meatina: (Default)
Meatina ([personal profile] meatina) wrote in [community profile] findthatbook2021-08-28 07:24 pm

Book of spooky tales/articles for children

Hello,

I've been trying to find a book I read as a child, that had some snippets of poetry, some stories by different authors, and at least one non-fiction piece. I've tried googling some of the names of the stories, but no joy.

Here's what I know/can remember:

-It would have been published in the UK no later than about 1993 - however it's probably from the 80's.
-It was a paperback with a blue cover, possibly with a church window and a bat on.
-It featured a Shakespeare sonnet in it - "Now is the time of night"
-There was a story/poem by (I think) Joan Aitken called "The Nine O'clock Horses" about horses that spirit away children that stay out late at night.
-There was a story about a boy who did a brass rubbing of a skeletal knight
-One story was about a ghostly goalkeeper 
-Possibly the same story had a boy explaining to his little sister about ghosts, she wasn't scared but he was told of by his mum for scaring her - all the sister had said was "poor man that you can see through". He'd explained that you could see through ghosts, a bit like you could see the bones of her fish. 
-There was both a story and a non-fiction piece on Herne the Hunter
-The last story was about a very young stonemason who dies carving an angel on a church


delacourtings: (Default)

[personal profile] delacourtings 2021-08-29 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
this is a stretch but it's the closest i could find. could it be the 1984/85 paperback version of The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories edited by JA Cuddon? blue cover, an anthology, and includes a story by joan aiken (though not the one you mention). different places have different orders of the table of contents so i couldn't really check to see what the last story was but maybe you recognize some of the titles?
petrea_mitchell: (Default)

[personal profile] petrea_mitchell 2021-08-29 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
The Joan Aiken story could be "Past Eight O'Clock", which is part of an all-Aiken collection of the same name.
carbonel: Beth wearing hat (Default)

[personal profile] carbonel 2021-08-31 03:54 pm (UTC)(link)
I can't help you directly, but this is a link to a listing of Joan Aiken's fantastical writing. If anything looks familiar, you can click the link and find where it's been collected.

Good luck!

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?582