Jack and Jill Magazine (October, 1973)

Here's some scans from the October, 1973 issue of children's magazine Jack and Jill, which is full of Halloween stories, crafts and puzzles.

The photos below are from an article explaining how to make a "pumpkin man" yard decoration.

A brief bio of Legend of Sleepy Hollow author Washington Irving.

Build-it-yourself skeleton-themed dice game, Shake Rattle N' Roll.

Instructions for building your own miniature Spookie Shack.

A homemade noisemaker, the "Halloween Whirler".

Halloween-themed crossword. Better use a pencil!

A regular feature of Jack and Jill was a gallery of children's art. This issue had some Halloween-themed entries.

The Hounds of Death (Ghosts-The Eerie Series, Seymour Simon, 1976)

Before my 5th grade conversion to junior skeptic under the influence of James "the Amazing" Randi, I was a believer in all things supernatural, so sought out ghost stories not only from the imagination (The Thing at the Foot of the Bed [Maria Leach], Tales of Terror [Ida Chittum], etc.) but from the non-fiction section of the library as well.

I was spellbound by books like Usborne Publishing's All About Ghosts, which documents real-life encounters with the spirit world, and I'll include the fictionalized novel of the allegedly true haunting known as The Amityville Horror in that category as well (a book, incidentally, that I was forbidden to read because it was deemed too adult, so kept a hidden copy stashed in my 2nd grade desk.)

One haunting encounter I'd read that struck me as uniquely unusual and scary is that of a ghost dog, hovering outside an upper-floor window of a house, and missing its head! That image stuck with me into adulthood, but I'd long forgotten the source.

Gotta love those ex-library copies!

Thanks goes (again) to Kindertrauma for turning me in the right direction. The account, as it turns out, comes from the book Ghosts (1976, Seymour Simon, black and white illustrations by Stephen Grammell), part of "The Eerie Series" of supernatural non-fiction children's books. In nine chapters, Ghosts relays stories of real-life hauntings, as well as a few fictional tales from literature and legend.

It was in Chapter 8, The Hounds of Death, where I'd read about various encounters with ghostly dogs, including one that haunted a woman in Norfolk. Disturbed by the sound of scratching on her upper floor windowpane, the woman gets out of bed to find, "pressed against the glass...the huge form of a shaggy dog without a head."

Another chapter, The Noisy Ghosts of Calvados Castle, is about a French castle where frightening screams, moans, and long shrieks have been heard as far back as 1875.

The Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square is an "unspeakably horrible" ghost with many legs and tentacles and only a round hole for a mouth, that, in the late 1890s, came out of London's ancient sewers to haunt a townhouse.

Chapter 3, A Long Island Spirit, is a more humorous than horrifying account from 1958 of a playful poltergeist that had been knocking over soda and perfume bottles in the Long Island home of James Herrmann.

The stories turn more disturbing in The Restless Coffins, about a family crypt in Barbados where the coffins, several of them children's, are repeatedly found displaced and stacked in unaccountable ways.

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is about a ghost that had been haunting Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, since 1835, and was allegedly captured on film by a photographer in 1936.

In Chapter 6, The Ghostly Hitchhikers, we move into the realm of urban legend with two variations of the classic hitchhiker campfire tale.

Ghost ships and sea haunts are covered in Chapter 7, The S.S. Watertown Phantoms, while Chapter 9, Haunted American History, takes us to the realm of early-American literature and legend, from White House hauntings to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.


Ghosts-The Eerie Series can be had cheap on the used market.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Disneyland Record, 1971)

Here's "a magnificent full-color illustrated book and long-playing record" of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (ST-3801, 1971), my favorite spooky Disney short, which was originally part of the 1949 package feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and later parted out as its own short under the title The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Another Washington Irving penned story, The Legend of Rip Van Winkle, is also on the album.

Unfortunately the second-hand copy pictured here, while having all its pictures intact, is missing one key element: the record! So while I haven't actually heard this adaptation, the great song that Brom Bones sings at the Halloween party to scare poor Ichabod, "The Headless Horseman", sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, is available for download from I-Tunes.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Leprechauns are cute and all, but what really left an impression on me upon first viewing of Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), is this pair of frightening characters that could have stepped right out of the Haunted Mansion... the Banshee, and the Coach of Death.

The banshee is a female spirit that appears when someone is about to die, methodically combing her long hair.

When the time is right, she hales the Coach of Death. Pulled by a team of flying, spectral horses, and guided by a headless driver, the Coach of Death ferries the newly departed to the afterlife.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Black Cats, Superstition and Witchcraft!

Below I present some creepy screencaps perfectly suited for the Halloween season. They are from an obscure Disney animated short... I'll reveal its title at the bottom of the post. If you're a Disney fan, see if you can guess.

Oh, that's a giveaway right off, eh? This spooky moonlit sky is instantly recognizable from The Adventures of Ichabod Crane, right? Yes, and no. While the shot is clearly recycled from "Ichabod..", this short uses a slightly longer, uninterrupted cut than the version that appeared in that earlier film.


At first glance this spooky graveyard, used to illustrate the devastation caused by the plague, might look vaguely similar to one in the "Night on Bald Mountain" segment of Fantasia, but it isn't.



The forboding gallows await those condemned to death for practicing witchcraft. Bedknobs and Broomsticks? No way.



This superstitious old woman fears strangers passing in the night...she believes they cause stormy weather! She looks like she could live up the block from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but she's on an entirely different continent!



The sinister stare of the black cat caused some villagers to fear it was casting a supernatural EVIL EYE upon them. One of the siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp? Ha!



A torch-bearing mob roves the village square in search of demons, which they believe can disguise themselves in the form of a common housecat! Are you getting warmer?

So were you able to identify the Disney short these screencaps came from? Scroll below for the answer.

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The short is The Great Cat Family (1953), a segment from Disney's Wonderful World of Color which depicts the history and cultural influence of the domesticated cat, from ancient Egypt to colonial America. Find it in the extras on The Aristocats Special Edition.