Jinty 15 October 1977

• Destiny Brown (artist Rodrigo Comos)
• Sue’s Fantastic Fun-Bag! (artist Hugh Thornton-Jones)
• Guardian of White Horse Hill (artist Julian Vivas)
• Alley Cat
• The Goose Girl (artist Keith Robson; writer Alison Christie)
• So What’s New with David Essex? (feature)
• Rinty ‘n’ Jinty
• Stage Fright! (artist Phil Townsend)
• Lilies for the Bride – Gypsy Rose story (artist Christine Ellingham)
• Fran’ll Fix It! (artist Jim Baikie)
• Cursed to be a Coward! (artist Mario Capaldi; writer Alison Christie)
• Autumn Treasures! (craft feature)

If you’ve read Mistyfan’s superb, thorough rundown of the cover styles that Jinty had over the years, you may remember this issue being noted as the last one which had a separate blue background behind the logo. (Following issues had the logo incorporated into the body of the cover design itself.) However, we had not yet posted about the issue itself, which I am remedying here.

Destiny Brown is trapped in a number of ways – having run away to find her father, her purse was stolen and she had to sleep rough. Not surprisingly she was quickly set up to be exploited by some rough types, especially once they realize they may have struck gold, if she really can predict the future with her second sight. Poor old Destiny – dragged away by these dodgy geezers, just as she has bumped into her father, who is likewise being dragged away by – who is *he* trapped by? It looks like the police, but is it really so? The art, by Rodrigo Comos, is clear and classy, if perhaps slightly old-fashioned looking for the time.

The letters page includes a list of the winners of a recent competition: the first ten correct entries won a KODAK Instamatic camera, while the 60 runners up won a giant full-colour poster of Starsky and Hutch. Looking at the names of the winners carefully, most of them are, unsurprisingly, traditional English, Irish, or Scottish girls names; but there are one or two less usual entrants hidden in the mix, indicating some small diversity of the readership. Pushpa Hallan is one of the ten winners of the main prize, and C. Thiyagalingam is one of the 60 winners of the runner-up prize. Perhaps even less expectedly, there is also one boy’s name included: Adrian King.

Orphan Janey is adapting to being fostered by the Carters – but when she sees a beautiful white horse, they think she is making up stories to impress them. What Janey doesn’t yet realize is that no-one else can see the horse apart from her – and nor will any photos of the horse show it, either! It’s all tied up with the local beauty spot, White Horse Hill, which is threatened by the destructive plans to build a motorway.

Brenda Noble is a bird-lover who is campaigning against the local sport of goose shooting in the village she lives in with her mother. Her mother hates birds as she blames them for her husband’s death – and soon she enacts her plans to take the two of them to Edinburgh away from the wee ‘backwater’ village.

“Stage Fright” is an odd mystery story: stylishly drawn by Phil Townsend, the protagonist Linda is being made by Lord Banbury to train as an actor in order to win an acting trophy that has been in his family for generations. But who is locking her into places, stealing her costume, and watching her from afar?

The Gypsy Rose story this week is drawn by Christine Ellingham, who until recently we were only able to list as the ‘unknown artist of Concrete Surfer’. What a pleasure to be able to correctly credit this lovely art! Delphine is a lively girl who works in a florist’s shop. She has an irrational fear of lilies, but the rich customer who falls for her wants a centrepiece of those same flowers, to be put together with her very own hands. Not only that – once he proposes to her, Delphine finds out that his mother’s name is Lily, and she is due to sleep in the lily room. All omens that tell her that soon she will meet the spirit of the lily – in death.

The evil fortune teller who is the villain of “Cursed To Be A Coward!” manages to get Marnie Miles thrown into a rickety old boat in the middle of a pond – luckily she gets fished out but the fortune teller’s determination to make sure that blue water will get her yet is pretty sinister.

The craft suggested for this week is to collect up ‘autumn treasures’ such as the heads of cow parsley, twigs with berries, or pretty leaves, and to make dried arrangements of them in vases, or pictures, or perhaps even jewellery of the tougher seedpods of ash keys or beech nut cases. The pictures accompanying the feature make it all look rather pretty, but I would assume that beech nut cases in particular would be rather scratchy to turn into jewellery!

A History of Jinty Covers

In a follow-up to A History of Tammy Covers, we present: A History of Jinty Covers. And now that A Resource on Jinty has run for five years, enough discussion, feedback and uploads on the Jinty covers should have accumulated to compile such a history.

We begin, of course, with the first Jinty cover, 11 May 1974. The format is a story panel format, with panels from two of the new stories, “A Dream for Yvonne” and “Dora Dogsbody“. The panel layout is rather stiff and boxy. It is enclosed inside a border, which is part of an orange background that runs from top to bottom of the cover.

The early Jintys had numbered covers, but the first issue is not numbered. Instead, the top caption says “No. 1”.

On the left is Jinty herself, a girl with long pony tails on both sides of her head. She is a blonde on the first cover, but in later years would be regarded as having brown hair. Jinty’s first gift is a “smiley” wrist bracelet.

The first two letters of the logo are separate, but the other three are joined together in a cursive style. It feels a bit of an odd mix, but it would be the standard Jinty logo until well into 1980.

updated to add: W.P. has informed us that this layout of the lettering was chosen so the “i” would not be confused with u-shaped lettering.

The second Jinty cover continues the format and still has not started the issue numbering. It was the last to advertise the free gift that came with the new comic.

The cover for the third Jinty issue is the first to start the actual numbering. It was very unusual for girls’ title in IPC to have issue numbering. June, Tammy and later, Misty, did not have it. In contrast, DCT titles like Bunty, Judy and Mandy had issue numbering from start to finish.

Issue 3 was also the last to use panel montages for quite a while in Jinty’s history. From issue 4, Jinty switched to the comic serial cover style. It feels quite an abrupt change. Did Jinty decide to use the story panel cover for her first three issues to advertise the new comic more or was she still experimenting and trying to find her feet and style? Or was she trying various ways to break away from the cover styles Tammy (The Cover Girls) or June (story panel filling entire cover)? Whatever the reason, her early covers definitely weren’t trying to copy either of them.

There is no free gift. Instead, Jinty is holding a competition. This is probably why Jinty is calling out instead of smiling and laughing as she did the previous two issues.

The first three issues used a rather boxy panel layout, using panels from Jinty’s stories inside to promote the comic. But with issue 4 this changed to the serial cover format i.e. using the first page of a serial on the cover. The story chosen is The Jinx from St Jonah’s, who would stay on the cover for a long time, as Katie was a regular and not a serial. The choice may have been using humour to attract the readers. Whatever the reason, it was a good choice as Katie the Jinx could never go more than three panels without getting into a scrape that provides laughs and hijinks for the readers and, of course, arouse their interest.

The first page is still enclosed within the window border, which gives it more of a boxy look than a splash page impression. The cover uses four panels when it first started this format, which meant less room for larger panels.

For three issues afterward the four-panel serial cover continued, but then it wisely shifted to a three-panel serial cover, beginning with #11, 20 July 1974. This allowed for bigger panels, especially the splash panel, which made the cover look less crowded and more spaced out with room to breathe, and therefore more eye-catching.

(click thru)

 

 

On occasion with the early covers Katie was pushed right off the cover when Jinty was advertising something, usually a competition. So advertising covers were also used.

(click thru)

 

 

Jinty ran 52 issues before she dropped her issue numbering on 31 May 1975. Other than that, the cover layout remains unchanged.

The Jinty for 1 November 1975 was the last to have Jinty on the top left hand corner of her cover. Next issue would change the course of Jinty’s history, and her cover would change with it.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

A History of Tammy Covers

The cover is the first thing the potential reader sees when they see the comic book on the shelf. The cover is what catches their eye, draws them in, arouses their interest, and induces them to buy it. Throughout the run of a comic, the cover will change dramatically in accordance with changes in public tastes, artists, levels of sophistication, and even the type of paper. Therefore compiling the history of the cover of a particular comic can tell you a lot about how things have changed in comics over the decades.

In this entry we are going to look at the history of the covers Tammy produced throughout her 13-year run and how they changed to make her a drawing card to the readers.

We begin with the very first issue, 6 February 1971. The girl on the cover is Tammy herself, showing off the bracelet and ring that come with the first issue. It is a very bright, happy cover, which belies the dark content that features in so many of the stories within, especially “Slaves of ‘War Orphan Farm'”. The floral-patterned logo is the one that will stay the same for nine years, though there were some exceptions to its regular layout. It most often appeared in red, but other colours were used on occasion. The floral pattern is unusual when girls’ comics used solid lettering. Perhaps the flowers were intended to be a further contrast to the dark content the early Tammy was known for.

First Tammy cover: original

Successive covers until Sandie merged with Tammy on 27 October 1973 were pretty cover girl covers, showing happy girls engaged in various activities such as leisure and sport. Again they continued to belie the grim content (slave stories, Cinderella stories, bullying stories) that continued to feature with stories like “The Four Friends at Spartan School”. A number of the covers had a flat, stiff, one-dimensional look to the artwork, which was probably fine at the time but looks a bit uninspired now.

On occasion though, an issue had a full cover that was inspired by a serial inside Tammy, such as Beattie Beats ’em All on Tammy’s first Christmas issue. It did not take long for the Sally logo to be added to the Tammy cover. Tammy was barely two months old before Sally, a longer-running comic, merged into her. It was most unusual for an older comic to be merged into a barely new one, and says something about the sales figures for both comics: Tammy was already a hit while it is presumed that Sally had lost readership due to a long-standing strike.

(click thru)

 

 

 

 

 

Next page…

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Sandie 28 July 1973

• Slaves of the Eye (artist Joan Boix)
• Cinderella – Superstar (artist Joan Boix?)
• Wyn and the Witch (artist A. E. Allen)
• Connie Courageous (artist “B. Jackson”) – last episode
• Sink or Swim, Sara! (artist Eduardo Feito)
• The Captives of Terror Island (artist Juan Escandell Torres, writer Terence Magee) – last episode
• Dancing to Danger (artist Tom Kerr)
• Bridie at the Fair (artist Leslie Otway)
• All Against Alice (artist Miguel Quesada?)
• Sisters in Sorrow (artist Desmond Walduck?)

“Slaves of the Eye” features another sinister teacher (Miss Krell) who exerts a strange, sinister influence over pupils, and it’s up to our protagonists (Kate Saunders and her friend Heather) to unravel how and why. Plus what lies under that veil Miss Krell always wears and what lurks in her laboratory. Kate has now discovered Miss Krell used a transmitter inside a netball to make the girls foul her during the match. Once she gets hold of the transmitter, it leads her and Heather to prison cells that were empty earlier but are now full of…whom?

 

“Cinderella Superstar” is an aspiring ballerina, Ellie Villiers whose road to her dreams is being blocked by uncooperative relatives who treat her like dirt. Now they’ve taken her gramophone to stop her dancing to her ballet music and given it away. But the blurb for next week says Ellie’s about to get some help.

 

Wyn is an ill-treated drudge at Pinchbeck Hall, but has a good friend in the form of the witch Grizelda “Grizzy” in the attic, whose magic helps Wyn get comeuppance on her horrible employers. This week Lord Pinchbeck is challenged to a duel but there’s a problem – Grizzy has turned him into a pig, so how the heck is he going to duel?

 

It’s the final episode of “Connie Courageous”. Connie Cartwright has jealous rivals in addition to learning to jump while being blind. And she needs the prize money to restore her sight, but her enemies have blocked the path to her getting to the event. Can she and her horse find a way to get there in time?

 

“The Captives of Terror Island” also ends this week. Madame Soong of Terror Island has kidnapped an entire hockey team in order to claim the National Hockey Championships for her country, and her training methods are “barbaric”. It looks like she has finally got what she wants and is a national heroine, until our heroine finally manages to expose her in front of the spectators. Madame Soong quite literally destroys herself – and Terror Island – with the very bomb she had set for her enemies.

 

In “Sink or Swim, Sara”, the two snobby headmistresses of St Agatha’s should have thought twice before making Sara Dale’s life so miserable. This caused her to change schools when they badly needed her to win an inter-school swimming gala. Now the same thing has resulted in two of Sara’s friends being expelled. Now they’ve transferred to Sara’s school and are happier – then Sara informs them that the expulsion is all part of some dirty trick the headmistresses are playing, which won’t be revealed until the final episode next week.

 

“Sisters in Sorrow” is also on its penultimate episode. Layla and her friend Pat have been forced to become thieves, but the story takes the unusual step of having an aristocrat, Lady Maggins, as the Fagin. They have been forced to impersonate two others in order to infiltrate a household so they can rob it. Layla manages to rescue the real McCoys, but they get cornered by Lady Maggins. Meanwhile, Pat has been exposed as an imposter, so they’re both in a corner now.

 

“Dancing to Danger” and “Bridie at the Fair” look like they have been reprinted from elsewhere, perhaps School Friend or June. In the former, Pat White uses ballet as her cover for undercover work against the Nazis in World War II. She manages to worm her way into Gestapo HQ to find information on a prisoner, Professor Duval, under pretext of her ballet troupe staging a performance there. However, her Nazi nemesis, Herr Staub, gets suspicious and is going to arrange a special watch on them. In the latter, Bridie Donovan has joined a fair in the hope of regaining her memory. But the fortune-teller Madame Rosa tells Bridie she can do anything she wants with her.

 

“All Against Alice” has been fostered out to a former Wimbledon champion who is coaching her in her beloved tennis, but shows her no affection. Then a Mr and Mrs Tyler claim to be Alice’s parents but lose the custody battle in the interim. Just as well, because they are clearly out to make money out of her, which they finally succeed in doing by destroying Alice’s amateur status through a dirty trick, and with it, her career.

Sandie 13 May 1972

• Lorna’s Lonely Days
• Slaves of the Sorcerer (artist Desmond Walduck?)
• Wee Sue (artist Vicente Torregrosa Manrique)
• Brenda’s Brownies (artist and writer Mike Brown)
• Odd Mann Out – final episode (artist A E Allen)
• Silver Is a Star (artist Eduardo Feito)
• Not So Lady-like Lucy
• Friends and Neighbours
• The Captives of Madam Karma (artist Jaume Rumeu, writer Pat Mills)
• Wendy the Witch (artist Mike Brown)
• Sandra Must Dance – final episode (artist Douglas Perry)
• Bonnie’s Butler (artist Julio Bosch?)
• Anna’s Forbidden Friend (artist Miguel Quesada)
• A Sandie Pop Portrait – Ryan O’Neil (artist Bob Gifford)

“Lorna’s Lonely Days” are due to her longing to find the mother who disappeared when she was two. The mystery of the mother really deepens when Lorna thinks she has finally found her mother at last, but the woman in the photo just turns out to be a former employee who expresses no surprise at nobody letting Lorna see a picture of her mother. Meanwhile, Dad is worried Lorna is becoming more and more like her mother. Now why can these people be thinking this way?

Mike Brown is drawing a new strip in Sandie, “Wendy the Witch”, in addition to Brenda’s Brownies.

Beth Williams has once again failed to escape the sorcerer, and she’s back in his clutches. Now this is getting really tedious.

Wee Sue is becoming unpopular with her classmates and she seems to be taking deliberate measures to make it so. Now what is she playing at?

It’s the last episode of “Odd Mann Out”. The tyrannical headmistress is brought down when Susie Mann exposes her as an embezzler and falsifying exam marks for girls she favours.

Trudy Parker’s efforts to save Silver have landed her in court. Only the action of the Colonel saves Trudy from an unjust sentence of corrective training school. But then another injustice looms, in the form of Trudy being falsely accused of stealing a necklace.

The neighbour problem finally seems to be sorted in “Friends and Neighbours”. But fresh problems start when Dad begins renovating the house.

“The Captives of Madam Karma” (spelled Madame Karma on the cover) are a slave labour force of abducted girls who slave all day making transistor radios in a sweatshop – which is 200 miles within the Arctic circle. But if you think that’s weird, it’s nothing on the mysterious helper who shows up to help our protagonist – a glowing woman floating on air!

In the final episode of “Sandra Must Dance”, the twins have fallen out because Joan has wrongly assumed Sandra pulled the dirty trick a jealous girl was responsible for. To put things right, Sandra compels Joan to dance again, and in doing so the twins discover they no longer need the psychic bond and both are brilliant dancers.

In “Bonnie’s Butler” there is a disagreement over home decorating and Dad taking exception to Bonnie’s pop posters adorning the walls. But of course the butler’s got a scheme to help Bonnie there.

Anna gets a clue to help her find her forbidden friend Julia, who has been kidnapped as part of her father’s machinations to drive everyone out of Madeley Buildings. The dirty rotten schemer has even put the blame for the kidnapping on Anna!

Sandie 29 April 1972

• No-one Cheers for Norah– final episode (artist John Armstrong)
• Slaves of the Sorcerer (artist Desmond Walduck?)
• Wee Sue (artist Vicente Torregrosa Manrique)
• Odd Mann Out (artist A E Allen)
• Silver Is a Star (artist Eduardo Feito)
• Not So Lady-like Lucy
• Friends and Neighbours
• The School of No Escape – final episode (artist “B. Jackson”, writer Terence Magee)
• Brenda’s Brownies (artist and writer Mike Brown)
• Sandra Must Dance (artist Douglas Perry)
• Bonnie’s Butler (artist Julio Bosch?)
• Anna’s Forbidden Friend (artist Miguel Quesada)
• A Sandie Pop Portrait – Mark Lester (artist Bob Gifford)

In this issue of Sandie we say goodbye to two of her first stories: “No-One Cheers for Norah” and “The School of No Escape”. The former finishes with a needle race to beat the relatives who have not only made Norah’s life a misery ever since they met but also ruined her father’s life. The latter ends with the pretty typical deus ex machina of the aliens just vanishing away just as they are about to triumph because time’s up, and everyone but the heroine loses all memory of them for no apparent reason.

Replacing them next week are “Lorna’s Lonely Days” and “The Captives of Madam Karma”. The latter is written by Pat Mills.

In “Slaves of the Sorcerer” Beth Williams finally gets the police onto Caspar. But when they arrive at the fairground there’s no sign of him. The lead they have been given is in fact another trap for Beth set by Caspar, and he’s waiting to pounce.

Boys are admitted to Wee Sue’s school. They get quite a shock when the titch they tease turns out to be brilliant at footy. Then Sue finds one of the football boys stuck on a ledge and climbs up to the rescue.

“Odd Mann Out” is now leading a demonstration against the tyrannical way things are run at her school. But why the hell is the headmistress smiling about it instead of looking worried?

Trudy loses Silver – to the rag-and-bone man. And everyone knows how cruel he is to animals. Can Trudy get him back?

Ann Friend and her family in “Friends and Neighbours” have moved into a new house. The neighours haven’t been friendly but now Anne believes they are worse than she thought – they are trying to scare her family out of the house with a ruse that it’s haunted. They deny it angrily and mean to prove it by sitting up with them.

In “Sandra Must Dance”, enemy Robinia Drew discovers the twins’ bizarre secret – Joan can transfer her ballet talent into her twin sister Sandra through a psychic bond. Robinia locks Joan up to prevent her from doing so during a performance. Can the twins pull things off despite this?

This week’s episode of “Bonnie’s Butler” has a row with the Major and Bonnie loses the present she was going to give Angie. Things get even more bizarre when Bonnie wins an unwanted hip bath at an auction, but her butler uses it to put everything right.

In “Anna’s Forbidden Friend”, Julia’s father takes advantage of Anna and Julia to hatch a scheme to get everyone out of Madeley Buildings. He managed to turn everyone against them once before and now plots to do it again. And his scheme includes kidnapping his own daughter!

Sandie 29 September 1973

• Angela Angel-Face (artist Rodrigo Comos)
• The House of Toys (artist Douglas Perry)
• Jeannie and her Uncle Meanie (artist Robert MacGillivray, writer John Wagner)
• Noelle’s Ark (artist “B. Jackson”)
• Cherry in Chains (artist Joan Boix)
• Sandie’s Pop Special – Geordie
• The Golden Shark (artist Santiago Hernandez)
• Dancing with Danger – last episode (artist Tom Kerr)
• Bridie at the Fair (artist Leslie Otway)
• Sister to a Star (artist Joan Boix?)
• Cinderella Superstar (artist Joan Boix?)

The issue begins with part two of the first print of the “Angela Angel-Face” story that will be reprinted in Jinty 1980 and Tammy 1984. It is generally agreed among Jinty readers that the less said about that one the better, so we move on to other things in the issue.

Sandie sure had a big thing for circus stories. There are not one but two of them running, plus one with a fairground theme. The first, “Cherry in Chains”, stars a heroine who’s an escape artist, which is a real delight to have. There are not many Houdinis in girls’ comics who can get themselves out of being tied up. There are many scenes I can recall in girls’ comics where they sure could have done with that. But Cherry’s unknown enemy is making her escapes even more dangerous and escape-proof than normal because he or she is using them to kill her. Who could be doing it? Everyone’s a suspect because everyone thinks Cherry’s father is a traitor. But there really can only be one person – the one who framed him.

In the other circus story, Mary Suza in “Sister to a Star” is a trapeze artist. She has defied her overstrict guardian in running away to the circus. In this episode she loses her nerve, gets it back, but the ageing trapeze star, Sue Suza, will have not have Mary in her act. No, she is not bloody well getting too old, she says! Meanwhile, the fortune teller sees tragedy in the cards, which will no doubt have bearing on the final episode next issue.

The fairground story, “Bridie at the Fair”, looks like it was reprinted from an earlier title, maybe School Friend. Amnesiac girl Bridie Donovan joins a travelling fair to find her true identity. Now Bridie has finally discovered her old nursemaid, Mrs Kerry – only to find the poor old woman was being taken advantage of by a nasty fortune teller. No wonder when it’s revealed that a nasty relative is out to steal Bridie’s estate, and then Bridie’s enemies, led by the fortune teller, close in to stop her claiming it!

“Dancing with Danger” also has the impression it was reprinted from an earlier title. Pat White is a ballerina who is in fact an undercover secret agent in occupied France. It’s the final episode and Pat has now earned a medal in addition to her bouquets, but that has to be kept secret until after the war. Right now, it’s more undercover work while dancing with those pointe shoes.

Sandie also had two ballet stories running at the same time. In the second ballet story, Ellie Villiers wants to be a ballerina, but her Aunt Stella and cousins do everything they can to stop her. It’s not just a matter of treating her like Cinderella. It’s also something to do with a locked room, which Ellie has found is full of tutus and other ballet paraphernalia, and they once belonged to a ballerina named Sylvia Coral. What’s more, Aunt Stella says weird things that sound like she thinks she’s being haunted by Sylvia’s ghost or something. Sylvia’s diary holds the answer, but Aunt Stella is trying to stop anyone from reading it.

“The Golden Shark” looks like another reprint from elsewhere as its lettering is not the same as Sandie’s. Perhaps it originally appeared in June. Like “Barracuda Bay” (a June reprint in Jinty), it’s an underwater sea adventure, and it’s got underwater exploration, pirates, a treasure hunt in a sunken galleon, and a giant octopus.

“The House of Toys” is “and then there were none” story. Jill Small and nine girl gymnasts have somehow found themselves on a mysterious island when they were headed for another, and the only house on it has nothing but strange toys. Now the girls are disappearing one by one. Even the food is disappearing into thin air, and we don’t mean eating. Is it because these toys have strange powers or is someone pulling a fast one on them? In this episode the girls discover there are definitely two people on the island, but now another girl vanishes!

Uncle Meanie is running for Parliament, would you believe? His campaign is to stop needless spending and save, save, save. In other words, he would issue tight-fisted McScrimp-style black budgets given half the chance. As nobody in their right mind would vote for him, he is turning to dirty tricks to sabotage the other candidates. And then his ideas begin to grow in popularity once he learns to appeal to the miser in people. Can Jeannie find a way to stop him?

Like “Fran of the Floods“, “Noelle’s Ark” was ahead of its time in anticipating rising sea levels and worldwide flooding. This week Noelle encounters a mystery boat that carries a deadly fungus. She manages to get rid of the fungus, but it’s had a weird effect on her – she’s turning so nasty she’s on the verge of pushing her friends overboard!

In “Slaves of the Sorcerer” Beth Williams finally gets the police onto Caspar. But when they arrive at the fairground there’s no sign of him. The lead they have been given is in fact another trap for Beth set by Caspar, and he’s waiting to pounce.

Boys are admitted to Wee Sue’s school. They get quite a shock when the titch they tease turns out to be brilliant at footy. Then Sue finds one of the football boys stuck on a ledge and climbs up to the rescue.

“Odd Mann Out” is now leading a demonstration against the tyrannical way things are run at her school. But why the hell is the headmistress smiling about it instead of looking worried?

Trudy loses Silver – to the rag-and-bone man. And everyone knows how cruel he is to animals. Can Trudy get him back?

In “Friends and Neighbours” Ann Friend and her family have moved into a new house. The neighours haven’t been friendly but now Anne believes they are worse than she thought – they are trying to scare her family out of the house with a ruse that it’s haunted. They deny it angrily and mean to prove it by sitting up with them.