A well-worn copy of "The Haunted Ghost"

Today's book is a well-worn former library book from more than 50 years ago that appears to be much admired...

• Title: The Haunted Ghost
• Author & illustrator: Barbara Ninde Byfield (1930-1988). This book was part of a series that also included The Haunted Spy, The Haunted Churchbell and The Haunted Tower. None of them seem too easy to come by! Byfield was mentioned briefly in a 2018 Papergreat post about Konkle Memorial Library. A little more about Byfield, plus a photo, can be found at this 2013 post on the Lesser-Known Writers website by Douglas A. Anderson, which is still going strong.
• Publisher: Doubleday & Company
• Year: 1973
• Format: Prebound trade hardcover
• Pages: 36, by my count
• Provenance: Mission Park Elementary School in California's Salinas City School District.
• Excerpt #1: Oswald, full of cheer and gossip, was telling me of how prosperous the town was becoming with new businesses and shops and customers for everything.
• Excerpt #2: "The addition you see being built now must be finished and working in one week or we close the factory," the mayor proclaimed. "They have no business pouring their poisonous waste materials into our lake, and once this purifying system is working they won't have to."
• Excerpt #3: "I think my tussle with the modern world has been as good for me as I was for it," boasted Sir Roger early next summer. "I've lost five pounds, and I even enjoy reading the newspaper from time to time."
• How does a ghost lose five pounds? That's not made clear.
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.38 stars (out of 5)
• Excerpt from 1974 Kirkus review: "Both text and illustrations have more style than the usual picture book about either ghosts or pollution, but we're not sure that Sir Roger (whose experience leaves him 'even more transparent than usual') has enough strength to transport his airy British wit across the Atlantic." 

This wasn't Byfield's most famous book (that would probably be The Glass Harmonica, also published as The Book of the Weird, which may have influenced E. Gary Gygax), but I'm still surprised there aren't more comments about The Haunted Ghost online. If you remember the book, please leave a comment. 

Here are some of Byfield's wonderful interior illustrations...

 

"The Truth About Fake Giants and Other Great Hoaxes" (1981)

When I was traveling to visit my dad in West Virginia last month, I stayed in a hotel in Raleigh, Virginia, on the first night, and after a show about the architecture of the Pantheon ended, the only good thing on TV was Martin Scorsese's 2004 Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator. Though it was late, I ended up watching the whole thing.

The next afternoon, Dad and I went to an awesome bookstore in Beckley, West Virginia, called Burm Booksellers (209 Prince Street). I highly recommend it, if you're ever in the area. They sell books on AbeBooks, too. While there, I was browsing the many shelves full of great old books and I came across this oddball that I'd never heard of: 1981's The Truth About Fake Giants and Other Great Hoaxes, published by Rourke Enterprises of Florida. And, lo and behold, one of the chapters in this book for kids was about Clifford Irving's hoax involving the attempted publication of a Howard Hughes biography. Why you'd have that as a chapter in a kids' book with robots, the Cardiff Giant and winged moon creatures featured on the covers, I have no idea. But it was a heck of Hughes coincidence.

Anyway, the book is amazeballs. It's a hardcover former library book measuring 5⅝ inches by 8⅞ inches. The colorful front and back covers and the interior black-and-white illustrations are by Norman Nodel (1922-2000), a World War II field artist for the U.S. Army who later became known for his illustrations for the Classics Illustrated series.

The author is Timothy Bay, who seems to have a much smaller biographical footprint online than Nodel. If anyone knows anything about him, please share it in the comments.

It's worth noting that this book was first published as Fake Giants and Other Great Hoaxes by EMC in 1980, before being republished in 1981 by Rourke Enterprises with the longer title that adds The Truth About... I have no idea why.

This book spent many years in the Gauley Bridge Library in West Virginia, which was part of the Fayette County Library System before closing in early 2014. The town has a population of less than 600, which may have been part of the reason for that. I do want to note, however, that the Fayette County Library System has an official cat, named Bob. And Bob is no hoax.

The book's table of contents page is pictured below, and I can tell you that, in addition to the Irving-Hughes hoax and the Cardiff Giant, the topics include "King of the Mediums" Daniel Douglas Home [sic], Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, art forger Hans Van Meegeren [sic], the Piltdown Man, the New York Sun's fantastical moon hoax, and H.L. Mencken's bathtub hoax. It's an odd but fascinating mix.

The book possibly had a fairly limited distribution, because there's very little about it online, especially compared to similar books from the 1970s and early 1980s that focused on similar weird topics, such as the Contemporary Perspectives books. There are no reviews at all on Amazon or Goodreads. I guess this will have to become the post that champions and remembers the book, moving forward. Now is a good time to get a copy, if you're intrigued; I see at least two on eBay with prices under $20.

After the coincidence of The Aviator and The Truth About Fake Giants and Other Great Hoaxes, I was inspired to create a watch list of films that are intertwined in some interesting ways:

• Hell's Angels (1930, director: Howard Hughes)
• Ice Station Zebra (1968, John Sturges)
• F for Fake (1973, Orson Welles)
• The Night That Panicked America (1975 TV movie, Joseph Sargent)
• The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977, TV miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones as Howard Hughes)
• Melvin and Howard (1980, Jonathan Demme)
• It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (1993 documentary by Richard Wilson, Bill Krohn and Myron Meisel)
• The Aviator (2004, Martin Scorsese)
• The Hoax (2006, Lasse Hallström)

It also strikes me that you can draw a direct and fascinating line from Welles' F for Fake to this year's Nathan Fielder/Lance Oppenheim/Elizabeth Holmes film You Can See Everything.

And finally there's Clifford Irving's 1969 book Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time.

Cozy autumn Postcrossing arrival

This dandy Postcrossing card was sent to me by Ashley in Florida to mark World Postcard Day 2026. Ashley loves books and Halloween, and despises AI. So she's a very good egg. The artwork on the postcard is by Lydia Jean and you can check out all of their autumn-themed drawings and designs at the appropriately named LittleGhostShack.com. Support creators! 

I'll be highlighting more mail in the coming days, alongside the other Mild Fear 2026 posts. We're halfway to Halloween already.

Scholastic book: "Spook"

• Title: Spook
• Author: Jane Little. I can't find much biographical information about her. Her other books included Sneaker Hill and The Philosopher's Stone.
• Illustrator: Suzanne Kesteloo Larsen. I can't find much on her, either. Help would be welcome! For both Little and Kesteloo Larsen, it seems that Spook is their best-known work.
• Back cover excerpt: "Poor Spook! He's the only dog in the world who belongs to a witch! And she'd rather have a cat. No wonder she's so mean to him."
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TX 1001)
• Cover price: 45 cents
• Year: 1965. This is Scholastic's 1967 second printing
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 80
• Little's dedication: "To my family, with love" 
• Excerpt #1: Then abruptly she stopped dead in her tracks, a look of horror settling on her face. Spook craned his neck around the curtain to see what she was staring at. It was a large marmalade cat, strolling down the hall directly toward Grimalda.
• Excerpt #2: When he stopped at last, he was an enormous spider on eight gigantic legs, with two fangs curved like buffalo horns and eight eyes as big as soup plates.
• Is this book kind of creepy? For a kid's book, absolutely.
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.26 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2018, Kati wrote: "This is such an adorable book! My boyfriend told me it was one of the first *actual books* he ever read, and I love anything even remotely related to Halloween, so I just started reading it one day when I saw it hanging around at home. It’s so sweet. Grimalda is a 'mean, scary' witch without actually being an animal abuser toward little Spook. She’s just butthurt cuz she’s allergic to cats."
• Is that the first appearance of "butthurt" on Papergreat? Yes indeed.
• Rating on Amazon: 4.6 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2011, Sherry wrote: "It is a cute little book, but the reason I only gave it 3 stars is because I do not care for witches."
• Other reviews and memories: A grinchy writeup by Kirkus, a 2017 review on Vintage Toys and Books, and a Facebook post on Vintage Scholastic Books last month featuring a lot of comments.
• And one final view: Writing on the Postcards from La-La Land blog in 2011, NeriSiren, a self-described "Bookwyrm of the Benthic Zone," concludes: "Spook is a very entertaining story, with villains who are goofy enough to offset their scary qualities. Other than a few exposition-heavy passages, the dialogue is believable and the descriptions create vivid, tangible scenes. This would be a fun book for teachers to read to their students the week before Halloween, a chapter or two each day."

Here are some more of the illustrations by Suzanne Kesteloo Larsen:

And here's Mercury posing with Spook. She's always great for this specific season.

Time-worn and still-unsettling paperback work of art

In years past, I've written about how damaged postcards, photos and other pieces of ephemera can gain a different kind of beauty from the ravages of time. The same is true today with this paperback cover. (Maybe it's best to read this post at night, in the dark, with only the light from your laptop screen glowing outward.)

It's the stated August 1976 first Signet printing of Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot in paperback.

This was only Stephen King's second novel, after Carrie. His name doesn't even appear on the cover. As Ron Gabriel notes in a blog post: "The all-black cover was unusual in that there was no title on the front, only an embossed illustration of a girl with a tiny red drop in the corner of her mouth. The title was on the spine and back cover, and the blurb was cryptic: 'The town knew darkness ... but no one dared talk about the high, sweet, evil laughter of a child ... and the sucking sounds...'"

Gabriel adds: "I salute the daring cover art director and marketing team for offering a novel with no title on the front, and delicious, high-level taste and restraint."

I'm sure this embossed cover looked amazing when new and shiny 50 years ago. It's extremely hard to find a copy in such condition. Time and readers — many, many, many readers — have led to soiling, creases, tears, pricetag residue and other blemishes for these first paperbacks. And I think that now gives them a different kind of terrifying beauty. It's a thinning membrane over half-century-old scares. The deterioration, the rot, has only made the warning more ominous. Would you pick it up and read it in the dark of night, while alone, while the autumn wind — or is it wind? — rattles the windows?

Related posts

• Water-stained work of art: Hudson & Manhattan Subway Terminal
• Water-stained work of art II: Princes Point on Orr's Island
• Water-stained work of art III: Mt. Washington Club, Maryland
• Page from an old library book
• A water-stained postcard memory and fiddling with technology
• Cabinet card from Pottstown, Pennsylvania
• Family member and friend in damaged old photo
• Peering at (literal) scary book from Germany in 1920

Susy Smith's "Today's Witches" (1970)

There was a time when I was thinking about doing a deep dive on paranormal author Susy Smith (1911-2001). It does turn out that she had an extensive Arizona connection, as this biography of her on Occult World notes:

"In 1971, she moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she founded and became the first president of the Survival Research Foundation, which is still in operation. On January 11, 1997, the Susy Smith Project in the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona was created by Drs. Gary E Schwartz and Linda G. S. Russek to continue her research. Russek called Smith 'the matriarch of survival research.' They persuaded Smith to write her 30th book, which became The Afterlife Codes (2000), a recount of the highlights of her life’s inquiry into survival."

Forgoing the deep dive, I'm going to downsize and keep just a few of her greatest hits on my shelf. But before I get Today's Witches into someone else's hands, I wanted to write a little about it here today, for posterity.

The Susy Smith book was published in 1970, during an era when interest in witchcraft was being conjured in many places — intertwined at times with the counterculture movement, the feminist movement and a broader fascination with occultism and alternative spirituality.

Published by Prentice Hall, the 180-page book has this spicy secondary text on the cover: "How hippies, jetsetters, and ordinary housewives are using the occult for good — or evil." The equally spicy dust jacket text cites Lewis VanDercar, Anton LaVey, Sybil Leek and others. The bibliography mentions Sharon Tate, author Richard Cavendish and Aleister Crowley. (And now this post is going to pop up in a lot of awfully weird Google searches.)

I should note that the dust jacket design is by Claudia Kelly.

The book opens thusly:

"At the witches' stalls in the Sonoran Market in Mexico City I acquired an ajo macho. This is a 'virile' garlic to protect me from any evil spells that black witches anywhere might decide to try to place on me. I felt that having this was important before attempting to write a book about witchcraft. Perhaps after reading this book the reader will agree with me that no matter how much one does or does not believe in the dangers of black magic, it can't hurt to take precautionary measures. The existence of witchcraft in the world today is not something you question. It is something you either know about or you do not."

Susy Smith's book goes on to discuss witchcraft in the United States, Haiti, Mexico, England, Canada and worldwide, with some devil worship, drug use (marijuana and LSD) and murder thrown into the witches' brew.

Much of the book is an alarmist warning about all of that, the devilry and drugs. The author concludes firmly on the side of the good witches:

"When the time comes that it can be proved scientifically that the force of thought is a potent force, that the power of the mind is the strongest power of all, then we will realize the necessity of controlling our thinking by conscious effort. Until then, it appears that witches are among the few who are aware of this and are actively using it. It is necessary for us all to learn how to apply this universal mind force for good. We can become in tune with the positive elements just as the white witches are."

There are no reviews or comments about Today's Witches on Amazon or Goodreads, suggesting the book didn't leave much of a cultural footprint. But it certainly captured a moment in 1960s/1970s culture, when interest in witchcraft and the occult was attracting considerable attention.

Related posts

• Book cover: "Ghosts Around the House"
• Hans Holzer's "The Witchcraft Report"
• Cursed books? "That stuff is real, and not something to be trifled with"
• Stay-at-home shelfie #52
• Answering questions about my reading history and habits
• The Clayton book attic 

Dandy cover of Issue #9 of "Horror Monsters"

Here's the wonderfully horrifying cover of the Fall 1964 Issue #9 of Horror Monsters. This was the next-to-last issue of the magazine's existence. You can learn more about its short history in this 2024 post in which I showcased Issue #10.

The cover of this 35-cent issue features the Neanderthal Man from 1961's Valley of the Dragons (that may be Jack Elam under the makeup) and mentions the Vincent Price/Carol Ohmart classic The House on Haunted Hill, Lon Chaney Jr. in The Devil's Messenger, George Zucco, Mothra and 1956's The Black Sleep.

Below is the contents page, which notes that the members of the editorial staff were Sanzar Quasatoad, Quaszar Sanatoad, Santoad Zarquasar, Zarsatoad Sanqua and Toadzan Quasocar.

Spruce Street book: "The Ghost of Windy Hill"

In August I wrote about M for Mischief being one of the first books that I distinctly remember having, circa second grade. Well, there's at least one book I distinctly remember having even earlier than that. I had a copy of The Ghost of Windy Hill in my bedroom on Spruce Street in Montoursville when I was in first grade. It's not a cover you forget if you had this book during early childhood! Probably my first ghost-themed book. (This isn't that original, long-gone copy; it's one I came across a while back. And I just noticed that "69" on the back cover, which I'll see if I can gently rub off.)

This is the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club hardcover of The Ghost of Windy Hill, published by Thomas Y. Crowell of New York. The book, first published in 1968, was written by Clyde Robert Bulla (1914-2007) and illustrated by Don Bolognese. There have been other editions over the years, some with a different illustrator.

Illustrator Bolognese, by the way, talked about his long career in this 2022 interview and mentions a 1967 anti-war children's book he wrote and illustrated titled Once Upon a Mountain. 

The Ghost of Windy Hill is 84 pages, has numerous illustrations and is broken into 14 short chapters, one of which is titled "The Crazy Quilt." The story opens in a candle shop, as daylight is fading. It ends with a walk in the woods that includes a woman in a long, white dress. It's beloved by many, though some note that, while spooky at times, it doesn't quite rise to the level of "ghost story."

Here are some comments that I found sprinkled across Goodreads, Amazon and Facebook...

• The Ghost of Windy Hill was my favorite book as a little girl — my Granny had purchased the book for me through the Weekly Reader club for kids in elementary school
• I think any child who reads it will find it a fun read.
• The memorable aspect of "The Ghost of Windy Hill" is Bulla's portrayal of a warm, supportive family. 
• Simple, entertaining ghost story concerning a family who relocate to a country farmhouse for the summer and encounter rather strange situations. Eerie illustrations contribute to the very clever writing from Bulla. 
• The title of this story is very misleading. Of course there usually isn't really a ghost at the end of such stories but in this one there really isn't even a hint of one! 
• For a kids book it hits well above its weight class in creepiness.
• Great read for kids during the Halloween season. There is talk of a ghost but the main story centers around a family moving into a large farmhouse for the summer and in the end helping several of the new people they meet.
• This is what got me hooked on the kind of books I mainly read now.
• Started my lifelong love of horror!