Welcome back, dear listeners, to The Ghostly Grotto. Pull up a rock and listen while I tune in my old squeaky 1932 radio to KPFA-radio in California, and we'll listen to one of the best and most underrated radio shows of all time... The Black Mass was not technically an "Old Time Radio" show, since it aired in 1969. Nevertheless, it was a very well done show which initially featured only one actor doing all of the narration for the stories. In fact, I say stories since most episodes of this series were direct readings of classic ghost stories by such famous authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and the author of this week's story, M.R. James. (My apologies for the image used to the left here. As far as I searched, I could find no newspaper clipping, advertisement, or other related photo which came directly from this series) "The Ash Tree," written by M.R. James and initially published in 1904 as part of James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. It tells the story of a woman who is killed for witchcraft but vows an ominous revenge by swearing to her murderers that "there will be visitors at the hall" of the man who sentenced her to death. Some very eerie things happen, but I don't want to give them away. This episode is one of the best, if not the very best of the series, and I've even seen it on some lists of Top 50 Scariest Radio Show Episodes, so there you are.
Here's the link to the episode, courtesy of Archive.org: archive.org/details/blackmassashtree Enjoy! And pleasant dreams!...
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Ah, dear reader. Welcome back into the chilling, thrilling Ghostly Grotto. Sit down, won't you? Ah, that's better... First of all, I would like to apologize for my lack of posting lately. This post has been awhile in the works, and I've had a lot on my plate lately. So, I'll be posting more regularly now. Sorry! Recently, I've been adding to my large collection of horror literature (see photo at left), and some of the little gems I've ordered online or found in used bookstores are very quaint little collections of ghost stories from the 1970s. As you can see, I've also finally acquired a set of first editions of the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series, which I might touch on later in another blog post. But these strange books, the ones on the bottom of the image, are the focus of today's post. They're ghost story collections published from the 1950s to the 1970s, and they're published by Scholastic (though two of them claim to be published by Arrow). Some of the stories inside are strangely spooky and interesting, and some of them are not. But, they're vintage horror related, so I bought them and I mostly enjoy reading them. But, in preparation to make this blog post, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of other Scholastic Halloween books that were published around the same time (1970's), and so I decided to briefly touch on two of them here today. THE ARROW BOOK OF GHOST STORIES, published in 1958, is the oldest of the Scholastic horror books. It features several entertaining stories that fail to deliver a real shock rather than just a chuckle or a giggle. The best story in here is not in because it is scary, just entertaining. "King O' The Cats," (known to some who may have listened to the Troll record Weird Tales Of The Unknown as The Cat That Didn't Purr) is a clever tale of a band of cats who a man meets in the road, then tell him to let his cat know that one of them has died. I won't spoil the ending, but it's very clever. THE HAUNTED HOUSE AND OTHER SPOOKY POEMS AND TALES was published in 1970 by Scholastic, and it may be my favorite of all the books published. It's not extremely spooky, but it has several very good tales in it, along with quite a few poems and legends. Most of the stories are from other authors such as Ogden Nash, Ann McGovern, E. V. Rieu and many others. This book was one of the best of its kind for the time. In fact, the litany at the beginning was borrowed by Alvin Schwartz when he wrote Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark: Parts of the book were released onto a 7 inch vinyl record by Scholastic the same year. Though it's not impossible to find, it's hard to find with its original picture sleeve, as seen below: Here's a link to one of the stories from the record, the title story "The Haunted House". A very spooky story, not scary but eerie and very atmospheric: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHHUEFsYdYE
Welcome again, dear listener, to The Ghostly Grotto. Pull up a chair, won't you? And listen to one of the greatest horror radio programs ever to air... oy and, pleasant dreams? Hm"Dark Fantasy" was an interesting little show which aired on NBC out of WKY, Oklahoma City in the early 1940s. It's also a special series in the fact that all but four of the episodes of it survive. It featured a very well written series of scripts, and some very talented voice actors performing the stories with just an edge of mystery and interesting angles that can't be described. The show ran for a short time (only 30 episodes plus a re-run), but it did do well with the public and was given great reviews. The story tonight is the best one out of the series, and was performed a second time on the show after its initial release. So, here, without further ado, is The Demon Tree! Click the link below to listen free on archive.org! archive.org/details/DarkFantasy411205TheDemonTree Enjoy, and... Pleasant dreams? Hmm hmm hmm... |
AuthorA Halloween fanatic, scary story vinyl collector, and ghost story teller extraordinaire. All self-proclaimed titles, however. Archives
December 2019
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