"Lonely, Lonely" Spooky Stories (1978, Pickwick Records cereal box record)

UPDATED 11/6/2017: See bottom of post

For a few days in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade, I ran a detective agency with my friend who lived three houses down, Tiffany. We worked out of her backyard playhouse, and our biggest case (in fact, our only case) was The Mystery of the Hidden Treasure at the Empty House That Was For Sale Two Blocks Over.

The big twist in the "hidden treasure" case was that there was no treasure. More accurately, we left the case unsolved after a neighbor threatened to call the police if we kept letting ourselves into the backyard (a later attempt to return to the scene disguised as prospective buyers fooled no one.)

(image source)

So our little detective agency was forced to close its doors, ruining summer for about 5 minutes.

But Tiffany had more going for her than just a backyard playhouse... like an appreciation for ghost stories and spooky Halloween records. Sounds to Make You Shiver and The Story and Song From The Haunted Mansion were prized albums from my collection that were constantly playing in the background at my house. But one day Tiffany showed up with a record that I could never find a copy of myself, and so naturally coveted: Spooky Stories (1978, Pickwick Records), a "cereal box" record, meaning it was pressed to a very thin layer of plastic attached to a piece of cardboard (in this case, to the back of a box of Post Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits cereal).

As was the tradition with these types of records, there were multiple stories available, and it was luck of the draw which one you ended up with. Tiffany's copy contained a story I call "Lonely, Lonely" (I don't remember the actual title being credited anywhere on the record), a variation on the "Dark, Dark" type spooky story where the listener is lulled into a comforting rhythm by slowly repeated phrases, only to be startled at the end by a suddenly loud climax.

Transcript of the story below the video embed.



Lonely, Lonely
Along this lonely, lonely road,
Was this lonely, lonely hill.
Along this lonely, lonely hill
Stood this lonely, lonely house.
And inside that lonely, lonely house,
Was this creaking, squeaking stair.
At the top of the creaking, squeaking stair,
Was this long, long hallway.
And down that long, long hallway,
Was this flapping, clapping trapdoor.
And above that flapping, clapping trapdoor
Was this crying, sighing attic.
And in that crying, sighing attic
Was this shadowy, shadowy corner.
And in that shadowy, shadow corner
Was this big, old chest.
And inside that big, old chest...
...WAS A THING!!!

UPDATE: The background music used here appears to be "borrowed" from Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (queued to around the 15:50 mark in the embedded video below). It also sounds awfully similar to the 1977 Star Wars soundtrack by John Williams, cut no. 4, "The Desert and Robot Auction" (retitled "The Dune Sea of Tatooine/Jawa Sandcrawler" on later editions of the soundtrack). Take a listen--what do you think? Credit to reader TheLibrarySound for recognizing the Star Wars track similarity!

A Ghost Named Fred - An I Can Read Mystery (Nathanial Benchley, Ben Shecter, 1968)

Here's A Ghost Named Fred (1968, written by Nathanial Benchley, illustrated by Ben Shecter), a slightly spooky but mostly cute story about a lonely boy, George, who, while playing astronaut by himself (hence the space helmet) wanders into an old mansion haunted by friendly ghost Fred and a bat named Charlie. Selected scans below.

The Whistle (Strangely Enough)

Here's an unnerving tale culled from the pages of the Scholastic Book Club's collection of "chilling stories" and "offbeat yarns", Strangely Enough (C.B. Colby, 1959).

In The Whistle, a South Carolina woman living on a remote farm with her dog is repeatedly startled by a strange, unnatural whistling sound emitting from somewhere in the neighboring woods. The  whistle seems to be coming closer every time she hears it, and the high-pitch of the sound disturbs her pet terrier.

One evening, the noise returns and is so loud and frightening she bolts the front door, leaving her dog barking hysterically on the front porch, until suddenly... silence. The next morning she inspects the scene only to find her dog is missing, the porch splattered with blood.

What was the source of the whistle? What happened to the dog?

"Nobody ever found out."

Read the complete text of the story above. While "The Whistle" leaves it a mystery, I have my own theory. The dog could very well have been the victim of a shadmock.

What is shadmock? To explain, I'll first need to brief you on the confusing geneology of monsters. Luckily there's a visual aid for that.

You see, the three primary monsters at the top of the family tree are the vampire, the werewolf and the ghoul. When a vampire and werewolf breed, the offspring is called a werevamp. A werewolf and ghoul produce a weregoo, while a vampire and ghoul produce a vamgoo.

A weregoo and werevamp make a shaddie, weregoo and vamgoo a maddie, and werevamp and vamgoo, a raddie. Now any combination of shaddies, maddies and raddies results in a mock (a polite term for mongrel).

And should a mock mate with any of the other hybrids... they produce a shadmock, lowest on the monster geneological hierarchy.

Shadmocks do not bite or tear at their victims... they only WHISTLE. But their whistle is very deadly. There was one particular shadmock who lived at a remote English castle, so remote that his only friends were the pigeons.

One morning he noticed a stray cat stalking his feathered friends...

...and before he could do anything about it, the cat had a mouthful of pigeon.

The shadmock let loose the eerie, inhuman whistle for which his race is known...

...and in short order, the cat turned into, well... this.

You don't even want to know what happened to the woman he was wooing after she tried to run out on him and he had to whistle for her to come back home.

The story of the shadmock comes from the 1980 cult classic The Monster Club (here's a rendering of the unfortunate cat incident as it appeared in the comic book adaptation of the story)

The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales (1970, Scholastic Book Services)

Here's another Scholastic Book Services entry, The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales (1970, edited by Gladys Schwarcz and Vic Crume, illustrations by Gerry Contreras). This is a collection of spooky poems and short stories from various authors, including a reappearance of Maria Leach's telling of The Cradle That Rocked By Itself.

Some of these stories were performed for an accompanying album (called, appropriately, Selections From the Haunted House and Other Poems and Tales).

Some of the more notable entries include the poems The Haunted House (Vic Crume), A Skeleton Once in Khartoum (author unknown), Dust (Sydney King Russell), The Bat (Theodore Roethke), and short stories The Cradle That Rocked By Itself (Maria Leach)and The Velvet Ribbon (Ann McGovern). Below is a sample of illustrations from the book, some with accompanying audio from the record (hat tip and thanks to Scar Stuff).

THE CRADLE THAT ROCKED BY ITSELF (Maria Leach)

DUST (Sydney King Russell)

THE HAUNTED HOUSE (Vic Crume)

A SKELETON ONCE IN KHARTOUM (Author Unknown)

THE GHOST CATCHER (A tale from India retold by E.B. Chance)

OLD CORNISH LITANY (Author Unknown)

THE OLD WIFE AND THE GHOST (James Reeves)

SPOOKS (Nathalia Crane)

THE BAT (Theodore Roethke)

THE VELVET RIBBON (Ann McGovern)

A sad story for Scary Stories To Tell In the Dark

If you're a reader of this blog, you probably don't need me to tell you that the Scary Stories trilogy (Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones), a compilation of ghost stories, spooky folk tales, and urban legends collected and retold by author Alvin Schwartz, is a must-have for any respectable haunted library.

The surreal and unsettling black-and-white illustrations by Stephen Gammell (which have graced the cover and interior pages of each volume since first published) play no small part in the books' appeal, and I'm guessing Gammell's visualizations left their mark on many a young reader's subconscious (Kindertrauma has the proof!)

Sadly, I've learned that after over 30 years of being in print (the original volume was released in 1981, the sequels following in 1984 and 1991), the publisher has decided to quietly replace Gammell's original illustrations with brand new renderings by Lemony Snicket artist Brett Helquist.

Don't get me wrong, I like Helquist's style, which has a charm all its own (this article at Adventures In Poor Taste offers some sharp observations and page-by-page comparisons). The problem is, the new illustrations look like the labor of a competent and perfectly sane artist. Gammell's, in contrast, appear to have seeped out of a fevered nightmare and manifested itself onto paper.

You just don't see this kind of stuff in children's books today (in fact, to find anything comparable I have to reach back to Franz Altschuler's shadowy and ambiguously disturbing drawings for Ida Chittum's Tales of Terror (1975).

In memoriam, I present a selection of scans from the Scary Stories Treasury (a 2002 hardcover compendium of all three volumes, complete and unabridged.) Meanwhile, if you've been putting off picking up an original copy of your own, better act fast. Prices on the used market are already starting to climb! (Hat tip to artist Daniel Danger... and if you aren't familiar with his work, click this link and prepare to be captivated.)