Vintage Horror Paperback: The Screaming Skulls by Elliott O'Donnell
I have been collecting a lot of vintage horror paperbacks of the 60's and 70's and recently finished reading a collection of true ghost stories and legends from a gentleman by the name of Elliott O'Donnell. If you are unfamiliar with the name, as I was, he was born in England in 1872 and was a fairly renown author of the supernatural. His most famous works of the time were collections of ghost stories, either from his own experience, from friends, or local legends.
This book was truly chilling. Some stories are just strange and mysterious but a handful of these literally gave me goosebumps and often had me thinking about them long after having read them. One in particular got me good. The story is called the London Villa of Ghostly Dread and takes place in the area near the Crystal Palace of Hyde Park in London. I don't want to give away any of the happenings in the book but apparently the history of the small villa involves a suicide from the original owner. This owner apparently had a bad reputation in the community but according to legend, the grounds of the villa had some bad history involving foul play so it seems to run deeper than what is originally portrayed.
If you find any books by Elliott O'Donnell, there are quite a few still out there, I recommend checking them out. I don't think these have been reprinted so despite O'Donnell's prolific writing career, these could be a tad difficult to locate. Also, he was one of the original ghost hunters to publicize so it's pretty cool to read his findings.