THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Taste the Lolly of Dracula!

Hello dear fiends and welcome once again to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! In our past few trips in the chilly archives of the 'Orrible Old 'Ouse we've been looking at the weird world of 1970s ice lollies. Last week we saw how one of the twin titans of the British ice lolly market had struck gold with some spooky themed offerings, in particular the Haunted House lolly. But what were arch rivals Walls up to? Well, naturally they had something to also bring an extra chill to the freezer cabinet...

Now kids have always loved monsters and spooky stuff, but in the 1970s there seemed to be a multitude of scary things for kids (as documented in the marvellous book Scarred For Life that I reviewed here). Now Lyons Maid tapped into this horror boom firstly with the Jelly Terror and Haunted Houses lollies, and later with the Daleks Death Ray, Dinosaurs and King Kong lollies. And so they had pretty much covered all the usual scary fare bases - monsters, ghosts, aliens, and robots. However Walls did manage to fight back by resurrecting from the grave one of the most famous monsters of all-time - Count Dracula!  

Now back in the early '1970s, the immortal vampire was riding high in pop culture. His then current cinematic biographers Hammer, had recently rebooted their movie series by bringing the Count to the present day in Dracula AD 1972 (1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), while Marvel Comics had done something similar in 1972 too with their monthly title Tomb of Dracula. And in 1974, this particular comic was to be reprinted in Britain as a weekly title called Dracula Lives by Marvel UK, something I'm sure was on the radar of the marketing department of Walls, for one of the prime places they advertised lollies was in the pages of comics. 

So then, as no one technically owned the rights to the character of the Count, Walls were free to raise the old vampire from his grave once more to sell ice lollies. Retailing at 3p, Count Dracula's Deadly Secret (later shortened to just Count Dracula's Secret) was a lolly of "midnight black" according to the advertising blurb, which entombed blood red jelly and an ice cream centre. Quite what was so secret about it, no one is entirely sure - was it that the Count was secretly an ice cream man? Sadly we will probably never know... However this enigma didn't hurt the sales of the lolly at all, for Count Dracula's Deadly Secret was a huge hit and haunted the chiller cabinets for many years. 

While most of the lollies we have discussed ultimately only lasted a summer or two, in 1976 Count Dracula's Deadly Secret was still going strong, and even got a new gimmick to keep the kids interested. Now while most lollies came on the traditional wooden stake, sorry, I mean wooden stick, over the years there were several experiments with plastic sticks moulded into assorted novel shapes. Hence in 1976, Count Dracula's Deadly Secret was now boasting it came on a Trace-A-Face stick - essentially a plastic stick that had shapes cut into it to make a stencil. The shapes in question were assorted eyes, mouths and noses so kids could make their own monster mugshots in a crude identikit fashion. Now to be honest, looking back the shapes weren't either very detailed or particularly scary, looking more like a moron's idea of Egyptian hieroglyphics than terrifying facial features from beyond the grave. But back in the day, it all seemed terribly exciting, especially as the adverts proclaimed that the Trace-A-Face sticks were in limited supply. 

Meanwhile in the wider world of pop culture we had the BBC producing a memorable version of Bram Stoker's horror classic entitled Count Dracula for Christmas 1977, while in 1979 John Badham's all-star version of Dracula, with Frank Lagella as the Count and Sir Lawrence Olivier as Van Helsing, flapped onto the big screen. And also on the small screen, in 1980 Hanna-Barbera introduced us to a modern relative of the Count in The Drak Pack. And so with the Count being still big business, in 1981 Walls released a second version of their long-standing favourite.

Taking advantage of new breakthroughs in lolly technology, the new Walls Dracula was an ice lolly actually moulded into the shape of the Count himself! Although it now came only with one flavour, strawberry, this new vampiric snack did carry on the noble tradition that had been begun with Count Dracula's Deadly Secret of staining your lips red. Sadly however this icy incarnation of the Count did not last so long. 

However, as we all know, you can't keep a good man down, for in recent years Count Dracula has been spotted once again in freezers, now with a new cartoony look. In 2013, Unilever who now own Walls, responded to popular demand and resurrected Count Dracula's Deadly Secret, although now just under the banner of "Dracula Lollies". Yes, the Count will always rise up from the grave, and apparently that's true even in the world of ice lollies too...

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - The Blob from the Haunted House

Welcome once again my dears to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Incredibly in this septic isle it is actually still summer - yes, I know, a summer that has lasted more than a fortnight! Unprecedented! Well, possibly not, but certainly for such a heatwave one probably has to go back to the 1970s, which coincidentally, is exactly what we are doing once again this week! Don't fret though, while there may be lions, and tigers and flares (oh my!),  there will at least be ice cream! 

Now ice cream itself goes back to the Ancient Greeks, and the ice lolly has been knocking about since the 1920s. However it wasn't until the 1960s that the great icy snack wars began, and these frozen treats were marketed in a host of flavours, with a legion of gimmicks (as we have previously charted in these dubious missives). Now in previous weeks we have looked at how in the early 1970s, lolly makers had hit on the idea of creating characters and mascots that tied to distinct themes to flog their wares to kids. However also around this time, the very way these chilly snacks were being made was changing. And although lollies were in rude health at the time, with a market supporting dozens of competing items, all the same, to paraphrase Oscar Goldman, they could rebuild them, they had the technology, and they could make them better than they were! Better, stronger, and even more gimmicky! 

Now makers of lollies had been fusing different flavours together, and even making lollies in different shapes for quite a while. A recent breakthrough had been creating lollies with an ice cream centre and this would lead to the next leap forward - lollies made completely of ice cream and moulded in amusing shapes! An early hit in this new breed of lolly was the Brr Blobs from Lyons Maid. As the name suggests, the technology wasn't really up to creating a terribly exciting shape other than a roughly humanoid blob with an in-set smiley face, and they only came in ice cream flavour, but they were excitingly different.

More ambitious moulded lollies were to come however, with Lyons Maid launching Dinosaurs in 1974. Priced 8p, these were formed from two pieces of ice cream, one chocolate and one vanilla, and as you might have guessed, were moulded into the shape of a mighty prehistorical saurian. Ok, the moulding wasn't exactly super-detailed, and in fairness they looked more like generic lizardy shapes, as seen by Mr Magoo sans spectacles. But on the upside, the wrappers came with exciting dino-facts on the back, making an attractive series to scoff and collect.

Arch rivals Walls it seems came late to the moulded ice cream lolly game. Possibly the technology wasn't quite good yet, for even Lyons Maid don't appear to have attempted another shaped ice cream lolly in the rest of the '70s. However when Walls did venture into the moulded ice cream arena, they did knock it out of the park. Launching in the early 1980s, the Funny Feet lolly was a deceptively simple and silly idea - an ice cream lolly shaped like a cartoon foot. And this combination of flavour and absurdity proved to be extremely popular, and when all other lollies aimed at kids had passed away, Funny Feet still endured.

However, back in the 1970s, another ice cream lolly is perhaps the most fondly remembered. In July 1973, Lyons Maid launched a lolly destined to live long in the freezer and indeed in our hearts. It didn't have a fancy moulded shape, although it did come with badges. But this lolly did have another trick up its monstrous sleeve. For this lolly was the fondly remembered and much missed Haunted House!  

Now flavour-wise, Haunted House was nothing to write home about - it was just basically milky ice cream frozen onto a stick. But what made this lolly somewhat legendary was the fact each one had a picture of some horror stenciled on the ice cream in edible inks! Drawn in pink, orange, red, green and blue, there were different pictures on the lollies, with the marketing hook being that you wouldn't know which one was on until you unpeeled the wrapper. The full range was as follows - a ghost, a skellington, some bats, a spider in a web, Frankenstein's monster, a witch and something resembling a close relative of the Jelly Terror! Oh yes, Haunted House delivered a lot of fun for the 4p asking price!

And indeed, while its launch mates such as Captain Cody, Freakout and Freckles were forgotten in a summer or two, Haunted House still lived on, and indeed the memory of its simple but spooky fun is still cherished to this day. However Walls had noticed that the kids loved a monster too, and they would produce a rival icy horror... a lolly that came with a stick through its heart...

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Captain Rainbow vs the Green Demon!

Welcome once again dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Well, the temperatures are still rising, wearing shorts has become a full-time occupation, and the fridge can't make ice fast enough... I really must repair that stuck thermostat in here! Anyhow, it's rather warm and sunny outside too, and during this heatwave we've been exploring the world of the vintage ice lolly. Now then, last time we went back the early 1970s and discovered how leading British lolly merchants Lyons Maid struck gold, or at least a rich vein of pocket money, by inventing assorted cartoony characters for their lollies.

Breaking with the tradition that the name told you the flavour, lollies launched in 1973 such as Captain Cody, Jelly Terror and Freckles sold mostly on the little characters on the wrappers. And after the initial wave, more were to follow. Clearly Lyons Maid were onto something for other companies began to follow in their footsteps. One of their big rivals had been Midland Counties, an ice cream maker who had been going since 1898, but in the early '70s got taken over by Lyons Maid. However the company continued to compete with its new owners in the chiller cabinets for several years after. But of course, Lyons Maid's real rivals, Walls, were picking up on the character concept too. Unsurprisingly perhaps, both companies too launched a range of lollies based on home-spun characters.

Now Midland Counties clearly had clocked that the youth market liked their music, and hence we had two lollies aimed at the Top of the Pops crowd, with Pop Stick appearing to be the lolly for '70s teenboppers everywhere. This move was countered by Walls with the Superstar lolly, which seems to be aimed at the older crowd with a more glam rock feel to it. Likewise Billion Dollar Lolly and Cavalier seemed to be competing on an aspirational tip - with the former appealing to basic notions of wealth, with its gangster-like American tycoon being almost a satire on vulgar commercialism. Whereas the Cavalier proudly recalls our own history, appealing to romantic notions of aristocracy. Although quite what pineapple has to do with the Royalist cause I'm not sure. Possibly the pineapple  still had a lingering reputation as something exotic and for rich folks back in the early '70s.

Lyons Maid's Red Devil got not just one but two competitors, in the shape of the Green Demon from Midland Counties and the Little Imp from Walls. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! And further characters were to follow too in the next few years. Midland Counties' Chocopotamus continued a long line of food products having animal mascots, although it has to be said few were as nattily dressed and quite as prone to outbreaks of jazz hands. Certainly he made Jelly Jumbo from Walls look positively dour. But on the other non-jazz hand, the Ice Warrior lolly took the cheeky move of nicking the name of one of the telly Timelord's recurring foes and creating a new monster around it. Perhaps they were aiming for a slice of the Doctor Who market so successfully exploited by Walls' Daleks Death Ray. Certainly Midland Counties had form for this type of caper - they had launched a lolly called Rocket which was a carbon copy of Walls' Skyray. Although in fairness, Lyons Maid also did a Skyray-alike called Zoom. The Great Ice Lolly Wars were often fought dirty...

Meanwhile back at Lyons Maid HQ, in 1975 they were refining the concept, and they were clearly now looking at things that appealed directly to kids. Now in 1974, ITV had decided to air the third season of the 1960s Batman TV series - which so far had not been aired at all in the UK - and the result was a new wave of Bat-mania. Also after a humble beginning in 1972, by the mid-70s Marvel UK was in full flow, reprinting the adventures of Spiderman, the Hulk and the Avengers on a weekly basis. Therefore it was perhaps unsurprising that one of the first new lollies for 1975 had a superhero theme. This icy treat was called Captain Rainbow, and yes, I appreciate how camp he sounds now. Launching in March 1975, for the price of 6p the Captain offered lemonade and strawberry ice, with banana kreem and a choc dip. Sadly the Captain didn't fly for long, whether this was down to having an unusual cocktail of flavours or being three colours short of spectrum we do not know... 

Also big in Britain in the early 1970s were a legion of imported US cop shows, such as Cannon and McCloud, with Kojak in particular (which began aired in the UK in 1974) becoming a hit with the kids due to his penchant of eating lollies (but sadly just the regular non-iced versions) and being bald. And so, deftly spotting a bandwagon gathering speed, in September 1975 Lyons Maid launched Crime Squad, half blackcurrant and half mixed fruits flavour ice on the usual stick. Crime Squad also had an added gimmick too. Now back then nearly all lollies came on wooden sticks, and often had jokes printed on them. However Crime Squad had a rare plastic stick which had a stencil on it which revealed a secret code. Which was just as well, as survivors from the 1970s report that flavour of the lolly itself was less than impressive. Arch rival Walls did something similar, but instead tried to tap into the hip world of international espionage with the Superspy lolly. Whether the juices in it were shaken or stirred, history does not record, but declassified documents suggest it didn't have a fancy code breaking stick gimmick. 

However plastic sticks were not the only advances being made in cold snack technology, and new gimmicks and branding concepts were just around the corner. A particularly spooky corner in fact, as kids love nothing better than monsters do they?

NEXT TIME - Taste the lolly of Dracula! 

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Freak Out! It's the Jelly Terror!

Welcome back dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Well, summer is well and truly here with dear old Blighty sweltering in a heatwave and tabloid editors wondering if they can run that "COR WOTTA SCORCHER! " headline again yet. Well then chums, we are going to be keeping our cool with another visit to the cryogenic vaults of the 'Orrible Old 'Ouse and exploring once again the wonderful world of ice lollies... 

Now previously we have seen how in the 60s, 70s and 80s, purveyors of ice cold snackage successful prised pocket money from the nation's children by firstly linking their lollies to well known characters from film and TV. Later on, this marketing gimmick would blossom into branded icy treats, a wild world where characters as diverse as  the Daleks, King Kong, Bananaman, and the Mister Men would get their own lines of ice lollies. However these kind of tie-in deals cost money and could be something of a risky proposition, for the favour and fashions of the playground are fickle and hence while the Daleks conquered the chiller cabinets for several years, and during many of which they didn't cross paths with the Doctor on the telly mark you, no one was particularly rushing out to buy the Black Hole lolly when Disney's answer to Star Wars died a death at the box office. 

However, and let's be honest here, as makers of all kinds of tat have realised down the years, kids are bloody morons. If you can make something that is bright, colourful and sounds cool, even if it is a truly bloody awful product, you can create a playground sensation. Back in the '60s and '70s, no one had coined the term "viral marketing", but the concept that some products could magically capture the public's imagination was already well understood. And in the world of the ice lolly, if you could create a playground craze for your frozen wares, you were quids in. And hence many makers of lollies and assorted sweeties discovered that the right wrapper and the right name could outsell the biggest branded tie-ins.

Now, at first many lollies had just had names derived from their flavours - the all-time classics being the Orange Maid and the Mini Milk - but soon lollies with more inventive names started to appear such as Wiz, Rev, Woppa, and Mivvi. And this was a major breakthrough, as such names gave no clue to their flavours but still sold well because they sounded hip and cool. After all, what self-respecting junior hepcat wants a boring old Lemonade Fizz when you could discover what a Kinky tasted like? 

However while this advance in lolly nomenclature was a seismic shift in the way icy treats were sold, the novelty of giving lollies trendy and abstract names soon became normalised. And hence in the early 1970s, lolly branding was to evolve again, and various characters started appeared in the chiller cabinets that didn't exist anywhere else. Given the hazy and ephemeral nature of ice lolly history, I am not entirely sure who first made this next breakthrough, but a good contender is probably Lyons Maid who launched the Red Devil in April 1973. A regular in the freezers for many years, the Red Devil was a lolly comprising of an ice cream centre encased in fruity red ice. Some of us who remember this lolly may well be inclined to think that perhaps the name came from the fact that it was indeed a bit of a devil to eat, as all too often often the crimson ice you fall away from the ice cream and seek out brand new tops to stain and ruin.

However despite this lolly's propensity for getting kids in trouble with Mum, I suspect it was simply a case of the marketing chaps casting about for a suitable name that was a bit trendy and sounded cool without mentioning a flavour. But the real stroke of genius came when the graphics department designed a wrapper with a little cartoon imp on it. And in a stroke the concept of a brand name and an image coalesced into the idea of creating brand characters, for looking at Lyon Maid's production history, the Red Devil was closely followed by a range of lollies that crystallize this moment in marketing.

Now all of these lollies were united by the fact they they appeared at the same time but also were accompanied by a series of button badges to collect. A vanilla ice cream bar with chocolate chips was named Freckles, which clearly was the name of the cute cartoon spotted dog on its wrapper. Then there was Captain Cody, a old school cartoon hunter who lolly was cream soda flavour with a "raspberry kreem centre" apparently. However typifying the fact that lolly branding was a tipping point, the range also included Freak Out, a strawberry and lemon ice cream whirled together to allegedly "form a psychedelic pattern on a stick", whose badge featured a trippy vision of a long haired singer of indeterminate gender and sanity radiating acid drenched colours. However my favourite of this bunch was the brilliantly designed Jelly Terror.  The lolly itself comprised of a creamy vanilla shell, topped with chocolate, and entombing a strawberry jelly centre, but despite this generous combo of flavours the real draw was the titular Jelly Terror, a marvelous monster with fangs, swirling eyes and a great many legs/arms/tentacles/whatever they are.

Part of the success of this bunch which were launched back in April 1973 was down to the nature of the graphics themselves. Quite cleverly, Lyons Maid had opted for a style that was very kid-friendly. It was individual, energetic and lo-fi, but perhaps most importantly of all, generally the characters looked like something that a kid - admittedly a talented kid - had drawn on a school exercise book. Clearly they were on to something here, for the following year, they even launched a rival to their own Orange Maid, in the form of the Orange Dragon lolly, with a mythical fire-breather rendered in the same style. And in 1974 some new lines sporting more freshly dreamed up characters would appear too. And naturally other companies soon followed suit...

NEXT TIME - we round up more of these forgotten characters from the chiller cabinets and discovered the spookiest lolly of the early 1970s! 

FOLKLORE ON FRIDAY - Beneath the Sheets

In previous editions of Folklore on Friday we have examined why ghosts are often pictured wearing chains or depicted as headless phantoms, and so now we shall round off this little series with a look at why exactly we so often picture spooks as sheeted shapes. Of all the depictions of ghosts in popular culture, phantoms appearing as sheeted shapes is surely the most common. But somewhat weirdly, while the reasons for this used to be rather well-known, in recent years the waters have become somewhat muddied.

In recent times I've seen numerous articles making the claim that depicting ghosts as sheeted forms is a relatively recent development. It is claimed that it is based on an old theatrical convention.  Allegedly in olden times, when ghosts appeared in plays and other stage entertainments, they were costumed in suits of armour. And why was this? Well according to the TV Tropes article on this subject (which appears to be the source for many of the pieces I am referring to), it was because -

"in Elizabethan England, armor was no longer worn in combat, and the costuming convention at the time was to dress characters in contemporary (Renaissance) clothing. So, by dressing a character in armor, the character was given an out of date look, and recognized as a ghost."

However by the late 18th and 19th centuries, or so this theory goes, audiences would no longer suspend disbelief in the stage ghosts because their armour made too much clanking and creaking. And hence costume designers cast about for a way of creating a costume that would suggest that the ghost was  incorporeal and ethereal. The solution they arrived at was to dress the actor in white sheets, which along with low lighting, would create misty figures and shapes on shape.

Now this is all very interesting, but once you start investigating the matter the theory collapses like an empty paper bag. To begin with, armour was still commonly worn in Tudor England - Henry VIII for example had several magnificent suits of armour made for his martial endeavours. And furthermore one only has to look at the Roundhead soldiers who fought for Cromwell in the civil war in the 17th century to see that armour was still very much in use a century after the Tudor era was over.

Hamlet and his father's Ghost by Henry Fuseli

Digging a little further into the origins of this theory, we find that the idea that all ghosts were depicted as wearing suits of armour is something of a misconception. Yes, one of the most well-known ghosts in literature is Hamlet's father, who does indeed appear in full battle dress. But if we go back to the text of the play, we discover that while the spirit of Hamlet's father does indeed appear dressed in armour at the beginning of the play, later on he reappears, but in a different costume. For in Act II scene IV, when Hamlet is confronting his mother and his father's shade appears again, the doomed Prince says -

Why, look you there look, how it steals away! 

My father, in his habit as he lived! 

And this is a key scene to understanding why the ghost was deliberately costumed in armour by the Bard of Avon in his first appearance in the play. When the phantom father is first manifesting, he appears in martial dress as he is seeking to combat a grave injustice (i.e. his murder) which is placing the kingdom under threat. However after Hamlet has taken revenge on his uncle (the villain of the piece) and is seeking to also punish his mother for her part in the murder, his father's ghost appears without armour to stay his son's hand; his dress signals that justice has been served and the ghost can now rest. 

Furthermore we discover that there are other ghosts in Shakespeare. And Shakespeare's other famous ghost, is the spectre of Banquo in Macbeth, and this shade isn't specified as wearing armour either. Nor do the ghosts who visit Brutus in Julius Caesar - indeed it would make no sense for a Roman spectre to appear in a suit of armour. Likewise in John Webster's The White Devil (1612) it would be nonsensical for the spectre of the murdered Isabella to appear in full plate armour. In a play from the 1580s, Dr Faustus, written by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe, when our hero conjures up the ghosts of many different historical figures, but they don't all appear dressed in armour either. Rather they appear dressed in their own contemporary clothes.

In short then, what I shall term the armour theory collapses when you look into the range of ghosts and spectres in 16th and 17th century drama, for only a select few of these stage phantoms are kings or soldiers for whom it would be logical to depict as wearing armour. Furthermore Shakespearean scholars have written much on the technical aspects of staging plays, with John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London, in a 2016 article, theorising that "the actors probably – on the day-lit stage of the Globe – had their skin whitened with flour"

The Gambols of Ghosts by William Blake

So where did the armour theory come from? Well tracing my way through the perilous underworld of footnotes and references, the misconception appears to begin in an article entitled The Ghost in Hamlet by RA Foakes published in Shakespeare Survey: Volume 58, Writing about Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press 2005). In this piece Foakes examines the history of portraying the ghost of Hamlet's father, citing on the work Renaissance Clothing by Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, who document several reports of the ghost of Hamlet's father provoking laughter thanks to the noise made by the armour. Hence as a response to this, in the18th and 19th centuries, ditching the armour in favour of a lighter more ethereal looking costume came into fashion. However the key point here is that Roakes, and Jones and Stallybrass, were only speaking about one particular stage ghost, Hamlet's father. But it is thanks to some very careless readings of their studies that the historical evolution of the depiction of the ghost of Hamlet's father has been applied firstly to all stage ghosts, and then  to all popular depictions of ghosts in the eras discussed.

illustration by James McBryde for Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad

So why are ghosts depicted as wearing sheets? Occasionally I have seen the origin laid at the door of MR James, for in one of his most famous ghost stories, Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad a dreadful spectre manifests in a bed sheet. However here James was playing with the already popular notion of ghosts appearing dressed in white sheets, by having his malevolent apparition actually be a sheet with "a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen". Indeed the ghost as appearing as a white shape was very well-established by the 18th century, as can be seen in  the numerous spirits and phantoms depicted by William Blake, as well as in reports of hauntings such as the Cock Lane ghost and the case of the Hammersmith Ghost from 1803. In another of his tales, There Was a Man Who Dwelt By A Churchyard (which appropriately enough is actually James's guess at the ghost story Maxillius was going to tell in Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale) features another sheeted spectre, and James gives us the real reason why -

Have you ever seen an old brass in a church with a figure of a person in a shroud? It is bunched together at the top of the head in a curious way. Something like that was sticking up out of the earth in a spot of the churchyard which John Poole knew very well.

Now while we always think of burials and funerals as involving a coffin, this is a relatively new development. In ages past only the rich could afford a tomb or a coffin and most folks therefore were buried wrapped up in sheets, with more well-off folks being able to afford fine linen for their shrouds, but often wool blankets were used if they were poor. In fact in There Was A Man Dwelt by a Churchyard James details the funeral of the old woman who later returns from the grave, and tells us "She was buried in woollen, without a coffin."

Hence for many centuries, when people thought of the dead they thought of shapes wrapped up in sheets. Ironically had any proponents of the armour theory read a little more Shakespeare they would have found a passage that highlights this. In Julius Caesar, the Bard has Horatio deliver these lines (which were memorably quoted in one of the eeriest sequences in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) -

A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets

Even more ironically, had anyone bothered to consult one of the original sources, they could have easily discovered the truth. For the matter was concisely and clearly wrapped up, if you'll pardon the pun, by Mr Peter Stallybrass himself - 

If you ask people today, when they imagine ghosts, they say they come back in sheets. But if you ask people why they were in sheets, most people don’t know. And they come back in sheets because you’re buried in sheets. So you come back in your shroud.

Peter Stallybrass in an interview with Penn Current in 2001 

 Frontispiece to Tales of Terror by Matthew Lewis, 1808 edition