SVE's 1973 "Strange Phenomena" supplemental books for students

These "Strange Phenomena" classroom books, all from 1973, might be among the more obscure volumes I've ever written about on Papergreat. It's surprising how little about them can be found on the internet at the moment, so I'm hoping this post can be a light in the dark for anyone who's curious.

The books were published by the Chicago-based Society for Visual Education, which was a subsidiary of The Singer Company (the sewing machine folks). My understanding is that they served as a supplement for a series of six SVE filmstrips that had synchronized sound from either a record or cassette. The series was made to be folded into a science or, especially, a language arts curriculum in junior or senior high schools. The six filmstrips were titled "The Loch Ness Monster," "Unusual Science Facts," "ESP," "Mind Over Matter," "ESP in Animals and Men," and "Precognition." Does anyone out there remember watching these in class in the mid-1970s??

The three supplementary books shown above were subtitled Monsters, Nature and Science and The Mind. All are 48 pages and staplebound. They measure 6¼ inches by 9¼ inches. Here's a closer look at the content and creators behind each one: 

Nature and Science

• Illustrated by Barbara Corey
• Designed by Michael Reid
• "Strange Rains" by Thane Gower, about odd weather phenomena
• "The Orchid Hunters" by Barbara Smetzer
• "Animal Sense" by Emilie Carter Cook
• "Where Death Strikes at Night" by James Vorhees, about Oroya fever
• "Vampire!" by Winifred Ho Roderman
• "The Big Blackout" by Jill Gaynes, about the 1965 Northeast blackout
• "The Bermuda Triangle" by Douglas Hunt
• "The Creature from the Past" by Winifred Ho Roderman, about coelacanths

The Mind

• Illustrated by George Roth
• Designed by Michael Reid
• "The Dream That Saved a Life" by Nancy Davis, about Josiah Wilbarger
• "ESP into the Past" by Thane Gower
• "The Flying Monk" by Douglas Hunt 
• "Is It in the Stars?" by Bettina Smith, about astrology
• "The Man with the Television Mind" by Michael Friedrich, about Peter Hurkos
• "Space Talk" by Thane Gower, partly about Ashtar Sheran
• "Pictures of His Mind" by Cheryl Lynn Rothwell, about Ted Serios
• "The Titanic Disaster" by Thomas Fields

Monsters

• Illustrated by Mary Nolin
• Designed by Michael Reid
• "Monsters, Old and New" by Thane Gower, about the Flatwoods monster  
• "The Windingo" by Barbara Smeltzer
• "The Loch Ness Monster" by Douglas Hunt
• "The Giant Squid" by Douglas Hunt
• "Sasquatch, The Man-Beast" by Nancy Davis
• "The Abominable Snowman" by Jill Gaynes
• "Cry Wolf or Monster" by Thane Gower, about the Beast of Gévaudan
• "The Mystery of Glamis Castle" by Jill Gaynes, about the Monster of Glamis

Here are six of the interior illustrations from the books, some of which are pretty unsettling, especially if you think about kids looking at them. First up is the Flatwoods monster.

RIP, Walter Koenig

Walter Koenig, who portrayed Pavel Chekov across the original TV series and numerous films in the Star Trek universe, died last night at his home in Los Angeles at age 90, surrounded by family members.

Koenig is pictured here portraying Chekov in the original series in a full-page photo that appears in the 1973 issue of The Monster Times magazine that I wrote about just last month for the show's 60th anniversary.

Ashar and I had the very nice fortune of meeting Koenig in April 2019 at Steel City Con in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I think it was the final day of the show, and when we arrived first thing in the morning, the crowd was sparse but Koenig was already at his table. No one else was in line, so we both had the opportunity to chat with him for several minutes. Ashar discussed his recent spinal surgery, which Koenig was very curious about. He marveled at how far we've come with science and medicine, noting that people as recently as the mid-20th century simply didn't have access to some of the life-changing and life-saving medicine and surgeries that are available to us today. He told us a little bit about his mother, Sarah Koenig (née Strauss), who had been born in the Russian Empire in 1902 and later emigrated to the United States (Walter was born in 1936 in Chicago).  

It's not hard to find many wonderful stories about Walter Koenig being shared around the internet today. Personally, I cherished this series of skeets by actor George Takei, whose character Hikaru Sulu sat alongside Koenig's Chekov on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise for so many fictional adventures:

"My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man. Just last month, on Sept. 14, he turned 90, on the same day Brad and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. I will always treasure that he and I shared that date. Walter was more than Chekov. He was a writer, a teacher, a thoughtful man, and a loyal friend. To the fans who loved him for so many years, thank you. He loved you too. Rest well, my dear friend. Keep navigating a steady course. – George"

Orange and Nebula present 1977's "Ghosts and Ghouls"

One week until Halloween!

Here are the previous Contemporary Perspectives books in this series I've featured:

• This House is Haunted!
• The Case of the Ancient Astronauts
• Visions of the Future: Magic Boards
• The Abominable Snowman
• The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401

And now today's volume....

• Title: Ghosts and Ghouls
• Author: Gwen Risedorf. Full first name is Gwendolyn.  She also wrote a Contemporary Perspectives book titled Born Today, Born Yesterday: Reincarnation. She was born in 1923, but I can't find any other biographical information.
• Terrifying cover illustration: Lynn Sweat. This is the fifth Lynn Sweat cover I've featured, and they're all amazeballs. As far as biographical information, I haven't 100% established that this Lynn Sweat, who graduated from Lamar University and illustrated numerous Amelia Bedelia books, is the same Lynn Sweat who did the Contemporary Perspectives covers, but I have a strong suspicion that it is the same person.
• Incredible interior illustrations: Wayne Atkinson. Four of the illustrations are featured below.
• Publisher: A Contemporary Perspectives Inc. (CPI) book distributed by Raintree Children's Books, Milwaukee
• Year: 1977
• Pages: 48
• Format: Hardcover
• First paragraph: This could be called a book of "ghost stories." But the stories in this book are not the kind people make up to write about or tell their friends. At least we don't think they are made up. The ghost stories in this book have been reported by people who claim they truly did happen.
• People and events featured: 1. A haunting in central Connecticut of the Morgan family that's conveyed to the book's author by Ed and Lorraine Warren. 2. Anecdotes from ancient Egypt, Germany and Rome. 3. The "Ghouls of Clophill" in Bedfordshire, England. 4. Ghosts of Hampton Court in England. 5. The adventures of ghost hunter Hans Holzer. 6. An unattributed story involving a ghost with unfinished business haunting the Nolan family in Buffalo, New York. 7. Tales of mediums, seances and magic boards. 8. A short history of poltergeists and life after death featuring Raymond Moody. Yes indeed, all the stars of the 1970s commercialization of the paranormal are here! 
• Rating on Goodreads: There's only one rating on Goodreads and it gets 2 stars out of 5. The reviewer wrote this in 2016: "So I bought this book for 10 cents in my local library under KIDS books. First off this book is NOT for kids. Ed and Lorraine Warren are REAL people for sure, I've met their nephew ... on multiple occasions and it seems like the book makes it sound Ok to contact the dead which it is not ok to do this."
• Another review: A July 1979 "National Endowment for the Humanities Bibliography of Humanistic Reading for Grade Levels 1-8" notes that the book's original sale price was $5.49 and adds this short review: "A fascinating account of ghosts and ghouls that have appeared and annoyed people and how they have been eliminated. The chapter on ghosts of Hampton Court is especially interesting."

Unsettling eBay listing of the day

I cannot fathom why in the hell anyone would post a book in this condition on eBay, unless it were one of the first printings of the Gutenberg Bible. 

But here we have it. A deeply stained, warped and probably mold-carrying copy of the 1969 mass-market paperback Weird Unsolved Mysteries, by Eric Norman. And it can be all yours for just $13.08! (I can assure you that, if you truly must have this book, you can find copies for about the same price that don't look like they spent time in the hold of the Mary Celeste.)

The eBay listing states: "*Acceptable* Many Pictures before you decide. Check out our other items. Thank you and have a great day!"

I agree with the part in which there are many pictures.

Now, you may be saying out loud, "But Chris, you love gushing about the beauty of water-stained or damaged items! In fact, you were doing so just last week. Aren't you being hypocritical?"

To which I would reply:

1. Yes, but while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think you have to bring some aesthetic taste to the discussion. There are damaged items with inherent beauty ... and there is junk for the trash.

2. And, either way, I'm not trying to sell such items for thirteen American dollars! 

Maybe I'm just bad at capitalism? I dunno.

Related posts

• How much is that haunted doll in the eBay window I have open?
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• You'll never be able to unsee this creepy life mask
• Creepiest eBay listing of the year
• Varmint-enhanced eBay listing of the day

1990s mystery: Remember Horrorvision Video of Milford, Pa.?

Here's a minor history mystery. I was browsing through the Winter 1994 issue of Scarlet Street magazine (No. 13) and came across a full page ad for Horrorvision Video, selling VHS copies of old movies that would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find on the standard market 30-plus years ago.

It states "Horrorvision Video" at the top, but "Big City Video" at the bottom, as the business, whatever its official name, had a larger catalog that featured "comedies, cartoons, serials, musicals, television shows, detective films [and] dramas." The address was a Post Office box in Milford, Pennsylvania and the name associated with the business is Vince Alisauskas. 

The quality is described as "all from film, all of really great quality. No multi-copied or junk reproductions. Try us and see. Sold from one collector to another. No rights given or implied. Some prerecorded titles."

The price was hefty, but that was the market at the time. It was $20 per title or $50 for three. That equates to $44 for one and $110 for three today. No small investment. But one of the few ways back then, perhaps, to get titles such as 1921's The Haunted Castle by F.W. Murnau, 1926's The Magician with Paul Wegener, Fire Maidens from Outer Space, Vampyr, The Secret of the Blue Room and more.

I'm guessing Horrorvision has long since gone out of business, but I'm surprised I can't find any information about it or memories online. And some of the VHS tapes must still be floating about. (It doesn't help with searches that there's a 2001 movie called Horrorvision.) Please share anything you know in the comments.

Clarence Sinclair Bull Halloween photo

Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896-1979) was the head of the still photography department at MGM for many years and is estimated to have photographed more than 10,000 subjects. He also served as Greta Garbo's personal photographer.

This amazingly lit C.S. Bull (as he was most commonly credited) photo from 1928 features actresses Anita Page, left, Gwen Lee and spooky doll.

Anita Page (1910-2008) was a leading lady alongside everyone from Buster Keaton to Clark Gable during the height of her career. According to Wikipedia, she received multiple marriage proposals from Benito Mussolini. Among her most notable films are Our Dancing Daughters, The Broadway Melody and Sidewalks of New York (a talkie with Keaton).

Gwen Lee (1904-1961) appeared in more than 60 films alongside the likes of Clara Bow, Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery and Groucho Marx. Her notable films include Laugh, Clown, Laugh and A Lady of Chance, both from 1928.

Bull's photo reminds of this 1938 Judy Garland photo that I featured in 2014.

After decades, my final mystery has been solved

A mystery has finally been solved and, very appropriately, it happened in October.

Way back in 2015, I wrote about "those hazy, uncertain movie and TV moments" of our youth. Moments that become embedded in our minds, but without enough information to confirm their existence or track down their titles.

I had three mysteries.

The first two were finally solved in 2015, with the help of the internet.

No. 1 was The Man From Nowhere, a spooky, hour-long drama produced by the UK's Children's Film Foundation in 1975. I had first watched it on cable in the early 1980s, but it took me decades to confirm I hadn't misremembered or just dreamt it.

No. 2 was, hilariously, 1971's Dracula vs. Frankenstein. Pretty much all I had remembered was an Igor-type character who loved his cats. Turns out there was some misremembering there. It was a puppy, not cats, that Lon Chaney Jr. loved. Kindertrauma came to the rescue, and the memory would gnaw at me no more.

But No. 3 had dogged me for more than 40 years. Until yesterday. This is the passage I've been using, hoping it would jog someone's memory on a message board or social media, or have the "secret sauce" keywords for a successful internet search: 

"A man arrives at an inn that is (of course) in the middle of nowhere. He checks in alongside another new guest, a middle-aged woman. During the evening, the man meets a beautiful young woman, who is also staying at the inn. They eventually go back to his room for a romantic engagement and are in the midst of said engagement when the clock strikes midnight and the woman turns evil and attacks him. (I think maybe her eyes change somehow.) It turns out that everyone in the inn, except for the man and the middle-aged woman who checked in at the same time, are malevolent beings intent on killing the guests. In the mayhem, a fire erupts. The man tries to save the middle-aged woman but cannot, so he flees the burning building. The next morning, the man and a police officer he told his story to arrive at the site of the inn. But there's nothing there. No inn. No sign of fire. Just an empty field. But not entirely empty. The corpse of the middle-aged woman is there, among the tall grass. The end. ... I'm pretty sure this was an episode of a horror anthology series, like Tales from the Darkside or Hammer House of Horror. And I think it was a British production. I saw it circa 1984."

Despite the amount of detail, I'd had no success in years of searching. Part of the problem was that there were so many U.S., Canadian and British horror anthology TV series between the mid-1970s and 1984. This was the era of Hammer House of Horror, Darkroom, Tales of the Unexpected and numerous other similar shows, many of which have faded into obscurity. There were a few kind and helpful suggestions offered over the years. One person was positive it was an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, but I'm pretty sure I would have remembered Darren McGavin. But all the good leads eventually led to dead ends.

But I finally, finally found it! Every couple years I do another round of searching and I hit paydirt this time, because the whole episode, with keywords, was uploaded to YouTube in May 2025 by Maljardin.

Drum roll: It's an episode of the 1978 anthology series The Next Step Beyond. The series was a remake of the far-better-remembered Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond, which ran from 1959 to 1961. The Next Step Beyond was made directly for syndication and was a dud, lasting one season and 25 episodes.

One of those episodes, #19, was "The Haunted Inn." Indeed, it has been haunting me for 40-plus years.

It turns out my memory of it was pretty damn good:

1. A man arrives at an inn in the middle of nowhere. Correct.
2. He checks in alongside another new guest, a middle-aged woman. Correct.
3. He meets a beautiful young woman, who is also staying at the inn. Correct.
4. They eventually go back to his room for a romantic engagement and are in the midst of said engagement when the clock strikes midnight and the woman turns evil and attacks him. (I think maybe her eyes change somehow.) Almost all correct, though there's no clock that strikes midnight.
5. The inn is full of malevolent beings. Correct.
6. The man tries to save the middle-aged woman but cannot. Correct.
7. He flees the burning building. Partially correct. The building doesn't explode into flames (in stock footage) until he's exited. There was no money in the tiny budget for actual flames on the set.
8. There's no inn and no sign of fire the next morning when the man returns with a police officer. Correct.
9. All that's there is the corpse of the middle-aged woman. Correct! 
10. I think it was a British production. Incorrect!

Watching "The Haunted Inn" on YouTube yesterday, I was surprised to see that the man is played by James Keach. Though he has done fine work elsewhere, I know him almost entirely from Moving Violations, which ran endlessly on cable in the late 1980s. John Newland introduces and concludes the episode, in Rod Serling fashion. I hadn't remembered that part at all. Keach is joined by actors Patricia Joyce, Lorna Thayer, Buck Young and Robert V. Barron.

Amazingly, historian/critic John Kenneth Muir wrote about this episode all the way back in 2008 on his Wordpress blog, but I never stumbled across it in my web searches. He praises the episode's creepiness and the "dead white eyes" and concludes: "There are other episodes of The Next Step Beyond which are more accurate to the details of paranormal literature, but none which go for balls-to-the-wall, visceral horror like 'The Haunted Inn.' The goal here is simply to scare and there’s something about the cheap look of the videotape and the simplicity of this 'ghost story' that works in tandem to create an occasionally unnerving half-hour. Not a great show, but a decent one. And sadly, it’s probably the best The Next Step Beyond ever got."

I'm thrilled but it's also a little bittersweet that this mystery is now solved. I'm not sure I have any remaining mysteries from my youth left to pursue. What do I do now??

Here are some stills from "The Haunted Inn." I can finally say it exists!

Scholastic book: "Great Horror Movies"

• Title: Great Horror Movies
• Author: Favius Friedman (the copyright page states "F. Louis Friedman"). According to Sim Branaghan's 2018 article "Monsters Maidens and Mayhem: Horror Film History Books 1965-79 (Part 2)" for Film on Paper, Friedman lived from 1900 to 1990. Branaghan notes: "Friedman arrived in Hollywood in 1944 and worked as a prolific Tinseltown journalist for the next 25 years or so. ... By the end of the 60’s Friedman had switched to writing a sequence of young-adult paperbacks for Scholastic Corp, who enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) a vast readership due to their historic monopoly on US grade-school Book Club distribution. Friedman wrote at least six Scholastic titles."
• Cover photo: That's Lon Chaney Jr. in Jack Pierce's chilling makeup for 1941's The Wolf Man.
• Back cover excerpt: "Do you stay up all night to watch horror flicks on the late late show? Are you first in line when reruns of old monster movies come to your neighborhood? If so, this book's for you. Fantastic and fabulous facts and figures about 70 of the world's most famous horror and monster movies."
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TK 2408)
• Cover price: None listed.
• Year: First printing, February 1974
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 160
• Friedman's dedication: "This book is for Maxie, Karie and Im, Cordalie, and Anna Francesca."
• Friedman's acknowledgments: In a passage written in March 1973 and included in the book, Friedman gives credit to Carlos Clarens' An Illustrated History of the Horror Film; Peter Underwood's book Boris Karloff; Focus on the Horror Film, edited by Roy Huss and T.J. Ross; Focus on the Science Fiction Film, edited by William Johnson; Science Fiction in the Cinema by John Baxter; and friends Roger Corman, Julian Myers, and Mildred Simpson.   
• Excerpt from the introduction: "Just how popular the movie King Kong has been over the years can be judged by what happened during a certain week in March 1955. Executives at a top television station in New York, WOR-TV, decided to try an experiment. They would program the 1933 film King Kong — then 22 years old — for seven evenings in a row, or a total of 16 consecutive showings (two a night and three over the weekend). The movie ran every night, all through that week of March 1955. Rival TV station managers are probably still in shock. That ancient horror flick, all but derided as "a silly trick epic" at its initial New York theatre showing, actually had more people watching it on television than sat through Ed Sullivan, Groucho Marx, and Bishop Fulton Sheen!"
• Small correction: Friedman has the other details right, but the year wrong. The 16 showings of King Kong were on WOR-TV from March 5-11, 1956.
• Films included in Great Horror Movies: There are about 70 of them summarized by Friedman! You can guess a lot of the obvious ones: The Birds, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Haunting, The Innocents, King Kong, etc. There's a big emphasis on science fiction, with War of the Worlds, Planet of the Apes, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Forbidden Planet and Fahrenheit 451, among others. Both Val Lewton's Cat People and Curse of the Cat People (one of my Christmas favorites) are included. Among the most interesting, or outright bizarre, inclusions are Bigger Than Life (1956, with James Mason), Bobbikins (1959), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), The Ghost Goes West (1935), The Boy with Green Hair (1948), The Mind Benders (1963), The Power (1968), and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.0 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2021, Kirby Davis wrote: "I reread it now to study how my language appreciation has changed (it's interesting to find prose referring to Bette Davis and Vincent Price in the present tense), to count how many of these films I have actually watched over the last half-century, to reflect on how horror films have changed over that time, and to ponder how these films (and my appreciation for them) impacted my character. ... Even though Friedman's tome now covers but the first half of Hollywood's existence, the book provides insightful commentary on the state of the art up to that time and makes good recommendations on what to see."
• Rating on Amazon: 3.6 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2016, Walter Solley wrote: "Friedman writes about this genre with obvious affection and his attitude is infectious. This book leaves you wanting to watch each of these great movies."
• More from Sim Branaghan: In the aforementioned Film on Paper article, Branaghan notes: "The treatment is tersely serious and the historical detail impressive — Friedman is very good at digging out the telling backstage anecdote or box-office snippet. Each film gets a one/two page analysis with cast and credits appended, occasionally followed by a brief overview of themed follow-ups. The oldest film discussed is Caligari (including some shrewd detail on its New York premiere) and the most recent Planet of the Apes. Hammer doesn’t appear (apart from The Nanny), but this is a far from conservative selection with some notably unusual choices."

Speaking of horror movies, check out these related Papergreat posts:

• Spooky cinema: My 53 personal favorites (2024)
• Dark & stormy night Halloween flick picks from Twitter's cool kids (2016)
• Great links: Which movies gave you the biggest fright? (2013) 

Typos and a big spoiler on VHS cover of "Night of the Living Dead"

I behaved over the past year and I've only added one VHS title to my tiny collection that includes Shock and King of the Zombies.

Mostly, I added it because it's hilarious in its audacity.

It's Congress Video Group's 1986 public-domain VHS release of George Romero's 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. 

Spoilers ahead!

The image on the front cover shows one of the very final moments of the film: Ben (Duane Jones), the main character, is being tossed into a bonfire after being mistaken for a ghoul and shot by a law enforcement posse. It's a grim and powerful moment in a visceral horror movie that eschews a cathartic ending.

Congress Video Group doubles down on the spoiler with this text on the back cover of the VHS box:

"Possibly the greatest low-budget film of all time filled with non-stop action. From the opening sequence, in which Judith O'Dea is terrorized by the first living corpse in the twilight cemetery, to the last slow dissolves and pans of still pictures, depicting the hero's death, the film is filled with ghoulish undertow that pauses only now and then on the thread-line to reality."

Maybe I'm overreacting. But I feel like, especially in 1986, there would have been plenty of potential viewers who didn't know how the film ended. 

Circling back to that (now spoiled) ending for a moment, actor Jones deserves some of the credit for how stark it was.

"I convinced George that the Black community would rather see me dead than saved, after all that had gone on, in a corny and symbolically confusing way," Jones said. "The heroes never die in American movies. The jolt of that, and the double jolt of the hero being Black seemed like a double-barreled whammy." [via SlashFilm, originally from The Wrap]

Jones, meanwhile, is disrespected by this VHS sleeve, which spells his name incorrectly as "Duanne Jones."

Judith O'Dea's name is spelled correctly. But there's another typo when Russell Streiner (Johnny, aka "They're coming to get you, Barbara" guy) is spelled as "Russel Streiner" in multiple places.

Romero receives no credit anywhere in the packaging.

According to the PD Video Wiki, Congress Video Group was founded as Memory Lane Video in 1984. The name change to Congress Video Group occurred in 1985. The company's assets were sold to Allied Film & Video Services in 1988 and Congress ceased operations in 1991. The wiki states that "Congress' tapes were of high quality," though that quality control apparently didn't extend to proofreading the packaging.

The company in its various iterations had a wide range of releases, including The Day of the Triffids, collections of mid-century cartoons, at least one Laurel & Hardy film, Three Stooges cartoons, Forbidden Planet, Little Shop of Horrors, Dementia 13, and something it called Mantis vs. Falcon Claws on the packaging. You can read about its logos at the Audiovisual Identity Database.

Here's Nebula wondering about the VHS.

"Breaking" boulder news from New Hampshire

Yesterday, a 2016 Papergreat post titled "Old postcard: 'The Mysterious Hanging Boulder' in Polar Caves" suddenly zoomed toward the top of the most-read posts.

Alas, that's because, as of yesterday, the hanging boulder is no longer hanging.

An Instagram video by Wildfernandfield first detailed the 80-ton boulder's new position, attained due to the inevitability of time and gravity. It appears that, most fortunately, no one was hurt. That Instagram video (and a subsequent Reddit thread) led a bundle of folks who wanted to see what the boulder looked like before it fell to Papergreat.

Wildfernandfield added in a comment: "We reported it, we were the first customers through the park at opening. In their morning inspection the rock was not like that."

The park is the privately owned Polar Caves Park in Rumney, New Hampshire, which issued this press release.

One commenter on Reddit wrote: "The rock is so obscure. Like there is no entries on Google about this rock besides this Papergreat site and other pages. I swear, most of us is going to learn about this rock only because of this video haha."

And one Papergreat commenter wrote: "Sad I won’t ever get to see it in person."

Well, I'm fairly certain you'll still be able to see it someday, after the park safely reopens (probably in the spring). It'll just be aligned much differently. That boulder isn't getting up and going anywhere. And we still have the old postcards.

Tucson: 2 Little Free Libraries and an air traffic control tower

We visited and added books to two more Little Free Libraries in the Tucson area today, after having also done so last month. The first is shown above and was at a business. The second one was a residential Little Free Library and is shown in the four pictures below. This is the background on its beautiful craftsmanship, per the Little Free Library app: "This library was built by my father, Angelo, in his 89th and 90th year of life. He put his whole heart and effort into it to make sure it was sturdy and would last and be enjoyed for a lifetime! My niece, Jenna, wrote sayings from many different books on the outside of the library. Our wonderful neighbors and friends helped erect the library when it was completed."

You can see Angelo's name in a little plaque on the back. His work, and the work of everyone else who helped to make this library a reality will absolutely stand for years and be a monument to them. We added some very nice books to the already robust collection. 

Finally, here's my shot of Tucson International Airport's old air traffic control tower from this morning. It opened in 1958, was "retired" in 2016 and is now being used for administrative offices. It's not far from another interesting aviation attraction in Tucson: the Boneyard, officially known as the U.S. Air Force's 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group. That's not to be the confused with the Pinal County Air Park, which is a boneyard for commerical aviation north of Tucson.

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...