Classic Ghost Series II: The Screaming Skull

This is the second in a series of read-and-watch-alongs for the Kino Cult Blu-Ray release The Classic Ghosts.

Cover300 classic ghosts blu-ray
Source: DVD Beaver

Today we’re reading and watching the second in the series:

The Screaming Skull

This one is adapted from the 1908 F. Marion Crawford story of the same name. In the movie version, the skull is more of a moaning skull than a screaming one, but that makes sense in the context of the narrative.

The story has been updated to present day–that is, 1973–but it takes place in a old gothic mansion somewhere in rural Maine. Ollie Pratt (Vincent Gardenia: Moonstruck, Death Wish, Little Shop of Horrors) is a globe-trotting businessman who comes to visit his younger brother Luke (David McCallum: The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Sapphire & Steel, NCIS), a physician and anatomist married to wealthy Helen (Carrie Nye: Creepshow). Luke and Helen are quite unhappily married; Helen blames Luke for the death of her son from a previous marriage, and basically behaves like a terrible harpy. Why can’t people just get divorced, instead of torturing each other?

The two fight in front of the embarrassed Ollie, who tries to distract Luke with the story of a murder case he heard about on a recent trip to South America. A woman killed three husbands via an ingenious, virtually undetectable method, before getting caught on her fourth attempt. The anecdote doesn’t make the evening any better, but it does put ideas in Luke’s head….

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Classic Ghost Series I: The Haunting of Rosalind

We recently picked up a new release from Kino Cult, called The Classic Ghosts. It collects five “feature-length” (about an hour and change each) gothic TV programs, originally broadcast in 1973 as part of ABC-TV’s Wide World of Mystery late night anthology series. These shows were virtually unseen after their original airings, but are now available thanks to the restoration efforts of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Classic Ghosts Blu Ray case, Kino Cult
Source: DVD Beaver

And best of all for my international readers: while the Kino link above says that it ships only to the U.S. and Canada, DVD Beaver (and my box) confirm that the Blu-Ray is REGION FREE!! So if you can find a retailer that will ship to your location, you can enjoy ’70s American Gothic television, too!

The series was shot on video, “soap opera” style, and directed by three veteran soap opera directors—two of them women. In fact the production team of Classic Ghosts, was largely women, led by the pioneering producer Jacqueline Babbin.

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A Midsummer’s Nightmare

Now that November’s here, I’ve started getting ready for Winter Tales season. In the course of all the reading and re-reading this entails, I came across this fun little story.

It’s called “A Midsummer’s Nightmare,” and just from the name, you can tell it’s not going to be a suitable winter tale. But it is arguably an occult detective story, and it’s certainly a humorous one. I thought you might enjoy it, and so I’m sharing it now.

Our protagonist, Trueman, is a family man, a struggling journalist, sometime researcher/ghostwriter, and an amateur detective. Right now, he’s desperately in need of a quiet place to research and ghostwrite a chapter on “The Origin of Dreams” for a client. When Lord Seaborne hires Trueman to go up to Norwich for a few days in search of his missing ward, Trueman sees a chance to kill two birds with one stone. Soon, his two birds turn into three, and a chance to fulfill his longtime dream of doing some psychical research.

You can read “A Midsummer’s Nightmare” here.

This story is from the collection A Moment of Madness (1883), by Florence Marryat. I shared one of her stories, “The Ghost of Charlotte Cray,” for Winter Tales a few years ago. It was a fun story, and this one is fun, too.

Enjoy!

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Austin Philips’ The Booby-Trap

Another Austin Philips story, this one from Nash’s Magazine, November 1909. In “The Booby Trap,“ a postmistress contends with a person out of her past; one who knows her dark secret.

It’s rather interesting that the protagonist became a postmistress, given what her secret is. It’s quite understandable that she wouldn’t want her secret revealed, for a variety of reasons. Philips reveals a rather cynical (but probably accurate) attitude towards human nature:

In spite of what she had said, she was afraid of the scandal. The village, intolerant, uncharitable, and gossiping, would make her life unbearable. She and her husband—if he still stuck to her—would have to leave.

So all in all, she probably did the best that she could do.

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Dorothy L. Sayers on Women

I used to be quite fond of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I hadn’t read them in years, but now that the earliest books have entered the public domain, I’ve re-read a few. I still enjoy them, though they are certainly of their time; and I enjoy her supernatural fiction, as well. I have always meant to explore her other work, in particular her translation of the Divine Comedy, and her writings on Sherlock Holmes (Ms. Sayers was a founding member of the Sherlock Holmes Society). Someday ….

Dorothy L. Sayers, 1925
Source: Wikipedia

At any rate, I came across an address that Ms. Sayers gave to “a Women’s Society” in 1938, entitled “Are Women Human?” (spoiler: yes). It was interesting to see that—all the way back in 1938—Ms. Sayers was already reluctant to call herself a feminist, and she seemed to think that “the time for ‘feminism’… had gone past.” If only.

I will admit that I went into the essay with some trepidation, and certainly some of the metaphors she uses are quite dated. But the points she makes are still timely, which is unfortunate, because I also would like to live in a world where women (and people of color, and so on) are treated as individual human beings, not representatives of a collective. I don’t think we are there, yet. Nor do I think (again, unfortunately) that the need for collective identities has gone away.

One could also say that this is an essay in support of nuance, and against overgeneralizations and pithy slogans. These are still timely points, in an era of Facebook and Twitter/X and other short-form social media. I wonder what she would have thought of the world we live in now.

Do check out the essay, and see what you think.

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Austin Philips’ The Missing Word

I’ve put up another Austin Philips story on Dark Tales Sleuth. This one is supernatural!

In “The Missing Word”, an old telegraph operator regales his colleagues on a stormy midnight, about the night that he “heard” his fellow telegraphist’s murder–over the wire. The murderer’s never been found. Yet.

This is the story that Mike Ashley collected in his 2018 anthology Glimpses of the Unknown. It’s quite a good one. I hope you enjoy it.

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Austin Philips’ The Telegram

The next Austin Philips story is up on Dark Tales Sleuth. This one is a quiet little crime story with a twist, from The Strand Magazine, July 1909.

In “The Telegram,” Florence Earle is a naive young telegraph operator, who may just be making a big mistake.

Since I don’t know any British Post Office history, I had to check: when telegraph services came to the UK, they were originally provided by private companies. But in 1870, the UK Post Office took over all such services in the country. So this story is, indeed, a Post Office tale.

Enjoy.

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Austin Philips’ A Dead Letter

I’ve put up a new Austin Philips story over on Dark Tales Sleuth:

“A Dead Letter” is a ghost story about a moaning ghost—and a ghost envelope! On the way, the reader learns a little British Post Office history, too.

It’s also set on Christmas Eve, so this story may make a return at Winter Tales season. But in the meantime, enjoy!

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The Post Office Stories of Austin Philips

I’m starting a new project over at Dark Tales Sleuth! It’s really more “literary excavation” than “literary sleuthing,” but it should still be fun and interesting.

Crime in post office illo.
Illustration by A. Twidle for “Crime in the Post Office,” Strand Magazine, October 1907. Source.

Back in 2019, I read a terrific anthology called Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories, edited by Mike Ashley; I wrote a post about it, too. At the end of the article, I gave a wishlist of more collections I’d like to see, from the authors included in the anthology. One of the items on that list:

Austin Philips’s Post Office detective stories (and novels). At some point in his career, Philips served in the Post Office’s investigative branch, which “co-operated with British Intelligence Services in checking suspect mail.” He must have a few interesting stories coming out of that experience, right?

And now, I’m finally working on (parts of) my wishlist, starting with Austin Philips. While much more of the work is in the U.S. public domain than was in 2019, alas, not all of it has been scanned into an online archive that I can access. But I’ll do what I can.

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Reading Strangers

Strangers
by Taichi Yamada, translated by Wayne P. Lammers
Originally published 1987, English translation published 2003
Image Source: Open Library

Hideo Harada is a recently divorced, 47 year old screenwriter. He lives in his office/apartment above a noisy, busy Tokyo thoroughfare. He’s estranged from his college-aged son, and he’s just learned that his colleague Mamiya is about to start dating his ex-wife. The whole situation has him feeling lonely, alienated, and depressed.

On an impulse, he visits Asakusa, where he lived as a child. While there he encounters a young couple who look eerily like his parents—or to be precise, exactly how his parents looked when they died, thirty-five years ago. And even though they’re now apparently much younger than him, they treat him with the love and affection that parents have towards their child. It’s exactly the emotional comfort he needs in this moment.

So he begins to visit them regularly. But soon his colleagues, including Mamiya, and his new lover Kei, who lives in his apartment building, become concerned. Because—though he doesn’t see it himself—Harada is wasting away. Are his “parents” really his parents? Or are they soul-vampires, sucking his vitality away? Or both?

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