How much is that haunted doll in the eBay window I have open?

The New York Times recently published an article by Alicia DeSantis with an attention-grabber headline: "The Weird World of ‘Haunted’ eBay: ‘Purchase With Caution’". It's about the odd, to say the least, subculture of those who attempt to boost the value of the everyday items they're peddling on the online auction service by claiming that the item is touched by the supernatural — possessed, cursed, magical, haunted, etc. This hucksterism is nothing new, of course. Since the idea of "magic beans" first sprouted centuries ago, humankind has never been without swindlers and those who are receptive, even enthusiastic, about being swindled.

The Times is not the first to write about supernatural-tinged online auctions. Other pieces of note have been published by Sabrina Maddeaux for Vox; by Reyhan Harmanci for Topic; by Katherine Carlson for The New Yorker; and by Luke Winkie for Vice. But one thing I enjoyed about short Times article was the interview with artist Eric Oglander. He has a fascination with witnessing, and documenting, the everflowing stream of "haunted" objects on eBay. He understands that cyberspace is fleeting, ephemeral. And so he deploys one of the best tools we have for documentation: the screenshot. The Times' DeSantis writes:

"Oglander describes himself as a 'collector of aesthetics,' and his material is the ephemera of the world around us. For him, it is not the item on sale, but rather the listing itself which becomes the object. The listings are 'a way of containing a story and also telling a story,' he said."

Indeed, in a slight twist on Papergreat's mantra, every eBay listing tells a story. And says something about us. So, in that spirit (no pun intended), here's the haunted-item listing I'm adding to the record for posterity.

The full description for Very Expensive Haunted Troll states:

Haunted Troll Doll.. Discontinued collectors item. . Condition is Used. Shipped with USPS First Class Package. This doll is haunted. I got it from an estate sale where some old lady had passed away. The man at the sale was making comments about how she or the house was haunted and he would not buy anything and take it home because he would not want that activity in his house. I felt compelled to buy this doll. within a week of having it, a doll that belonged to my daughter who has passed away started to play its music. Then a couple days later I was in the bathroom after a shower and felt something touch my leg. Next day in my bedroom right after putting on my pajamas I was touched on the opposite leg, but this time it felt like a grab.. Since then I've been in bed and felt like someone sat down on the end of my bed. I have been at my computer and felt something touch my hair and lightly tug at it. That has happen several times. I have seen a shadow figure and my dog has got up and went to growl where the movement happened. Those who want a haunted object, this is it! I was trying to sell this well before Halloween, so no its not for a Halloween hype. This is real. Not a joke. If you collect haunted objects. This doll is for you. It does have a little crack in its tail, but that obviously does to effect the amount of haunt you get from this figure. Once its sold, I wont take it back, I take no responsibility in any form as to what happens when you receive it. FREE SHIPPING ONLY IN THE USA...…. NO EXCEPTIONS...……….

Hurry now. This offer to curse your family for just $400 won't last.

Promotional postcard for arcade game with Bimbo the clown

Hey, it's The Original Bimbo 3 Ring Circus!!

Does anyone remember playing The Original Bimbo 3 Ring Circus??

I don't.

This undated, unused postcard has the following explanatory text on the back:

BIMBO
The Singing and Dancing Clownis a tested located proven moneymaker, suitable for Arcades, Discount Houses, Five and Tens, Department Stores or any other place where children congregate. This sure-fire winner takes floor space of 24 x 27 inches. Bimbo features a solid state tape cartridge player, dust proof plug-in relays. Housed in a top quality laminated cabinet, Bimbo is another product of United Billiards, Inc., 51 Progress St., Union, New Jersey 07083. (201-686-7030)

So, let's turn to the experts. The International Arcade Museum®, which describes itself as "the world's largest educational center focusing on the art, inventions, science, and history of the amusement, coin-operated machine, game, and videogame industries," has an entry for Bimbo, which states that it was released in 1981, five years before Stephen King's It slammed the door on any hope that America would make clowns fun again.

The International Arcade Museum® adds that United Billiards began releasing arcade games in 1975, and its other games included Omicron Cocktail Table, Sportacard, Super UBI Cocktail Table, UBI Cocktail Table, and Daddi-O. (And there's a good chance that's the last Daddi-O reference on Papergreat.)

Another website with some good information about Bimbo is pinrepair.com. The author explains that the 1981 game was actually a remake of a musical 1956 arcade machine called Peppy the Clown. (Check out those pictures. They're great.) Here are some details on Bimbo's "game play" from that site:

"Designed for kids, Bimbo the clown talked and sang, moving his head from side to side, player could press buttons on the front console which controlled Bimbo 3 Ring Circus' arm and leg movement. ... Each game play is approximately one minute long, depending on the length of the original songs. The song titles include 'Yankee Doodle', 'Oh Susannah', 'The Farmer in the Dell', 'East Side, West Side' and other standards, sung in a sing-songy way to appeal to young children."

If you feel the need to have your very own sing-songy The Original Bimbo 3 Ring Circus arcade game, perhaps so you can put it beside your Annabelle doll, you're in luck. There's one on eBay with a Buy It Now price of just $995. Have it delivered just in time for the holidays.

Stairway painting #LifeGoals

Some fun with "Daddy-Long-Legs"

When I saw this cover of Jean Webster's 1912 classic Daddy-Long-Legs, I couldn't help but have a little fun with photoshopping.

Vintage spooky, sugary candy

These aren't from one of my envelopes, drawers or piles. Just some vintage images from the good old internet that I wanted to share for Halloween. If you're my age (Generation X — The Generation Raised on Sugar), you'll remember some of these treats...

Drac-Snax, by Topps

Munchy Mummies, by Topps
(read more on Grubbits)

Mr. Bones, by Fleer
(read more on Gone But Not Forgotten Groceries & CollectingCandy.com)
* * *
This one isn't candy, but adults sure liked to entice us with "vitamins disguised as candy" back in the day. (I would actually sneak extra doses of Flintstone Multivitamins, for the mini sugar rush.) Also, it's always good to check in with Vincent Price on Halloween.

Monster Multiple Vitamins
(read more on Neato Coolville's 2007 post & 2011 post)

Halloween 2019 book cover: "A Ghost Hunter's Game Book"

• Title: A Ghost Hunter's Game Book
• Author: James Wentworth Day (1899-1983)
• Dust jacket illustrator: Eisner, according to the lower-right corner. I can't find any other information about who that is.
• Publisher: Frederick Muller Ltd, London
• Publication date: 1958
• Dust jacket price: 16 shillings, I believe. The dust jacket flap reads "16/- net"
• Pages: 222
• Format: Hardcover
• Dust jacket blurb: "James Wentworth Day collects ghosts, ghouls and legends as other people collect stamps. Ghosts, he believes, definitely exist — he has seen them. In this intriguing and sometimes spine-chilling book he has gathered together the first-hand experiences of very many living people, from all over England."
• Select chapter titles: "The Ghosts of Craster Tower," "He Died in Drury Lane," "A Spectral Army in the Sky," "A Church of Sad Spirit," "The Man Who Changed into a Cat," "The Appalling Club in Cow Lane," "Castle of Ghastly Secrets," and "The Black Hound of Mid-Devon." (The "Spectral Army in the Sky" refers to the Battle of Edgehill in 1642 and not, as I might have guessed, the Machen-fueled Angels of Mons in the First World War.)
• First sentence: "Every county has its village legends, fustian hobgoblins, churchyard hauntings and turnip-top ghosts."
• Last sentence: "We have barely touched the fringe."
• Random sentence from the middle #1: "Shortly before the old lady died, she told her relatives that if they would carry her from her cottage by the mill stream up through the garden to Bower House, she would show them where she had buried her treasure when the Scots were on the march."
• Random sentence from the middle #2: "In short a 'Something' shaped like an egg and gifted with the strength of ten."
• About this book: There is a serious dearth of reviews or information about this spooktastic volume online. In the introduction to his 2013 book Essex Ghost Stories, Richard Holland writes:
  

  "Special mention must be made of James Wentworth Day, for it is a name we will encounter often in this book. Wentworth Day (1899-1983) was born in Suffolk but lived most of his adult life in Essex. A lover of the land and a particularly keen wildfowler, Wentworth Day spent many years befriending the country folk of East Anglia and in this way discovered many Essex-based ghost stories, including first-hand encounters that would otherwise have been lost to obscurity. Many of these tales were repeated in the several books of ghost stories he published in his lifetime, particularly Ghosts and Witches (1954), A Ghost Hunter’s Game Book (1958) and Essex Ghosts (1973)."

Halloween 2019 book cover: "Haunted Houses"

• Title: Haunted Houses
• Author: Joseph Braddock (1902-?)
• Dust jacket designer and interior illustrator: Felix Kelly (1914-1994). You can get a full look at Kelly's gorgeous wraparound dust jacket on this 2011 post on Uncanny UK.
• Publisher: B.T. Batsford Ltd. (same as yesterday's book)
• Publication date: 1956
• Dust jacket price: Can't tell. It's clipped.
• Pages: 218
• Format: Hardcover
• Dust jacket blurb: "Joseph Braddock believes in 'a world of spirit which is just as real as this one'. Although, to his regret, he has never seen a ghost, it is his humility before the relation of supra-normal happenings which gives a particular quality — neither sceptical nor yet credulous — to this book about Haunted Houses."
• Dedication: "TO MY WIFE who has walked with me round the edge of the Unknown"
• First sentence: "A great number of books has been written, in the present and in the past, about ghosts and haunted houses, linked with their allied subjects such as witchcraft, legends, miraculous cures, uncanny happenings at séances, extra-sensory perception, and visitations and messages received by living persons from the so-called dead."
• Last sentence: "The scientific approach to these profound mysteries, though most valuable, is not the only one."
• Random sentence from middle #1: "Doarlish Cashen — Manx for Cashen's Gap, a gap in the hedge — is an ancient, bleak and remote farmhouse, built of slate slabs faced with cement, out of sight of any other farm, perched about seven hundred and twenty-five feet above sea level upon a treeless, shrubless slope of Dalby Mountain on the west coast of the Isle of Man."
• Don't leave us in the lurch, Otto! What happened at this spooky place? Not much. Unless you consider a clever talking mongoose from the fifth dimension named Gef odd.
• Random sentence from middle #2: "A baleful black stalagmite formation, dominating the mysterious river, clearly depicts the menacing nutcracker profile of an old witch woman."
• Review excerpt: On Magonia (http://pelicanist.blogspot.com), a reviewer compared his original read as a child in 1961 with his re-read in 2012, writing: "Today they may seem like pretty tame stuff, but I suspect there is stuff in them to scare even the most internet-hardened kiddie. I am not sure what did for me, perhaps it was Braddock’s chapter heading ‘Evil Ghosts’, or his story of the house in Birmingham in which a phantom cat was blamed for the death of a baby, or maybe it was his story of the boy in the Grenadier pub, who saw a shadow advancing and retreating, complete with evocative drawing by Felix Kelly."
• Want a copy? This book was reprinted in 1991 with the title Haunted Houses in Great Britain, though I'm not sure if Kelly's illustrations are included. Used copies of this later edition are fairly cheap.

But wait, there's more

While trying to find more about Joseph Braddock, I stumbled upon this classified advertisement, under "Business Personals" in the October 20, 1975, edition of The Pittsburgh Press.

Halloween 2019 book cover: "Haunted England"

In counting down the final few days to All Hallows' Eve, I have some appropriately spooktastic books to share...

• Title: Haunted England
• Subtitle: A Survey of English Ghost-Lore
• Author: Christina Hole (1896-1985)
• Dust jacket designer: Lynton Lamb (1907-1977)
• Illustrator: John Farleigh (1900-1965)
• Publisher: B.T. Batsford Ltd.
• Original publication year: 1940
• Publication date of this edition: 1951 (Second Edition, Third Impression)
• Dust jacket price: 13 shillings, 6 pence
• Pages: 184
• Format: Hardcover
• Dust jacket blurb #1: "This is far and away the best ghost book I have ever met, as Miss Hole is thorough, careful and completely unbiased." ⁠— The Queen
• Wait. The Queen?? Well, this edition was published in 1951, so it cannot be Elizabeth II, because her reign did not begin until 1952. The most logical guess is that there was some sort of UK publication titled "The Queen."
• Dust jacket blurb #2: "With its infinite variety of ghostly manifestations it should appeal strongly to the ordinary reader." — The Scotsman
• First sentence: Belief in ghosts is almost as old as the human race.
• Last sentence: The study of ghost-lore suggests that some places area nearer the edge of the spiritual world than others; and here, perhaps, lies the only explanation as yet available of Borley's curious history.
• Random sentence from middle: She had a secret room prepared against emergencies which was reached by a concealed staircase in the kitchen chimney.
• Review excerpt #1: Dodwell wrote this on Amazon.co.uk in 2013: "I bought a copy of this work, in 1966 from a junk shop, for the princely sum of two shillings (20 pence) and I still have it now. It is full of tales, ghostly and ghastly, from all of the shires of England; ghosts of the great and unknown ghosts fill its pages. Written in an easy, lucid style by an author who obviously felt a great affection for the folklore of England, so much so, that this affection shines through in every chapter."
• Review excerpt #2: The Wolf wrote this on Amazon.co.uk in 2017: "Christina Hole's English spookfest, with terrific illustrations by John Farleigh, still has the power to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck."
• About the author: Christina Hole was a member of The Folklore Society and her other notable books include A Dictionary of British Folk Customs, English Folklore, English Home-Life 1500 to 1800, and Witchcraft in England. On the website England: The Other Within, Alison Petch noted that Hole "might have been considered by some rather eccentric — according to the obituary she refused to have a telephone installed in her home even though it would have made her honorary duties easier and was 'surrounded by well-behaved cats whose idiosyncracies gave [her] great pleasure.'"

But wait, there's more

Tucked away inside the book was a dandy 1955 National Tuberculosis Association Christmas Seals bookmark. It's shown below, along with a couple of John Farleigh's interior illustrations. In 2011, the blog Uncanny UK, edited by Richard Holland, had this to say about Farleigh's work: "The other attraction of ‘Haunted England’ are its numerous weird illustrations. The illustrator, John Farleigh, was well-known in his day both as a fine artists and as a commercial artists, for example for London Transport. He was best-known as a wood engraver. The images he created for ‘Haunted England’ are like no other gracing a work of this kind: often abstract, with distorted perspectives, they are nightmarish yet oddly child-like – and certainly memorable."

1960s Scholastic book: "The Witch Next Door"

Author/illustrator Norman Bridwell (1928-2014) has more then 100 million books in print and was best known for his Clifford the Big Red Dog series, which includes an astounding 80 books. But in 1965 he published a sweet children's book titled The Witch Next Door. This is the Scholastic Book Services (fourth printing) edition from 1967. It is TW 776 and cost 35 cents (the equivalent of $2.66 today).

In the cheery volume, the witch's young neighbors observe that she paints her house black, does her laundry on Mondays, has a pet dragon, delivers soup to sick neighbors, goes to sleep at 8 p.m. every night (in an odd position I won't spoil), and casts "a few spells now and then."

Then some older neighbors decide they don't like having That Kind living on the block. So the witch uses some gentle magic to win them over. And everyone flies away on a broom, happily ever after. I think my favorite line is: "She showed us the bat bath in her yard."

Here are some reviews of The Witch Next Door from Goodreads:

• "I LOVED this book when I was little and I LOVE it still! A witch moves in next door, but she is actually a very sweet witch who uses her spells to enhance her life and the lives of those around her." (Samantha in 2013)
• "Love this book! Way ahead of it's time, and so much fun! I remember this book from my youth and have always loved it." (Rebecca in 2018)
• "This text would be a good way to teach kids to be welcoming of others and it should definitely be read to this day." (Alicia in 2012)
• "Even when the witch confronts prejudice and gets angry, she doesn't get mean. She solves the problem in the nicest way possible." (Cindy in 2007)

Bridwell went on to write other books about the friendly witch. And now this book can go back into a Little Free Library!

Spooky Tuck & Sons Hallowe'en postcard mailed in 1910

I like this vintage Halloween postcard because it reminds me of what is still one of my favorite pieces of ephemera, eight years after I first wrote about it: The dark and stormy night Victorian trade card.¹

The postcard features a young girl who is wearing a nightgown and holding a candle. Peeking behind her, she seems the unsettling image of a grinning jack-o'-lantern in the mirror. In researching if there is any folklore surrounding the idea of seeing a carved pumpkin in a mirror, I didn't come up with much. But I did stumble upon this amazing photograph from the October 31, 1980, edition of the Star-Gazette of Elmira, New York.

First, it's a great piece of photojournalism by George F. Lian (who was Chief photographer for the Star-Gazette and died in 2010).

Second, it's a great time capsule of what American girls wore in 1980.

Third, I saw it and immediately thought, "The Olsen twins? What the heck?"

Finally, I love that this girl is the daughter of a man named John Saxon. Obviously it's not the same John Saxon who is a minor icon of horror movies, but it's a fun Halloween photograph Easter egg.

Getting back to the postcard, it was printed in Saxony and published by Raphael Tuck & Sons as part of the company's Hallowe'en series of postcards (No. 174). It was postmarked at 2 p.m. on October 20, 1910, in Remus, Michigan.² It was mailed to Belmont, Michigan.

Here's my best transcription of the cursive message:

10-20-10
Having lots of fun here some more than in Dear (?) Old Cannon. Have not heard the cause yet and it has been 9 days instead of 2.
As ever,
Brid

My best guess is that "Cannon" refers to Cannon Township, which is also in central Michigan. But what is Brid referring to? What happened? We'll never know for sure. But here's on historical tidbit that's a possibility.

In August 1911, several Michigan newspapers reported a minor epidemic of infantile paralysis, or Acute Anterior Poliomyelitis, in Cannon Township and other areas of Michigan. One article notes that "this disease is most prevalent during the months of August, September and October. It seems to be more prevalent in dry weather, and at times rain has seemed to cause the subsidence of an epidemic. It would therefore seem as though dust had something to do with the spreading of the contagion."

So is it possible there had also been an outbreak of infantile paralysis in Cannon Township in October 1910?

We, of course, know this disease as polio. It was usually spread, according to Wikipedia, "from person to person through infected fecal matter entering the mouth. It may also be spread by food or water containing human feces and less commonly from infected saliva. Those who are infected may spread the disease for up to six weeks even if no symptoms are present." So we now realize that any idea that rain could cause the epidemic to subside held little merit, except to the extent that heavy rain might "cleanse" unsanitary locations.

Polio was one of the most devastating childhood diseases of the first half of the 20th century, until Jonas Salk developed an approved vaccine around 1955.

Footnotes
1. There's a Victorian trade card titled "The Ghost Story" that's very similar to one I call "A Dark and Stormy Night." I plan to write about that one some day, too.
2. Remus is an unincorporated community near the center of tiny Wheatland Township in Central Michigan. The post office was originally named Bingen but was renamed Remus in 1880.

Peering at (literal) scary book from Germany in 1920

This hardcover book was published in Munich [Muenchen], Germany, in 1920 by Georg Mueller. The title is Das unheimliche Buch, which literally, and wonderfully, translates to The Scary Book. (Or The Eerie Book in some translations.)

Of course, the rest of it's in German, too, so there's not a whole lot I can tell y'all without spending a month on Google Translate. But I do know some things. It's a collection of supernatural stories, as compiled by editor Felix Schloemp (1884-1916). The illustrations were done by Alfred Rubin.

Some of the stories included are by Heinrich Mann, Frédéric Boutet, Gustav Meyrink, Edgar Allan Poe, J.P. Jacobsen, and E.T.A. Hoffmann.

And it features a foreword by Karl Hans Strobl (1877-1946), who wrote horror and fantasy stories, but whose awful existence was defined by being a member of the Nazi Party, an anti-Semite and a voluminous producer of Nazi propaganda. So screw him and his foreword. And also screw the story he contributed to this book.

Das unheimliche Buch was first published in 1914, two years before Schloemp's death. I have seen references to other editions. By 1938, Das unheimliche Buch was on the list of "harmful and unwanted literature" and would have been subject to Nazi book burnings.

Here's a look the bookplate on the inside front cover...

And here are two of Alfred Rubin's illustrations...

Book cover: "Ghosts Around the House"

• Title: Ghosts Around the House
• Author: Susy Smith (June 2, 1911 - February 11, 2001)
• Front cover design: APTERYX
• Book category (per back cover): Sociology
• Publisher: Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster (1971)
• Original publisher: World Publishing Company (1970)
• Cover price: 95 cents
• Pages: 178
• Format: Paperback
• Back cover excerpt: "Eerie eyewitness accounts of ghosts who've haunted some of the nation's 'best' homes. ... These spirits, and others, have actually been seen, heard, felt and duly reported by thoroughly respectable citizens. Their tales are chilling and fascinating."
• Selected chapter titles: The Lost Dauphin, Ghosts in a Governor's Mansion, The Hut in the Brush, Fort Sam Houston's Harvey, The Curse of the Bell Witch, The Case of the Pregnant Angels
• First sentence (from Preface): "Publishers love to have their authors make appearances on television and radio when a new book comes out; and the communications people appreciate having an author because they usually get some good conversation about a topic of interest."
• Last sentence: "I have said it before and I'll say it again: Whatever they are, ghosts are real."
• Selected paragraph from middle: "For several hours we sat in a circle in the den in the dark ⁠— only the barest minimum of light was coming in through the windows from the outside. We talked and enjoyed ourselves throughout the evening. There is one school of thought that insists that séances must be held in absolute quiet. We were subscribing to the theories of the other school, which believes that happy and interested conversation enlivens the physical conditions and makes it possible for spirits to use the power we thus generate to perform their manifestations."
• Amazon rating: All four reviewers gave it the full 5 stars.
• Amazon review: In 2013, Allie wrote: "I read this book MANY years ago and have never forgotten it ... the stories are from true events that occurred, and once you read it, it will stay in your mind, too! They are not terrifying stories, but just really eerie enough to keep you reading ... I highly recommend!"
• Kirkus review excerpt: "Miss Smith, an explicator like Hans Holzer who has wafted to us from that other frequency, continues her tittletattle. ... If it weren't for those true believers, this wouldn't have a ghost of a chance."
• Bonus random sentence from middle: "Perhaps it was a prediction of the Kennedy assassination that occurred just a few days later."

I'm hoping to write a full post about Susy Smith someday. In the meantime, here's an interesting website about attempts to contact her spirit following her death.

Book cover: "Haunted Britain"

Mom loved "true-story" ghost books. She was in her early 20s in the early 1970s and had a fair collection of the likes of Hans Holzer and Susy Smith paperbacks. She was also fascinated with the United Kingdom, perhaps the ghostiest place of all, and had several books related to the ghosts and folklore of its various haunted grounds. She held onto these books long enough for me to discover — and become equally fascinated by — them in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One that I especially loved, partly for the spooky photos, was this volume. So I tracked down my own copy earlier this decade.

• Title: Haunted Britain
• Author: Antony D. Hippisley Coxe
• Is that the most British name ever on Papergreat? Probably
• What else did he write? Performance and Politics in Popular Drama; Classical And Circus High School; A Book About Smuggling in the West Country, 1700-1850; and — I kid you not — The Great Book of Sausages.¹
• Photographer: Robert Estall
• House editor: Penelope Miller
• Designer: George Sharp
• Cartographer: John R. Flower
• Indexer: Gerry Miller
• Publisher: Pan Books Ltd.
• Publication year: 1975 (Book was originally published in 1973 by Hutchinson & Co. I believe that's a hardcover.)
• Original prices: £1.50 in the United Kingdom, $4.30 in Australia, $4.10 in New Zealand, $5.95 in Canada. (£1.50 in 1975 is the equivalent to about £14.88 today, which is equivalent to about $18.92.)
• Pages: 201 (plus numerous maps after the final numbered page)
• Format: Paperback
• Front cover blurb: "A guide to the supernatural in England, Scotland and Wales"
• Back cover blurb: "A unique collection of the uncanny and astonishing phenomena that may be found in haunted Britain."
• Title page blurb: "A guide to the supernatural sites frequented by ghosts, witches, poltergeists and other mysterious beings"
• Dedication: For Araminta remembering the occasional alarums and many excursions we have shared
• First sentence of preface: This is a guidebook to places about which people hold some strange belief.
• First sentence of book proper: The Duchy is as packed full of beliefs as a can is of Cornish pilchards.
• What's a pilchard: "A small, edible, commercially valuable marine fish of the herring family."
• So, a sardine? Basically.
• Last sentence: The Colstoun Pear is supposed to keep the family lands intact and is still in the Broun-Lindsay family who alone can lay eyes on it.
• Random sentence from the middle: Prehistoric ghosts are rare, but many people, including a highly respected archaeologist, have seen the Bronze Age horseman who haunts these parts.
• Goodreads rating: 4.10 stars (out of 5.0)
• Goodreads review: In 2016, Jonathan Farley called the book "an entertaining gazetteer of ghosts around Britain."
• Amazon rating: 5.0 stars (out of 5.0)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2014, Courtney wrote: "Instead of elaborating on the stories or offering theories about the supernatural, the book offers concise, matter-of-fact little snippets; it's arranged as the usual travel guide, region by region, with suggestions for day drives. ... Whether you're planning a trip to England in your daydreams or for real, you'll love browsing this book."

But wait, there's more

As a kid, I loved the visual aspects of this book. It had a system of symbols to describe each site. And the photograpy — some original and some from archives — was creepy and unsettling. Here are some peeks...

Hey, it's the ghost of Raynham Hall!

Mom and I loved this one. The caption states: "Spot the ghosts in this photograph taken by a former employee at Downe Court Manor. According to the owner, eleven phantoms are visible: Charles Darwin, a blackamoor in a three-cornered hat, a Cavalier, a Miss Smith, half a dozen faces, and a girl with a long plait.

Sausage footnote
1. The Great Book of Sausages does not have great reviews. Here are some from Amazon:

• Under-cooked Book
• What's not in this book? Any useful information on making or cooking sausages.
• This was by far the biggest waste of my time and money that I have ever ordered for myself. This isn't the great book of anything.
• The not-so-great sausage book

Valentine Funk's bad day in 1904

First of all, Valentine Funk is a real name. In fact, I found multiple persons in history who have had that name.

Second of all, in doing one of my mostly aimless online searches, I came across this harrowing tale of Valentine Funk vs. The Spider, documented in the Philadelphia-area newspapers of June 1904...

The Morning Post (Camden, New Jersey), June 25, 1904

The Courier-Post (Camden, New Jersey), June 25, 1904

The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 26, 1904

Full disclosure: I'm fairly certain that I was also bitten on the face by a spider in the summer of 2004, almost exactly a century after Mr. Funk. The right side of my face was swollen a few days, although a trip to the doctor was not needed. And there were no newspaper headlines.

1928 headline and spooky article: "Radio 'Ghost' Balks Experts"

For today's amusement and mystery, here is a lengthy article that appeared 91 years ago, in the November 23, 1928, edition of The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky:

RADIO 'GHOST' BALKS EXPERTS
Walls of House Emit Programmes of Nearby Station Without Cause.
NO RECEIVERS FOUND
By Sam Love.Bellmore, L.I., Nov. 22 (UP) — A "radio ghost," that haunts an untenanted and ancient farmhouse here, causing voices and music to come apparently from the walls themselves, has literally set this peaceful village by the ears and caused the owner to annunce [sic] a conviction that she never will be able to rent the property again.

The strange phenomenon has occurred daily and nightly for months but was kept a secret by Mrs. Lou Greenamyer, owner of the property, who hoped that the manifestations would stop.

Programmes Reproduced.An investigation of village rumors today revealed that the whisperings in Bellmore not only were true but that they understated the case. The Greenamyer house not only reproduced the programmes from WEAF's control station, half a mile distant, but when not fading reproduced them more clearly than an ordinary radio set and absolutely without static.

Most of the radio voices and music seemed to come from the south wall of the living-room. Then for no apparent reason they would come from the cellar.

It was admitted at the WEAF control station that experts had been sent over recently when Mrs. Greenamyer complained about the voices and that their best technicians had been utterly at a loss of [sic] solve the mystery or even to explain it after going over the old farmhouse from top to bottom.

Mrs. Greenamyer drove over from her home in Freeport and unlocked the house for the United Press correspondent and Charles Ellsworth, chief operator of the United Press radio station.

She explained that she had been unable to rent it since the last tenants, a Mr. and Mrs. Duval and their son, moved out suddenly — without mentioning anything strange, however, last February.

Meantime grass had grown knee-deep in the yard and a tangle of bushes and dried weeds aided a cluster of fir, oak and apple trees in screening the two-story frame home from Bellmore Boulevard to the East. To the South of the house is a thick woods of oak.

Haunting Denied.Mrs. Greenamyer, a matter-of-fact young matron, denied indignantly that she took any stock in village talk that the place was "haunted."

"But it is enough to give you a start," she said. "I remember last spring the first time I heard it I thought somebody near here had an extra-loud speaker radio, although nobody lives within a quarter of a mile.

"I was dusting the furniture, getting ready to spend part of the summer here with my two boys. Then I found out that you couldn't hear the music in the yard — only the house.

"I never thought much about it — that it was some sort of accident.

"But last August our house in Freeport was crowded with guests and a friend, Miss June Bell of New York, and I, came over to spend the night. We heard the music again. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, this time. I said:

"'June, you go to the back door and I'll go to the front and see where it's loudest'

"But when we got outdoors we couldn't hear it. Finally it got loudest in the cellar. Believe me, we got scared. When it never stopped we got petrified. About 1 o'clock in the morning it stopped and we went to a bed upstairs — both of us in a single bed.

"That's the last time I have slept here."

When the house was entered today it was disappointingly silent. The investigators went into the shallow center and crouched there. More silence.

Like Early Phonograph.Preparing to leave, despite Mrs. Greenamyer's protests that she had heard the noises with WEAF experts only a few days before, the party gathered round an oak table in the living-room.

Then, at first faintly, swelling later in volume until every word was clear, a lecture voice was heard coming from the south wall of the room. The voice had an uncanny quality, unlike radio as received on either a tube or crystal set, but more like the tone of the earliest crude phonographs.

The voices stopped in a moment. It was 3:45 o'clock. An announcer's voice was heard: "This is Station WEAF. Our programme continues with" — it faded — "our first number is by —" And then a piano tinkled in the wall and a soprano voice began a song that grew stronger and then faded into nothingness.

A hasty visit to the cellar revealed that whereas a moment before nothing could be heard in the cellar, but only in the living-room, now the soprano was singing below stairs only.

A search through the house while the music was still audible revealed nothing to explain it. An electrician went to the master switch in the cellar, cutting off the light current without affecting the reception, which was night fell became clearer. There was no aerial on the house. The remains of an old radio ground-wire were found in the cellar. This was uprooted without affecting the phenomenon.

Walls Seem Solid.The walls were tapped where the music seemed to come out. They seemed as solid as when Henry Golder, a Bellmore resident, who still lives, had them put together with old-fashioned "No. 9 out" nails fifty years ago.

As a final test, Mrs. Greenamyer, who seemed to have no room for a radio to be concealed on her slender person, was sent out into the yard. The result of this seemed to be that the WEAF programme came in stronger than ever in the home.

Various groupings of persons in the house seemed to effect the reception somewhat, but when all left the living-room the entire wall was sending out a musical programme.

WEAF's transmitting station is in view through the trees in the yard across field land. Half a mile distant another abandoned house and partially burned barn are in the between.

Questioned after the correspondent had visited the "radio-ghost" house, operators at WEAF's transmitting station admitted than an investigation had been made but that no evidence of a hoax could be discovered by their experts.

Nor was the "radio ghost" laid by the recent change in wave lengths when WEAF, on November 16, switched from 492 meters to 454 meters. The old frame house, if some freak of construction really makes it the queerest receiving set in the world — a receiving set without a crystal, a tube, a circuit, headphones or a loud-speaker — tuned itself in on the changed wave length automatically.

Suggestions that a nail in the structure might have penetrated a rock crystal in the foundation — that the whole phenomenon may result from some curious echo in the WEAF transmitting station — occurred to experts, but their preliminary investigations failed to substantiate them.

To them, as to Mrs. Greenamyer, the "radio ghost" is still just a radio ghost, manner of living and functioning unknown.

A large home-made sign recently was tacked on the front of the "radio ghost" habititation. It reads:

"For Sale."

————
Happened Before.New York, Nov. 22 (UP) — The Bellmore "radio ghost" recalled to veteran wireless men here a slightly similar case that a dozen years ago nearly frightened a farmer's family to death in an isolated house near New Zealand, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Mysterious tappings, which eventually proved to be code from the first transatlantic radio station at Glace Bay, Cape Breton, 135 miles from the farm house, continued to afflict the family for several months of 1913 and 1914.

Scientists from Boston investigated without solving the mystery, and the family abandoned the house.

Related

• Motherboard: Radio Ghosts Have Haunted the Airwaves for Nearly a Century

Lost Corners of Twitter Creepiness

Christmastime is more about ghosts, spirits and spooky moments than perhaps we'd like to admit, what with Dickens' A Christmas Carol, AS2 Clarence Odbody, the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas series (featuring many M.R. James tales) and, most terrifying of all, Michael Keaton's Jack Frost.

So perhaps it was appropriate that a creepy little Twitter thread popped up a couple days after Christmas last week. It was started by Valerie (@ValeeGrrl), who is Deputy News Editor for a nifty website called Scary Mommy. This was her initial offhand observation of a moment in the parenting life...

while tucking in my son he casually told me he lived a life a long time ago where his name was Gerald and he had a brother Cole who was also his business partner and they died together in a car crash so plz join me in not sleeping at all tonight lol

— Valerie 🍾🥂 (@ValeeGrrl) December 28, 2018

That post has gotten nearly 26,000 retweets already, so many folks have seen it. But that's still just a drop in the bucket compared to all the humans on Planet Earth. So I think it's worthy of being preserved as a future Lost Corner of the Internet.

What really makes it great, though, is all the replies to Valerie's tweet. They represent a veritable gold mine of paranormal-twinged instances of possible past life regressions and childhood visits with deceased relatives. (Or perhaps just cryptomnesia or playful storytelling in some cases.)

Here are some of my favorites:

years ago my baby brother passed away and 9 months later i had a little sister born prematurely. when she was about 4 one day she told my mom “i’m glad to be with you guys again...god took me away cuz i was very sick but that made you really sad. so he told me i could come back.”

— the dude (@tranquiliTwav) December 30, 2018

When my older brother was little, he asked my mom for two glasses of water. He said one was for him and the other for the man in the kitchen. No one was home but then two. When my mom told him to describe the man, he described our grandpa who died a couple months b4 he was born

— rosie (@Rosie1D5SOS) December 31, 2018

My son at 3 pointed to a photo of my Grandfather, who had died several years before. He said, “Mommy, see dat man? He cover me at night when I cold.” And then ran away all cheerful!

— Chronically, Raven♿️🌈 (@ChronicallyRavn) December 31, 2018

When I was a toddler I was watching Mary Poppins with my Nan and I apparently turned to her and said "I watched this with you when you were a little girl too" and she asked what my name was and I told her Maud, my nans Grandmothers name...everyone was freaked out lol

— Coley 🍄 (@narrpip) December 30, 2018

I remember when I was about 4 I would sing this song to help me go to sleep. Much later on in life, I heard the song in the background of a VHS and asked my mom about it, apparently it was a song my grandmother wrote like 20 years before I was born. She died 6 years b4 I was born

— JackJackWild (@jackjackwilds) December 30, 2018

So my son Aiden & his dream
Aiden: I dreamed that God made us from heaven & this is his 1000th time making us. He said be calm, be careful & be nice. I said thank you & amen
Me: Did you see him?
Aiden: yes, he's in heaven.
Me: What did he look like?
Aiden: he looked like me.

— NaLonni Nikole (@NayLahKnee) December 30, 2018

Every year we visit my great grandma and the cemetery for a balloon release. When my brother was around 3-4 he would go around and talk to headstones. Like full on conversations and he was always laughing. He said they were his friends.

— ✨Naturally Nicka✨👸🏾 (@blk_girl_magic) December 31, 2018

When my mom was about 4 (I think) her little brother passed away & they didn’t have her attend the funeral but she was able to recall every single detail down to the flowers about the funeral. She also said she saw him in their attic a few times after.

— JULZ (@sourposh) December 30, 2018

My son (5) insists that he has a grandfather in space name John who "adopts" him when he goes to space and that he lived there with "Space John" before he was born here. For the record, my dad's name was John, and he died 22 years ago.

— Gia Geach (@giabean27) December 31, 2018

When my youngest son was 5 or 6 he INSTSTED he had a “friend” named Joe who was his age. 1 day we saw him just a laughing & talking to himself & then saw him pushing an empty swing. Asked him about it & he said it was Joe...that Joe was sad cuz him & his parents were dead 😳 pic.twitter.com/7gtMuWUpTZ

— stephanie l. ogle (@soulsis69) December 30, 2018

One day my son was looking at picture with my mom and saw a picture of MY grandma who died when I was about 6. He told my mom, 'oh I like her, she's nice and comes over to play with me all the time.' She was a huge part of my life, it gave me a kind of peace to know she was here.

— Jacqulynn Fahrmeyer (@JackieFBabee) December 30, 2018

When I was little, I was with my family driving by a grassy hill and lake in the summer time that I’d never seen before, I was happily chatting then suddenly stopped and said “I died here in a skiing accident once” - the lake is used for skiing and skating in the winter

— kallee tucker (@kalleegrace) December 31, 2018

My parents told me that I spoke a different language while I slept (ages 4-7). I had a recurring nightmare (of hiding from soldiers who marched loudly & wore tall blk boots. I always hid in the same closet & the first thing I saw were the soldiers boots when closet door opened)

— Suzan Anthony (@suzanthony7) December 31, 2018

My friend sd her grandkid was scared of the “Scratchy faced man” in her closet. 1 day she was organizing pictures & her grandkid sd “I know her” she sd no honey she died a long time ago, that’s my grandma. Kid sd “that’s the lady who protects me from the scratchy faced man.

— Arcana7609 (@arcana7609) December 29, 2018