The third issue of Phantom features a release date of June 1957 and has cover art by R.W.S. (Ronald W. Smethurst). Once again no editor is noted but we can assume it is Leslie Syddall. This is the first issue to appear as by Dalrow Publications.
The mag opens with a right good classic sea-ghost story. A ship’s captain relates the tale of how his ship (The Wild Rose) was smashed up on the rocks in Trevellion Bay (fictional bay near Cornwall no doubt meant to be Treyarnon Bay) because the residents there messed with the warning lights. The residents frequently wrecked ships to steal the lumber, goods, monies, etc. Well, the captain’s ire arose and getting his crew clear, he set the ship to blow to smithereens, timed for when the Trevellion residents should board her. He timed it wrong and not only slayed all of them, he sent himself straight to hell too. I’ve never heard of Ewing Cowell but The Captain’s Ship ought to be reprinted sometime. It’s honestly not a bad tale.
Barbara Crabtree’s The Cat and the Chickens involves an elderly woman distraught over the passing of her cat, Timmy, who she has had for over 10 years. She decides to raise chickens and sell their eggs. But when she begins to lose chickens and the local rancher informs of a fox in the area, she refuses to believe a fox exists. She accuses the neighboring dog! To prove her case she remains up late at night with the chickens. Then she hears a chicken scream bloody murder. Investigating, she spots a cat and screams “Timmy!” She falls flat on her face. Next day, the farmer learns she is selling her chickens despite his assertion they’ve caught the fox. She states she is selling the chickens because Timmy has always been jealous [of other animals]. A weak story insinuating the cat she saw was Timmy at night and not just some other prowling cat.
The hangsman performs his duty and is found later hung himself. Then, the man he hung is found likewise hung but left a suicide note stating that he murdered the hangsman for killing his innocent brother! The police must exhume The Hanged Hangsman to prove whether or not he was murdered. Opening the coffin, the undertaker has a heart attack and promptly dies upon finding the hangsman was not dead after all. They buried him alive, his uncut fingernails broken and his eyes are bulged. Robert Corkin supplies a decent tale here but it’s not a ghost story.
A widower hears deathwatch beetles knocking and they slowly drive him mentally unbalanced to the point that he falls to his death in Alastair Frame’s Off Balance. An unmemorable short tale.
In Thomas Maddocks’ tale, Mulligan relates to a newspaper reporter that he’s had nightly dreams that leaves him exhausted by the time he wakes. Eventually he learns that his astral body has been traveling and going to the same location every night. The tale concludes with he and the reporter at night trying to retrace his astral route. The reporter becomes fed up and tired with the hunt and goes into a tavern for a drink. There Mulligan realizes he’s in the very building of his dreams and runs up to Room 17. Downstairs, our reporter is having a drink with the proprietoress and realizes she’s Mulligan’s sweetheart from many decades ago. His astral body has been yearning for her all those years and has led him to her, she being Mulligan’s Treasure. Thomas Maddock had many articles and short stories in Ireland’s Saturday Night including one called Nailing a Ghost.
Nora I. A. Robinson supplies an article called Strange Animal Phantoms in which she discusses the folklore surrounding people that supposed reincarnate as various animals.
In F. J. Taylor’s Artist’s Model, a young lady answers a painter’s advertisement for a model. She has an unusual smile and while painting her he begins to perspire and feel faint. When he looks to her again, she has vanished, and yet, he hears her mocking laughter. He recognizes the laugh and voice as that of a woman he made love to long ago and gave birth to a daughter. Wanting nothing to do with either, she ended up in a mental institution. The girl? Is she the model or the ghost of his former lover? The story ends with he in a mental institution.
In Matthew Saunder’s The Mirror, we are introduced to two lovers. She informs him that she can access other worlds via mirrors. Skeptical, he watches as she calls forth in a trance-like state his mother in the hand-mirror. Converted into a believer, she teaches him the ways of the mirrors but is unable to make a connection. She comes to an untimely accidental death and he yearns painfully for her. Taking up her own mirror, he succeeds he calling forth her very image. Everything falls apart when he invites another skeptic, a real estate agent working on selling his home, to watch him call forth his love. The skeptic is shocked to see the woman appear and blow a kiss at her lover. He himself imagines feeling the cold brush her of her lips and in a fit of rate snatches up the hand-mirror and smashes it to smithereens. The lover dies as a result. But why did the agent smash the mirror? Turns out he was engaged to the girl and she left him for another man.
An unusual story of occult and incredible coincidence, Mrs. Coulson Kernahan supplies the romantic tale Shadow of a Hindu. An Englishman has returned home to England but feels a stranger and is alone. Having lived abroad in India for many years, he has longed to return to his homeland. Now there, he wishes to leave. Walking about the streets he looks in at a junk shop and spots a parrot in a cage and behind it spots an odd shadow. The bird is clearly speaking to the shadow! What’s more, it is doing so in Hindustani. The man buys the bird and remarks upon the shadow. The dealer is grateful that he too sees the shadow, for he was certain otherwise to be crazy. Aboard a train, a woman across from him hears the bird and the pair begin conversing as he learns she was also abroad in India for a long time, now a widower, and misses her time there. She spots the shadow and informs the owner that the shadow belongs to the former owner and is ever-present. They part ways but she wishes to see him again. And the bird. At home, he lets it out of the cage and the lady caring for the home takes an instant dislike to the parrot. Next day, we hear a shriek. Jumping downstairs he finds her seemingly assaulted. Claims a man with a turban attacked her. She quits and the parrot remarks candidly his pleasure in her leaving. The story bizarrely jumps to the new owner meeting up with the woman and clearly they are beginning a lovely relationship to which the parrot heartily approves. The earliest known publication for the Shadow of a Hindu appears in the 15 February 1930 Malayan Saturday Post as A Shadow of a Hindu. Later publications include the 13 September 1930 Shipley Times and Express (Yorkshire, England) and 25 February 1933 Tamworth Herald (Staffordshire, England). The authoress formerly wrote as Jeanie Gwynne Bettany, the surname being that of her first husband. The story isn’t bad, but it feels rather disjointed.
Invited to a remote estate by his friend, he arrives in a storm and is admitted by an elderly lady in dated clothing. Handing over his coat and hat, he is finally greeted by his friend who states he is a few minutes late for The Appointment. Elaboration can wait until after the meal. Having dined, we learn the reason why the host wanted his friend to punctual. Seems the estate is reportedly haunted annually to the date and time by a ghost. He’s happy however to report that the ghost failed to make its manifestation. Only, it did, for we learn the home has only himself and the servant that dished up the meals. If true, then who was the old lady that took his coat and hat? Not a bad tale by Judith Morgenstern, but one that has turned up in one form or another. She has also authored the children’s books Great Uncle Hiram: a play for juniors (UK: Paxton, 1960) and Bunty Goes Exploring (UK: Lutterworth Press, 1961); this was translated in Sweden the following year.
An eccentric deceased aunt leaves her nephew a run-down cottage. Unable to take the soonest train from town out to the remote country, he sends his young wife, scarcely married 18 months, ahead of him. Arriving late by train after missing an exchange, the young lady investigates The Cottage Down the Lane to find the aunt kept an odd scrapbook of local suicides and their methods. To her horror, a few deaths occurred in this very cottage. Looking up to the beam above her, she spots a hook from which one suicide apparently dangled. Her husband finally arrives hours later to her grateful arms. She’s been petrified in the dark, certain of strange noises and a feeling of the place being haunted. Assuring her there is nothing present but her overworked imagination, they go to bed. He wakes to a noise downstairs and while investigating swears he sees a rope or noose dangling from above! Injuring himself and bloodying his leg, he looks again and the rope he swears to have saw is no longer visible. Next morning he informs his wife they don’t need to live there. She doesn’t know why, nor pries, but is certain one day he’ll tell her why he changed her mind. The author is given as A. B. Palmer.
Next up is a 3-page short called Travelling Companions by Thomas Edwards. A train passenger finds himself in luck when two unscrupulous men depart. Taking their room he finds he’s not alone. A creepy fellow is with him and begins to relate stolen diamonds, Black Kid Morton eating lead, Chink Harris out to rub him out. When they pass through a tunnel, the traveler is grateful to find himself suddenly alone. That is, until a dark pool of blood spreads about. Reaching under the seat he finds the man very dead and realizes the two goons killed the fellow and he’s been conversing with a spook.
Samuel Forsyth’s Spook Feet involves a once-happy-man now widowed once more hearing at 9pm sharp the rapidly approaching ghost feet of his mother. But the story never progresses beyond this point!
A man recently released from solitary confinement in prison accepts the job of delivering a message to a specific address. On arrival, he learns that the man has been dead for over a century as has the person the message is being delivered to! And the people that inform the former prisoner of this fact are themselves regularly holding seances and apparently already were in contact with the dead prisoner in Thomas Maddock’s From Beyond the Wall.
Sidney Norling’s Strange Companion is the stereotypical pub meeting where everyone denounces ghosts and finally someone has to step forward and tell a ghost story. Unusually though, the narrator claims to have first-hand knowledge. In the end it turns out that the narrator is the ghost and vanishes before everyone’s eyes. First publication is unknown, but I’ve found it published in the 21 June 1944 Montrose Standard (Angus, Scotland) and in the 5 October 1945 Runcorn Guardian (Cheshire, England).
Edgar Godwin’s Red Scarf takes place after World War One. The mere fact that term is used would imply that the story was written as early as 1939, when WW2 was beginning. Prior to that it was simply The Great War. A married man and their kids take up residence in a cottage only to be haunted by an odd fellow running about with a red scarf. The father never sees him, until one night, with a candle in hand, he sees the fellow rush past him. The candle goes out, he has a saber, slashes about, but zero. Asking an elderly man in town he learns a man botched his own suicide, slitting his throat and ran about the cottage, splashing blood all over the place.
Fellows working at the local R.S.P.C.A. at Northstead are mystified by a place nicknamed Cat Cottage. Reportedly overrun by cats, they’ve tried all manner of methods to catch or kill them. But none are caught. None are poisoned. How they obtain food is a mystery. Licensed kills turn up no bodies. Background: an old lady dies with a dozen black cats. Upon her death, her place is searched but no cats are found. The cats are written off. Yet, the place at night is screaming mad with cats. Secreting himself in the cottage’s loft by day, Thorne watches as a coppery colored cat appears then a dozen black cats surround the home. Then they rush the copper-cat, rub against it, etc. Thorne is baffled to find the copper-cat has vanished and the others left not a trace in the dust below. Only his own prints are visible! The mystery unravels as we learn the lady was left unmarried when her fiancée and dog went for a nightly walk and never returned home. The obit mentions she was a beauty with auburn hair. Keeping watch a couple more nights in the loft, at 10pm, a new cat emerges with a peculiar marking. Nuzzling and gazing at one another, both cats vanish. Next day, he acquires a newspaper which boldly notes decades old mystery solved. The missing fiancée and dog were found the prior day by a farmer. The man had fallen and broke both his legs. The dog remained faithfully by his side until it too died. And now we know the mystery of John Wakefield’s The Thirteenth Cat. This might be the same person that in 1963 authored the books Your Pet Canary (UK: Cage Birds, 1956), The Strange World of Birds (UK: lliffe, 1963), Cancer and Public Relation (UK: Pitman Medical Publishing, 1963), Death the Sure Physician (UK: Constable, 1965), and other public health books.
The second Robert Corkin short in this issue is The Letter. A news reporter worries about his father who always seems strained. He finally learns from the housekeeper the secret. His father found the bodies of a young body and young girl. Death by suicide. They left a note requesting whoever finds them appeal to the authorities to bury them together in the same coffin. If they fail, the discoverer of their bodies and reader of the letter will be haunted until they themselves die.
Vera Clacton supplies Needs a Long Spoon, from which the titles origin is Geoffrey Chaucer’s incomplete genius work Canterbury’s Tales. The full line reads: He needs a long spoon who sups with the Devil. A woman learns his betrothed suffers from tuberculosis. A strange man offers her the ability to bring her lover to Switzerland and care for him. In exchange: her soul. Yes, the man is indeed the Devil and she does sell him her soul. Thankfully, she slips out of his clutches via the good will of mankind. It’s a decent story so I won’t ruin the plot. Vera Clacton supplied fiction stories to English newspapers from the 1930s-1960s; some of those were syndicated as far as Singapore. I can’t find any such person born, married, or that died with this name. However, Clacton-on-Sea is a town in England, and Vera translated means faith. Could be the name is an alias.
In Andrew Armour’s No Way Out, a man commits murder, dumps the corpse in the river, and is perpetually haunted by her ghost to the point that he dies trying to escape his sin.
The rear cover features an untitled poem credited to “R. I. P.” (rest in peace).