7th Armada Ghost Book

Another book cover I am not overly fond of, especially for a book anthology of ghost stories:

Despite it's rather lacklustre cover, the anthology boasts a few interesting titles...

...and the tome received a more powerfully visual cover for its 1983 reincarnation! 

Shelf Work

Today was a quiet day. My biggestcachievent was starting to tidy my bookshelves:

My Seth's Crimbo Ghost Stories

I finally disassembed by Lego M.R. James too:

6th Armada Ghost Book

The 6th Armada Ghost Book has my least favourite cover in the anthology series. It looks more like a juvenile adventure/mystery book to my weary eyes rather than suggesting the ghostly terrors awaiting readers within its pages. Again, the artist doesn't receive a credit in the book.

The book was released in 1975, for the price of 25p, making the cost of each tale within the book just a little of 2p a story, which has to be a bargain.

Along with disappointing cover art the story illustrations in the book hardly pump up the fear factor either:

All in all, this was a rather quiet entry in the series. That said, it sold well enough for Armada to start immediate work on a successor...

The later updated artwork for the book's re-release addressed the lack of scares in the original art with this:

Just look at the state of that cat!

5th Armada Ghost Book

It's January 1st, 1973, and look what has just hit the bookshop shelves:

 

Moving on to the 5th Armada Ghost Book, we find the first girl protagonist decorating a cover in the series. It also features its first horse! And doesn't that horse look terrified? 

The rear cover art does a great job, with the scariest looking treesthe in the Armada books to date terror too. Shame the publisher didn't think to credit the artist!

The story's illustrations are pretty scary too, especially for the age group the book was aimed at:

I've not read any of the stories in Book 5 yet, but when I do, the tale with the illustration directly above will definitely the first I tuck into.

4th Armada Ghost Book

1972 saw Armada publish its 4th Ghost Book. Peter Archer was responsible for illustrating the book's cover and internal pages. This was the first of the Armada Ghost books to ditch the familiar running boy motif on the front cover Whilst the running boy motif

I love seeing the prices on old books -you could leave a bookstore with this little beauty having spent just 20p!

This is a delightful collection of stories with some genuine stand-out first-class spooky entries nestled amongst the lineup. It's great to see children introduced to the Master of the Macabre, M.R. James, who adds literary class to the ghoulish fayre with his tale The Haunted Doll's House. And I remember E.F. Benson's classic The Bus Conductor giving me the heeby-jeebies when I first read it as a child in my bedroom at night. This tale haunted me for a long while afterwards, adding to my reluctance to open my bedroom curtain at night to peek out into the dark! The tale was made famous by featuring in the 1945 portmanteau Ealing horror Dead of Night.

3rd Armada Ghost Book

1970, two years after their previous anthology, the 3rd Armada Ghost Book hit the bookshelves. This time, a new Captain had taken the helm - Mary Danby. 

Danby's name was to become synonymous with the ghostly Armada franchise over the next thirteen years. Much to their reader's delight, as well as curating the stories presented in the anthologies, she was also happy to include her own spooky outings amongst their number.

Peter Archer was the chosen illustrator for this third volume of ghost stories, and he did a sterling job - even keeping the now familiar running boy, crooked tree and flying agressor motifs on the cover artwork.

Archer also delivered the scariest story illustration so far in the series. Imagine laying in bed as a child reading scary stories and coming across this image! 

The 2nd Armada Ghost Book

Armada were quick to follow the success of The Armada Ghost Book with the publication of The 2nd Armada Ghost book the following year.

Christine Bernard retook the helm as the ghost story compiler, but her choices in this second volume suggest this book might have been a bit of a rush job. The clue to the kind of tales required for this book was surely in the title. But Bernard's collection of far-flung tales appears as though cribbed from a possible alternate venture, and hemmed within the Armada Ghost Book franchise as a quick cash-grab after the popularity of the first in the series.

Whether Bernard's selection really was a misunderstanding of her brief, or she was annoyed the change of book title had made her anthologising skills look questionable and so turned down the offer of the third book, the lack of ghosts within the pages of this second book in the franchise did not go unnoticed and a new editor took the helm of the series for the third Armada Ghost Book...

Gino D'Achille's 'running boy' motif artwork kept the franchise's visuals on point, with the cover art appearing to depict the lad racing from a ferocious bat borne from the fiery pits of hell itself. Only when the book is flipped over to read the advertising blurb does the reader realise the location is actually an ancient graveyard with subsiding tombstones, set beneath a stormy blood-coloured sunset.

Armada Ghost Books

With my Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories up-to-date (it turns out the book I am waiting for doesn't reach these shores until May), I decided to grow the odd few Armada Ghost Books I have into a real collection. 

I will share them as I add each next volume in the series to my shelves, but I wanted to use today's post for the very first book in the series, which by 1978 came in two editions.

With the plume of ghostly anthologies being published in the gloriously creative 1960s, it was hardly a surprise when, in 1967 Armada produced a children's version of the great and hugely popular Fontana and Pan ghost story collections:

Whilst the collection was aimed squarely at older children, their covers promised genuine eerie content and their intended audience lapped them up with relish.

The Armada Ghost Book's cover featured a young lad racing from a huge and terrifying spectral lady in white. The whole scene is beautifully illustrated by artist Gino D'Achille with a suitably crooked tree and a ragged fat crow completing the front image: 

The rear cover continues the scene and introduces more crows and an archetypal haunted house in a stage of creepy disrepair. A sole light shines from a window beneath its tall tower and suggests the boy, has awakened something he oughtn't have whilst investigating the decrepit property. 

It's a great cover, and, to ensure a prospective reader purchases the book whilst browsing its pages in a bookshop, the artist was commissioned to illustrate several of the stories contained in the volume.

The book contains 11 eclectic tales and was a huge success for Armada, spawning another 14 entries in the series before concluding in 1983.

To blend the book seamlessly with its sequels, it was republished with a fresh reworking of the original cover art and a new title in 1978:

The book's contents, however, remained identical:

Purchases

Look what beauties arrived today:

 

A Visit by Shirley Jackson

 I had to order this book from the USA as it costs an arm and a leg here in the UK. 

The Amethyst Cross

With the arrival of this little gem, my Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories collection is just x2 books short of completion...

There is still no sign of A Visit by Shirley Jackson, which could be anywhere between here and the USA. The post was less than a fiver so I just hope it turn up as I snagged it as a cheap price and I haven't seen it avalaible at a price I am willing to pay anywhere else online. 

One of Seth's 2024 issues, Captail Dalgerty Returns ended up being unavailable, but I have finally managed to source and order another copy at that. It is just a waiting game now... 

Ghostly and Ghastly

What kind of kid's book had illustrations like these?