Julian Franklyn – Death By Enchantment [# 30] (Sphere, 1975: originally Hamish Hamilton, 1971)

blurb;
An Examination of Ancient and Modern Witchcraft
Witchcraft has in recent years come back to the public consciousness with reports of graveyard desecrations, black magic rites and vandalism.
Julian Franklyn discusses such incidents as manifestations of the black art.
Touching on the infamous Salem witch trials, sorcery in Melanesia and the notorious Aleister Crowley, he reviews the whole subject in the light of modern theories of psychology, hypnotism and suggestibility.

Death by Enchantment is Volume 30 in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult

Philip Bonewits – Real Magic [ #14]   (Sphere, 1974)

Blurb
“I believe this book to be unique …. “

Philip Bonewits, who holds the world’s first university degree in Magic, reveals his scientific explanation of the nebulous patterns in occultism. He uses data from  many different arts and sciences to loosen the rigid boundaries of traditional thought and reports his results in plain language. And he challenges you to test his theories for yourself!

Real Magic is Volume 14 in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult

Ken Johnson – Blue Sunshine (Sphere, 1977)

Based on an original screenplay by Jeff Lieberman.

Blurb:

PSYCHOSIS…

It started off as a great party – just eight of them in a ski-lodge in upstate New York. But then the last guest, Frannie, arrived. There was something wrong with Frannie’s hair. And something very wrong with his eyes. And what he did with three of the girls was too hideous for description….
That was just the start. After that, things began to happen all over New York – ugly things: psychosis, insanity, murder – and no-one could find an explanation. The police were helpless- because they didn’t know that behind all the grisly happenings lay a single, uncontrollable horror. A horror called BLUE SUNSHINE…

Thanks to Franklin Marsh for providing details and blurb!

Sax Rohmer – Brood of the Witch Queen [# 41]    (Sphere 1976)

Blurb:

What was Anthony Ferrara doing in a darkened room with a fire burning on a hot summer night? What are the ‘unholy’ things he brought back from a holiday in Egypt? Above all, who is he? Ferrara’s friend Robert Cairn begins to suspect the answers – but the power which confronts him is more terrifying than he could ever have imagined. Long forgotten evil has come out of the darkness.  The smell of it, the chill of it, hang menacingly in the air.

Thanks to Nightreader for the cover scan and blurb.

Brood of the Witch Queen is Volume 41 in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult

Guy N. Smith – The Camp (Sphere, 1989)

Les Edwards

Hi De Hi! meets James Herbert’s The Fog as blissfully unsuspecting holiday campers are used as guinea pigs for the new C551 drug and take to butchering one another in their chalets.

“A bit far fetched, even by GNS standards. A holiday camp becomes the site of bizarre mind control experiments”  concludes Vault’s tame GNS authority, funkdooby.

A. E. W. Mason – The Prisoner In The Opal [# 10] (Sphere, 1975)

Blurb:

‘The two men were standing face to face, the priest sheltering what knowledge he had behind a stolid face, Hanaud towering over him, like an
inquisitor…

“You did not find all your vestments in the sacristy this morning. For one of
them is in the mortuary at Villeblanche stained with the blood of a young
woman who dined at the same table with you in this house last night, and
was savagely murdered afterwards.”‘

The Prisoner in the Opal is Volume 10 in the Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult

Owen West [Dean R. Koontz] – The Funhouse (Sphere, 1981)

Blurb:

For twenty-five years it grew in the shadows—tonight it waits for Amy in …  THE FUNHOUSE

A novel by Owen West based on a screenplay by Larry Block

Tonight Amy and her friends are spending the night at the carnival. And whilst they enjoy all the fun of the fair they will visit the funhouse, a place for gondola rides, gory delights and midnight terror.

But there is unspeakable Evil waiting for Amy in the dark labyrinths of the funhouse, a secret Evil that began twenty-five years ago, when a lonely woman destroyed her monstrous offspring, and a violently disturbed man vowed to exact his terrible revenge.

Now it’s Amy’s turn to keep her date with horror  as she enters the funhouse – for A CARNIVAL OF TERROR!

Marc Alexander – Haunted Houses You May Visit: A Ghostly Guide To Britain’s Haunted Stately Homes (Sphere, 1982)

Blurb:

Spectral figures, screaming skulls, gliding monks and white ladies – phantom harbingers of doom, avengers of past misdeeds and innocent victims … the whole spectrum of supernatural phenomenon is contained within the precincts of Britain’s stately homes.

Sandford Orcas in Dorset with its fourteen ghosts, including the stinking man, the wicked priest and the screamer … Glamis Castle with its white lady and bloody history … the four Royal ghosts of Windsor …

HAUNTED HOUSES YOU MAY VISIT details the ghostly manifestations in historic houses open to the public – we can’t guarantee that you’ll see a ghost, but at least you’ll know where to look!

Guy Lyon Playfair – This House Is Haunted (Sphere, 1981)

Blurb:

THE INVESTIGATION OF THE ENFIELD POLTERGEIST

In 1977 life as the Harpers had known it came rapidly to an end. For their Enfield home was visited by a wilfully destructive poltergeist. Chairs were thrown and bricks hurled at visitors to the house. Bedclothes were removed, cutlery and metal fittings bent and twisted, writing mysteriously appeared on the walls and even the Harpers’ teenage daughter achieved the amazing feat of levitation. And through this ordeal Mrs Harper and her family, though often frightened and worried, were firmly rationale as mediums, ghost-hunters and the Press invaded their home.

One year later the family were experts on psychic-phenomena. For the ghost was captured on tape and film by Maurice Grosse of the Society for Psychical Research and writer Guy Lyon Playfair. More compellingly vivid than any fiction, this extraordinary story was happening here in Britain, persuading even the most case-hardened sceptic to believe that THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED

“an extraordinary book of dedicated documentation” – Daily Express

“Gripping account of astonishing paranormal activities … backed by some impressive photographs” – Now!

Gerald Suster – The Devil’s Maze (Sphere, 1979)

With his death in November 1977, Dennis Wheatley left a vacancy for a new British dark master of Black Magic, and three of the applicants, as it were, were serious occultists turned pulp horror authors Jack Shackleford, Eric Erickson and Gerald Suster. The Devil’s Maze, Suster’s debut, has so far eluded me, but writing in the current Paperback Fanatic, Stephen Sennitt has no hesitation in proclaiming it Suster’s finest novel, a tribute to Arthur Machen which takes the Welsh mystic’s The Three Imposters as its inspiration.