Haunted Houses Ghosts & Spectres (Usborne Supernatural Guides, 1979)

One of the more popular posts on this blog is my coverage of 1977's All About Ghosts from Usborne Publishing's World of the Unknown series. I guess there are a lot of folks out there like me who were captivated by this series as a kid after having checked it our repeatedly from the school library.

Usborne followed that up in 1979 with Haunted Houses, Ghosts & Spectres, part of a new series of Supernatural Guides (the other titles were Vampires, Werewolves & Demons and Mysterious Powers & Strange Forces. All three volumes were compiled in a fourth book, Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, and like the World of the Unknown series, they were all reprinted in the early 90s with new cover art but identical content.)




This is a much smaller sized publication than the World of the Unknown books, and is labeled an "Usborne Pocketbook", because it is tiny enough to fit in your pocket... well, that is if you wear clothes with freakishly large 7" x 4.5" pockets!

And don't assume as I did that this book is merely a Cliff Notes digest version of All About Ghosts . Its actually all new material, illustrations and all. Here are some samples of what you'll find within.



Before we can delve into the world of supernatural hauntings we need to agree on terms. What exactly is a haunted house, anyway?



Don't leave out the haunted castles!



Different types of ghosts are described and defined.



Everyone knows the best ghosts are missing their heads, and this book has a whole spread devoted to them!









In a story reminiscent of The Golden Arm, a ghost returns to retrieve a ring that was stolen from her corpse.



The Lord Dufferin story, in which a ghostly premonition warns "Room for one more!" is covered here but for some reason the author chose to leave out the signature quote from this telling. (This famous ghost story was also covered in the Scholastic classic Strangely Enough by C.B. Colby!)



Did somebody say poltergeist?



The Usborne Supernatural Guides are out of print, but can be found on the second-hand market for reasonable prices.

"The Grandchild" (The Waltons, 1977)

I never was a watcher of The Waltons, nor was anyone else in my family. So I'm not exactly sure how it was I came to view the (exactly) two episodes that I remember seeing as a child back in the late 70s. But I do remember this--they rank among the scariest things I had seen on TV up to that time.

One of these, The Changeling (Season 7, Episode 5, 1978), has since become a bit of a cult phenomenon (and holds the honor of being the subject of Kindertrauma's debut post).

The Walton household turns into a G-rated version of the Amityville Horror when a poltergeist haunts daughter Elizabeth (Kami Cotler) on the cusp of her 13th birthday, causing rocking chairs to hover in the air, and her Raggedy Ann doll to move on its own.

But that was child's play compared to the scares contained in a 1977 episode called The Grandchild, elements of which I've remembered ever since.

I'm not sure why The Grandchild seems to have gotten overlooked among seekers of television fright. Maybe because it's a long, two-part episode, and the scary elements only occupy a small portion of one of several subplots.

Mary Ellen (Judy Norton-Taylor) is expecting her first child with husband and town doctor Curt Willard (Tom Bower). She works as a nurse at her husband's practice, and can't wait for her baby to arrive.

One stormy evening, Ab Hineman (David Hooks) arrives at Dr. Willard's office seeking help for her grand-daughter, Cassie (Beth Raines), also pregnant and going into a difficult labor. Dr. Willard is seeing a patient in a neighboring town, so Mary Ellen rides out with Mr. Hineman to provide assistance.

They arrive at the dark cabin amid wind-whipped trees and flashes of lightning.

Cassie has already given birth, and is holding her newborn, but it is eerily quiet.

Mary Ellen has to break the news that the baby was stillborn.

Cassie, a simple and superstitious person, believes the baby's death was caused by the ill omen of her having seen a dead bird the day before.

"I saw a dead bird yesterday. He had his eyes open and I looked right into them. They was all yellow and dead. It's an omen! Today, my baby's dead!"

And now that Mary Ellen has looked into the face of her "sweet dead child", Cassie now believes that Mary Ellen's baby is cursed to the same fate.

It's here that Cassie starts reciting a verse, slowly and rhythmically, as if casting a spell, that has haunted me ever since first hearing it over thirty years ago.

"Look upon the face of death...
And never feel your baby's breath."

She chants it over and over, disturbing Mary Ellen, who at first dismisses it as mere superstition, but is soon fleeing the cabin in fear.

What's waiting for her outside only tightens the psychological screws. It's the surreal scene of Cassie's grandpa, standing over a table in the middle of the lightning storm, building a baby-sized coffin.

Now in a full-fledged panic, Mary Ellen flees down the dark forest road, when a mysterious electrical phenomenon appears along the fence, blue sparks that she perceives as some supernatural sign.

She is picked up shortly by her late-arriving husband, who tries to comfort her by explaining everything in rational terms (the strange lights were just static electricity created by the lightning, etc.)

Days later, after things seem to have returned to normal, Mary Ellen is enjoying her baby shower.

Flossie Brimmer (Nora Marlowe), who wields "occult powers" as a hobby, is reading people's fortune through tea leaves. But when Mary Ellen playfully invites her to read hers, Ms. Brimmer doesn't like what she sees.

This is when a fluttering curtain betrays the presence of someone--or something--just outside the window (and we get a great Window Into Fear moment.)

It's an increasingly unstable Cassie, spying on the shower from the bushes.

Later, Dr. Willard pays Cassie a visit to check up on her well-being (he hasn't had a chance to examine her since her miscarriage.) She's hiding in the dilapidated house of her long dead parents.

Dr. Willard tries to speak kindly to her, but she states coldly: "Nothing's gonna save your baby."

After the doctor leaves, it's revealed that Cassie has been playing mother to something wrapped up in a blanket--why, it's none other than our little haunted friend from The Changeling episode!

Being The Waltons, I guess it's no spoiler to reveal that everything turns out alright in the end--but there is a last minute dramatic turn that will have anyone who's ever seen The Other (1972) looking for the nearest wine barrel.

Man, that old Walton's place gives me the creeps!

Both The Waltons Season 6 (featuring The Grandchild) and The Waltons Season 7 (featuring The Changeling) are available on DVD.

Happy Arbor Day from The Haunted Closet!

Once again, it's that holiday I'm vaguely aware of that has something to do with trees.

I usually observe Arbor Day by not knowing it's Arbor Day. But this year I thought I'd break tradition and venture forth into that spooky old forest growing in the back of this ol' closet to examine some of my favorite arboreal (it's a word!) friends that managed to uproot themselves and branch out into the realm of monsters.

We will dispense with the pleasant-trees (zing!) and get right to "Mel", the mean-spirited specimen from 1973's Tales That Witness Madness, a British-accented anthology film of four spooky tales wrapped in a framing story set in an insane asylum operated by the always pleasant Donald Pleasence. Anyone who's familiar with Amicus' 70s anthology output will feel right at home here, even though this is a World Film Services production.

In the film's third segment, "Mel", couple Brian and Bella Thompson (Michael Jayston and Joan Collins) get into an argument over Brian's latest addition to their modern country home, a section of dead tree with the name "Mel" carved into it. Perhaps going for that primitive-meets-modern effect that causes people to decorate their contemporary living spaces with tribal masks or tiki carvings, Brian displays Mel in the living room after finding her in the neighboring woods. It's shaped vaguely like a women, even more so after Brian sands and prunes it.

Bella isn't impressed with Brian's decorating taste, but she has a good reason to object beyond mere aesthetics, as Mel seems to be alive, gently leaning and shifting position around the room, and emitting a soft heartbeat heard only by the audience.

When Brian steps out for a visit to the pub, Bella leans in too close and gets clawed by Mel's sharp extremities.

When Brian returns, Bella gives him an ultimatum: if he expects her to sleep in this house, the tree has to go. Well, you can guess how that turned out...

Tales That Witness Madness has not found its way to DVD yet, but is available streaming on Netflix as of this writing.

Next up is one of my earliest monster-tree memories, the sour-apple trees from The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Back in Kansas, Dorothy was used to picking apples off of trees. But in Land of Oz, trees pick fruit off of YOU!

In the animated sort-of sequel, Journey Back to Oz (1974), Dorothy (voiced by Liza Minnelli) and some new friends revisit the ferocious forest, where the trees have grown larger and nastier with the help of Mombi the Bad Witch's magic.

They all look like they belong to the same family tree (slide whistle) of the evil trees from Living Island, home of 1969's H.R. PufnStuf.

But going back even further, we have this unpleasant fellow from Walt Disney's first color cartoon, the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees (1932). His morning yawn reveals a mouthful of bats and a lizard for a tongue.

While trying to burn down the forest, he ends up setting himself on fire instead, leaving behind a semi-disturbing burnt-out corpse.

Flowers and Trees led to Disney's first animated feature, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which had its own spooky forest of anthropomorphised trees.

Even though these monstrous trees appear to be the product of Snow White's overactive imagination, they can be found occasionally roaming the Disney parks as costumed characters.

Charlie Brown had regular run-ins with a ravenous kite-eating tree, which loudly and visibly devoured any kite that got too close.

It was sometimes depicted with an actual tooth-filled mouth, and in 1969's A Boy Named Charlie Brown, it even leaned menacingly at passers-by.

In 1982's The Last Unicorn, Schmendrick the Magician winds up tied to a tree that is brought to life by magic, transforming into a voluptuous lovesick tree-woman, threatening to smother the poor wizard with her... affections.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) featured a walking, talking hangman's tree...

Moving out of the realm of animation, we have Baranga, from 1957's From Hell It Came. I haven't actually seen this film, about a murdered island prince reincarnated as a murderous walking tree (available on DVD from Warner Archives burn-on-demand store), but the trailer looks like a lot of fun.

Anyone remember when this picture of a young Baranga was taken? I'm stumped.

After classroom chum Veronica plants ideas of witchcraft in her head, the impressionable Flavia has a nightmare that the tree outside her window is scratching to get in, in 1984's Poison For the Fairies (a.k.a. Veneno Paras Las Hadas) (hat tip to Kindertrauma for introducing me to this gem.)

But that tree was a wallflower compared to the one outside the Freeling's house in 1982's Poltergeist, which not only scratched at the window, but busted right through to grab up little Robbie between its massive limbs for a midnight snack.

Why do we always fight on holidays?