TV horror host: Ottola Nesmith

This photo of Ottola Nesmith being creepy appears in the May 26, 1958, issue of Life magazine, which features on its cover the attack on Vice President Richard Nixon's limousine in Caracas, Venezuela, on May 13, 1958. ("Week of World Tumult," states one of the headlines.)

Nesmith was featured as part of a Life photo essay on television's "Night Harbingers of Horror" — "The horror movie, now a staple of local late-night television shows, has spawned a new breed of announcers who take farfetched ways of introducing their spooky fare. ... These macabre masters of ceremonies try to get the viewers teetering on the edge of terror before The Frozen Ghost or Calling Dr. Death from a 52-film series called Shock."

Nesmith was the only woman horror host featured in the photo essay¹, which also included KRON's John Barclay (whom I believe was actually second fiddle to Russ Coglin on Nightmare Theater), KTNT's Warren Reed, WCAU's John Zacherle, and KFJZ's Bill "Gorgon" Camfield.

The caption for Nesmith under "A Little Old Lady Ghoul" states: "One of the few lady ghouls on TV is Ottola Nesmith of KTLA in Hollywood. She plays the role of a little old demented lady who sits in front of Victrola in rooming house, has weird visions. On show, directed by her son, she fancies herself the young beauty who gets abused in the horror films her program shows."

Nesmith appeared in more than 100 films, typically in smaller and uncredited roles. Some of her most notable films were The Wolf Man (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and the Val Lewton films The Leopard Man and The Seventh Victim.

If I may recommend a great book, film historian Gregory William Mank's The Very Witching Time of Night (2014) features a chapter on a pair of Shock! horror hosts, one of whom is Nesmith.² It's filled with wonderful details about her short time at KTLA and why her act as the "Lady Ghoul" got her sued by Frankenstein star Mae Clarke. It's quite the story.

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• Zacherley's 1960 Transylvania passport for fan club members
• Late nights and weekend afternoons of horror in the 1970s
• Ghoulardi's kid

Footnotes

1. The very first TV horror was a woman: Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira, hosted The Vampira Show in 1954 and 1955 on KABC in Los Angeles. But her show was off the air by the time of this Life photo essay. The 2021 book Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi, by Sandra Niemi, documents Nurmi's life.

2. Naturally, Mank is from Delta, Pennsylvania. Because everything revolves around York County, as we've long said.

Vintage snapshot of scarecrow and pumpkins

There's no date, no location, no nuthin' on this found vernacular photo. It features a slightly creepy scarecrow sitting in a wagonload of pumpkins outside of what appears to be a roadside farm market. It's autumn, as the pumpkins and the background foliage attest. I'd guess the 1980s or 1990s, but it seems kind of timeless, which I think is one of the comforts of October. I'm curious what the word "BITTERSWEET" refers to on the partially obscured sign.

Related posts

• American Autumn (a photo essay)
• American Autumn 2020
• Kid lit horror: "The Night the Scarecrow Walked"
• Happy Halloween: Witches and zombies and scarecrows! Oh my!
• RPPC with family, jack-o'-lantern and cat
• Vintage Hallowe'en postcard: Witch declares that she's No. 1

Spooktober begins: "The Ghostly Hand and Other Haunting Stories"

Another October is here, which means a monthlong celebration of spooky stuff on Papergreat, and at least one more night of nail-biting over the Philadelphia Phillies' playoff fate. (Following them can be more stressful than any horror novel or film.)

Focusing on ghosts and goblins during Deireadh Fómhair, when the world is ablaze, literally and figuratively, might seem childish, but it's a nice and necessary diversion — for just a small portion of each day and for our mental health — from the corruption, crises and collapses. (Others, including Tom at Garage Sale Finds, are keeping up this October tradition, too.) 

As always, there will be a lot of old books this month and I'm kicking off, appropriately, with another Scholastic volume from the 1970s. Click on the Scholastic books label at the bottom of this post to find dozens more.

• Title: The Ghostly Hand and Other Haunting Stories
• Editor: Nora Kramer (1896-1984). This is her third curated collection to be featured on Papergreat, following Arrow Book of Spooky Stories and Arrow Book of Ghost Stories.
• Illustrator: Don Dyen, though his name is credited incorrectly as Don Dyan on the title page. It appears that he has a LinkedIn page that he's been active on this year. Prints of his illustrations of sports figures Cliff Lee and Mike Schmidt, among others, seem to be available on this website.
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TX 2234)
• Cover price: 60 cents
• Year: 1st printing, October 9172
• Format: Paperback
• Dedication: "For My Grandchildren"
• Contents: What I love about this book is that it collects and preserves a great deal of material from sources that might not be as ubiquitous as a Scholastic paperback. There is material from 1949's Upstate, Downstate: Folk Stories of the Middle Atlantic States; 1951's Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman; a 1966 issue of Golden Magazine; Gaelic Ghosts; 1956's The Screaming Ghost and Other Stories; and especially 1923's The Creaking Stair, among others.
• Excerpt #1: "This is a true ghost story," said my elderly Quaker friend. "It really happened to my cousin, the one my own age whom I love more than any of my other relatives."
• Excerpt #2: The woman of the house had two horses to her carriage, and Mrs. MacNair had no carriage at all. But the MacNairs had three bogles, being well supplied, and Mrs. MacNair was so set up about them that it fair put one's teeth on edge to hear her going on about them and their doings.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.33 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In a 2022 four-star review, Roger praised "The Open Window" by Saki: "I liked several of the stories and would have given this 3 stars, but The Open Window is one of the best short stories I’ve read in a long time, and probably the best short ghost story I’ve ever read."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.4 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review: In a 2019 review, J.M. DeMuth writes: "Rereading the stories brought back fond memories of how I loved to read when I was a kid, and in particular ghost stories. These stories are all rather tame by today's standard. But as a kid reading them on cold, dark, late October evenings I can say that they kept my interest and had me wondering what was going 'bump' in the night! Try reading some around your next campfire, or by the fireplace on some chilly autumn evening."

Here are some of Dyen's interior illustrations, plus the poem by Rosalind Welcher that opens the book...

When late-night TV images stop making sense