1910 letter inside "Legends & Tales of Old Munich"

This letter, dated May 27, 1910, in Munich, was typed and placed inside a gift copy of Legends & Tales of Old Munich, told by Franz Trautmann (1813-1887) and translated by Amelia Curtis Stahl. 

The letter states: 

"To one who knows, loves, and embellishes the ancient, historic, and beautiful City round which the legends therein contained cluster, THIS BOOK is offered, for her gracious acceptance, by Her sincere friend,"

The last name on the signature looks like Soltau.

As to the recipient, it may be the name written on the title page (see below). I can't figure out the first letter, so it could be Meülholtz or Neülholtz or Heülholtz, or ... 

But none of those is a common German last name, so I'm clearly misinterpreting the century-old German cursive. If we toss out the first "L," the most likely name would be Neüholtz. Anyone wish to weigh in?

The chapter titles include: Concerning the Origin of the City of Munich, The Cross in the Wieskapelle, The Little Faust Tower at Sendling Gate, Dragon Corner on the Market-Place, The Spoon Landlord behind the Rathhaus, The Black Footprint under the Organ of Unser Franen, The Monkey on St. Laurenz, The Hunger Bell in Theatine Monastery and the Theatine Clock, and Concerning Ghosts and Apparitions in Munich. 

There are no online reviews of this 1910 book, but, just last summer, Lunte Books in Eugene, Oregon, did a 23-minute examination of the book on its YouTube channel. Very cool and valuable for the historic record! 

A commenter on the video states: "Now this is the kind of travel book that I truly enjoy — To learn about a country's culture, and not just see sites or read descriptions of buildings — This fuller picture makes the destination much more compelling. Thanks for discussing this book, and for giving so many fascinating details."

Book cover: "A Dream of Dracula" — plus other vampire stuff

• Title: A Dream of Dracula
• Subtitle: In Search of the Living Dead
• Author: Leonard Wolf (1923-2019). He was featured in a 2023 Papergreat post about another book of his: 1968's Voices from the Love Generation.
• Dust jacket design: John Renfer, using a 1941 photo that's copyrighted by RKO Pictures.
• Publication date: 1972
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 327
• Dust jacket price: $8.95 (which would a steep $67 in February 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Dedication: "This book is dedicated Bram Stoker on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of DRACULA."
• Excerpt #1: "Meanwhile, somewhere in that field of desire and Coca-Colas, hashish, LSD and old-fashioned, ordinary picnic pleasure, a child is born." [Wolf is writing about the Altamont Free Concert of 1969.]
• Excerpt #2: "Dracula is from the moment that we meet him in Bram Stoker's novel a dry horror, which is a way of saying that he is intelligent evil, unlike the wet, slime-covered things that slide through our instinctive dreams."
• Excerpt #3: "Vampires have even been reported in Outer Mongolia. And if Hollywood is any prophet, they will be found waiting for mankind on planets where our rocket ships have not yet landed."
• Excerpt #4: "Christopher Lee is the best and most famous screen Dracula since Bela Lugosi. I sat in his London living room, which felt as if all of its mirrors, couches, tables and walls had been dipped into a tasteful sea-green dye. Lee had the color television on and was watching an important cricket match. ... He spoke more or less nonstop, in a rich but curiously charged voice. It was at once evident that he took the role of Dracula with great seriousness and had read all about Stoker and the folklore of vampires. He had very clear opinions about his relationship to the role. He pointed out that he had nothing to do with the scripts of the films he made."
• Excerpt #5: "Dracula, then, is a novel that lurches toward greatness, stumbling over perceived and unperceived mysteries: Christianity, insanity, identity, a spectrum of incest possibilities, marriage, homosexuality, immortality and death." 
• Excerpt #6: "The vampire fascinates a century that is as much frightened as it is exhilarated by its rush toward sexual freedom. ... He kiss permits all unions. ... Moreover, his is an easy love that evades the usual failures of the flesh. ... And it stands for death."   
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.68 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2014, Aric Cushing summed it up thusly: "A personal journey through a landscape of childhood dreams, melancholy, and vampire sentiment."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.1 stars (out of 5) 
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2004, mirasreviews wrote: "'A Dream of Dracula' is a meditation on the novel 'Dracula' and its 20th century progeny — literary, cultural, and personal — published on the 75th anniversary of Bram Stoker's novel, in 1972. A few years later, author Leonard Wolf would publish the most elaborately annotated version of 'Dracula.' Wolf is one of the world's foremost 'Dracula' scholars, but the novel has touched him more intimately than other academics. 'A Dream of Dracula' is a collection of ruminations on 'Dracula,' vampires, blood, and death, often is a stream of conscious style, all connected, directly or loosely, to the 19th century gothic novel whose popularity is set to survive longer than even its vampiric villain did. The book's ten chapters weave in and out of the past and present."
• Other views: The book is discussed by "Tinhuviel Artanis" in a 2006 LiveJournal post: "This is ... one of the best books on the subject of vampires, vampirism, the folklore of the the vampire, and the vampire's influence on popular culture. Published in 1972, it has that air of revolution, the quest for freedom, and the celebration of the absurd wrapped neatly in its poetry." ... And Alex Bledsoe wrote about Wolf's book on his blog, stating: "Wolf was actually born in Transylvania, and the book is a dive into both the legend of Dracula in popular culture, and into the psyche of Leonard Wolf. One is obviously more interesting now than the other, but even the personal asides and extended vignettes have their entertainment value. Wolf was writing at the end of the Sixties, so some of his interviewees actually use phrases like, 'groovy' and 'turned on.'"

But wait, there's more

I've been keeping some vampiric tidbits tucked away, but they'll never make their own standalone post, so I'm posting them here:

A 2023 tweet:

Mark Hodgson of the website Black Hole wrote in 2014 about 1921's Drakula halála, a now-lost film that predates Nosferatu as an adaptation of Stoker's novel. Hodgson writes: "While the plot doesn't follow Stoker's novel, many situations are familiar from it. Dracula's immortality, his castle, his brides, Mary's suffering health after meeting him, the asylum ... possibly the story elements were juggled to dodge any copyright issue?"

Also in 2014, Hodgson wrote a fun post on Black Hole about visiting Bela Lugosi's former home.

And speaking of Lugosi, here's a photo I took recently of a Lugosi life mask mounted on the wall at Terror Trader, an amazeballs horror-themed store in Chandler, Arizona.

Book cover: "Monsters and Nightmares"

Here's the first Mild Fear entry of 2025. Mild Fear definitely applies, because nothing on this blog, especially regarding fictitious and literary things that go bump in the night, approaches the horror of certain things transpiring in the real world at this moment. 

• Title: Monsters and Nightmares 
• Additional cover text: "Hideous tales resurrected from tombs, decaying graves, vaults of death and the blood-soaked lips of vampires ... GRAPHICALLY ILLUSTRATED"
• Author: Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987). Other books by Hurwood were covered on Papergreat in 2024 and 2021. Hurwood also wrote under the pseudonym Mallory T. Knight.
• Illustrator: Unknown, which is a shame. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "The cover artist is not credited, there is a partial signature [not recognized]. The interior artwork is not credited [by more than one artist], only a couple of pieces are signed."
• Publisher: Belmont (B50-735)
• Year: 1967
• Pages: 156
• Format: Paperback
• Cover price: 50 cents
• Provenance: The name Alan Giannini is written in cursive and pencil on the first page.
• Table of contents: Very colorful chapter titles! See the photo below for the full contents. There are a wer-hyena, a Russian Rip Van Winkle, a haunted vault, screaming skulls, cannibals, demon drummers, banshees, vampires and much more.
• Excerpt #1: "The count was so overjoyed at this turn of events that he refused to punish the undertaker."
• Excerpt #2: "To many it seemed as though the end of the world were at hand."
• Excerpt #3: "Fortunately the concept of therapy through terror came to an end in the 18th century."
• Excerpts from Hurwood's epilogue: "Take heart, dear reader (as they used to say in bygone day), the worst is over. There is no more need to shudder. You are safe from vampires. They have probably formed a union and would refuse to suck your blood unless it met carefully prescribed standards of purity unattainable in this century. ... As far as ghosts, and other assorted supernatural spirits are concerned, you have little to fear. At the rate the Great Society is destroying old landmarks, houses, mansions, and other assorted architectural relics, there won't be any places left for ghosts to haunt. ... What is the mere plague of the Black Death compared to the perpetual threat of nuclear warfare? ... All of our present day horrors notwithstanding — income tax, television commercials and uglification (to mention only a few) things could be worse. At least we can all still indulge ourselves in certain ways. We can still set forth on that most intimate of affairs, the one that each of us embarks upon each time we pick up a book and read it." 
• Online thoughts: There's not much in the way of reviews or criticism about this book on the internet. ... In a 2013 post on the Amazing Stories blog about Hurwood's books, the writer mentions Monsters and Nightmares in passing. And he notes: "I think it’s a great shame, but Mr. Hurwood isn’t exactly a household name. He deserves to be one though. ... Several of his books on the occult were short snappy retellings of European and Asian legends of ghosts, demons and various monsters such as werewolves and vampires. Several of the collections were cannibalized and repackaged by the Scholastic Book club under such titles as Ghosts, Ghouls and Other Horrors and Vampires, Werewolves and Other Demons." ... Separately, Lee Harper Oswald mused a little bit about Monsters and Nightmares and Hurwood in a 2020 blog post.

Speaking of nightmares

A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare that I think was partly fueled by the post-operative oxycodone I've been taking. I usually can't remember dreams well, but what I typed up the next morning as I tried to recall/interpret the dream is both a bit creepy and a bit too on-point:

"For a long period, I had been making unsafe and unauthorized trips to the rooftop of the large building in which I lived. I was addicted to the thrill of walking or running across the rooftops. But, even more so, I was strangely addicted to the terror of the presence that followed just behind me, just out of sight, as I went across the rooftops. It was a very dangerous, and I didn't have the feeling that I was always just eluding it as much as it was letting me elude it. But then I stopped the habit and stopped going to the rooftops. But The Presence wouldn't let this stand. It was either intruding into my everyday existence in the lower parts of the house, or calling me back to the rooftops. It was no longer a thing I could resist or elude."

Somewhere out there: Unpublished stories by Ruth Manning-Sanders

Lay's Auctioneers in the United Kingdom had another high-price auction today involving material from the estate of Ruth Manning-Sanders. (I wrote about an earlier one in January 2023.) Tantalizingly, this one focused on Manning-Sanders' papers and, specifically, her unpublished stories! Boxes and boxes of unpublished stories. (Gasp!)

This was the official auction listing:

"A vast collection of folk stories and fairy tales in typescript.

A very large collection containing thousands of folk stories from around the world, almost all in typescript with graphite notes to titles showing origin, included in this important collection are unpublished works including the novel 'Fog in the Channel'.

"Ruth Manning-Sanders was best known for her collections of fairy tales and folktales from around the world. Her significance lies in her dedication to preserving and sharing traditional stories from various cultures. While some fairy tales were well-known and widely published, Manning-Sanders sought out and shared lesser-known stories. This helped shed light on narratives that might have been overlooked and ensured that a broader range of cultural traditions was represented in her collection at a time when the field of folklore and fairy tale collections was often dominated by male scholars. Manning-Sanders made a significant contribution as a female folklorist. Her work helped pave the way for a more inclusive representation of voices in the study and preservation of folklore.

"An important collection of folk and fairy stories.

"From the estate of the authors descendants."

So, we now know that Manning-Sanders wrote an unpublished novel titled Fog in the Channel. I wonder what decade it's from. Was this one of her novels for adults from her early writing days? Or one of her later juvenile novels? Perhaps the individual who won this lot will seek to have it published some day. I think it's also fair to hope that these papers and ephemera will eventually be housed in a research library. I'm glad they still exist, and I hope they continue to exist for future scholars.

Notes on these papers also serve to further emphasize the important role that Manning-Sanders' daughter, Joan Floyd, played in her mother's writing efforts. They truly seemed to be a two-person team in the creation of many of the folklore and fairy tale collections.

Here are some more of the Lay's Auctioneers photos from the auction preview, for posterity:

Book cover: "Challenge to Reality"

"Challenge to Reality" feels like an apt phrase as we enter this daunting year.

• Title: Challenge to Reality
• Author: John Macklin. I can't find much biographical information on him, despite his many published works. We do have this information from the front of the book: "For nearly 20 years John Macklin, expert in psychic phenomena and the supernatural, has hunted ghosts. He has crossed three continents chasing stories, spent countless nights in 'haunted' houses, focused his infra-red camera on curious sights, and his microphone on curious sounds. Most of the events have had some rational solution at their roots. But some haven't. ... Nine times out of ten, the 'phenomenon' turns out to be an illusion, delusion, or fraud. For twenty years, it's been Mr. Macklin's job to investigate the tenth. ... These, then, are the stories of the author's experiences, and other stories he has collected over the years."
• Cover designer: Unknown
• Publication date: 1968
• Publisher: Ace Star (H-108)
• Pages: 158
• Format: Paperback
• Cover price: 60 cents
• Some chapter titles: The Mummy in the Clock Case; The Dream House That Percy Built; The Deadly Nightmare of Emily Jones; What Did the Axe-Man See?; The Dinner Guest No One Else Saw; The Ghosts of Ballechin House; The Tomb of Standing Stones; The Witch and the Waif; Riddle of a Hundred Lost Islands; The Riddle of the Musical Plants; Little Girl Lost; The Witch Who Laughs at the Law; and The Ghostly Glow from Waltham Abbey.
• Excerpt #1: "Many stories make us realize just how powerful superstition can be. For instance, many years ago, when a bridge was being built in Germany, influential townspeople would insist that a living child be buried in the foundations. They believed that the foundations would then remain firm. And the younger the person, the longer it would remain so."
• Wait, is that true? Well, it's a long-lived bit of grisly folklore, though it's certainly not limited to Germany. Some believe that there are implied references to child sacrifice in the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down," though there are scores of speculative guesses at the "historical" references in that song, and they should all be taken with a grain of salt (Hey, another superstition!).
• Excerpt #2: "The specter turned, and the terrified woman saw the enormous, longboned hands and the large protruding eyes. The man, who wore a long robe tied around the middle, nodded his head in a very peculiar way towards her husband, then vanished."
• Excerpt #3: "The awe-inspiring specter that suddenly appeared in front of Charles Winston in 1901 was of the type known as a Radiant Boy. They are usually reckoned to warn of impending death."
• Amazon review: In 2011, Bookworm70 wrote, scathingly: "Books of John Macklin are easy to read. They contain events, mysteries and other phenomena considered to be out of this world. However, the problem with his works, they contain a lot of errors and do not agree with historical facts."
• Fanzine mention: In Scottishe #52, a zine published by Ethel Lindsay (1921-1996) in May 1969, Lindsay writes: "This is the eighth in a series by Macklin, so his collections of ghost strories [sic] must be a good seller. Each collection has about forty stories."
• Other books by Macklin: Strange Destinies, The Strange and Uncanny, The Enigma of the Unknown, Dwellers in Darkness, Orbits of the Unknown, Dimensions Beyond the Known, A Look Through Secret Doors and Journey Beyond the Grave.

But wait, there's more

A fun bonus: There was an old receipt tucked away inside this paperback book. I can't say for sure that this is the receipt from the book's original purchase, but that's a good bet. Someone paid $1.04 (99 cents, plus 5 cents tax) at the Stanford Sport Shop in Palo Alto, California, on August 29, 1969. According to Palo Alto Weekly, the Stanford Sport Shop rented and sold skis, shoes and sports gear for 53 years, until it closed in 1989. Geoff Millington and his daughter Tracy Millington operated the business. If Challenge to Reality was sold there in 1969, it seems they had a book rack, too. Something to read in front of the fireplace at night after a day on the slopes?

Examining "The Abominable Snowman" from all sides in 1977

Previous Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree children's books covered on Papergreat:

• This House is Haunted!
• The Case of the Ancient Astronauts
• Visions of the Future: Magic Boards

Today's book...

• Title: The Abominable Snowman
• Author: Barbara Antonopulos. I can't find anything about her or anything else she wrote. That's a mystery we should solve.
• Cover illustrator: Lynn Sweat
• Interior illustrations: Nilda Scherer (that includes the one above and the one below). A 1981 article in The New York Times mentions in passing that Scherer also worked as a courtroom sketch artist.
• Publisher: A Contemporary Perspectives Inc. (CPI) book distributed by Raintree Children's Books, Milwaukee
• Year: 1977
• Pages: 48
• Format: Hardcover
• Photo research: "All photo research for this book was provided by Roberta Guerette." 
• Chapter titles: Monster of the Moutain; Just How Abominable Is the Snowman?; Footprints in the Snow; Hillary's Search; The Village of Beding; The Snowman's Scalp; Man or Myth?; American Relatives?
• First sentences: A small group of men made their way slowly up the steep mountain slope. The air was still. No one spoke as they climbed. Each man thought only of the blinding white snow and the steep mountain still ahead of him. Suddenly, the men froze in terror.
• Last sentences: If these beasts are actually living in the mountains and forests around us, hopefully one day we will be able to prove that they do exist. By studying the Abominable Snowman, we may shed new light on the way people and animals have changed since prehistoric times. At this time, however, the strange case of the Abominable Snowman remains a great, unsolved mystery.
• Pause for comment: I think it's important to point out here that these Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree books were rarely hyperbolic or sensationalized. Yes, they were attempting to attract young readers with topics like ghosts, spooky mysteries, cryptozoology, etc. — stuff most kids are fascinated by. And it was the 1970s, when Leonard Nimoy's In Search of... was a popular TV show. But, generally, these are reasonable, thoughtful children's books that try to get young readers to think about what is and isn't credible and decide for themselves. As I included in the Visions of the Future: Magic Boards post, one librarian stated, "We found that the books represented, throughout, both sides of the issue."
• Excerpt from the middle #1: The scalp was examined by scientists in Chicago and Paris. But they didn't believe it had once belonged to a Snowman. In Chicago they believed that the "scalp" was really the hide of a serow — a wild goat antelope.
• Excerpt from the middle #2: Others say the Abominable Snowman is really a human being. Lamas, the religious men of Nepal, sometimes wander in the mountains by themselves. From a distance, dressed in their large hooded robes, they could be mistaken for a Snowman.
• About the above illustration: The illustration of Mih-Teh, Thelma and Dzu-Teh shows what the Sherpas describe as three types of Yeti. The largest is Dzu-Teh, which can be up to 8 feet tall. The middle-sized one is Mih-Teh, which is the fiercest and the most dangerous to man. And the smallest is Thelma, which is about the size of a human teenager. And it turns out that "Thelma" is as incorrect as it seems. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman pointed out on Twitter earlier this year: "The editor of this book ... inserted a typo in the mix. The Teh-Ima, the Little Yeti, is a definite part of the history, not 'Thelma.'" You can read more about this on the Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.80 stars (out of 5)
• Rating on Amazon: 4.00 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review: Matthew wrote: "This book I read when I was 9. It introduced me to the world of cryptids, ufos, and the paranormal. I've been looking everywhere for this book as I want to relive the nostalgia. Very good introduction to the abominable snowman."
• Twitter mention #1: Folk Horror Revival (@folk_horror) calls it "a cool little book" and highlights more of the illustrations by Nilda Scherer.
• Twitter mention #2: Richard Fay, responding to a post about favorite childhood books, wrote: "THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN by Barbara Antonopulos. Actually, the library in my grade school had a whole series of books about monsters and the unexplained. I read and re-read all of them! A while back, I ordered three of them to add to my personal library."
• Movie moment: There are many, many movies about Yeti and Sasquatch. Most of them are low-budget films made during the 1970s that will likely never receive a Criterion release. I have not seen many movies from this genre, unless you're counting animated Christmas specials. My one recommendation, as a fan of most things Hammer, would be 1957's The Abominable Snowman, featuring Peter Cushing. And my recommendation of one to avoid would be 1977's Snowbeast. Joan and I watched it in August 2008 and, in our movie-watching journal, I wrote: "This made-for-TV flick is basically 'Jaws' with a Yeti, which we barely ever get to see. It's also 'Jaws' without a good script, good directing, good editing and good acting. But, hey, it's got Bo freaking Svenson." Why is that this 1977 children's book treated its audience with more respect than a movie made for adults in the same year? 

"A Treasury of Witches and Wizards" — briefly annotated

That's Phantom. Isn't she pretty?

This book was one of my recent finds at the Goodwill store in Queen Creek, Arizona. Published in 1996 by Kingfisher¹, it's A Treasury of Witches and Wizards, as chosen by David Bennett. This particular book is interesting because: (1) it collects the Ruth Manning-Sanders retelling of the Tyrolean tale "Gold," from 1966's A Book of Wizards; (2) one of its previous owners — a parent? a teacher? storyteller?  — has annotated the table of contents to provide some subjective thoughts on the 15 stories.

Here's the table of contents and its annotations:

• "The Hare and the Black and White Witch" by Lynne Reid Banks — No!
• "Petronella" by Jay Williams — fair, long
• "Gold" by Ruth Manning-Sanders — fair to good, long
• "The Mean Pear Seller" by Floella Benjamin — OK to good lesson, short
• "The Boy with Two Shadows" by Margaret Mahy — kinda cute
• "The Not-Very-Nice Prince" by Pamela Oldfield — fair 
• "Yashka and the Witch" by Stephen Corrin — fair
• "The Improving Mirror" by Terry Jones — fair to good
• "Jack My Lad" by Alan Garner — fair to good
• "The Fat Wizard" by Diana Wynne Jones — too long
• "Glooskap and the Sorcerer" by Gillian Osband — fair - 
• "Lizzie Dripping and the Witch" by Helen Cresswell
• "The Tale of the Three Tails" by Charles J. Finger — good but long
• "Hamish and the Wee Witch" by Moira Miller — good for Halloween, adapt & shorten
• "Anancy, Old Witch and King-Daughter" by James Berry — fair

Final note: The cover illustration is by Virginia Chalcraft and the interior illustrations, including those on the table of contents, are by Jacqui Thomas.

 

Footnote 

1. The publisher's full name is Larousse Kingfisher Chambers Inc., and I'm unsure whether it's still in business.

1970s folklore rarity: "ghost, ghouls and golems."

Author Nina Antonia was the first to put this staplebound booklet on my radar, when she tweeted about it on July 27.¹ It's titled ghost, ghouls and golems. — I'm keeping the lowercase and the period intact — with the subtitle "THIRTEEN DEVONIAN GHOST STORIES."

It was published circa 1975/1976 by the Beaford Centre Community Arts Project. 

The 60-page booklet is, as of this writing, listed on eBay for £50. It seems to be quite the rarity from nearly a half-century ago and I think it's worth documenting what we can about it here, for posterity. There will be no second printing. What we know comes mostly from the pictures attached to the eBay listing.

Beaford is a small village in Devon, England. The Beaford Centre, now known as Beaford Arts, was established in 1966 to promote and support artists in that rural region of Devon. A short paragraph in this booklet of ghost stories explains how it came about: "These thirteen stories were chosen from among the entries to a Ghost Story Writing Contest organised by the Beaford Centre Community Arts Project in the autumn of 1975. We would like to thank the authors of the stories for allowing us to print them. We would also like to thank Barbara Woodland for typing them out, and Graeme Rigby for designing and printing the booklet."

Thanks to the photos with the eBay listing, here's the table of contents, along with the 13 authors.

UNEASY SPIRITS

• Rose of Marsland, by E.W.F. Tomlin
• The Powers That Be, by Jane Reed
• The Warning, by Veronica Warner

SPIRITS OF THE SEA

• The Grey Lady, by S. Gorrell
• The Captain's Cabin, by John F. McKno

DEVILS, DOGS & DEMONS

• The Devil: A Bit Of Hot Stuff, by G.H. Hackett
• Black Dog, by Geoffrey Skinner
• The Old Evil, by M.A. Russell
• The Power Of The Megalith, by E. Clay

TRUE STORIES

• "My Grandfather was Walking," by M. Incledon-Webber
• Mahala, by M.J. Wreford
• First You Dee It, Then You Don't, by W.J. Nott
• Owing To The Depression, by Ruby Ewings

I'll leave it to someone else to try researching all of those Devonians. 

Antonia's tweet this summer led to a little discussion about the booklet and local folklore in general. I think parts of that are worth saving, too, before they become a lost corner of the internet.

• @HooklandGuide: Persactly this. I still have my childhood booklet on Essex’s Black Dog Paths.
• @NinaAntonia13: Have you dared to venture down any of them?
• @HooklandGuide: I think you can guess that I spent a lot of my very early teens cycling down then and exploring them thoroughly.
• @NinaAntonia13: I would have expected nothing less! :)
• @MelanieWoods65: That looks like a little gem. I love these kinds of publications & it being about ghosts is a double bonus.

Footnote

1. Antonia has long been one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter, with past tweets inspiring the pre-pandemic posts Regarding Estella Canziani and Who wants to join me in buying a crumbling, haunted British estate?

Horst Schönwalter illustrations of Ruth Manning-Sanders' dwarfs

Das Buch von den Zwergen is the 1972 German-language edition of Ruth Manning-Sanders' A Book of Dwarfs, which was published in 1963. While English-language readers fell in love with the illustrations that Robin Jacques provided for that edition, German readers were treated to the delightful illustrations by Horst Schönwalter (1917-1996).

The illustration at the top of the post goes with "The Girl Who Picked Strawberries" ("Das Mädchen, das Erdbeeren pflücken wollte"). It's about a girl who uses her ingenuity and takes advantage of these particular dwarfs' dimwittedness to escape a difficult situation. 

There's another tale in the book about a trio of dwarfs who live in the forest — I guess that was trendy in those days. In "The Three Little Men in the Wood," the dwarfs reward kindness and punish greed, leading to a nicely satisfying ending. Oddly, that one also involves strawberries.

Here are some of Schönwalter's other illustrations from Das Buch von den Zwergen...

Favorite first-time watches thus far in 2023

Where Chimneys Are Seen

Marjoe

Synecdoche, New York

Through the first five months of the year, I haven't watched as many movies as I would have liked. There are a lot of reasons, including getting into a daily rut that involves winding down for bed around 8:30 p.m., the fact that Ashar and I have been primarily watching streaming series and, of course, taking care of the many cats 24/7.¹

Last year I shared a list of my 20 favorite "first-time watches." I looked over what I've watched so far this year (written down in my cat-chewed Story Supply Co. notebook) and started mulling what might make the year-end list for 2023.

The best movie I've watched this year is 1953's Where Chimneys Are Seen, directed by Heinosuke Gosho and starring Kinuyo Tanaka and Hideko Takamine. It's an outstanding drama that revolves around a group of struggling Japanese citizens and how they deal with a baby that is suddenly thrust into their midst.

This is my short list of first-time watches that are most likely to be considered for the year-end list:

• Dead of Night (1945)
• Where Chimneys Are Seen (1953)
• Marjoe (1972 documentary)
• The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)
• Synecdoche, New York (2008)
• Game Night (2018)

My most recent first-time watch was 1958's Black Cat Mansion, directed by Nobuo Nakagawa. It's part of the delightful Japanese subgenre of "ghost cat" films. It is also, decades before Ringu/The Ring, an early example of the Japanese horror trope of the slow-moving supernatural entity with long hair covering its face.

Now I want to track down some other films by Nakagawa. He's most famous for 1960's Jigoku, but I've read a lot about that one, and it sounds too grim/depressing/sadistic for my taste. One that I would like to watch is 1949's The Adventures of Tobisuke. With this poster, how can you go wrong?

Footnote

1. That includes the growing population of outdoor feral cats. This morning I had multiple visits between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. from Creamy, Fjord, Mittens, Cirque, Big Boi and Mamacita and her still-unnamed but very hungry kitten (pictured at right). Also, I discovered yesterday that Cirque has at least four kittens of her own, which are about a month old. They're in the neighbor's yard and inaccessible because of a tall wall, which is a conundrum. Also, Mamacita is almost certainly pregnant again. We need to get the TNR into a higher gear.

My bumper stickers

I was never much of a bumper sticker guy until the past few years. I'm not sure what my aversion to decorating the car's rump was. Perhaps I didn't want strangers knowing anything about me. Perhaps I found the endless stickers featuring sports teams, stick figures, colleges, presidential candidates and that kid from "Calvin and Hobbes" peeing to be clichéd. (Of course, Scatological Calvin is incredibly mild compared to the today's tsunami of bumper stickers featuring vulgar and/or hateful phrases you wouldn't want to repeat in front of your kid, your grandmother or you cat.)

But I think the combination of the pandemic, turning 50 and seeing how important public visibility is for vulnerable and marginalized groups unlocked a higher level of What Do You Care What Other People Think? within me. So I began adding stickers to the bumper of my blue Honda Civic.

Unsurprisingly, most of these are directly tied to things I've written about on Papergreat. My passions here are my passions in the physical world.

Pictured above are most of my current bumper stickers. I think this is good for posterity, too, because these are pieces of ephemera that will not last. They can't be put into an envelope for safekeeping. In the unlikely event that they survive many years of Arizona sun and weathering, I'll have to part with them when I eventually get another car. 

Featured bumper sticker themes, as you can see, include the long-gone Brigantine Castle in New Jersey; WNEP-TV's Hatchy Milatchy; the outstanding podcast Fairy Tale Fix; the artist SpaceMonsterKid; Star Trek and now-defunct WKBS-48; and an illustration by Philadelphia artist Hannah Carnes, who goes by iamfartist on Instagram.

I discovered SpaceMonsterKid in August 2020 when Ashar and I took a side trip to Sutton, West Virginia, and the Flatwoods Monster Museum. I was surprised to discover that I've never mentioned that on the blog. I'll rectify that this weekend, because I got some interesting photos during our short time there.