Help with finding a scary story book from when I was younger
 

I'm looking for the title of an anthology of horror stories that I recieved from my brother as a hand-me-down, I had it in paperback. It was definitely published in the late 70's, so it wasn't Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. I have graphic recollections of minor details in the book, & I know exactly what the cover looked liked so this shouldn't be very hard.

★The cover was very, very green, like a green lava texture - or maybe a mass of green spirits / ghosts? Front and center was a full body art of a man with a skeleton face, wearing a formal suit and cloak like Dracula would wear. He had long brown hair done in a dated looking 70's style, like it was feathered. It's as strange as it sounds.

★Every story had an illustration, in a clean looking Comic Book style.Again, the pictures were very dated to the 70's, the kids having Three's Company hairstyles & bellbottomed pants in them even.

THE STORY DESCRIPTIONS
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None of the stories ended happily, every protaganist met with some kind of grisly death at the hands of the monsters.

STORY ONE
★A boy lives near the beach, and he kills a seagull with his slingshot. Seagulls begin waking him up at night, dropping pebbles on his roof & keeping him up with a racket that only gets worse. The illustration is of the boy in bed, covers pulled up to his neck, looking in terror at the ceiling.

STORY TWO
★A boy walks over a bridge to get home, when he looks over the side at the river and sees a human-shaped lump in the concrete base of one of the beams. A hunchbacked Quasimodo esque ghoul appears in front of him, and does an odd gesture - it sticks one arm straight in the air "like he has a balloon tied to his wrist", and points with one finger at the top of its head. The boy's scared, but before he can run the Thing tackles him to the ground in a bearhug. Later, the boy's reported as missing, but no one thinks to look over the side of the bridge at the lump that's now the shape of *two* people, one clutching the other in a deathgrip. The illustration is of the hunchback, arm up with his finger pointing at the top of his head.

STORY THREE
★A boy is lost in an abandoned house in the middle of the woods, with a gigantic beast / monster stalking him thru all of the rooms. Another detail that this story may involve, the kid finds himself in a room with a window on each of the 4 walls, & each window shows a different season outside. One shows a snowy landscape, one shows leaves changing colors & falling off the trees, ect. On the last page he escapes out the front door, dances on the front lawn, rejoices in the sun on his face, kisses the sweet earth he never thought he'd see again - and the beast crashes through the front door, grabs him before he can run, and drags him back inside to his doom.

Well that's all I can remember. Does this ring any bells?

OMG HOLY SHIT

After talking to my bro, he remembered a couple other stories & the book has been found :eek:

The cover of "The Haunted Planet"

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KUw2BU3zsn...d%2BPlanet.JPG

It wasn't hyperbole when I said "skeleton man with a Farrah Fawcett haircut". $5 on Ebay, it's already on its way!
Here's a blog writeup on it

The book your talking about is The Haunted Planet :D:D cheers :y:

Paul Jennings was my go-to for weird bedtime reading as a kid.
That guy is a genius.

So I'm the only one that liked stuff about concentration camps and gas chambers for bedtime reading?

Did you ever befriend a Nazi war criminal living under a pseudonym who both reviled and revelled in the stories you demanded he recount to sate your burgeoning and unfed sexual hunger for atrocity?
And if so did the secret Nazi reignite his taste for it and start offing hobo's that look a lot like Elias Koteas in his basement?

I did befriend a Nazi war criminal living under a pseudonym.

But I taught him the importance of respecting other cultures and got him interested in hip hop. He then went on a tour with Grandmaster Flash as his hype man.

I think Sixx is Brad Renfro's ghost

Nah, man. That little shit OD'd. Fuck them junkies.

My mate recently informed me that he had been trying to sleep with homeless women. Part of his act is pretending to be homeless in bus shelters and pubs. Anyway someone nearly battered him when they saw his house keys.

I'm a bit worried about him.

This is only acceptable if it's a bet.

No he's just your bog standard hopeless lunatic that drinks far too often.

Well, a friend of mine recently made out with an old bum lady at a train station in the middle of the night, because he thought it was funny.

We're talking swollen, toothless, reeking, old sack of shit.

Are we talking about the same guy here?

Yay for bum-loving mutual friends!