Armchair Thriller

Alan Garner

House of Hammer 13

I'm not sure what the reason is for my lifelong fascination with this series of magazines from the 1970s. Perhaps it's due to the fact the lady in the newsagents shop asked if my mum and dad knew I was buying this when I picked up this copy whilst on holiday aged about 8.
HoH ran for about 20 or so issues, changing its name to Halls of Horror, although later issues were poor in comparison with the earlier ones.
The magazine featured a comic strip adaptation of a Hammer film in each issue, a 'Van Helsing's Terror Tale' as well as articles on horror films in general, including Hammer, Universal and contemporary oddities.
Issues 2 - 6 were always impossible to get hold of, even back then; the reason, apparently, was that the whole lot of back issues for those editions were sent to Australia. Issue 6, with its Dracula Prince of Darkness cover, was particularly in demand and fetches around £20 to £30 on eBay.

Happy Days

This is the paperback adaptation of "Children of the Stones" published in 1977 by a division of Transworld Publishing and written by Jeremy Burnham & Trevor Ray.
Each chapter is headed with a small illustration which looked to have been drawn from the series in a naively charming manner.