Giving schoolchildren a proper monster education in 1976

Fifty years ago, in our bicentennial year of 1976, Scholastic published an amazeballs guide to monsters. School was just cooler then, wasn't it? Movie monsters, mythical creatures and cryptids could be mixed into the lesson plans alongside multiplication tables, the metric system and spelling quizzes. I'm guessing Pennywise, Slender Man and the backrooms don't get that same treatment today, but what do I know? 

Well, what I do know is that this 32-page staplebound booklet rocks. I mean, it has Blacula (William Marshall) right there in the center of the cover, alongside such icons as Lon Chaney Jr., Medusa, Frankenstein's monster and King Kong. Fredric March's Hyde gets a very prominent spot, as does one of the Village of the Damned kiddos. 

What a cover! According to the credits, it was designed by Bonnie Bishop, who also served as the booklet's overall designer and art director. Some of Bishop's papers ended up at the University of New England Library, which notes that she had loved drawing, writing and making books ever since childhood and later became a full-time book artist. That love shows on this cover.

Let's hear it for the rest of the booklet's production crew, too. Lewis Gardner (1943-2020) was the editor and contributed a poem and a short story. Katherine Robinson was the supervising editor and Eve Sennett was the production editor. Ira Peck and Margaret Ronan handled some of the writing, which included retellings of classic horror stories. As a teenager, Ronan corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft (!!) according to the website Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, and those letters informed some of her work at Scholastic.

In addition to those already mentioned, this book pictures and/or mentions the big-headed alien from 1957's Invasion of the Saucermen, Paul Wegener's 1920 performance as the Golem, the Loch Ness Monster, The Thing from Another World, Cat People, Bigfoot, zombies (but only the kind who obey masters — Romero's flesh-munching zombies might have been a bit much), The Incredible Shrinking Man and Michael Landon's teenage werewolf. 

There are photos of both Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee as Dracula. The book doesn't sugarcoat Lugosi's life for the young audience. Ronan notes: "When Lugosi was 70, he admitted to being a drug addict. He kicked the habit in a hospital. A year later, he died. He had no money left from his days as a monster star. About all he had left was his Dracula cape. So he was buried in it."

The last page of the book is titled "People and Monsters" and has this introductory paragraph: "Why do some people believe in monsters? And why are monster stories popular? Here are some possible answers. Which ones do you think are true?" There are then 11 short paragraphs, all of which seem plausible but some of which are very bizarre for a school activity book:

• Some people fear others who are strange looking or deformed. They may have trouble seeing such people as fully human. They may believe such people have special powers and are evil.
• Drugs have been used in magic and religious ceremonies. After taking drugs, people have seen monsters. They have also imagined themselves as having supernatural powers.
• Monsters usually do horrible things. Deep within us, we may wish to do horrible things. Normal people keep these wishes under control. They may not even be aware of having such wishes. But they may enjoy hearing about monsters that break human laws.

If you're hankering to get your hands on one of these absolute-gem booklets, there's an eBay seller who apparently has a whole stash and is selling them for $12.99. It's well worth the trip down monster memory lane.

 

Book cover: "The Ghost Hunter's Road Book"

• Title: The Ghost Hunter's Road Book
• Author: John Harries. According to the blurb on the back cover: "John Harries has been a full-time writer since the war, in which he served with the R.A.F. A specialist in travel, he has visited every corner of the British Isles in search of the unusual and tourist-appeal material and currently lives in the Chiltern Hills, within audible distance of one of the most bizarre of the animal hauntings described in his new book." Interestingly, the book is copyrighted by Rupert Crew Ltd.
• Cover illustrator: None credited, which is a bummer.
• Publisher: Charles Letts & Co.
• Publication date: This is the revised edition, published in 1974. The book was first published in 1968.
• Pages: 176
• Format: Paperback
• Back cover price: 75p (accounting for inflation and converting from British to U.S. currently, that's about $13 today)
• Excerpt #1: Mystifying balls of light or flickering shapes apparently on fire are seen in many parts of Britain, and the majority of them have been excluded from this book. Those which are mentioned — as in the case of the West Witton light — have been reported in clear, cold weather or from areas free from peat, bog, or decaying material. The reason is that in my opinion lights seen during rain or on days or nights or great humidity , on in marshy districts, are of natural origin.
• Excerpt #2: Black Shuck has been haunting Norfolk for more than a thousand years. His very name proves his ancient origin because it is a dialect version of the Saxon word for Devil. He can alter his appearance, but all of them are terrifying. 
• Excerpt #3: The best-known and most ubiquitous of the Cornish supernatural beings are the pixies, a source of profit for many a souvenir shop in the tourist resorts where pixies are sold by the thousands as good luck tokens. Few native-born Cornish people would  wear the replica of the little man as a talisman. 
• Excerpt #4: Any subsequent attempt to dispose of the skull resulted in screams reverberating around the house, and heard far and wide by villages and farm workers of Bettiscombe. Something very evil indeed was presumably involved in the screaming skull affair, one of a number of such cases in different parts of the country. The usual inference is some connection with vampirism.
• Excerpt #5: Essex, moving willy-nilly into the brave new world of airports, marinas, new towns, nuclear power stations and industrial complexes, is still part of timeless East Anglia. A county slandered as flat, damp and dreary, can still retain a lot of its old-world charm — and its ancient traditions. Phantoms may retreat from the modernism of arterial roads and concrete runways — but ghosts still walk in Essex, and many of their haunts are surprisingly and appropriately unchanged by progress.
• Notes from the web: While the front cover has been a popular post on Tumblr, on message boards and in other locations, there's very little online about the book itself. Amazon reviewer Jackie Garcia wrote this in 2017: "It was a very enjoyable reading. My favorite part was the information given about T.E. Lawrence and the ghost at Clouds Hill." ... A passage from Harries' book is cited on a 2024 blog post about the Flixton Werewolf. ... And the book serves as a reference for the Wikipedia entry about the Shug Monkey.  

It's the 50th anniversary of the opening of Brigantine Castle

Brigantine Castle, the haunted attraction on the pier in Brigantine, New Jersey, opened 50 years ago, on Memorial Day weekend in 1976. It was in operation for less than a decade and burned down before it could be demolished, but it lives on in the memories of many who went to the Jersey shore's beaches in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

In fact, it's in so many memories that it spurred more than 600 comments on a Vintage Philadelphia post on Facebook that went up just this morning. Just a few of those comments:

• "I remember going as a kid. I thought it was a real castle. What a great time to be alive."
• "Scary tv commercials wedged in between the terrifying 'Creature Double Feature' on channel 48"
• "Its TV commercials were the first time I ever heard J.S. Bach's iconic Toccata and Fugue."
• "I went through it as a kid. Remember the fake rats going across my feet!"
• "Best Job I ever had!!"
• "We went the year it opened & didn't get past the first floor, that witch did us in. Granted we were 5, 10, 11 & 13."
• "The vampire that jumped out of the portrait scared the crap out of me!"

I wrote a fair bit about Brigantine Castle in this 2016 post, which you can check out, so for this anniversary I wanted to share some images from a hard-to-find brochure that I managed to track down a few years ago.

Related posts

• Brochure for the Boris Karloff Wax Museum in Niagara Falls 
• 1977 children's book about actual (maybe) haunted house
• Dilapidated structures of Southern Jersey

Ghoulardi's kid

Speaking of TV horror hosts (as we were last week with Zacherley), Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride, is a wonderful book about Ernie Anderson's antics as late-night host Ghoulardi on  Cleveland's Channel 8 (WJW) from 1963 to 1966. He is one of the most widely and fondly remembered of the regional horror hosts. And one of the most influential.

As Tom Feran and R.D. Heldenfels wrote in this 1997 book, WJW and Anderson "created an icon of popular culture whose legacy, decades later, would defy the disposable standards of modern media. Television was growing, still rough around the edges, into the common thread of community consciousness. Ghoulardi would first conquer it, amassing an audience of a size unimaginable today; and then transcend it, surviving in memories, attitudes, and language of a generation who would carry him to even wider attention."

It's a terrific book and one I highly recommend. And it comes with a fun coda. This passage appears on the final two pages of the book:

"Ernie's son Paul, an up-and-coming movie director, is stirring up trouble as eagerly as his father did. Paul's first movie, Hard Eight, came and went, but his second feature, Boogie Nights, was causing comment months before it was released. A look at the people working in and around the pornographic movie business in the '70s, the movie was the subject of eyebrow-raising stories about its subject, its male frontal nudity, and its two-and-a half-to-three-hour length. ... Through the efforts of the twenty-six-year-old auteur, it also boasted a cast of solid players like Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, and William H. Macy. 'The worst thing you can do is be wishy-washy,' Paul said of moviemaking. His old man seems to have lived his whole life by the code, and Paul acknowledged 'I definitely inherited that trait.' As Boogie Nights sat on the verge of national release, Paul said he was next considering making a film about his dad — one that would focus especially on his years as Ghoulardi. He already had paid tribute to his father by naming his production firm The Ghoulardi Film Company."

Indeed, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is the son of Ghoulardi — Ernie Anderson.

Anderson hasn't made a movie specifically about Ghoulardi yet, but his most recent film, One Battle After Another, is up for 13 Oscars this coming weekend. To which Ghoulardi might exclaim, “Stay sick, knif!”

Zacherley's 1960 Transylvania passport for fan club members

This night of a nearly full moon seems like an appropriate one for this post about a parody passport that TV horror host John Zacherle (1918-2016) made available to members of his fan club in 1960. 

Zacherle got his start as host of Philadelphia WCAU-TV's Shock Theater in 1957 (playing a host named "Roland") and after a year or so moved to New York's WABC-TV for Zacherley at Large (they added the Y to the end of his name, and it kind of stuck).

According to an article on Zacherley.com (yes, he still has a fan website): "Zacherley was aggressively merchandised. One of the most fondly remembered souvenirs from that era was the 'Transylvanian Passport' which was available by sending two labels from Strawberry Cocoa Marsh Syrup to the manufacturer." Indeed, the back of my passport states "PRINTED IN THE MOONLIGHT BY COCOA MARSHMEN IN TRANSYLVANIA."

It's most fun on the inside, though. The text begins: "The undersigned CREATURE is hereby granted entrance to the SOVEREIGN STATE OR [sic?] TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE YEAR 1960; the year of the FRANKSTEIN JUBILEE."

The passport holder could check a box to classify themself as a He-Wolf, She-Wolf, Vampire, Mummy, Ghoul and/or Monster.

Then there's a spot to check boxes if the holder has been inoculated for Werewolf Fever, Moon-fright, Coffinitis, Sunrayphilia, Banana Blight, Fur Fullout, Egyptian Itch, Chronic Fangosis and/or Embalmer's Rash.

The "Restrictions" are described as follows: "This PASSPORT is issued by the AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE with the understanding and condition that the BEARER CREATURE will travel only during the hours of DARKNESS and will do no EXCAVATING IN THE STATE GRAVEYARDS after visiting hours. WOLF-CALLING is restricted to nights of the FULL MOON."

The ambassador-at-large is, of course, Zacherley, whose photo and signature appear at the bottom.

There are quite a few books and magazines filled with information about Zacherley. If you're interested in horror hosts in general, a good place to start is Elena M. Watson's Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed.

Please share any memories you have of Zacherley (or other horror hosts) in the comments section. I'd love to hear them! 

 

Book cover: Ida Chittum's "Tales of Terror" (1975)

• Title: Tales of Terror
• 
  Author: Ida Chittum (1918-2002). According to her profile page on IllinoisAuthors.com, "Ida Chittum was educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse. She was a prolific reader and advocate of literacy. Her love for all living things as well as her warm sense of humor are evident in her many published children's books." She had a talking mynah named Poo Bah and was a friend to stray animals. Her other books included A Nutty Business, Clabber Biscuits, The Empty Grave, Farmer Hoo and the Baboons, The Cat's Pajamas, The Ghost Boy of El Toro, The Hermit Boy, and The Secrets of Madam Renee. (Some of them appear to be quite rare, though, on the used market.) In an article by Mardy Fones that was published in the Oct. 1, 1978, edition of the Decatur Sunday Herald and Review, Chittum explains that she used the front of a brown envelope to rough out chapters and then stored the completed chapters inside, annotated with brightly colored corrections and notes to herself. There are a website and a Facebook page devoted to Chittum's legacy.
• Illustrator: Franz Altschuler (1923-2009)
• Book dimensions: 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches
• Provenance: My copy was previously shelved in the Edmeston Free Library in Edmeston, New York. (The library is inside a gorgeous old building.) Stamps say it was checked out various times between 1980 and 1992.
• Publisher: Rand McNally & Company.
• Series: Rand McNally published Tales of Terror alongside a few other truly spooky books for children in the mid 1970s. The other volumes include Monsters Tales and Horror Tales (both of which I have and both of which are psychedelic collections edited by Roger Elwood) and Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures.
• Publication date: 1975
• Pages: 124
• Format: Hardcover
• Original price: I can't confirm. I saw one reference to $4.95, but that seems a little low, by at least a couple dollars, for a hardcover in 1975.
• List of stories: The House the Dovers Didn't Move Into; Vision of Roses; Uncle Ned Kunkle; The Twins; The Snipe Hunt; The Yellow Cat; Giant; The Feather Reader; The Woman Who Turned to Paper; Sod Miller's Money; Print on the Window; The Haunted Well; The Special Gift; Bring Back My Teeth; The Lovers; the Cruel Girl; The Twisting Wind; and Courtland Wethers and the Pit.
• Excerpt from Ida Chittum's introduction: "These stories of the hills are taken from my childhood in the Ozark mountains, those scenic hills in the south central part of the United States that are now, for the most part, national forests and wildlife conservation areas. There, every visitor was a storyteller — a source of mystery. Having no books I read the folks who came calling of a Sunday afternoon. The hills were fertile grounds for listeners. These are accounts of a passing way of life, stories of a people who lived out their lives never seeing the outside world or expecting to, any more than one sees into heaven before dying. ... In a sense these stories are mysteries — accounts to wonder on and ponder over. They are tales that need telling before they are lost or forgotten."
• More about this book: In the 1978 Decatur Sunday Herald and Review article, Chittum adds: "We lived on a 40-acre fruit and tea farm — that's persimmons and sassafras sprouts — between St. James and Salem, Mo. When you live with people in the country as I did, you become one of them. They're different than city people. They have more time to be closer to nature in every way. ... Where we lived was five miles from any other house so anyone who came through was as welcome as the sunrise, and they had their stories to tell. ... About 50 percent of these stories I know to be true." (Chittum adds in the article that her "know to be true" stories include a personal encounter with Bigfoot.)
• Excerpt #1: "The strange part, though, was how the footprints of Enoch Schradder, a slender man, were sunk so deep in the earth all the way from the ravine into the timber, as if he were carrying a very heavy burden."
• Excerpt #2: "If Sod every changed his aging bib overalls or took a bath in the cheerful creek which tumbled past his shed, no one would have known it from walking downwind of him."
• Excerpt #3: "Folks around about considered it a marvel the way Ada learned to travel in the vast, timbered area without getting lost. They didn't guess her guide was Geoffrey, and she never said, fearing that the slender thread of joy that ran through their friendship might be broken by those who couldn't understand."
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.82 stars (out of 5). One of the highest ratings I've ever seen.
• Goodreads review: In 2020, Maria wrote: "I read this so often my elementary school librarian refused to let me check it out any more. The illustrations are excellent and greatly contribute to the mood of the book. I treasure the copy I have now."
• Rating on Amazon: 5 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2017, Cynthia wrote: "I first read this book when I was in I think third grade. I feel in love with it instantly. It's still one of my very favorites ever."
• 
  Thoughts and memories from The Haunted Closet blog in 2008: "The beautiful, yet vaguely disturbing illustrations perfectly capture the tone of these tales of drowned children, restless ghosts, magic spells and malevolent wildlife." In 2010, one of that blog's commenters added: "When I was younger I lived in southern Illinois, not far from the Ozarks that Ida Chittum depicted. We checked Tales of Terror out of the library over and over and it stuck with me down the years. The stories were weird and eerie but had the ring of truth to them as well. Some were so sad and beautiful and others were full of dark humor. In our family we often refer to Uncle Ned Kunkel as though he were a relative. And that cover with the faceless people and the illustration that goes with the first story about the house that didn't get moved into are still some of the scariest pictures I can dream up." And in 2012 another blog commenter relayed this personal story: "Mrs. Chittum lived down the road from me, in a very tiny town in Illinois. As memory serves (again, from the mind of a very young child) she lived in an old Victorian house. How fitting! I'll have to check facts with my parents to find out if that is true or not! I remember being scared to death after a visit to her home. She told us a story (could have been from one of her books, I don't know) of the monster that would grab the uncovered feet of kids & drag them off, never to be seen again ... I was never so scared in my little life!! I couldn't peddle my bike fast enough to get home ... and to this day, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered!" (For what it's worth, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered, either.)
• This book's availability: In great news, a hardcover reprint is available for the very reasonable price of $22.99 on BookBaby and Amazon. One person writes on Amazon: "I had an old falling-apart copy that was the only one I could possibly afford, due to it being such a rare find, so I was very glad to see this book republished in an affordable volume." Ida Chittum would be rightfully thrilled that in 2026, these tales are not being lost or forgotten.