I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a novel less than I enjoyed Dracula in Love. I started it during the hectic last week of my summer holidays and finished it over a nasty bout of jetlag, and I’m sure these circumstances had something to do with me struggling to get through more than a few paragraphs at a time. Also, I got through a fair bit of the text with an audiobook from Encyclopocalypse. I love when publishers put out old books like this as audiobooks, but the narrator did silly voices for each character, and that really annoyed me. To be honest, a lot of things have been annoying me recently.
Zebra – 1990 (First published 1979)
Lucifer visits Dracula’s son (His name is Vlad Horescu. Sounds a lot like that guy who wrote that other book on Dracula, doesn’t it?) and asks him to help trapping the King of the Vampires. Dracula rapes a few women with his demon cock and inspires rape waves wherever he goes. It turns out he only got back in touch with his son because Vlad Junior is high up in a computer company and is capable of hijacking software that will give Dracula enough influence over the economy and politics of Brazil that he will be able to become an Emperor there. His plan is foiled when he is sucked into Lucifer’s giant vagina.
On the plus side, this is gory and gross and features sentient genitalia. Unfortunately though, the plot is confusing, the characters are unlikeable, and the whole thing is overwritten. I have a high tolerance for crap, but I really had to force myself to get through this one. In fairness, the author was only 18 when it was written, so maybe his other books are better. It’ll be a while before i get around to them.
In 2019, I read Flesh by Richard Laymon and quite enjoyed it. 2 years later, I read The Cellar. I didn’t like that one, and I’ve steered clear of Laymon since. Recently a friend suggested that I check out The Woods Are Dark. I had read that the first edition of this book had been heavily censored, and I was very pleased to find a copy of the unedited version that Laymon’s daughter had published after her father’s death.
Cemetery Dance – 2008 (First published 1981)
After a freak throws a severed hand into their car, two young females are kidnapped in small town and tied to a tree in a clearing in a nearby forest. There they meet a family of 4 who have met with a similar fate. The kidnappers promptly run away, and it turns out that they were just serving dinner to a tribe of cannibals called the Krulls. Luckily, one of the kidnappers starts to feel guilty because he has fallen in love with one of the girls he kidnapped, so he comes back to save her. He manages to set everybody free, but then the Krulls arrive and things get ugly.
The best part about this book is Lander Dills, the father of the family of 4. The former English teacher goes mad and starts behaving just as poorly as one of the Krulls. His thought process is outlined in one of the crudest lines ever put to paper: “An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A rape for a rape.” The only difference between Lander and the savages is that he quotes Shakespeare while raping and skinning his victims. Apparently this guy’s escapades were the parts that were cut from the first edition. Without him, the book would be very dull.
One of the girls who was kidnapped by the hillbillies manages not only to forgive her kidnapper when he comes back to rescue her, but she actually has consensual sex with him hours later and cries at the thought of not being able to spend the rest of her life with him shortly thereafter. Very realistic.
In truth, I was a little shocked at the level of brutality on display in this book. There’s gang-rapes, and cocks being bitten off aplenty. Also, this is a Richard Laymon book, so there is a lot of tit talk. I did a search through an ebook version of the book, and without counting tits, boobs or nipples, the word ‘breast’ appears 58 times. The Woods are Dark is pure trash, but it was relatively entertaining. I’ll probably read more of the Booby man’s stuff in the future.
Final Events and the Secret Government Group on UFOs and the Afterlife – Nick Redfern
Anomalist Books – 2013
Aliens are not extraterrestrials, they are demons that were set loose by Jack Parsons, and they are trying to bring about the end of the world. (They may also be harvesting human souls.) The Collins Elite, a top secret group within the United States government know about this, and they have been working for decades to make sure this doesn’t happen. (Then again, it is possible that all of the information they have been given/putting out has been disinformation. They may unwittingly aid Satan in bringing about the apocalypse.)
There’s some novel details in here, but the basic premise behind this book (that aliens are demons) is one I have encountered a few times before. The most surprising element of Final Events is that its intended audience seems to be conspiracy nuts and fans of Forteana rather than just evangelical Christians (unlike Bob Larson’s UFO book and Basil Tyson’s UFOs Satanic Terror. The problem is that if you don’t believe in Jesus-hating demons, none of this seems remotely convincing. If you’re not a Christian, there’s no real threat being presented, and all of the people claiming that Aliens are Satan’s henchmen just seem like idiots. Redfern doesn’t come across as preachy, but it does feel like he is trying to frighten his Christian readers. I suppose that is a noble thing to do.
I know that the US government has put money into researching bizarre ideas, and I’m sure there’s some military guys who do think that aliens are evil, but this is clearly a book of bullshit. It’s not even a case of misinterpretations either. Most of this was obviously just made up. I’m not saying that Redfern made it up himself, but if he didn’t, his sources definitely did. The guy who put him onto this story was a priest who had been approached by members of the ultra-secretive Collins Elite. I liked the first few chapters, but after a while it got a little boring. Many of the sources it references are absolute tripe too. It discusses both the work of Kurt Koch and Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. It also mentions last week’s book, the bizarre Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer. Seeing all these titles mentioned alongside the work of my old friends, Whitley Strieber and Aleister Crowley, was fun. It’s nice to know that there are other people out there who spend their time reading this stuff.
Final Events didn’t exactly blow me away, but I enjoyed reading it. I am quite sure that I’ll be reading more books by Nick Redfern in the future. Apparently he has one in which he claims that the alien bodies found at Roswell were actually those of progeria patients. LOL. Definitely checking that one out soon.
A couple of years ago, after I posted about UFOs Satanic Terror, my pal put me on the trail of another book on the same topic called Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer. With a title like that, who could resist? I finally got my hands on a copy yesterday.
Vantage – 1955
Cecil Michael, a mechanic, goes out for a walk and he sees a UFO. A few days later, 2 weird men come into his shop and stand there looking at him. They’re tall, strong, handsome looking men, but they’re weirdly silent and they scare Cecil. He gets really freaked out once they start turning transparent in front of him. They stay in his shop all day, disappearing whenever a customer comes in, and then leave at 4.30. Cecil knows almost immediately that they’re from space. The same thing happens the next day, and the day after that.
These lads are really annoying, and Cecil frequently wants to punch them in their fool faces, but he’s too afraid/in awe of them. Despite that fact that they are capable of speaking telepathically, they say almost nothing to Cecil. At one point they show him their insides. They are made of tubes and electronic parts. They’re a real pair of jackasses.
The spacemen do the same thing every day for a couple of months and then take Cecil for a ride in their spaceship. To do so without inconveniencing Cecil, they create a robot clone of him that stays working in his shop while he’s away. Cecil’s brother ties him to the inside of the spacemen’s flying saucer, and they fly away from Earth and land on a red planet that’s mostly on fire.
When they land, the 2 spacemen stay in the UFO, but Cecil gets off and meets a scruffy bum who tells Cecil that he has a job for him. Cecil doesn’t want the job, so the bum gives him some horrible food and introduces him to his other workers. They are small pygmy men. Their job is to throw corpses into a lake that carries the corpses into a fire. Cecil tells the bum again that he doesn’t want the job, and the bum gets angry with him. Then Jesus appears in the sky. Cecil tells the bum that Jesus will make sure that he doesn’t have to work for him.
The aliens take Cecil back to Earth. After a few more days, they stop showing up in Cecil’s shop because he has been smoking too many cigarettes.
That’s what happens in this book. It’s such a ridiculous story that I find it hard to imagine the author thinking that anyone would believe it. Some of the details are so arbitrary that it reads more like a description of a nightmare than a cohesive narrative. The part where his brother helps him into the spaceship makes no sense. Also, it’s very unclear as to whom the spacemen are working for. Cecil is full of praise for them, but it does seem that they are under the employ of scruffy old Satan. If I was going to make up a story about being kidnapped by spacemen and taken to Hell, I would make the story more cohesive. Maybe this account was just a dream and Cecil Michael thought it was real.
This isn’t like the other Satanic alien books that I’ve read in that it’s not preachy. While Jesus acts as a saviour here, it seems like it’s more a hologram of Jesus than the real guy. This book doesn’t come close to Larson or Tyson’s attempts to use aliens to scare people into Christianity. Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer is a unique and truly bizarre book.
Round Trip To Hell in a Flying Saucer came out first in 1955, but it was republished in 1971 in New Zealand. Copies of these editions are very hard to find, but the complete text was republished in Round Trip To Hell in a Flying Saucer: UFO Parasites – Alien Soul Suckers – Invaders From Demonic Realms Paperback, a 2011 anthology on Satanic aliens compiled by Timothy Green Beckley and Sean Casteel. I may well turn to that book in the future.
I’ve been planning on reading Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac for a while. I’ve gotten into weirdo true-crime books recently, and this is the book that served as the basis for the 2007 movie of the same name. The Zodiac killer, in case you don’t know, was a freak who killed 5 people over the course of a year and then spent 5 years writing threatening and bizarre letters to newspapers. For one of the attacks, he wore an executioner’s hood with his weird symbol sewn onto it. He claimed to have killed 37 people, but there is no proof that his kill count was this high. His letters boasted of collecting souls to serve as his slaves in the afterlife, and some of these letters were written in code. One of these codes was only cracked a few years ago. This guy was a real weirdo. Robert Graysmith was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the newspapers that received Zodiac’s first letters. He followed the case as it progressed and kept researching it for years after the Zodiac stopped sending letters.
Berkley Books – 1987 (First published 1986)
Zodiac lays out the facts of the case and focuses on pinning the blame on one particular subject, Bob Hall Star. Bob Hall Star is a pseudonym for Arthur Leigh Allen. Allen was the only person named by police as a Zodiac suspect. He was in the areas when the murders took place, he had bloody knives in his car on the day of one of the killings, he told his friends that he planned to become a killer named the Zodiac, and bombs were found in his house. Nobody was ever able to prove that he was the Zodiac, but it was proven that he molested children and didn’t wash his dildos after shoving them up his own ass.
“Several large, uncleaned dildos rolled out at his feet.” – Zodiac Unmasked: Chapter 8
I’m not convinced that Arthur Leigh Allen was definitely the Zodiac, but I really enjoyed this book. It’s well researched non-fiction, but it has a strong narrative, and it almost felt like a novel. I also really liked the movie that was based on it. You should definitely watch that if you haven’t.
So Zodiac was published in 1986, but Arthur Leigh Allen was still free at that time, and nobody had been charged in the Zodiac case. In 2002, Graysmith put out a second book on the Zodiac case containing information that came to light after his first book had been published.
Berkley Books – 2003 (First published 2002)
Zodiac Unmasked is roughly twice as long as the first book. It’s not nearly as entertaining. The narrative structure and suspense have been replaced with meticulous, repetitive and sometimes boring detail. While the first book reads like a novel, the second feels like a vendetta. Robert Graysmith was certain that Allen was the killer.
I think that Arthur Leigh Allen was a disgusting human and a good suspect, but his handwriting and DNA didn’t match that found on the Zodiac artefacts. It’s certainly possible that he found a a way to make that happen, but it’s also possible that he was just an attention seeking creep who enjoyed the notoriety that came with being a suspect.
The first book sold millions of copies. It’s tells an interesting story. The second book merely presents more evidence to believe that story and will only be interesting to people who are already super interested in the Zodiac case. While the movie was based on both books, only a few scenes in the movie are based on parts of the second book. Admittedly, my favourite scene, the interrogation of the suspect, is taken from Zodiac Unmasked.
One of the most interesting parts from Zodiac Unmasked was the description of stuff that was found in Arthur Leigh Allen’s House after he died. The police found child-porn, bombs, guns and a video cassette. They weren’t allowed watch the video until they got special permission, but they were hoping that it might contain a confession or perhaps even footage of one of the Zodiac murders. When they got the permission and finally watched the tape, it was a video of Arthur Leigh Allen mooning the camera.
The Zodiac and Arthur Lee Allen, AKA The Dirty Dildo Boys
While it wasn’t as good as the first book, I still quite enjoyed Zodiac Unmasked. I listened to an audiobook version, and I found its repetitive nature quite soothing. It was the perfect thing to listen to before falling asleep. There are other books on the Zodiac Killer, and I may well read them in the future. It really is a fascinating case.
I was originally planning to post about a different book today, but then I discovered a 600 page sequel that I felt I should read before posting about it, so I had to read something quick to get a post done on time for the weekend. I haven’t had to resort to reading anything from Finbarr in almost a year, and I know that I probably say this every time, but I genuinely think this was the worst one yet.
The general idea here is that if you think about getting the things you want, you will get them. The message of this book is dumb, but the amount of effort put into pushing this message is minimal. Cliff R. Stevens treats his readers like the morons they definitely are. I have summarised the entire text below.
If you want to get a thing, you must really want the thing. This is 2/3s of the work. For 10 minutes after work and 10 minutes before bed, think of getting the thing you want. If this approach doesn’t work it’s your fault. Don’t blame the Occult.
Don’t give up, and don’t be dirty and visualise somebody else’s wife. Also, don’t worry about this approach working or not because doubts interfere with the magnetism of your desires. Unfortunately, this approach might not work well with personal health problems because they cloud the mind and interfere with visualisation. It’s ok to visualize material things because God wants us to have things. that’s why he made them.
There you have it. Pure crap. The only part of this book that I found easy to swallow was when the author stated:
Ingo Swann was one of the big names in the development of remote viewing. One of the characters in the movie version of The Men who Stare at Goats is based on him, and he did actually work with the American government on bizarre military projects attempting to harness psychic power.
Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy – Ingo Swann
Self Published – 1998
This book, published in 1998, tells of how Ingo was approached by a weirdo named “Axelrod” in the early 1970s to work on a top secret project. Axelrod may have been a US government agent, a Russian spy or maybe even an alien. If I remember correctly, Ingo drew Axelrod’s attention by boasting of visiting Jupiter with his mind. Anyways, once he agreed to join the project, Ingo was kidnapped by a weird set of twins (possibly clones or aliens) and taken to a secret location. Then Axelrod gave him some coordinates on the dark side of the moon and Ingo visited them (in his mind). There were aliens up there, and they were able to see Ingo even though his body was actually on Earth. Ingo came back pretty quickly once he had been spotted.
After this, Ingo went home and got back to work. This was the kind of thing that happened to him regularly, and he actually completely forgot about it until he saw a really sexy lady in a grocery store a few years later. He walked closer to her to get a better look at her boobs (really), and then saw the weird twins that had kidnapped him for Axelrod a few years prior. Once he saw them, he realised that the sexy lady was actually an alien, so he ran away.
He was contacted by Axelrod shortly after, and they arranged to meet up again. Axelrod flew him up to Alaska to show him a UFO. The UFO almost killed them with a death-ray, but they hid behind a rock and managed to escape.
The rest of the book presents Swann’s arguments for the moon being an alien spaceship. Ever wonder why we stopped going there in the early 70s? It’s because NASA knows it’s full of aliens. There’s a lot of nonsense about government cover-ups and conspiracies. They don’t want us to know the moon is full of aliens, and they really, really don’t want us to know that we all have psychic powers.
This is stupid garbage. The bullshit story at the beginning was moderately entertaining, but the spew at the end was pure diarrhea. It’s sad to think that there’s twats out there who take this kind of crap seriously. I wouldn’t normally allow myself to read a book about remote viewing, but the cover and title of this one made it hard to resist. Not only does the book fail to keep the promises made by the cover image and titillating title, but it also completely fails to answer the question that makes up the subtitle of the book. The notion of telepathy between extraterrestrials and human is barely touched upon. Swann wrote another book on “psychic sexuality” that I considered reading for a laugh, but I don’t think I’ll bother.
This is a book of texts that the government and the mainstream media didn’t want you to see! I use the past tense there because the stuff in here is very dated. It’s a Feral House compilation job, similar in style to Apocalypse Culture. I’ve had copies of the Apocalypse Culture books for years, but I’ve never read through either from start to finish because I don’t want to read the paedo-stuff. (Both books contain essays from real creeps.) I only read Secret and Suppressed because it contains “Sorcery, Sex, Assassination and the Science of Symbolism”, an extended version of James Shelby Downard’s Kill King 33° essay which was originally published in the first edition of Apocalypse Culture. The second edition of Apocalypse Culture replaced Kill King 33° with “The Call to Chaos: From Adam to Atom by Way of the Jornada del Muerto”, another piece by Downard. The second volume of Apocalypse Culture contains an entirely separate essay by Downard called “America, The Possessed Corpse”.
While “Sorcery, Sex, Assassination and the Science of Symbolism” is a longer version of the “Kill King 33°” essay in Apocalypse Culture, it’s actually not quite as long as the document titled “Kill King 33°: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy”. This document was co-written by our old pal Michael A. Hoffman II. This contains a few more details than the version in Secret and Suppressed. These extra details deal with stuff from Downard’s autobiography.
Honestly, all versions of this essay are truly ridiculous nonsense. The main idea is that JFK was assassinated by the Freemasons. The proof for this lies in the spellings of certain words and how they might be translated, some numerological nonsense, and some not-so-coincidental coincidences. Apparently the three tramps, the ones photographed in the park after JFK was killed, represent 3 of the characters in Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s 1949 absurdist play. Godot, the character who never shows up in that play, is obviously JFK. This play was written 14 years before Kennedy’s assassination. I assume Samuel Beckett was a member of the Illuminati to have this kind of foreknowledge. Later on, Downard points out that the guy who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s alleged assassin, was named Jack Ruby. RUBY! Ruby slippers! Ruby slippers send you home. Jack Ruby sent Lee Harvey Oswald home! This has been there the whole time, and we didn’t notice it! WAKE UP!!!
Honestly, I was planning on doing a more in depth post on the writing’s of James Shelby Downard, but this has been enough. He was either a very insane person or a CIA psyop to make conspiracists look crazy.
Here’s a recap of the other pieces in Secret and Suppressed:
An Open Letter to the Swedish Prime Minster From a Survivor of Electromagnetic Terror
Robert Naeslund
This dude believed he was a victim of a mind control experiment. Boring.
Remote Mind Control Technology
Anna Keeler
Unreadable technical writing about mind control technology. Barely skimmed this one. Probably all true, but I’m not really interested.
Is Paranoia A Form of Awareness?
Kerry W. Thornley
The dude who knew Lee Harvey Oswald and created Discordianim reflects on conspiracy theories.
Sorcery, Sex, Assassination and the Science of Symbolism
James Shelby Downard
Discussed above.
Subliminal Images in Oliver Stone’s JFK
Dean Grace
A list of what the title describes. I haven’t seen that movie in years. I didn’t rewatch to check the list. Maybe I will when I am old and have more free time.
Terminator III
Associated Press
Newspaper articles about racist games that were available in the early 1990s. It’s surprising how naive people were about the insidious ways we would come to use technology.
The Masonic Ripper
Jim Keith
Jack the Ripper was a freemason. I came across this idea in Alan Moore’s From Hell. I assume it’s originally from another book.
The Erotic Freemasonry of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf
Tim O’Neill
There once was a mason named Nick, He liked others to play with his…
Rumors, Myths and Urban Legends Surrounding the Death of Jim Morrison
Thomas Lyttle
I thought Jim Morrison was cool when I was 15. I become less interested in him as each year passes.
The Last Testament of Rev. Jim Jones
Jim Jones
This is a transcription of the Jonestown Death Tape. I had heard this recording before, but not since becoming a parent. I was able to read this, but I couldn’t listen to the recording of the babies screaming while their parents murdered them. Too much.
The Black Hole of Guyana
John Judge
This essay posits that the People’s Temple commune was a CIA experiment. I reckon it’s easier for some people to believe that a faceless government organisation would be capable of committing such an atrocity than any one specific person. Jim Jones was a real cunt.
Behold, A Pale Horse A Draft of Danny Casolaro’s Octopus Manuscript Proposal
Kenn Thomas
I am planning on reading Thomas’s book about the Octopus and Danny Casolaro soon.
Why Waco?
Ken Fawcett
The Waco tragedy was deliberate. Duh.
An Invitation to War
Ambassador April Glaspie & Saddam Hussein
American diplomat encouraging Saddam to start a war.
Inside the Irish Republican Army
Scott Smith
Scott Smith interviews an Irish freedom fighter. Brits out.
Recipes for Nonsurvival: The Anarchist Cookbook
Esperanze Godot
The Anarchist Cookbook is designed to kill the Anarchists who try to make its recipes. I remember getting a pdf of the anarchist’s cookbook when I was a kid. It was very disappointing. Never tried anything from it.
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
This is the document that somebody left in a photocopier than William Milton Cooper published in his Behold a Pale Horse
Secrets from the Vatican Library
This is a very long, boring document that claims that the bad jews kill children and drink their blood. There are good jews too, but it’s never discussed how to tell them apart.
AIDS: Act of God or the Pentagon?
When I was a kid, I was told that AIDS started when a man shagged a monkey. This story claims otherwise. I am not convinved.
“Clinton is the best guy for us”
Some American guy working for a pro-Israel organisation boasts about his political power.
Exposing the Nazi International
A neo nazi describes his relationship with Otto Skorzeny, a Nazi soldier who faked his own death. Boring and probably all bullshit.
Secret and Suppressed was a fairly interesting read. A lot of really fucked up things have happened since it was published though, and the paranoia that this book attempts to induce is widespread at this point. I think a lot of the claims made in this book are inaccurate, but I believe that things are just as bad as it makes them out to be.
I started this collection of short stories knowing nothing about it or its author. I honestly had no idea how much I was going to love it.
This is about 8 ghost stories in the tradition of M.R. James. The narrator is an antiques dealer who keeps coming across haunted antiques. There’s a Satanic clock, some very creepy dolls, and a pervert in an abandoned church. The narrator here is a bit more worldly than James’ guys.
I read a similar collection of Jamesian ghost stories a few months years ago. A.N.L. Munby’s The Alabaster Hand was enjoyable enough, but I didn’t find it scary. Some of the stories in Antique Dust are quite creepy though, the first two especially. You should definitely read this book.
I wrote the above in December of 2022. It didn’t feel like quite enough for a post, so I decided to read more Robert Westall. I didn’t go near him again for well over a year, but I’ve been dipping in and out of his horror fiction for the last few months, and I have thoroughly enjoyed pretty much everything I read by him.
After Antique Dust, I read 2 “best of” collections, Demons and Shadows and Shades of Darkness. Both were phenomenal. These books came out in 1993, but they were reissued in 1999, and while both editions of Demons and Shadows are the same, the newer edition of Shades of Darkness swapped out 2 stories. I managed to track down copies of both editions.
The Best of Robert Westall, Volume 1: Demons and Shadows
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (1994) Macmillan’s Children’s Books (1999)
Rachel and the Angel
Girl sees biblically accurate angel. Must find a good soul or there’ll be another Sodom situation.
Graveyard Shift
Starts off with ghosts appearing to cemetery worker, but things get dark when paedo vampire appears.
A Walk on the Wild Side
School headmaster’s cat brings home a kitten. The kitten falls in love with him but then kills robbers in his house and might be a shapeshifter. Some actually scary passages. So, so god damn good.
The Making of Me
Sentimental story about shellshocked angry grandad. Nothing spooky
The Night Out
Biker boys have fun. Not scary
The Woolworth Spectacles
From Antique Dust
A Nose Against the Glass
Long, kinda boring story, about antique dealer who sees pesky child’s face in his window
Gifts from the Sea
Boy goes to granny’s to avoid blitz. Finds cool stuff on beach then a corpse
The Creatures in the House
Weird vampire creature drains women of their minds. One such woman leaves her haunted house to niece, but niece lets a bunch of cats in who fuck creature up. Good story.
The Death of Wizards
Boy saves old man’s life, but old man is wizard. Pays boy back by giving him intimate knowledge of everything around him. Doesn’t want this after trip to supermarket
The Last Day of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux
From Antique Dust
The Best of Robert Westall, Volume 2: Shades of Darkness
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (1994) Macmillan’s Children’s Books (1999)
Woman and Home
Kid skips school. Goes into weird house that’s actually a ghost’s trap. Good.
St. Austin Friars
Priest moves to new rectory in Muncaster. Seems as though the town is inhabited by vampires
The Haunting of Chas McGill
Boy moves to old schoolhouse in countryside during the blitz and meets the ghost of a soldier who deserted first world war.
In Camera
People find roll of film in antique camera. Contains pictures of a corpse. They track down a man from the pictures.
Fifty-Fafty
Sentimental autobiographical story about author’s family.
The Cats
Old man becomes unwell. His wife starts seeing ghostly cats in their house.
The Boys Toilets
There’s a ghost in the jacks. Excellent story.
Portland Bill (1999)
From Antique Dust
The Bus (1999)
Guy gets on a time travelling bus. Very racist man on board. Wouldn’t get published today. Odd that this was added to later edition of the book.
The Red House Clock (1994)
Excellent story about boy who fixes dead neighbour’s clock to get revenge on landlord
The Call (1994)
Samaritan phone operators get a scary call on xmas night.
The Cat Spartan
Kid inherits his grandad’s cat and house, much to his mother’s dismay
Blackham’s Wimpy
WW2 bomber becomes haunted by a German pilot it shot down.
Valancourt 2015 (First published 1991)
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral
Next up, I read The Stones of Muncaster Cathredal. It’s an excellent tale, and the Valancourt edition has an extra short story thrown in for good measure. This book is well worth a read.
The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral
Something in the tower of a Cathedral is luring children to their deaths. Nothing to do with the other story set in Muncaster.
Brangwyn Gardens
A lad takes a room and finds a woman’s diary.
Valancourt – 2016
Spectral Shadows
This is a collection of 3 novellas. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Blackham’s Wimpy
I read this in Shades of Darkness.
The Wheatstone Pond
A pond is drained and old toy boats start showing up. Another mysterious box holding something stinky also shows up. These items are somehow linked to a mysterious house nearby, and it’s up the local antique dealer to solve the mystery. There’s good suspense here, but ultimately, there’s too many threads to the story and it gets a bit silly. Still an enjoyable read. This is definitely not children’s fiction. The protagonist has rape fantasies.
Yaxley’s Cat
A woman rents a cottage for herself and 2 kids. Previous owner was a witch. She finds his stuff. Good.
Honestly, every book I read by Westall was excellent. He wrote books for kids, and it seems like his stuff is labelled as kid’s fiction, or young adult fiction, but in sincerity, these ghost stories are top notch. I think older kids would certainly enjoy them, but they’re not toned down in any fashion. If you like good old fashioned ghost stories in the vein of M.R. James, I don’t think I’ve read anything as good as Robert Westall. Any of these books would be a good starting point, all of them perfect for bedtime reading.
I went a bit mad on books about Charles Manson last year. I remember seeing this book at the time, but I had had a little too much Charlie, so I put it off. Recently, I have been reading about James Shelby Downard, and any amount of research on that chap will bring you to a writer called Adam Gorightly. I was searching for a copy of Gorightly’s book about Downard, and I remembered that Gorightly had written a book about Manson.
The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control, and the Manson Family Mythos – Adam Gorightly
Creation Books – 2014
Gorightly doesn’t really push any specific theory of what happened, and in truth, there wasn’t a huge amount in here that I haven’t come across before. The Helter Skelter hypothesis is covered, but Gorightly also hints at some of the ideas that Tom O’Neill would later explore in Chaos. Mae Brussell, a name I recently became familiar with during my research on the Gemstone File, popped up a few times in here. She claimed that Manson was a CIA pawn used in an attempt to destroy 1960s counterculture. He was just another patsy like Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald. At this point I would be surprised by any book dealing in conspiracies that doesn’t somehow drag in JFK.
Gorightly is a Discordian and counterculture kinda guy, and I found the tone of the book to be quite similar to Sanders’ The Family.The Shadow was written at a much later date though, and it includes much on what happened after the trial. It gets into the Son of Sam connection and even the Hand of Death cult that Henry Lee Lucas was a part of. I’m planning to do a detailed post in the future on the Son of Sam/Manson connection. I know that connection is probably made up, but I’ve come across it in quite a few different books now.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this book was how it made me feel. It was comforting to come back to the Manson case, almost like meeting some old friends for coffee. I’ve been planning to read the revised version of Nikolas Schreck’s Manson book for a while, but now I reckon I’ll save it for the next time I have the blues. The Shadow Over Santa Susana would be pretty good for somebody who didn’t know much about the Manson story, but it was also pretty good for me as a refresher.
Nocturnal Revelries 