Seeking Old Paperback Horror Anthology With Pink Pastel Castle On Cover
July 3, 2024 8:17 PM Subscribe
"I am trying to find a book I read probably in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and barely remember, but am desperate to find again. Any information (title, editor, links to copies for sale) would be amazing!"
"It was a thin paperback anthology of horror stories that I am pretty sure were written in the first half of the 1900s. The book itself was probably published in the 1960s or 1970s -- it already looked older when I found it.
The cover illustration was in pastel-ish colors, with a pinkish slim turreted castle surrounded and partially obscured by bubbles or crystal orbs.
One of the stories in it might have been Lovecraft's "Strange High House in the Mists". What I remembered of the story was a man who lived by or on cliffs by the sea, and was fixated on finding this castle or mansion that only appeared in the sea sometimes, when the mists parted. He found it once, but I think never again. While the Lovecraft story doesn't match up entirely, I'm relying on thirty year old memories from childhood and could have remembered the details wrong.
The other story I remember enough of to be helpful was about a troubled boy who drew/dreamed up this froglike monster. Only he called it to life or it came to life and lived in the well on his family's property, and would come out to do bad things. It eventually kills his teacher.
Thank you!"
This is actually a question from a dear friend, hence the quotation marks, but it's been bothering the heck out of both of us for quite some time. I grew up around used paperback books, and the book she's looking for also sounds very familiar to me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
"It was a thin paperback anthology of horror stories that I am pretty sure were written in the first half of the 1900s. The book itself was probably published in the 1960s or 1970s -- it already looked older when I found it.
The cover illustration was in pastel-ish colors, with a pinkish slim turreted castle surrounded and partially obscured by bubbles or crystal orbs.
One of the stories in it might have been Lovecraft's "Strange High House in the Mists". What I remembered of the story was a man who lived by or on cliffs by the sea, and was fixated on finding this castle or mansion that only appeared in the sea sometimes, when the mists parted. He found it once, but I think never again. While the Lovecraft story doesn't match up entirely, I'm relying on thirty year old memories from childhood and could have remembered the details wrong.
The other story I remember enough of to be helpful was about a troubled boy who drew/dreamed up this froglike monster. Only he called it to life or it came to life and lived in the well on his family's property, and would come out to do bad things. It eventually kills his teacher.
Thank you!"
This is actually a question from a dear friend, hence the quotation marks, but it's been bothering the heck out of both of us for quite some time. I grew up around used paperback books, and the book she's looking for also sounds very familiar to me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Was it The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales, a Scholastic Books paperback from 1970, edited by Vic Crume and Gladys Schwartz? The front cover kind of looks like your description.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:37 PM on July 3
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:37 PM on July 3
Response by poster: Bardolph - She thinks it's very plausible that the "frog man" story might have been "Sredni Vashtar" -- she remembers the boy in the story spending a lot of time looking out the garden window, and that he was frightened of the creature. It's possible she's conflated some of the details with those of another story about a drawing coming to life. (If there is a frog man story in which a drawing comes to life, she believes that creature's name begins with the letter G.)
Harvey Kilobit - Nope, not that one, but thank you! The book she's looking for would have looked more like fantasy than horror, with a lot of pastel colors in the art, more of a mist/cloud vibe with bubbles, and was most likely published for adults rather than juveniles (the narrower mass market paperback format rather than the wider format Scholastic used). You definitely hit the right general era, though.
posted by verbminx at 10:17 PM on July 3
Harvey Kilobit - Nope, not that one, but thank you! The book she's looking for would have looked more like fantasy than horror, with a lot of pastel colors in the art, more of a mist/cloud vibe with bubbles, and was most likely published for adults rather than juveniles (the narrower mass market paperback format rather than the wider format Scholastic used). You definitely hit the right general era, though.
posted by verbminx at 10:17 PM on July 3
Here's a page on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database that lists a bunch of books where Lovecraft's "Strange High House in the Mists" has been reprinted over the decades. I'm not sure how complete that listing is, but I had a quick look at the covers for some of the books that sounded like contenders and none of them came close to the one you described. I have a hunch you may be thinking of another story. If you can figure out what story it was, maybe you could search for it on the ISFD and find the book there.
Does your friend have any idea where they first found the book? Knowing its origins could help.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:14 PM on July 3
Does your friend have any idea where they first found the book? Knowing its origins could help.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:14 PM on July 3
Response by poster: This is all her ask -- I have no idea about any story, alas. I can tell you that she's dug through that database pretty deeply and is not, herself, convinced that the story she recalls is "The Strange High House in the Mists". It accords with some of her memories of the story but not with all of them -- it's just the closest she's found, the same way the suggestion of "Sredni Vashtar" is the closest she's ever gotten to what she remembers of what she thought was the frog man story. When we're both online again tomorrow she can probably provide me with more details of how what she remembers differs from "Strange High House", if no one has found the actual book she was looking for via the cover art details.
One reason I offered to post this ask for her is that she's spent a ton of time going through the Internet Speculative Fiction Database looking at books that the Lovecraft story was published in and, as you said, Ursula, none of those look like the right book! She's also been directed to several different subreddits by well-meaning people in the past, and the advice there hasn't been helpful at all. So she's found a detailed $30 Lovecraft bibliography that she's been considering purchasing on the off-chance that it has more in it than ISFD, and I was like, hold up, don't buy that, let's ask MeFi.
She found the book on a bookshelf at home as a child; she is now in her early 40s. I believe she lived in the Boston area at the time that she found it, and she thinks the book most likely belonged to her mother. She says that if it had looked overtly like a horror book, she wouldn't have picked it up -- it had more of a fantasy vibe because of the pastel ombré mists in the cover art, and she was kind of a horse/unicorn girl. The reason it sounds familiar to me is that from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, my stepmother worked in a very large bookstore that exclusively sold secondhand mass-market paperbacks, so I've seen a lot of American genre paperback cover art of that era at least once or twice.
Her mother is still alive, but is about 80, and my friend doesn't think she would remember the book. The book itself was left behind in a move about 20 years ago.
posted by verbminx at 11:58 PM on July 3
One reason I offered to post this ask for her is that she's spent a ton of time going through the Internet Speculative Fiction Database looking at books that the Lovecraft story was published in and, as you said, Ursula, none of those look like the right book! She's also been directed to several different subreddits by well-meaning people in the past, and the advice there hasn't been helpful at all. So she's found a detailed $30 Lovecraft bibliography that she's been considering purchasing on the off-chance that it has more in it than ISFD, and I was like, hold up, don't buy that, let's ask MeFi.
She found the book on a bookshelf at home as a child; she is now in her early 40s. I believe she lived in the Boston area at the time that she found it, and she thinks the book most likely belonged to her mother. She says that if it had looked overtly like a horror book, she wouldn't have picked it up -- it had more of a fantasy vibe because of the pastel ombré mists in the cover art, and she was kind of a horse/unicorn girl. The reason it sounds familiar to me is that from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, my stepmother worked in a very large bookstore that exclusively sold secondhand mass-market paperbacks, so I've seen a lot of American genre paperback cover art of that era at least once or twice.
Her mother is still alive, but is about 80, and my friend doesn't think she would remember the book. The book itself was left behind in a move about 20 years ago.
posted by verbminx at 11:58 PM on July 3
Response by poster: Another set of valid follow-up questions might be:
- Does anyone know of a story about a drawing of a frog-man that comes to life? The frog-man's name probably begins with a G.
- Does anyone know of a story similar to Lovecraft's "The Strange High House in the Mists"... maybe something that involved a person trying to reach a house or castle that they were either never able to reach, or, once reached, could never reach again?
My theory: these could be stories from a magazine like Weird Tales that were never super well known, but were pretty cheap to reprint in the 1960s or 1970s when there was some interest in genre fiction.
(The second question is based on my guesses... friend has been asleep for a while. She super appreciates all the help so far, though! Even if we haven't found it yet, this is still the closest she's gotten since she lost her copy of the book twenty years ago. She also thinks a valid next step is looking for anthologies where both "Sredni Vashtar" and "Strange High House" were published together, so she's going to start doing that in the next day or so.)
posted by verbminx at 12:09 AM on July 4
- Does anyone know of a story about a drawing of a frog-man that comes to life? The frog-man's name probably begins with a G.
- Does anyone know of a story similar to Lovecraft's "The Strange High House in the Mists"... maybe something that involved a person trying to reach a house or castle that they were either never able to reach, or, once reached, could never reach again?
My theory: these could be stories from a magazine like Weird Tales that were never super well known, but were pretty cheap to reprint in the 1960s or 1970s when there was some interest in genre fiction.
(The second question is based on my guesses... friend has been asleep for a while. She super appreciates all the help so far, though! Even if we haven't found it yet, this is still the closest she's gotten since she lost her copy of the book twenty years ago. She also thinks a valid next step is looking for anthologies where both "Sredni Vashtar" and "Strange High House" were published together, so she's going to start doing that in the next day or so.)
posted by verbminx at 12:09 AM on July 4
Could it be Humor, Horror and the Supernatural? It's a collection of Saki stories that went through multiple printings, with the last apparently being in 1974. It features "Sredni Vashtar" and the cover has a slim-turreted castle enveloped by a pinkish mist. Maybe? Here's the 1974 edition's isfdb page.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:38 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:38 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Alas, it is not the Saki anthology! (Thanks, though -- I was excited, I thought that was a pretty good lead.)
She's made a mock-up of the cover as she remembers it... it really is very pink and girly, no dark colors at all, and looks like it would be a book about princesses and unicorns, some kind of fairy tale anthology. If you told me it was the cover of a 1975 reprint of The Pink Fairy Book, I'd say, "That tracks." I'll try to link that later today.
She did ask her mother, and after some thought, her mother does sort-of remember the book. Her mother also would not have purchased an overtly horror-looking book, and thinks the emphasis in the outward packaging and even in the anthology theme might have been more on whimsy/humor/fantasy than overt horror. But the classic horror/weird tale vibe was still there.
I can explain for context that, in the 30ish years since she read these stories, friend has had a few experiences that are known to alter memories like this a little. She wouldn't misremember the look of the cover, but she would potentially conflate the details of the stories with some other things she's read.
Anyway, I'll post her mock-up in here later.
posted by verbminx at 12:04 PM on July 4
She's made a mock-up of the cover as she remembers it... it really is very pink and girly, no dark colors at all, and looks like it would be a book about princesses and unicorns, some kind of fairy tale anthology. If you told me it was the cover of a 1975 reprint of The Pink Fairy Book, I'd say, "That tracks." I'll try to link that later today.
She did ask her mother, and after some thought, her mother does sort-of remember the book. Her mother also would not have purchased an overtly horror-looking book, and thinks the emphasis in the outward packaging and even in the anthology theme might have been more on whimsy/humor/fantasy than overt horror. But the classic horror/weird tale vibe was still there.
I can explain for context that, in the 30ish years since she read these stories, friend has had a few experiences that are known to alter memories like this a little. She wouldn't misremember the look of the cover, but she would potentially conflate the details of the stories with some other things she's read.
Anyway, I'll post her mock-up in here later.
posted by verbminx at 12:04 PM on July 4
Response by poster: Here's the mock-up of the cover as she remembers it. Big pink fairy-tale castle-in-the-sky vibes, 1960s-1970s fantasy illustration style, containing stories that were dark/grim/upsetting on the whole.
(She apologizes for the use of AI, but didn't know any other way to demonstrate the overall vibe of the cover art.)
posted by verbminx at 12:20 PM on July 4
(She apologizes for the use of AI, but didn't know any other way to demonstrate the overall vibe of the cover art.)
posted by verbminx at 12:20 PM on July 4
So rather than looking for the stories, I searched for cover art with that color scheme and timeframe/vibe. The mockup shares some art elements with the back cover of the anthology 'The Last Defender of Camelot' by Roger Zelazny. Picture here.
And here is the full cover on isfdb.
I couldn't find a synpsis of any of the stories that contained the details your friend remembers, but what I could find is definitely dark/grim/unsettling.
With 'Camelot' in the title evoking fairy-tale themes, and a mismatch between the color scheme/art and the content, this seemed like it could be a possibility?
posted by jolenex4 at 2:50 PM on July 4
And here is the full cover on isfdb.
I couldn't find a synpsis of any of the stories that contained the details your friend remembers, but what I could find is definitely dark/grim/unsettling.
With 'Camelot' in the title evoking fairy-tale themes, and a mismatch between the color scheme/art and the content, this seemed like it could be a possibility?
posted by jolenex4 at 2:50 PM on July 4
Response by poster: She thinks the look of the Last Defender of Camelot back cover is a pretty nice catch, kind of along similar lines to what she remembers, although not quite the same style -- but no, that's not it, alas!
She had a few details to add:
There are two more stories I have vague memories of, but I don't often include them because my memories are even more vague.
Possible third story: a man in great distress, possibly injured, bursts into a bar or pub (I feel like it was set in England, but am not sure) raving about something terrible under the streets, possibly in the sewers.
Possible fourth story: this house where people, maybe a family, disappeared with no explanation. Someone, possibly a cousin or friend of the family but maybe just an investigator, comes to the house and discovers that there's a door or something that leads to some kind of strange, empty world or other dimension or something.
The fourth story is not 'Instructions' by Bob Leman.
I also think that because she's spent so much time scouring ISFD for this herself, it may not have made it there at all. But it's still entirely possible that she just hasn't come across it yet -- there are tons of books to go through. I can say that now that I've seen the mock-up, my own half-remembered book cover is something different (probably the cover art from a gothic or something, lol).
posted by verbminx at 4:59 PM on July 4
She had a few details to add:
There are two more stories I have vague memories of, but I don't often include them because my memories are even more vague.
Possible third story: a man in great distress, possibly injured, bursts into a bar or pub (I feel like it was set in England, but am not sure) raving about something terrible under the streets, possibly in the sewers.
Possible fourth story: this house where people, maybe a family, disappeared with no explanation. Someone, possibly a cousin or friend of the family but maybe just an investigator, comes to the house and discovers that there's a door or something that leads to some kind of strange, empty world or other dimension or something.
The fourth story is not 'Instructions' by Bob Leman.
I also think that because she's spent so much time scouring ISFD for this herself, it may not have made it there at all. But it's still entirely possible that she just hasn't come across it yet -- there are tons of books to go through. I can say that now that I've seen the mock-up, my own half-remembered book cover is something different (probably the cover art from a gothic or something, lol).
posted by verbminx at 4:59 PM on July 4
The fourth story is not 'Instructions' by Bob Leman.
That's kind of a puzzling note. Why would your friend specify a story that's not in the book?
I asked Chat GPT if it knew of any stories that fit the "man bursts into a pub, raving about something scary in the sewers" description, and it came up with this:
"The Terror of the Sewer" by Paul Ernst
Plot Summary: This pulp horror story features a monstrous creature living in the sewers. It's a tale of fear and grotesque horrors beneath the streets.
Relevance: The setting and the sewer element align well with your memory.
Publication: Often found in early 20th-century horror anthologies.
I did a quick Googling and while Ernst seems to be a real pulp writer, I can't find any record of this particular story. I'm afraid I'm out of ideas at this point.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:39 PM on July 4
That's kind of a puzzling note. Why would your friend specify a story that's not in the book?
I asked Chat GPT if it knew of any stories that fit the "man bursts into a pub, raving about something scary in the sewers" description, and it came up with this:
"The Terror of the Sewer" by Paul Ernst
Plot Summary: This pulp horror story features a monstrous creature living in the sewers. It's a tale of fear and grotesque horrors beneath the streets.
Relevance: The setting and the sewer element align well with your memory.
Publication: Often found in early 20th-century horror anthologies.
I did a quick Googling and while Ernst seems to be a real pulp writer, I can't find any record of this particular story. I'm afraid I'm out of ideas at this point.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:39 PM on July 4
Response by poster: She would specify a story that's not in the book so that people don't suggest that it might be that story based on details that they remember. She's been looking for this book for a long time -- apparently, "Instructions" has some similar facets to the story she thinks she remembers, but "Instructions" is not in the book.
I'll see what she thinks about Ernst! I think she's hoping that if any of these story descriptions ring a bell for anyone, she can look them up, read them, see if they seem familiar when she does, and see where they've appeared.
(She was also just hoping that maybe one of the older MeFites might have a copy in their own library.)
posted by verbminx at 6:02 PM on July 4
I'll see what she thinks about Ernst! I think she's hoping that if any of these story descriptions ring a bell for anyone, she can look them up, read them, see if they seem familiar when she does, and see where they've appeared.
(She was also just hoping that maybe one of the older MeFites might have a copy in their own library.)
posted by verbminx at 6:02 PM on July 4
Best answer: So, friend wound up taking this to Reddit, where it was solved in a few hours despite her somewhat confused recollections of some of the details. The frog-man story is "Old Fillikin" by Joan Aiken, and in fact, the anthology is Aiken's A Whisper in the Night! (Goodreads link to correct cover, because ISFDB doesn't actually have an entry for this edition/cover. The book itself is very different between US and UK editions: it has 12 stories, and 6 differ between countries, which means that the question of where my friend was when she read this might have turned out to be very important. You can see the pink/castle/bubble vibe at that link, but other covers for this book may be much more familiar.)
The main detail that she had wrong was the idea of the stories being weird tales written in the first half of the 20th century: it's actually an anthology of stories written in homage to such stories. So, "Old Fillikin" is a "Sredni Vashtar" homage. Not a name beginning with a g, alas, though, and not multiple authors.
And the reason I remembered it is that I read a lot of Joan Aiken as a kid and definitely ran across "Old Fillikin" somewhere myself.
posted by verbminx at 1:15 PM on July 6 [2 favorites]
The main detail that she had wrong was the idea of the stories being weird tales written in the first half of the 20th century: it's actually an anthology of stories written in homage to such stories. So, "Old Fillikin" is a "Sredni Vashtar" homage. Not a name beginning with a g, alas, though, and not multiple authors.
And the reason I remembered it is that I read a lot of Joan Aiken as a kid and definitely ran across "Old Fillikin" somewhere myself.
posted by verbminx at 1:15 PM on July 6 [2 favorites]
Yay! I wish I could've helped more, but I'm glad to see the mystery resolved. May I ask what inspired your friend to go on this quest? It seems like it may have been more than simple nostalgia. She was very determined to track down this book!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 8:55 PM on July 6 [1 favorite]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 8:55 PM on July 6 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Friend is a published horror writer, and this is the book that got her into horror! Before that, she was definitely a princesses-and-unicorns fantasy person. The cover of the book being a little deceptive is what drew her in, and she hasn't really been the same since reading it. It's also a book that she lost when fleeing an abusive situation in young adulthood, which made her especially determined to find it again. So, it was just an enormously significant book for her.
She's literally looked about once a week for the past fifteen years, but never had enough to go on. One reason she knew "Instructions" wasn't one of the stories in the book was that it was often suggested when she tried to use "find a book" forums and listed the details of all the stories she could remember. But she hunted down "Instructions" and read it, and it's not quite the same story.
There are a few books I've been this way about (The Velvet Room and Miranty and the Alchemist), but my issue in those cases was more around locating and being able to afford a copy, since I knew the titles and eventually the authors. The Velvet Room was a lost childhood favorite for so many people that it is no longer particularly difficult to find at all, which was definitely not the case 25 years ago. A Whisper in the Night is also not a rare book at all, especially if one has no investment in the "pink castle" cover.
She very much appreciated your attempts to help!
posted by verbminx at 10:02 PM on July 6
She's literally looked about once a week for the past fifteen years, but never had enough to go on. One reason she knew "Instructions" wasn't one of the stories in the book was that it was often suggested when she tried to use "find a book" forums and listed the details of all the stories she could remember. But she hunted down "Instructions" and read it, and it's not quite the same story.
There are a few books I've been this way about (The Velvet Room and Miranty and the Alchemist), but my issue in those cases was more around locating and being able to afford a copy, since I knew the titles and eventually the authors. The Velvet Room was a lost childhood favorite for so many people that it is no longer particularly difficult to find at all, which was definitely not the case 25 years ago. A Whisper in the Night is also not a rare book at all, especially if one has no investment in the "pink castle" cover.
She very much appreciated your attempts to help!
posted by verbminx at 10:02 PM on July 6
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