Petition: Bring Back Usborne’s Supernatural World

Hey there Spooky Nostalgia Fans!

Last year we championed a petition created by Usborne’s Director of UK Marketing, Anna Howorth and backed by The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith, to bring back a childhood favourite book – The World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts.

Bosses had told Anna that if there was sufficient interest, then the children’s publisher would seriously consider reprinting the book. The petition received more than enough signatures and the book was published last October, with a new foreword by Shearsmith. Off the back of the Ghosts book’s success, Usborne will be publishing the next book in the series, All About UFOs, with a foreword by broadcaster and comedian Jon Culshaw:

However, that’s not all. In the late 70s, Usborne ran another series of spooky books for children – The Supernatural Guides. This series consisted of three volumes – Vampires, Werewolves and Demons, Mysterious Powers and Strange Forces, and perhaps the most memorable of all, Haunted Houses, Ghosts and Spectres. The latter was certainly a childhood favourite of mine and has been hugely influential on my fiction writing (which, in a shameless plug, you can find on my other website, Badgers Crossing).

In 1979 all three books were compiled into one mega-book called Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, and it’s this book that is now subject to a petition to bring it back, this time by genealogist and ghost stories fan @Farmer_Ancestry.

At the time of writing, the petition has received exactly 700 signatures, so it only requires a meagre 300 more for Anna to once again suggest bringing it back to her bosses at Usborne. If you’re a fan of these books, nostalgia, spooky tales or creepy artwork then please do pop over to Change.org and sign the petition here:

https://www.change.org/p/usborne-publishing-bring-back-usborne-s-guide-to-the-supernatural-world

 

Paul Childs

As well as writing for Den of Geek and Your Truth, Paul also runs Badgers Crossing, a site for ghost stories. He loves the 1980s and thanks to a keen interest in Public Information Films he has never been electrocuted or set himself on fire.

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