

He got Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-1973) to pen the book's introduction. In it, Chaney discusses how he, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi worked to translate now-iconic monsters from the page to the movie screen. And he writes of his regret (as of 1949, anyway) that he hadn't had an opportunity to portray a ghost on film. "This book, unfolding the background and history, the motivation, the setting and the character of the ghost, is a complete guide for the actor," Chaney writes. "If one cannot see the real ghost, then reading the true ghost stories of James Reynolds is the next best thing."

In a 1949 review for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Helena Lefroy Caperton gushed:

"A reviewer of books learns the technique of skimming through a volume, getting the gist of the subject, but only enough of it to do honest justice to the author. In 'A Gallery of Ghosts,' by James Reynolds, this is wholly impossible, for one becomes more deeply absorbed at the turn of every page. Although it is often difficult to read continuously through a volume of short stories because the attention is apt to wander concentration to fail, this is impossible in this amazing and beautiful book because of its glowing, masterly writing, its hair-raising subjects, the fine sketches by the author, and even the admirable format of the book itself."

Review Norma C. Howard, writing for the Independent Tribune of Concord, North Carolina, was somewhat less effusive when reviewing the Grosset & Dunlap edition published in 1965:

"The stories delve deeply into the lore of the many countries from which they are taken, but fail to produce the promised spine-tingling and goose-pimples promised on the dust jacket. In fact, I believe they may be safely read alone at night without fear of disturbing one's sleep. ... James Reynolds was an art-illustrator before turning writer ... and has done a very commendable job of illustrating 'Gallery of Ghosts.' It is one of the most attractive books I've seen in quite a long time and makes me wonder if he should not have stayed with his first love after all."

I have to wonder if what readers found spooky changed enough 1949 and 1965 to account for part of the difference between Caperton's praise and Howard's shrug of the shoulders. Films certainly made a transition to more graphic and visceral scares during the 1960s. Was it the same for books? Were mere ghosts entering a down cycle compared to knife-wielding psychos and satanists?

Here are some of Reynolds' illustrations from the book, which I think have certainly retained their uncanny spookiness over the decades: