A 1975 introduction to horror cinema

Here's Smoky with 1975's Movie Monsters by Thomas G. Aylesworth. This is a battered (aka "much read") copy in a school library binding. Although someone removed all of the circulation cards and tried to obscure its provenance with a thick black marker, I can tell you that this copy was in the Brandywine Heights Elementary School library in Topton, Pennsylvania. 

This was a right proper book for an elementary school library in the 1970s, when monster-loving kids wore turtlenecks and corduroy trousers and inhabited a world with the hue of Polaroid photos and the haze of cigarette smoke. Aylesworth's book covers King Kong, Godzilla, Frankenstein's creature, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Fly, Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein ("the greatest monster sequel," it states), Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man and Dr. Moreau's creatures (Charles Laughton version). 

There's also a section on the greatest copycat monsters, which basically calls the Hammer creatures of Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed nothing more than "interesting copies." And there's a short section on the greatest monster actors of all time, which cites only Lon Chaney Sr., Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. The list could have been a bit lengthier and more expansive — Fay Wray? Elsa Lanchester? Barbara Steele? Agnes Moorehead? I know the idea of Scream Queens was still a few years away in 1975, but it would have been nice for Aylesworth to honor some horror actress pioneers.

Still, this book served as an solid gateway to horror cinema for a lot of kids nearly a half-century ago. In a 2009 review on Amazon, Rodney writes: "This was quite possibly the first book I purchased on my own as a kid. It set the stage for a life long love of monsters and horror movies."

And in a 2018 review on Goodreads, Timothy writes: "I had any of Aylesworth's books I could get my hands on ... when I was a kid. Read them over and over. It's 40 years later, and I am still an obsessed Monster Movies fan. I wish I could have met the man as an adult and told him how much joy I got from reading these little books, over and over and over."

Indeed, Aylesworth (1927-1995) wrote a lot of books for kids who were curious about monsters, ghosts, spooks and the paranormal. Even by 1975, he had quite the impressive bibliography, as seen here on the "Other books by..." page at the front of Movie Monsters. 

His papers from 1968 through 1983 are held at the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. That website's biographical note states that when Aylesworth began writing nonfiction for children, he focused topics of science and the environment: "He enjoyed tremendous success with This Vital Air, This Vital Water (1968), a book on environmental pollution that was translated into seven languages. After hosting a houseguest with an interest in astrology and witchcraft, Aylesworth began writing juvenile books on the occult. Servants of the Devil (1971), a book on witches, was well received and followed by similar titles on vampires, werewolves, mythological beasts, and paranormal phenomena. He also served as ghostwriter for young readers' autobiographies of several celebrities and co-wrote a series of seventeen travel books with his wife, Virginia."

Send the Popcorn Clown to get me

For the second year in a row, I whiffed on October/Halloween posts. I had so many grand plans and so much spooky/fun stuff lined up on the runway. Once again, I blame cats, work and the Phillies for stealing all my available time, but ultimately the blame should be directed at me. I just wasn't disciplined enough to keep Papergreat rolling during the best month of the year.

This clown was going to be part of the Mild Fear festivities. Maybe my punishment should be having to hang out with him in a haunted house on a dark and stormy night. 

Anyway, this colorful postcard was published in 1968 by Yankee Colour Corp. of Massachusetts. It shows — in the happy days long before Poltergeist and Bob Gray flipped the script on clowns — a red-haired clown selling popcorn in a Boston-area park. The caption on the back explains:

"Ye Days of Yore ... saw this Popcorn Wagon built by Mr. [Eleftherios] Alexion in South Boston, Mass., in 1915. Travelling Boston for 48 years, he became friend of young and young-at-heart at his frequented stop between the Common and Public Garden. Acquired by Mr. [Joseph A.] Coyle in 1963, this wagon still pops corn in a wire basket over white gas flame."

I wonder what happened to the wagon, which would be 108 years old now and would certainly be museum-worthy. 

When this postcard was posted on Facebook by Vintage Roadside, most of the comments were exactly what you'd expect. But I did like this one from Mary Beth: "I think this is really sweet, but I’m from the pre-scary clown era. What a lovely man to have spent 48 years brightening up days for kids and adults with fresh popcorn. Hard for me to see anything other than good vibes here. Send in the clowns — I love ‘em."

Maybe it's time to bring back Good Clowns and give them another chance. What do we think?

In the meantime, now I have the upcoming late autumn and winter to put all of my belated Halloween posts onto Papergreat. Winter chills, indeed.

Postcard of cat on a broomstick

This is one of my favorite Halloween-themed Postcrossing cards that I've received this autumn. Unfortunately, there's no clear indication who the illustrator is on this Hogwarts-inspired card. 

It was sent by Yi-Ning, who lives in Taiwan with four cats — Bacon, Babao, Licon and iPhoenix — all of whom are rescued strays, which warms my heart. Yi-Ning has some limitations due to health issues, but works part-time helping elderly citizens at the hospital and is a powerhouse on Postcrossing, with more than 8,000 cards sent and received. Postcards really do let you travel the world and meet other people, with the mailbox serving as your magic portal. I'm glad our portals connected.

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? 

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?

Hans Holzer's "Window to the Past: Exploring History Through ESP"

Here's another in an occasional series about the more obscure paperbacks penned by parapsychologist and ghost hunter Hans Holzer. The most recent post before this looked at Charismatics.

• Title: Window to the Past: Exploring History Through ESP
• Additional cover text: Psychic "conversations" with some of the great figures of the past (at least they put "conversations" in quotation marks)
• Author: Hans Holzer (1920-2009)
• Cover designer: Unknown
• Cover model: Unknown
• Interior illustrations: Catherine Buxhoeveden (born 1939). Holzer and Buxhoeveden were married in 1962 and later divorced. She provided illustrations for several of his books, including this one. (One of her illustrations is below.) The Internet Speculative Fiction Database states: "A sixth generation descendant of Catherine the Great, Countess Catherine Geneviève Buxhoeveden's family were Russian royalty in exile, living in France until the beginning of World War II, when they settled in Italy (1935). Catherine was born shortly thereafter in Castle Rovina. ... Catherine, sometimes referred to as 'The Haunted Countess,' believed that the castle in which she was born had been haunted." Alexandra Holzer, the daughter of Hans and Catherine, penned the 2008 book Growing Up Haunted: A Ghostly Memoir.
• Questions posed on the back cover: Who really planned Lincoln's murder, carried out by John Wilkes Booth? ... Where did the Vikings land in America 500 years before Columbus? ... Did Camelot really exist? ... What is the truth behind the Mayerling tragedy? ... Was Aaron Burr really the villain history has made him out to be? ... Why was Nell Gwyn dropped by her royal lover Charles II?
• Publication date: May 1970
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Format: Paperback
• Original publication: January 1969, by Doubleday & Company
• Alternate title: This book has also been released as Window to the Past: How Psychic Time Travel Reveals the Secrets of History.
• Pages: 232
• Cover price: 95 cents
• Provenance: "Michael Faulkner from Bill McNeese"
• First sentences:  "Goodness," Ethel Johnson Meyers said, and looked at me with a big frown that turned matriarchal face into a question mark, "What on earth is that fat fellow doing with all those dancing girls in harem costumes?" Ethel wasn't watching the Late Late Show. She was holding a cigarette case I had handed her for the purpose of psychometrizing it."
• Last sentence: It is as if we are privileged to be present at the events themselves, catapulted back in time, eavesdropping and observing without being seen, but recording for our time that which is of another time.
• Random excerpt #1: If Edwin Booth came through Sybil Leek to tell us what he knew of his brother's involvement in Lincoln's death, perhaps he did so because John Wilkes never got around to clear his name himself.
• Random excerpt #2: All this correspondence came to a sudden climax when Johnstone informed me that new digs were going on at what might or might not be the true site of Camelot.
• Random excerpt #3: I thanked Alice and decided to hold another investigation at the site of Café Bizarre¹, since the restless spirit of the late Vice-President of the United States had evidently decided to be heard once more.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.65 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2012, Mike S wrote, "author writes very clearly and I found him to be quite likeable from the book. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in esp or remote viewing."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.8 stars (out of 5) 
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2019, J.H. Clemson wrote, "My grandfather was with Hans Holzer and Sybil Leek on the Constellation in Baltimore. My grandfather was involved in the restoration of the ship as part of the Maryland Naval Militia and was invited along. He attested to all that went on! So I can say that at least that part of the book is accurate!"

Footnote

1. According to Rock & Roll Roadmaps, Café Bizarre in Greenwich Village was the club were Andy Warhol discovered The Velvet Underground; Warhol soon became their manager. And, according to a 2013 comment on Rock & Roll Roadmaps, the site of Café Bizarre was said to be "the former stable of Aaron Burr, who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Still the wodden [sic] loft which looked very much like the hayloft of a barn." Café Bizarre as razed around 1984 and the site is now part of the NYU's law school dormitories.

Book cover: "The Grandmother Stone" (aka "Stone of Terror")

• Title: The Grandmother Stone
• Author: Margaret Greaves (1914-1995). She was an English teacher who wrote many books, nearly all well-received, including The Dagger and The Bird, The Gryphon Quest, The Abbotsbury Ring and Cat's Magic. In a 2018 tweet (post on X), Christine Chambers raved, "Margaret Greaves is a wonderful story teller somehow keeps you guessing and gives you wonderfully magical descriptions." It definitely seems like it would be worthwhile to track down some more of Greaves' folklore-fueled novels.
• Cover illustrator: Gareth Floyd (1940-2023). He died just last month, and his daughter Emma penned his obituary for The Guardian. She notes that her father provided many illustrations for the popular BBC children's show Jackanory: "Jackanory usually involved an actor, seated in an armchair, reading from children’s novels, with specially commissioned drawings shown on screen at various intervals. Gareth provided illustrations for more than 150 of its episodes." She also adds this delightful detail: "In addition to his drawing, Gareth was an excellent model maker, building miniature railway engines from scratch and running them on a track in his basement." Floyd's full dust jacket illustration can be seen below.
• Publication date: 1972. 
• Publisher: Methuen Children's Books, Ltd.
• This edition: This copy is the 1980 reprint by Methuen.
• 
  U.S. version: The book was also published as Stone of Terror: A Story of Suspense by Harper & Row in 1974. I reckon the UK title wasn't considered spooky enough for the U.S. market.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 173
• Dust jacket price: £5.95
• Dust jacket excerpt: "It was a small thin girl they hunted ... her face twisted with terror like a white mask pitted with darkness." When young Philip Hoskyn rescues the girl from her tormentors he is warned to stay away from her in the future — for Marie is the niece of Annette Perchon, outcast, witch and priestess of the Grandmother Stone. ... Set in the island of Sark in the seventeenth century, The Grandmother Stone is a fine perceived drawing of adolescent love against a turbulent background of witchcraft and passion.
• Provenance: This copy is stamped as WITHDRAWN from Rhondda Borough Libraries in Wales. 
• Dedication: "For my sisters"
• First sentence: Philip Hoskyn walked quite unsuspectingly out of that bright spring evening into the event that shaped his life.
• Last two sentences: They walked up the grassy track together, crinkling their eyes against the sun-dazzled air, drenched with the smell of warm wet earth. An oyster-catcher skimmed with its thin keening call just above the surface of the tide, and the island echoed with the morning clamour of the gulls.
• Excerpt #1: He was only too willing to accept Jacob's view that the Stone was the object of ignorant superstition rather than a malignancy in her own right. But at night time she had a hold on his imagination that he could not escape.
• Excerpt #2: He had heard it said by an old man in Dorset that the late King James, father of Charles Stuart, had been much injured by witches.
• Excerpt #3: Everywhere there was grim evidence of last night's fury. Roads were filled with earth and loose stones washed from the banks, and rutted with water. Fields were waterlogged, apple orchards more than half stripped. Near the graveyard charred and broken stumps of wood left blackened trails among the trampled grass and churned earth. The Grandmother Stone smiled there alone under the blank sky, leaning at a drunken angle against the graveyard wall.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.88 stars (out of 5)
• Online reviews: There's not much. Kirkus did a review in 1974 that contains a bit of spoiler. Capn wrote a long, detailed and generally positive review on Goodreads last year that also contains spoilers but concludes with "TL:DR - complex religious psychology, abusive situations, adolescents, and detailed descriptions of the Channel Island of Sark." Capn's piece is thoughtful and well worth checking out. I'm glad to see lesser-known "old" books getting reviews such as this. 

Fun reading for 1970s kids? "Visions of the Future: Magic Boards"

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

• This House is Haunted!
• The Case of the Ancient Astronauts

Today's book...

• Title: Visions of the Future: Magic Boards
• Why are they called magic boards? Because the word Ouija is trademarked, currently by Hasbro.
• Author: Saul A. Stadtmauer (1929-2018). He also wrote 24th Forward: The Pictorial History of the Victory Division in Korea and co-authored Jewish Contributions to the American Way of Life. He was married to poet Colette Inez (1931-2018). There's a photo of Saul and Colette on the sixth page of this PDF.
• Cover illustrator: Lynn Sweat
• Publisher: A Contemporary Perspectives Inc. (CPI) book distributed by Raintree Children's Books, Milwaukee
• Year: 1977
• Pages: 48
• Format: Hardcover
• Interior illustrators: Wayne Atkinson and Alida Beck
• Photo research: "All photo research for this book was provided by Sherry Olan." (More on her in a moment.)
• Chapter titles: The Unexpected Visitor; Where It All Began; Searching for the Spirit Seth; Dr. Hegy's Magic Table; and How to Build Your Own Magic Board. (The Spirit Seth involves the famous case of psychic/medium Jane Roberts (1929-1984) allegedly channeling a personality called Seth.)
• First sentence: Pearl Curran and her friend sat facing each other in the darkened living room.
• Last paragraph: Even if you never receive a message from the past or from the future, the magic board is sure to be fun. Some say that your success depends on how much you believe.
• Random photo caption from the middle: Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous "ghost hunters," advise against amateurs trying to contact the spirits.
• Random sentence from the middle #1: Dr. Hegy's game was similar to the magic board, and he planned to play it with passengers during long, fog-filled ocean nights. (Context: Dr. Reginald Hegy penned a 1935 book titled A Witness Through the Centuries. According to Weiser Antiquarian Books, "in this volume he outlines the experiences which led him to become a believer in spiritualistism. He then offers practical advice on how to start your own spiritualist 'home-circle' and test for yourself the actuality of the spirit world.")
• Random sentence from the middle #2: It is very important that the board has a slippery, smooth surface so that the triangle-shaped pointer you make can glide from letter to letter.
• Online reviews: Alas, none.
• Attempts to ban the Contemporary Perspectives books: I found a pair of examples of attempts to ban these books from school libraries. I'm sure there were other examples during the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s.

1. In 1991, a school board in Dallas, Texas, had to deal with a parental challenge on Visions of the Future: Magic Boards, for "poor writing." I don't know how the challenge was resolved.

 

2. A May 4, 1992, article in the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, details a request by the Rev. David A. Wade to permanently ban eight Contemporary Perspectives book, including Spells, Chants, and Potions, from the school system. The books deal "with such subjects as witches, palm reading, ghosts and astrology," the article states.

The article explains that the books were purchased by the school system in 1981. As just two examples, officials noted that Spells, Chants, and Potions had been checked out 32 times in 11 years, while Visions of the Future: Magic Boards had been checked out eight times in 11 years.

But Wade worried that many young students may have simply read the books in the library without checking them out.

”I’m not going to stop,” Wade told the Daily Press. ”We’ve got to get these books out of the city school system. They’re horrible.”

From the Daily Press article: "Perhaps the most intriguing of the eight books is 'Spells.' It has a whole chapter on the use and significance of different colored candles in making spells but gives somewhat sketchy information on three 'enemy' spells. The book concludes with a detailed 'recipe book' for a love spell, a spell to make money, and a good-luck spell."

Librarian Pamela Neilson defended the books: "We found that the books represented, throughout, both sides of the issue. They were not advocating to the reader that this was something to do.”

Neilson cited a seven-page account of an Apache medicine man in Spells, Chants, and Potions as having value and said the Contemporary Perspectives books all contained disclaimers regarding any inherent truth regarding topics like witchcraft, astrology and numerology. 

The Daily Press' thorough reporting involved contacting Contemporary Perspectives: "Sherry Olan, president of the company, said she doesn’t remember the books and declined to comment further. 'We stand by the books we publish,' said senior editor Kenneth E. Baranski."

A short item in The Virginian Pilot in June 1997 explains how Wade's dispute was resolved:

"FIVE YEARS AGO. Books on voodoo, witchcraft and astrology were placed back on the library shelves at Hampton’s Forrest Elementary School in June 1992 after a parent’s complaint prompted some restrictions on who could read them. A series of eight books had been pulled for review after the parent requested they be banned as too explicit for young children. The books, the parent said, contained too much detail, such as a list of recipes for spells and a detailed explanation of tarot card reading.

"It was subsequently decided that only children who received permission from a parent would be permitted to check out the books.

"Today, the books still have a place in the school library, with the staff continuing to follow the procedure handed down five years ago, according to Forrest Elementary librarian Pamela Neilson."

For what it's worth, there doesn't seem to be a single copy of Spells, Chants, and Potions available for sale anywhere on the internet. I guess the lucky private owners are hoarding that spell to make money.

***

Finally, here are a pair of interior illustrations from Visions of the Future: Magic Boards, both by Wayne Atkinson.

Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree children's books to be covered some day on Papergreat (hopefully):

• The Bermuda Triangle
• Ghosts and Ghouls
• Witches
• Bigfoot: Man, Monster, or Myth?
• The Mystery of Stonehenge
• The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401

Rowel Friers' endpapers and interior illustration for "The Obstinate Ghost"

I still need to get around to a full essay on the dandy 1960s ghost/folklore books by Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd. In the meantime, this post features some of the superb artwork by their illustrator, Rowel Friers (1920-1998). Shown above are Friers' endpapers illustration and his illustration for "Billy Bates's Story" from the 1968 collection The Obstinate Ghost and Other Ghostly Tales. Don't we all wish we grew up in a neighborhood with a house like that? Or lived in one now?

Friers was a cartoonist, painter, illustrator, set designer and actor. For a story on his funeral service in 1998, Neil Johnston of the Belfast Telegraph wrote:

"The church was packed with representatives from the arts, music, drama, newspapers and television. ... All of them referred to his humanity, his generosity of spirit, his charm, his talent as an artist, his work for charity, particularly Cystic Fibrosis, and the devastating way in which he used his gift for cartoons to attack pomposity, political cant, and sectarian bigotry wherever he saw it."

It seems that providing illustrations for children's books was just a minor side job for Friers, but we should be very glad it happened and that his contributions to these Palmer/Lloyd books exist.

Other endpapers illustrations

• Curious artistic endpapers from the 1912 novel "Corporal Cameron"
• Dubble Bubble Quiz tucked away inside an old schoolbook
• Birds wearing clothes to help children learn to read in 1930
• Sheep featured on endpapers of Elson Junior Literature book
• 1936's "Albanian Wonder Tales": Frontispiece and endpapers
• Cool map featured on endpapers of "At Camp Kee Tov"
• The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle
• Gorgeous endpapers in 1895's "The Young Conductor"
• "Joyce of the Secret Squadron: A Captain Midnight Adventure"
• 3 cool things: The Story of Siegfried (published 1931)
• Endpapers and title page for 1920 primer: "The Winston Readers"
• Nifty endpapers from a Nelson Doubleday Junior Deluxe Edition
• "A Child's Garden of Verses" and the work of Eulalie
• Book cover & endpapers: "Doctor Dolittle in the Moon"
• Book cover and alarming endpapers: "All About the Atom"
• Book cover: "The Vanishing Shadow"
• The joyous illustrations of Johnny Gruelle's "The Paper Dragon"
• Farewell to a book
• Book cover: "Little Pilgrim to Penn's Woods"
• Book cover: "The Mystery of the Shining Children"
• Remembering "Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful"
• Endpapers of 1915's "The Brownies and the Goblins"
• Colorful covers and endpapers of 1926's "Granny Goose"
• Carlos Mérida's delightful illustrations for "The Magic Forest"
• Wynn's dandy endpapers illustration for 1933's "Incredible Land"

Book cover: "The Witchfinder"

• Title: The Witchfinder
• Author and illustrator: Mary Rayner (1933-2023). Unknown to me before I started working on this post, Rayner died just two months ago, in late March, at age 89. There are obituaries for her in The Guardian and The Telegraph. She was best known for the children's books she wrote and illustrated about a family of pigs. Rayner also illustrated Dick King-Smith's 1983 children's book The Sheep-Pig, which was adapted in the delightful 1995 film Babe. In 2020, Rayner published her memoir, No More Tigers, which includes an introduction by her daughter, Sarah Rayner. It's described as "a beautifully written and deeply moving account of a family who for several generations lived in Colonial Burma, and of what happened to them when World War 2 shattered their lives." Sarah Rayner has also written a number of books.
• Publication date of this edition: 1976. (The book was originally published in the United Kingdom in 1975, with the hyphenated title The Witch-Finder.)
• Publisher: William Morrow and Company, New York
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 160
• Dust jacket price: Not sure, because it's been clipped
• Dust jacket excerpt: "From England comes a story of witchcraft and possession guaranteed to hold readers spellbound. The setting is a country village near an ancient circle of standing stones known as Wansbury Ring."
• Dedication: "In memory of A.H.G. and for Sarah, whose idea it was." 
• About this book: In Rayner's obituary, The Guardian wrote: "Although she began by writing a novel, The Witch-Finder (1975), a tautly written family story infused with a sinister creepiness very unlike her subsequent warm and benign picture books, she had always been as interested in illustration as writing." And The Telegraph similarly stated, "Her first book, The Witch-Finder (1975), featured a young girl whose mother has fallen under the spell of strange standing stones near their home. It conveyed an unsettling atmosphere very different from the comforting happy family theme of her pig books."
• First two sentences: "Only a few yards to go. Louisa struggled through the water, her heart pumping, taking great gulps, now of air, now of water."
• Last sentence: I'm going to skip that, as it's a possible spoiler.
• Random excerpt from the middle #1: "Her mother's mocking words seemed suddenly to carry an air of menace."
• Random excerpt from the middle #2: "The shelves behind the librarian's head blurred over suddenly in thick mist, and the line of books began to rock up and down."
• Reviews: There's not much to be found online about this short novel, with its themes of UK folklore and folk horror aimed at juvenile readers. Kirkus published a short review at the time. I learned about the book through an article in issue No. 5 of the zine Weird Walk. The relevant passage: "If ancient customs were rich pickings for the burgeoning market in eerie children's tales, so too were ancient monuments. Avebury was famously used as the setting for the 1977 TV serial Children of the Stones, fictionalised as 'Milbury.' Two years earlier, Mary Rayner's The Witch-Finder had made Avebury 'Wansbury' and used the stones as a plot device to transform the central character's unfortunate mother into a witch." The Weird Walk article serves as a great jumping-off point for discovering similar books aimed at teenagers in the second half of the 20th century. 

Here's one of Rayner's interior illustrations... 

Another terrific Jack Gaughan cover illustration: "Almuric"

I've previously featured a handful of great cover illustrations by Hall of Fame science fiction/fantasy artist Jack Gaughan (1930-1985):

• Three Against the Witch World
• Time and Again
• Beyond the Stars 
• The Escape Orbit 
• Gather in the Hall of the Planets 

It's always a good time for more Gaughan, so featured today is the cover for the 1964 Ace edition of Robert E. Howard's Almuric. It's a fantastic illustration, with its winged creatures and dark tower in the background. To me, it sort of raises the cool-as-heck idea: What if Conan had traveled to Mordor?

Gaughan was an inspiration for so many readers and fellow artists. The 2010 book Outermost: The Art & Life of Jack Gaughan collects many of his pieces and preliminary sketches, offering some insight into his mind and process. Reviewing the book for Amazon, Tim Lukeman's only "complaint" is that the book isn't longer. Of Gaughan, he writes: "His art encompasses kinetic sketchiness, blazing swaths of saturated color, finely detailed linework, semi-abstraction, psychedelic imagery, caricature, exquisite B&W renderings like Medieval woodcuts or Lotte Reiniger's paper silhouettes … he could do it all. And yet, as I say, it's still recognizably Gaughan, never to be mistaken for the work of any other artist. There's an intensely personal essence to all of it."

As for the short novel Almuric itself, here's the rest of the rundown:

• Cover secondary text: "Alone on an uncharted planet"
• Author: Robert E. Howard (1906-1936)
• Original publication date: It was serialized in three issues of Weird Tales magazine, starting in May 1939. Because this was first published three years after Howard's death, there has been some question whether the work is entirely Howard's. "It may be that Howard created a draft for such a story that was later finished by another writer," Wikipedia notes. Writing on Grognardia in 2011, James Maliszewski opines "I suspect the real truth is that Almuric is a rough draft, lacking the polish of REH's other tales, and that this roughness accounts for its seeming 'un-Howardian' qualities in places. Taken as a whole, though, it's hard to credit anyone other than Robert E. Howard as the author of Almuric."
• Publication date of this edition: 1964
• Publisher: Ace Books (F-305)
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 157
• Cover price: 40 cents 
• Back cover excerpt: How Esau, alone on Almuric, with nothing but his wits and his muscles to protect him, faced Almuric's worst perils to make him master and monarch is a novel worthy of the creator of the Conan stories.
• First sentence: It was not my original intention ever to divulge the whereabouts of Esau Cairn, or the mystery surrounding him.
• Last sentence (deep breath, and trigger warning for colonial mentality): And we two — I an Earthman born, and Altha, a daughter of Almuric who possesses the gentler instincts of an Earthwoman — we hope to instill some of the culture of my native planet into the erstwhile savage people before we die and become as dust of my adopted planet, Almuric.
• Random sentence from the middle: I saw it plainly then — a gigantic spider, bigger than an ox.
• Which reminds me: We discovered another spider in our Arizona garage last night, so that was fun. Note sure whether it was a brown recluse or a wolf spider. It was not, however, the size of an ox.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.77 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2008, Graham wrote: "As a stand-alone adventure, it’s a decent piece of writing, absolutely jam-packed with the kind of thrilling adventure and chaotic battle scenes that Howard made his own."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.3 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2012, Suzanne wrote (slightly edited): "I am happy I read this book before reading the John Carter of Mars series because Almuric is more or less a rip-off of that series. ... I can ignore the fact that it's a rip-off because its an enjoyable rip-off, but the aspect I cannot ignore is how the main character is some kind of uber-fighting machine and how he doesn't really have any challenges in the books. His punches are like anvils and the poor aliens simply don't stand a chance. It is a bit like reading Harry Potter, where everything is handed to the main character on a silver platter."
• Another take: James Enge wrote a thoughtful review of the good and bad of Almuric on Black Gate. 

Dusty makes her first appearance on Papergreat.

Photos of Sutton, West Virginia, and the Flatwoods Monster Museum

In late-August 2020, Ashar and I got out of the house for essentially the first time since the start of the pandemic and traveled to a state park in West Virginia to visit my dad and stepmom, who similarly needed a chance to fend off coronavirus cabin fever (by traveling to an actual cabin in the peaceful woods). 

On the way back home to Pennsylvania after the visit, Ashar and I passed a sign for the Flatwoods Monster Museum, and we immediately knew that we had to leave the highway and see where this very rural West Virginia exit took us. 

The answer was Sutton, a town of fewer than 1,000 people in Braxton County.

And it is indeed home to a monster museum. The Flatwoods Monster doesn't have the same level of notoriety as Mothman in United States urban legends, but it's pretty interesting. The Braxton County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, which would very much like your tourism dollars, describes what a group of teenagers purportedly saw on a night in 1952:

"Upon reaching the site of the crash, the group saw a pulsing red light. Lemon shined his flashlight up the hill, and the group witnessed a terrifying sight — a ten-foot-tall creature, with a head shaped like a spade and what appeared to be a dark, metal 'dress'. The creature’s hands were twisted and clawed, and what seemed to be its eyes glowed an eerie orange color. It appeared to levitate off the ground. A strange, sickening mist hung in the air. The creature hissed and glided quickly toward the witnesses, the group then turned and fled in terror."

Here are some pictures I took at the museum...

The sign says, "Absolutely no Seances."

Sutton itself, which sits on a hillside, was just as interesting as the museum. I wish we'd had more time to explore, but we still had many hours of driving to get back to Dover. These are some of my snapshots of the struggling Appalachian town (I played around with filters on a couple of them.)

Past photography posts

• Sonoran Desert snapshots
• Ephemeral artwork seen on a late-night stroll through Brooklyn
• Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia
• Oak Hill Cemetery in Vermont and Phoenix Cemetery Tioga County, Pennsylvania
• American Autumn (a 2014 photo essay)
• American Autumn 2020
• 2015 York Fair: My favorite photos
• Psychogeography, snickelways of Miami, Arizona: August 2021
• Alpine Road Cemetery (Bender Burial Ground) in York County, Pennsylvania
• Snapshots from a foggy morning at Prospect Hill Cemetery
• Return to Prospect Hill Cemetery
• Mount Zion Lutheran Church cemetery
• Manipulated photos of a graveyard at dusk
• Dilapidated structures of Southern Jersey
• The abandoned Great Barrington Fairgrounds (Massachusetts)
• Creepy & dilapidated structures of the eastern United States, Part 1
• Creepy & dilapidated structures of the eastern United States, Part 2
• Old house in Coudersport, Pennsylvania
• Artsy-fartsy photos from a night on the town with real artists
• Instagram snapshots of Ruins Park in Glen Rock, Pa.
• Atomic Warehouse photo gallery
• Timeline Arcade photo gallery

Hans Holzer & hot pink: "The Psychic World of Bishop Pike"

I've been on another Hans Holzer kick lately, mostly due to childhood nostalgia and the urgent necessity for some escapism, but also partly to uncover some of his really obscure 1970s stuff, including some books that aren't about spooks and spirits. (Stuff like The Vegetarian Way of Life, which I wrote about in 2020.) Here's a paranormal one by Holzer that doesn't get as much mention as his ghost books, perhaps for good reason.

• Title: The Psychic World of Bishop Pike
• Cover subtitle: His startling new message from the Other Side
• Author: Hans Holzer (1920-2009)
• Publication date: December 1971
• Publisher: Pyramid Communications, under the Pyramid Books brand. (The book was first published in 1970 by Crown Publishers.)
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 223
• Cover price: $1.25 
• Back cover excerpt: "The name of Bishop James Pike also needs no introduction. Bishop Pike's communication with his dead son, his famous séance on television, his conversion from a psychic skeptic to a believer, his expanding revelations, and his strange and mysterious death in the desert, all made world headlines. ... Here told for the first time is the whole amazing, authentic, and vitally important story.
• About Pike: Wikipedia describes James Albert Pike (1913-1969) as "an American Episcopal bishop, accused heretic, iconoclast, prolific writer, and one of the first mainline, charismatic religious figures to appear regularly on television. ... He was an early proponent of ordination of women and racial desegregation within mainline churches. The chain smoking Pike was the fifth Bishop of California and, a few years before he began to explore spiritualism and psychic phenomena in an effort to contact his deceased son, became a recovering alcoholic."
• Was his death "strange and mysterious"? Strange, yes. Mysterious, not really. Wikipedia does a good job of detailing the sad story. Pike got lost in the Israeli desert, dehydrated, disoriented and died in a fall while trying to climb a steep cliff.
• Dedication: "In memory of a friend who lives on."
• Curated excerpt #1: "The purpose of the visit to Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, had been not so much to contact and free the restless spirit of the late rector as to follow up and, if possible, verify Bishop Pike's experiences. In the process we also succeeded in freeing the late rector from his earthbound status, by allowing him to express himself through Mrs. Meyers and thus relieving himself of the pent-up anxieties and remorsefulness from his incarnate period."
• Curated excerpt #2: "I thanked the Canon and set out for Ena Twigg's rose-entwined cottage. Ena and I had talked on the telephone before, and I had found her a vivacious, slightly opinionated but overall extremely likable person, a far cry from the traditional misconcept of what a medium is and sounds like."
• Curated excerpt #3: "Bishop Pike made friends easily, perhaps too easily, and he took into his confidence people whom he scarcely knew."
• Online reviews: There's really nothing of substance in the Amazon or Goodreads reviews. One Amazon review states, "Well worth reading."
• Criticism: In fact, the only review of The Psychic World of Bishop Pike I could find was within the 1976 book The Death and Life of Bishop Pike: An Utterly Candid Biography of America's Most Controversial Clergyman, by William Stringfellow. He pulls no punches (the bold is mine):

"The exploitation of Bishop Pike by smallness and meanness did not terminate with his death. He had no more than stretched out in his grave hard by the Mediterranean Sea than Crown Publishers of New York saw fit to publish (1970) The Psychic World of Bishop Pike by Hans Holzer, who was identified on the jacket as the 'the country's most notable parapsychologist.' The book is truly without redeeming social value. Unfortunately, Bishop Pike was partially responsible for this posthumous insult. Holzer, who seems to have made a career out of flitting from poltergeist to poltergeist, turned up on the bishop's doorstep one day with the proposal that he make a documentary film about him. Was he told to go fly a kite? No. He was warmly received and in no time the bishop was a captive of Holzer's tape recorder. ... Holzer's talent for invention is considerable but he did not invent his conversation with Bishop Pike. That conversation is reproduced in the book verbatim."

So there you have it. Holzer seems to have crossed a line with this book, especially with his irresponsible speculations (aided by "mediums") about mysteries and even foul play surrounding Pike's tragic and entirely accidental death. Holzer was better off when he was writing about ghosts, bumps in the night and haunted houses — harmless storytelling and modern folklore — than when he was trying to mix parapsychology and bad journalism to write about real people.

But wait, there's more

Many 1970s paperbacks had advertisements on thicker paper stock in the middle. Sometimes they were for book clubs or encyclopedia sets. Many of the advertisements were for cigarettes. The Psychic World of Bishop Pike has a page in the middle featuring advertising for Smirnoff vodka on one side and Eastern Air Lines on the other side.