1

1923-1924

Alvey J.M.

Birch A.G. 1 (2)

Chapman A.E. 3

.Chunn C

.Clark V

.Craigie H

.Crane G.W

.Eddy C.M

.Fifield E.W

.Giesy J.U & Smith J.B

.Grierson F.D

Hall A. 1 (2)

.Hickey P.L

Houdini

Irvine B. 3

.Kilman J

.Kline O.A

Leahy J.M

.Lewis G.W

.Lovecraft H.P

Manzer I-B

.Miller C.F

.Owen F

.Quinn S

.Rasmus C

Rud A.M. 2

Shirk A.H. 2

.Starrett V

.Suter P
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Stevens Francis

.Triem P.E

.Wallis B

.Ward H

.Wright F

Adam H. Shirk

Osiris (1923.6) (have you read about King Tut? If so, you'll be interested in… the weird tale of
an Egyptian mummy) An Egyptologist finds the tomb of the god Osiris which happens to be a
supernatural monster with a bull's head who tracks him down for disturbing its sleep and
kills him in his study at England.

Mandrake (1923.7) (an uncanny tale of a flesh-colored plant) – a young, beautiful, orphan
heiress is tricked by her uncle and an evil medium charlatan into believing that her dead
father killed her mother. Another reason for this trickery is that they want to prevent her
from marrying anyone so that she will go mad without a successor. The narrator is a doctor
who wants to marry her. She is convinced to plant a legendary mandrake root under her
father's tomb when the charlatan screams thus convincing her that her father is the
murderer (according to legend a mandrake root under a grave will scream if the deceased
was guilty of murder). Another mandrake root starts running around her mansion and
around her uncle revealing him as the murderer and making him mad.

A.E. Chapman

The Inn of Dread (1923.10) (a "creepy" story told in a quaint way by Arthur Edwards
Chapman) – A man follows his friend to deliver some diamonds in an official mission of the
King. During a storm he finds himself at a nearly abandoned inn run by an ugly hunchback
and his mute servant. After observing the old gun of his friend, the man suspects fowl play.
At night he sneaks outside his room and finds the hunchback sleep-walking and muttering
about murdering a man with diamonds. Opening a hidden compartment in the floor the man
recognizes his dead friend kills the hunchback and leaves the inn.

The Spider (1923.11) (a weird storiette) – A man buys an antique Indian statue of golden
spider who was stolen by the British and caused them to die. At night the spider becomes a
monster and attacks him. It is unclear whether it is the result of his imagination or whether it
really happened.

The Tap (1924.02) (a ghost story the mounts to a vivid climax) – A man cannot sleep at night
as his bathroom's sink faucet always starts to drip around 11 P.M. and a window opens. He
consults his psychic friend who tells him the house was inhabited by a woman who was
murdered by her jealous husband while trying to take a glass of water. They watch as a glass
fills itself and being downed into nothingness. The friend tells the narrator how the ghost
had to finish her last action before dying before leaving the world forever.

A.G Birch
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The Moon Terror (1923.5-6) (The astounding events in this remarkable novel leaves the
reader breathless with amazement) (Final thrilling installment of the mysterious Chinese
moon worshippers)A Secret Chinese organization that ruled the world in pre-historic times
(and apparently caused a second moon of the Earth to embed itself in our planet) uses some
stolen American parts to make catastrophic earthquakes that shatter the world. They
threaten to destroy earth if their demands for world domination will not be met. After
refusing their demands two Americans, one of them an eccentric doctor who visited the
dark kingdom of this cult in China and barely managed to escape commandeer an American
warship and travel North to find the secret base of this evil cult. Masquerading as Chinese
they infiltrate the island where they witness human sacrifice and see the cult's leader Kwon.
After many brushes with death all the sailors with them are dead and they kill dozens of
Chinamen. To save their "white" planet from destruction only three survivors – the doctor,
the narrator and a tough ensign – make a last stand in which they blow a huge dynamo that
makes the earthquakes that almost destroy the world (had they not managed to do that just
seconds before the Earth exploded) . Kwon is killed by the narrator who throws grenades at
his evil Chinese figure. The world is saved, and an international envoy invades China and
apprehend what is left of the evil cult. The narrator and doctor are terrified to see the face
of Kwon in the rising moon.

A. M Rud:

Ooze(1923.3)(a Remarkable short novel by a master of "gooseflesh" fiction)– A narrator who

adopts the toddler girl of his deceased friend tells how he traces the happenings of the
latter's disappearance with his wife and the false accusations that his friend's father killed
the two. The friend is a scientist's son who also writes "Scientific novels" and (without
authorization) dabbles in his father's secret experiment to make a protozoic amoeba larger
than a small cat. He makes it huge by feeding it meat in a log cabin in a backwater Cajun and
black inhabited wilderness. It kills the son and his wife with the scientist becoming mad with
grief – he later commits suicide by starving the monster and jumping into its mud pit in the
now-walled cabin.

A Square of Canvas (1923.4) (Anthony M. Rud's remarkable story of an insane artist) – a

woman who learns art meets an elderly man in a mental asylum. The man appears to be a
famous artist who disappeared. He tells her his story. He was a boy fascinated with blood
and death and only through painting after debuting a grisly deed did his paintings amounted
to something. At first he kills beetles, rabbits, horses and finally he gruesomely murders his
beloved wife and the mother of his child to create a final masterpiece. The piece is revealed
to be a blank canvas.

Austin Hall

People of the Comet (1923.9 -10)(a fantastic new novel filled with amazing adventures in
another world) (the final chapter bristle with strange experiences even more engrossing
than those in this first installment) – An eccentric, elderly astronomer starts looking with a
microscope into his huge abnormal thumb whenever people talk to him about comets. He
reluctantly explains to his student the reason for that phenomenon. He was visited by one of
the progenitors of the amazing Aryan race from whom all the great Caucasian races
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emerged as the philosophical and good forces of humanity. The beautiful white man and his
companion, a beautiful white woman, accidently traveled millions of years into the future.
The man is the king of an ancient race of humans who lived in the north pole (as the rest of
the world was uninhabited) in a scientific, philosophical utopia that lasted hundreds of
thousands of years without war or any problems at all. Apparently, they discovered the
secrets of the atom. The moon is also inhabited by people who live in its equator and with
whom the pole people communicate from afar. Using a spaceship, the young king wants to
test a theory of his – that the microscopic world in our cells is a solar system and that the
solar system is also a sub-atomic structure of a larger thing. He flies to space in an "ether-
ship" to prove that a huge comet is, in fact, an atomic neutron. He lands on the huge comet
and finds a little world inside. In there he meets a dying astronomer from a different solar
system who got trapped on the comet with his beautiful daughter (both look Caucasian for
some reason). He finds out that the comet is an ion an that the solar system is an atom.
After the father dies he and the beautiful woman he fell in love with manage to use the
comet to escape the universe which only makes them larger and they find themselves tiny
creatures in a thumb of a white bearded astronomer. They shrink again and find themselves
in the professor's laboratory. The woman faints, the professor goes outside to give her water
and the two shrink again. The professor only manages to haul them into his huge thumb.

Bryan Irvine

The Ghost Guard (1923.3). (a spooky tale with grim background) - a Ghost story about a
fanatic prison guard who likes to sing at night about how he will haunt those who did him
harm when he is dead. The guard shoots an escaped convict. The convict, after healing from
the wound, kills the guard just as the palce where the guard worked for many years, a tower,
is closed for a new tower. The murderer is not caught as there is no evidence. At night weird
occurrences start to happen around the defunct tower at nightr with some phone calls
coming from the deserted place's dusty phone though no one is there, and the place is shut
down. The criminal started shouting at night and after an escape attempt is caught in the
swamp outside prison delirious saying the ghost of the guard haunts him, he dies soon after.
The guards hear an echo of the guard's bizarre song fading in the distance.

Shades (1923.7) ( a realistic ghost story)Two childhood friends create a ring of master
thieves. They are both in love with one of crooks – a beautiful, yet slightly unfaithful woman.
The narrator wins her hand, but the two friends remain amicable. The narrator is caught and
thrown to prison. Saving the life of a guard in prison he is released early. He finds out that
his wife married his best friend after divorcing him without him knowing about it. He tries to
kill his best friend who kills him first and then the narrator becomes a remorseful ghost who
haunts his friend only wanting to tell him he forgives him and loves him as he finds out his
wife orchestrated the divorce. After many years as a ghost, floating among a throng of
ghosts, the narrator finds out that his friend's wife left him. After seeing the ghost of his
friend the friend kills himself to join his long-lost friend. The two visit a medium who fails to
convince people about the reality of ghosts. The two leave.
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The Great Adventure (1924.4) (a powerful story of life after death with an unexpected
climax) – a famous writer commits suicide. He claimed to write with the help of a ghost or
something of the like as he loathes the fiction he writes. He had a wife who apparently could
not stand him but stayed faithful to him. A farmer claims to be possessed by the ghost of the
dead writer writing exactly like the deceased author who, apparently, had a style no one
could mimic. It turns out that the famous author was a fraud an he blackmailed a talented
author, the farmer, to turn his loved one (the estranged wife) to the police for some murder
the farmer believed she committed. After threatening him to expose the wife after death (by
some orders left to his henchmen) the farmer continues to write. The real murderer was the
fake author who made both the woman and the farmer think he is going to frame the other
if they will not cooperate with him.

B. Wallis

The Abysmal Horror (1924.1-2) (an absorbing novel about the end of the world) – a meteor
falls to earth and spreads a spore of man-eating plants all over the planet. Slowly, many
incidents happen around the world where people are sucked dry by sea and land plant-like
vines that multiply exponentially. Soon the vines spread around the oceans and hamper sea
trade. Many besieged islands are decimated. England is besieged, and the human race is on
the verge of extinction as mass migrations start, martial law is established and people are
trampled in the thousands by fear-stricken hordes. Europe is about to crumble under the
naval siege and the slow earthly sprouts of the killer-plants. As food is about to last just a
few more days the citizens of England plan to go together to their deaths unlike the people
of southern Europe who are selfish and anarchist and thus almost utterly destroyed by the
plants. An American scientist saves the day by utilizing a fungal virus that obliterates the
plants. People around the world help England. The world becomes united and wars never
look the same after that as people become more hospitable to one another.

Carl Ramus

The Scar (1923.4)(A thrilling novelette) – A doctor talks with his friend about the recent
kidnapping of an important daughter. The doctor hears from his doctor friend that the girl
was operated by a famous, eccentric, doctor who removed her appendices leaving a peculiar
"s" shaped, mark. The doctor is contacted by a patient and is kidnapped by people who want
him to check a sick girl whose face he cannot see. He finds out, by seeing her "s" shaped scar
that she is the kidnapped girl and after making an electronic thingy with the lights he
manages to barricade himself and the girl in a room after killing one guard, taking his gun
and calling the cops. He manages to fall in love with the girl and save her from the rest of the
gang until the cops arrive. He is badly hurt and the girl falls in love with him but it is revealed
he is going to be okay.

C.F. Miller

The Ghost of Silent Smith (1924.2) (here's a story that is not easily forgotten, an uncanny
tale) – A weird baseball prodigy dies in service only to be replaced by a talkative mediocre
player. A ball hits the player in the head and he seems possessed by the dead baseball player
who manages to win the match only to collapse later with the talkative player's personality
returning.

The Hermit of Ghost Mountain (1924.3) (This uncanny tale of creeping horror will hold you
spellbound) – A reporter finds himself at the cabin of a deranged old man during a storm.
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The old man believes that ghosts are haunting the forest and him especially. It seems that
the old man is a crazy scientist who kills special people whom he believes have special types
of blood (young, old, bold, strong). He kills them by draining their blood. He wants to create
an elixir that will keep him alive forever. He kills the detective and tries to take his blood
while something happens (perhaps a ghost of one of his victims attacks him) and he dies.
The police comes later to find the two bodies and the leftovers of the old man's
experiments.

C.M. Eddie

Ashes (1924.3) (C.M. Eddie Jr., spins a strange yarn) – a mad scientist develops a formula
that disintegrates everything it touches (aside from glass) to ashes. His laboratory assistant
falls in love with the scientist's secretary and they both have a romantic time only to be
stopped by the secretary's disappearance. The assistant suspects the scientist when he finds
his beloved's hat at his private lab. He kills the scientist and drops his body into the liquid
mass that disintegrates him to ashes. With the help of his friend he searches the lab and
finds his beloved in the cupboard. Indeed, the scientist wanted to do experiments with
human subjects.

The Ghost Eater (1924.4) (an eventful night in a haunted forest) – a man travels between
two villages through a forest at night. He comes upon a well-maintained mansion inhabited
by a handsome hunter with a slight limp. At night he suspects his host and stays alert only to
find out the ghost of a man entering his room with a ghostly, limping, wolf that follows and
ravages the ghost. The man escapes and finds out in the next village that 60 years ago a
Russian immigrant made a mansion in the woods but as people suspected him to be a
werewolf (a wolf was shot in the leg and afterwards the village witnessed the Russian
walking with a limp) and after the death of a Russian count who visited him by a huge wolf
he is killed by the people of the village who burn his house.

The Loved Dead (1924 5/6/7) – a sick young man becomes an undertaker after discovering
he likes to be with dead bodies (it is unclear what exactly he does to them – sleeping?
Touching? Eating? Just watching?). He starts murdering people so that he will always have a
supply of fun. He does not take bodies from graves but likes fresh bodies. He runs from city
to city, even participating in WWI (with its huge supply of fresh bodies) finally coming back
to his home town where he murders a family and enjoys their dead bodies. After he knows
he is going to get caught he kills himself to join the dead he so loves.

Elwyn Owens

Mystery River (1924 5/6/7) – a pilot crashes and has a series of hallucination that look like a
nightmare influenced by Dante's Inferno and Hieronymus Bosch (consisting a multicolored
river filled with surreal human-like figures and monstrous animals that feast upon him and
one another) before waking up in hospital.

Sybla Ramus

Coils of Darkness (1924.2-4) (the first installment of a new serial that contains an unusual
thrill) – a dastardly young captain saves a British colonial post. The post's commanding
general's daughter is lost in the battle only to be later found in the jungle unconsciousness
and unharmed. Her awareness returns only days later and very slowly the captain falls in
love with the slowly recovering girl. The girl shows unprecedented fondness of animals. The
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captain takes her outside and she runs into the Indian jungle. She refuses to leave a spot in
the jungle and the captain forces her to come back with him. A huge cobra tries to
mesmerize the captain who manages to escape with the girl. He confesses his love to the girl
who agrees marrying him. Her weird fondness to animals is slowly disappearing as the two
are about to get married. One day they go for a walk when the girl becomes agitated and
runs to a forest where Indian revelers dance with snakes. She is bitten by a snake and has
some sort of an orgasm. She asks her husband to buy her snakes. The husband becomes very
important in India and he suspects his wife cheats on him with a young officer as she often
relapses into silent and dormant states. Just before almost killing the lover in a duelhe finds
out his wife runs to the jungle, unseen, to get bitten by a giant cobra which she calls her
lover. She seems to enjoy the sexual pleasure the snake gives her (probably by biting her but
it is hinted that it may be something more). The captain kills the snake and almost kills his
wife doing such an abominable thing. He reconciles with the young officer and promises his
wife to find a cure for her abnormal cravings. The woman becomes a social butterfly in
England as her husband sinks in his depression. The woman becomes mad after her last
snake dies. Her husband does not know whether to let her keep on living as a dependent on
the sexual pleasures of the snake's venom or not. As she becomes weaker she reaches a
catatonic state. After consulting many physicians, the only cure is to keep using cobra venom
as a stimulant. The husband finally agrees to give her snakes, but it is too late, and the
woman dies.

CulpererChunn (and Laurie McClintock )

The Whispering Thing (1923.4-5)(Death and terror are spread broadcast by the icy breath of)
(the mystery of the frightful invisible monster is solved in the lst chapters of) – A Holmes-like
French detective walks home and sees a man smoking. A few minutes later he hears a cry for
help and finds his proffesor friend lying on the street after smashing through the window of
his house. The professor says "assassins" and "Dix" and dies. A nearby pharmacist comes
with his assistant and the man who smoked the pharmacist tells them that the professor
died from asphyxiation. Then both the pharmacist and the man who smoked become purple
and start to choke. He pharmacist dies but the man survives. The police arrive and after
searching the house with the detective they find the body of the professor's servant dead in
a closet with a knife on his chest. The man who choked tells them he heard a whisper and a
cold breath upon his face while struggling with some invisible monster. The detective tells
the rest that he solved the case because the man said he felt a cold breath upon his face.
After some implausible chases and searches the detective confronts the man who choked in
his house telling him that he, now under the name Dweese (which sounds like Dis?) and his
Chinese servant are two master-spies who tried to steal the professor's plans for a super
weapon trying to convince the servant but after the latter was killed by the professor they
released poisoned bats into his house that when released almost killed the spy himself. After
disguising himself as the Chinese servant the spy confesses to all the detective said which at
that point the detective shows that he is not the Chinese servant and the police enter.

Doctor X (1923. 7-8) (a five-minute tale buCulpererChunn) – A doctor uses his brain-dead
son's body to transfer his brain into it. The experiment succeeds.

Effie W. Fifield

The Amazing Adventures of Joe Scranton (1923.10-1923.11) (Here's an Extraordinary Novel

filled with quick action of an unusual sort) – A man and a woman, both married to other
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people, have a strong platonic relationship. They learn astral projection from a scrupulous
man who studied it in India. Thus, they meet regularly each night and travel the world in
astral form discussing art and other things. As the man's body becomes cold while he project
and his wife complains that his body freezes her (though she does not know of his nightly
projections) he is advised by his astral teacher to ask for another astral to inhabit his body.
As he does so the astral refuses to leave his body and he is forced to inhabit the astral's own
body in England. The evil astral is an ugly, unhealthy drunk who beats his wife and refuses to
work. Meanwhile the evil astral's control of the narrator's body causes misery to the
narrator's wife as the former beat her badly and refuses to go to work spending all their
money on booze and nicotine. Without any choice left the narrator is forced to live the life of
the evil astral, trying to earn enough money to travel to the U.S. and murder his former body
and afterwards he plans to commit suicide. He is accused to be Jack the reaper, for some
reason, and is about to get hanged. He astralizes and finds the thief who tells him he can get
his body. He finds the astralized form of his platonic girlfriend and knows how to find his
former body. He discovers that his wife filed for a divorce. He defends himself in court and
confess to astralize. After talking to the press he proves his story but everyone ridicules him
and his platonic girlfriend whose marriage is also ruined. The astral teacher comes to the
ruined man and convinces him to become an astral teacher and guru to redeem himself and
become a sex magnet.

Farnsworth Wright(not supernatural – only one story mildly supernatural)+

The Closing Hand (1923.3) (a brief story powerfully written) – Two young girls are left alone
in a scary mansion at a stormy night. The elder sister goes down to find the source of a
sound. The young sister waits for 20 minutes before she hears something coming up. She
faints as the thing touches her hand. In the morning she finds out it was her dying sister who
was stabbed by a burglar who entered the house.

The Snake Fiend (1923.4) (Farnsworth Wright offers another tale of diabolic terror)– A man
tries to kill his friend and his wife because the latter married athe woman he wanted to
conquer. The man likes snakes and reptiles and convinces his friend to live next-door to
them in a snake filled desert. He makes a trap for the two by nailing their door and windows
and inserting dozens of snakes into their trailer. The two manage to escape and come to visit
the friend. The friend, sure that the two are dead, becomes insane after seeing the two who
understand he tried to kill them.

The Teak-wood Shrine (1923.9) (a fantastic bit of fiction by Farnsworth Wright) – A woman
tells the story of statue. Everyone who looks at the empty drawer of the statue becomes
insanely depressed for seeing "the truth" inside it. For some bizarre reason those possessing
the statue try to convince people not to take it from them by flashing the dangerous statue
in front of strangers who want to buy it. The man hearing the story opens the statue,
becomes sad and kills himself with the statue by jumping to a river.

An Adventure in the 4th Dimension (1923. 10) (a fantastic tale by the author of "the snake
fiend") – A man reads a boring theoretical physics book by Einstein as he falls asleep and
dreams about a ball from Jupiter filled with whimsical 4 th dimensional aliens and a ridiculous
professor who explains their peculiarities.
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Poisoned (1923.11) (another fantastic tale by the author of "the snake fiend" and "the
teakwood shrine") – Two friends become enemies after the two fight over a card game.
Things go south when one of them makes moves on the latter's fiancé and tells her his
friend's secret – he is divorced and refuses to pay alimony. After the woman marries another
man the betrayed friend decides to kill himself. His former friend believes he is going to kill
him and switches a glass of wine in which the betrayed friend put some poison to kill
himself. The former friend puts poison on the switched cup. Both die.

Francis Grierson

The Hall of the Dead (1923.4)(the occultism of ancient Egypt, permeates a strange tale) – A
secretary of an eccentric, charismatic, rich and cold Egyptologist finds out that her missing
sister was murdered by the Egyptologist who imagined her a lost love from an earlier
reincarnation where he was a pharaoh and she a high priestess. Using the secret services she
fools him to open the mummy coffin where he placed her. He kills himself, imagining himself
the pharaoh again who reunites with his lost love.

The Case of the Golden Lilly (1923.10) (none) – A young, orphan, dancer is engaged to a very
rich and powerful man. At the night before her marriage she does a last dance in the theater
where she decides to take an electric ball (a prop she always uses at the end of the show and
raises to her head) and present it to her fiancée at the crowd. The ball explodes. The girl is
all right because the ball was further away from than usual. It is revealed by an amateur
detective that an envious, buxom dancer wanted to blind her, Without providing any solid
proof, by the way.

The Iron Room (1923.11) (another Paul Fry Story) – The same detective from The Case of the
Golden helps to solve the mystery of the disappearance of young electrician. He deduces
that the latter invented an electric hatch that opens to a certain musical note trying to kill a
fellow worker who was engaged to his love interest. The plan fails as the girl unwittingly
triggers the trap causing the electrician to save her by tossing her aside and falling to death
in his own trap.

Francis Stevens

Sunfire (1923.7-9) (Harrowing and Weird events startle the five adventurers who land upon
a far-off island) –Five adventurers explore a mysterious pyramid in the middle of an Amazon
island. They see beautiful girl dancing with a huge centipede. They chase the centipede away
The girl acts mysteriously and they cannot communicate with her. They find out a big pit
with a huge diamond that covers it. They are tricked by the girl who gives them some kind of
wine that knocks them down. They find out that they are going to be sacrificed by being
cooked alive in the pit using the diamond to focuse the sun's heat. A day after the girl forces
them to dance with her centipede and then uses it to throw one of them into the pit. After
18 hours they are sure their friend is dead. They are forced to dance again and are saved by
the one thrown into the pit as he managed to escape and bring a gun. The centipede is dead.
They unwittingly kill the hag. The girl is found out to be an amnesiac American who flies
planes and cars and whom one of the friends know from WWI as a driver. She and her
archeological father (the father came many years before and she looked for him with a
friend after the war) were tricked by a native magician to come to the island and be
sacrificed. The people of the island are almost extinct except for the old hag who teaches the
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girl about their history and religion and the sacrifice. The place becomes an archeological
site and the girl flies with the youngest of the friends.

Frank Own (psychological, supernatural)

The Man Who Owned the World (1923.10) (the hero of this story had a beautiful dream and
a rude awakening) – A bum believes he rules the world and imagines amazing riches where
in reality he lives in a sewer. He undergoes surgery after hitting an ice-cream man believing
him to be his slave. After his brain surgery he finds out he is lowly bum who lives in the
slums and afterwards commits suicide.

The Open Window (1924.1) (Hideous death lurked at… a wild yarn) – a man meets a stranger
who tells him about his time in India. In India the stranger's friend is murdered by a
werewolf of some kind, who slashes his throat, and he avenges him by running after the
killer making it sink in quicksand. A wet, slimy thing touches his hand as the werewolf dies.
At home the stranger is a painter who fears open windows (but not to go outside) and does
not allow people to see his paintings. The narrator sees him painting the portrait of a desert.
The narrator feels a wave of heat, the lights are off and when they come back the painter is
dead, a wide slash across his throat. The narrator feels a slimy, cold thing touching his hand,
he also starts fearing open windows.

Shadows (1924.4) (a five-minute Yarn) – a man who fears shadows become crazy for several
days and kills a man. As he is sentenced to death he escapes. Finding himself in a house (it is
unclear how he got there or who's the house is) he hears voices in the dark and after
shooting like a madman he leaves one bullet to commit suicide. It is discovered that the
sounds were emitted by a prowling cat who licks the man's cheek after he committed
suicide.

The Man Who Lived Next Door to Himself (1924.5/6/7) – The narrator lives next-door to a
Persian whom he befriends. The Persian tries a theory of his in which two friends can switch
bodies by concentrating on a rare, special, crystal ball. The two switch bodies but shatter the
ball thus forced to live in different bodies. The Persian and the man both love a girl who falls
in love with the Persian in the narrator's body. The Persian cannot live with himself as he
took both the body and the love interest of his friend and commits suicide. The narrator is
blamed for the murder.

George Warburton Lewis

The Return of Paul Slavsky (1923.3) (a "creepy" tale that ends in a shuddering, breath-taking
way) – An east European "Terrorist" is shot by a detective after many months of spying on
the terrorist. The "terrorist" sister, who is described as a metaphoric vampire – cruel and
beautiful , talks with the detective and warns him that her brother will come back to kill him.
After some time the sister is arrested for many felonies and on the train to prison the two
detectives apprehending her, one of them the detective who shot her brother, are attacked
by one of the passengers in their train car. The person who looks like the terrorist is
discovered as another brother of the woman, the other passenger is a an undercover agent
who helps to prevent the attack. The detective who shot the terrorist is paralyzed and looks
like a doll (or has become a doll). The woman laughs as she shows the detectives she can
easily squeeze out of the handcuffs restraining her.
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The Blade of Vengeance (1923.6) (a gripping, powerful story by man who always tells a good
tale) An unfaithful, feme-fatale like wife drives her husband insane. He divorces her and
plans his revenge. After many years the woman is in Panama and bored. The man, together
with the unwilling narrator, leads the boat they are on into a whirlpool threatening to kill her
to which the woman just laughs saying she is bored from life anyway. The man reconciles
with his ex-wife, but the latter only plots to turn him in into the local justice system and
continue her bawdy adventures. The man overhears this and late at night kills her with a
blade he carried all those years with the word "vengeance" on it.

The Outcasts (1923.7) (a story of stark adventure with an uncanny climax) – an outlaw who
lives in the wilderness for ten days finds a dog. He wants to kill the dog to eat it but only
hurts the dog. Seeing his pursuers, he kills the sheriff. He and the dog rest for the night
whereas the man sees the dog has eaten a rabbit rages and fight with the dog finding out it
is a half-wolf. The dog kills the man, but his dog side feels sorry for it.

G. W. Crane

An Eye for an Eye (1923.5) (no description) – A miser refuses to delay the mortgage
payment for a dying elderly woman and her daughter. The elderly woman dies. The miser
becomes sick and starts having nightmares about being buried alive. He manages to
convince people to install a pipe to provide air into his grave and to attach a bell to his coffin
when he dies without embalming him. The man apparently dies and several hours later the
bell begins to chime madly. Upon digging the grave the diggers find a bucket that blocks the
air and the rope cut. The man is found dead but it is apparent he was buried alive. The
diggers hear a maniacally laughter from the hills. The elderly woman's daughter is found
dead after drowning herself in the lake. It is revealed she was responsible for the bucket and
cut rope.

Hamilton Craigie (not supernatural)

The Chain (1923.3)(Craigie is at his best here) – A detective, who apparently has many
guards and owns a whole building with many steel doors and an impregnable safe, somehow
holds documents that can incriminate a local kingpin. The criminal-boss sends a taxi to
kidnap the detective. Leaving the detective tied, but in a way that he easily manages to untie
himself, with a lone guard that is easily distracted, the detective escapes and comes to his
office to retrieve the documents from the safe. He finds out that his assistant was
threatened by the boss to open the safe, hiding with him as the detective searches the
place. The detective shoots the lone kingpin and explains to his assistant how smart he is for
figuring out they are hiding – the chain of a chandelier moved when they were there and
kept moving when he came there.

The Incubus (1923.4) (a man's frightful adventure in an ancient tomb) – A man possessed by
lust for his friend's wife travels with this friend, a professor, to a series of caves plotting to
kill him. After pulling a cord around his ankle the friend falls and apparently dies. The man
starts panicking an gets lost in the caves until he stumbles upon his friend's body. The body
attaches itself to the friend who runs like a madman until he reaches the exit and collapses.
The friend, it is revealed, was alive all the time and the man stays insane.
 12

Midnight Black (1923.5) (Hamilton Craigie Spins another yarn in his inimitable style) – A
married woman flirts with a man and at night she hears footsteps entering her house. Her
husband is upstairs. Imagining the two men killing each other over her while hearing
crashing sounds she finally opens the door to find her husband over the body of a stranger
who broke into their house.

The Jailer of Souls (1923.6) (A powerful novel of sinister madmen that mounts to an
astounding climax) A federal detective tracks a sinister lawyer who has information about his
missing father to a mysterious Western town. After dealing with murderous Indian sent by
the lawyer the latter hires the agent as a partner for a notorious scheme to control local
ranches. The detective is lured again into a trap and shoots his way, cowboy-like, from the
trap. Together with another, beautiful, agent he finds out that hiring him was a ruse for a
darker plot that includes a local surgeon who kidnaps rich and important people and does
plastic surgery on them turning them mad for not knowing who they are. Together with a
friendly bartender and a boxer, first sent to kill him, he frees the captives and finds his father
and all the good people mentioned in the story that were taken by the gang. The lawyer is
killed by one of his mysterious Indians.

Harold Ward(not supernatural)

The Skull (1923.3)(a grim tale with a terrifying end) - A plantation beats a black worker after
he and his friends run around the cabin at night. After taking his bow with a poisoned arrow
he accidently, or not, kills his partner in a drunken rage fit embedding the poisoned arrow in
his skull. After waking from his drunken stupor he tries to dump the body some distance in
the island so that it will look like the latter was killed by a local islander. The beaten black
worker tries to kill the man with a spear but the latter shoots him and he vanishes in the
night. As the white man friends come later the killer shows them the headless body of the
partner who the escaped worker must have decapitated. They find the skull with the arrow
in it in an ant hill with the skeleton of the escaped worker who was shot and died after
cutting the head. After the lover of the white man comes to the island they return with the
head and as the people threaten the man to hide the skull in the presence of the girl he is
cut by the arrow and dies.

The Body Master (1923.4) (an amazing novelette filled with weird happenings) – A detective
finds himself a prisoner of a charismatic master -occultist and hypnotist. The master and his
companion, a beautiful black-haired woman, run an asylum where they manipulate and
control the bodies of their victims for their diabolical fantasies. They also use the detective
and a young girl (with whom the detective falls in love) as culprits for many crimes they
commit by possessing their bodies. After the detective shows potential for bypassing some
of the master's powers the master forces him, by threatening to make the young girl insane.
The detective willingly becomes a student of the master and at times agrees with his
psychotic philosophy that souls switch bodies all the time so killing people is just a method
of breaking lifeless objects. After the master starts forcing himself upon the girl the
detective, and the jealous ridden companion of the master, manage to divert the master
while the detective breaks an oil lamp on the figure of the master. Throughout the story the
detective loses consciousness for many weeks. He finally loses his consciousness and wakes
up in a hospital after learning that the whole asylum burnt down with only his diary left to
remind him what has happened. He finds out that there is a woman that looks like his loved
girl found delirious someplace near. It is unknown what happened to the villains.
 13

The Killer (1924.2) (a quick-action storiette crowded with dramatic pathos) –an ex-doctor
made serial killer accidently enters the home of the sheriff that tries to track him. In the
house he finds the wife of the sheriff giving birth and alone. He decides to help her deliver
the baby remembering the oath he made as a doctor.

The House in the Forest (1924.3) (The clank of chains; a whisper in the dark; a woman's
scream of terror; and then – read)(a strange tale) – a private detective investigates the
murders of two women in the forest who were brutally killed by an assailant who left no
footprints. He wanders the forest at night only to find an old decrepit house with an old
couple inside who reluctantly let him spend the night in their disgusting house. At night he
hears loud voices and finds out a huge, chained, black man with the head of a gorilla who
kills the old man and wounds the old woman. He kills the creature. The dying old woman
tells him that they were circus workers who had a show with the black freak. They retired for
many years in this shabby house. The creature, resenting years of confinement, escaped two
nights before and barely returned the day after the murder, he killed those two women.

Harry Houdini

The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt (1924.3-4) (an amazing adventure of Houdini) – Houdini is
recruited by a beautiful countess to disprove the claims of a fake medium who charms her
sister. His plot is to convince the sister to write a confession about the true nature of her
father – a depraved man who kidnapped local young peasant-girls for his sadistic, and
probably sexual desires. Houdini foils the scam only to be incarcerated and handcuffed
thoroughly in the castle's dungeons by the man and his lackeys. He easily escapes his
oubliette and bondage. He sneaks back to the castle, surprises a guard and manages to foil
the plans of the evil medium who tries again to convince the sister by doing a fake séance.
Houdini chokes him and, takes his clothes and speak in his voice (all while the séance is
going in the same room with all the people who do not seem to notice). He then surprises
the remaining cronies while an angry mob of farmers come and subdue the rest.

The Hoax of the spirit Lover (1924.4)(an astounding expose of fraud mediums) – Houdini
uncovers the fraud of a medium by escaping during the séance, going outside the room,
climbing the roof and barring the escape of a hidden complicit to the medium. The complicit
is turned out to be the unwitting ex-fiancé of one of the audiences who thought he was dead
for more than a year. It turns out that the man faked his death with that of this twin brother
to get the insurance money.

Imprisoned with the Pharaohs (1924.5\6\7) (A thrilling Adventure of the Gizeh Plateau) –
Houdini goes to Egypt with his wife. One evening he is coaxed to come with his mysterious
tour guide and a lot of Bedouins to the great pyramid in Gizeh. He is stripped and hauled to a
dark tomb. Houdini has a series of hallucinations (or not) about bat like creatures and
various Egyptian monsters that torture him. He frees himself and wanders in the dark
imagining (or not) a wild procession of half-man, half-animal, creatures who worship an
undead queen (Nictoris) and her consort who looks like his tour guide only with the body of
a sphinx. He awakens at a hospital and no one can trace his mysterious tour guide.

Ask Houdini 1 (1924.4) – seven people ask Houdini questions about certain seances they
attended and how they could be explained with some questioning Houdini's inability to be a
fair judge as a performer. One states that in recent years science turns more and more into
mystical musings and pre-modern mind-sets about supernaturalism.
 14

Ask Houdini 2 (1924.5/6/7) –a dozen people either ask or recite long narratives of their
experience of spiritualism, Houdini's lectures, Houdini's feats, supernatural phenomenon
and the occult. It seems like a heated debate in those years and most letters either endorse
spiritualism as a proper mode of belief, show vast interest in occult practices (like the
Magick of Aleister Crowley) or the tricks of magic performers.

Henry S. Whitehead

Tea Leaves (1924.5/6/7) – A 37-years-old, venerable and almost unnoticed, spinster saves
enough money for a trip to Europe in a ship. At sea she uses her tea to divine her future, a
practice she often does when no one looks, She divines some numbers and names. In
England she remembers she bought presents to everyone she knows aside from herself and
finds a quaint little store bearing the number and names she divined. She buys a dusty and
neglected necklace which the shop-owner forgot he even had for several dollars. At home a
young man is interested about the necklace and suggests she will get it appraised for he
believes it is worth more than what she bought. After going from one jeweler to another
(they always believe she can go to a better jeweler who will offer her a better price) she
reaches the best jeweler firm in the U.S. who find out the necklace is made from an
extremely rare kind of pink pearls and was also the historical property of Raleigh who
bought it as a present to queen Elizabeth. She gets half a million dollars for it.

H.P. Lovecraft\ Sonia Greene\Houdini

Dagon (1923.10) (H.P. Lovecraft, Master of weird fiction, has something unusual to say) (this
is the first of a series of remarkable stories that H.P. Lovecraft is writing for Weird Tales. The
second will appear in an early issue) – a mariner escapes from German control in WWI only
to find himself at a deserted, barren, clammy and disgusting island. In the island he discovers
an ancient monolith depicting fish-people. He observes a huge fish man at a deep ravine
next to the monolith. He somehow escapes the island and reaches America. There he
imagines the fish-men conquering the Earth and hears fishy footsteps next to his door. He
commits suicide.

The Invisible Monster (1923.11) (a short tale of horror) – A huge sea monster is found. The
monster is studied by scientist who believe the monster is only a hatchling of a colossal
Godzilla-like monster. The ship, in which the specimen is at, drowns. Some people try to
help, what they think as, a drowning man when they are pulled into the sea. Many people
help them to pull the drowned thing. The dozens of people who do this are entranced and
cannot leave the rope while the spectators are, probably, to dumb to use a knife or other
thing to cut the rope. A weird storm brews, a huge eye is seen in the water, all drown, and a
weird laughter is heard.

The Picture in the House (1924.1) (a chilling tale of horror by a master of weird fiction) – A
man visits New-England to trace his genealogy. He comes to an old decrepit house and finds
an old library with an ancient book with pictures of cannibals. The owner of the house, an
old, barely-intelligent rustic, shows his fascination with this book and especially the pictures
of cannibals. It is hinted he kills people to eat them as the book relished his appetite. The
narrator sees a red puddle on the ceiling from which blood drops into the room. A lightning
strikes the house and the story ends.

The Hound (1924.2) (a grim tale of ghouls by a master of Weird literature) – two decadent
friends rob exotic graves and fill their Gothic mansion with grisly trophies made of bodies
 15

and robbed statues and jewelry. They stumble upon the grave of a Dutch ghoul and rob a
hound-shaped pendant found on his 500 years old skeleton. It is mentioned that the
pendant has something to do with the Necronomicon and a lost, evil place, called Leng in
Asia. They are haunted by a flock of black mist that sounds like the howling of a huge hound
that often speaks Dutch. The narrator friend is rent to pieces by the monster. The narrator
decides to return the amulet to the grave after destroying the horrid museum he and his
friend created. The amulet is stolen from the narrator and he reads a newspaper that tells
about a massacre that took place at the thieves' hideout. He comes to the grave and begs
forgiveness from the ghoul. Opening his grave again he finds the stolen amulet inside and
the body with some new pieces of skin and blood, long fangs and phosphorescent ayes. He
runs away screaming. Still haunted by the ghoul the narrator shoots himself.

The Rats in the Walls (1924.3) (a tremendous tale that rises steadily to a terrifying climax) –
an American who loses a son in WWI (he is wounded badly and lives for two years as an
invalid before dying) renovates an old family mansion in England. His ancestor, apparently,
killed everyone in the mansion and fled to America in the 17 th century. The narrator hears
the scurrying of rats at night as his cats go crazy. He is the only one who hears this noise. He,
and a group of scientists, find an old basement in the house. In it they find a huge vaulted
underground city where tens of thousands of bones are found. Apparently, his ancestors
locked people in the basement for hundreds of years cultivating a race of degenerated
humans who reverted to be quadruples as the process of centuries of life in captivity. The
ancestors herded these victims to eat them. The narrator eats one of the people in this huge
place as he goes insane. He is locked in an insane asylum.

The White Ape (1924.4) (H.P. Lovecraft as at its best in this strange tale) – A slightly
deformed scientist with troubled ancestry of madness and deformities burns himself to
death after finding out he is the descendant of an 18 th century English explorer and a queen
of semi-human white apes who live in dilapidated city in the jungles of Congo.

Nemesis (1924.4) – a poem that probably tells about a man who dreams about long-gone
ages where his dream-self wanders for eons through the ruins of ancient civilization
culminating in him waking up and going mad.

Hypnos (1924. 5/6/7) (a story of weird adventures) – A sculptor meets a strange man in a
train station, takes him home and learns from him how to explore his dream world using
drugs. As the two reach further into the dream world they eventually reach a certain
"beyond" which causes the friend to scream. The friend convinces the other never to dream
and he fears some star shown in the sky. After two years without dreaming by taking
narcotics the friend finally collapses to sleep and is taken away by some hideous thing
coming from the star and his dreams, The narrator becomes insane seeing that. It is not
clear if the narrator had a friend at all or was the power from beyond strong enough to erase
everyone's memories as people tell the mad narrator he lived alone and was always seen to
go by himself in soirees to which he always remembered taking his friend (which also looked
like one of his statues).

Isa-Belle Manzer

The Transparent Ghost (1924.2-4) (the story is published by popular request) – after the
Eyrie had published the musings of the editor about an unreadable abomination sent to him
 16

Baird was convinced to publish the story. The story is filled with horrible spelling mistakes,
wrong syntax, lack of coherence and run-on sentences. I think it tells the story of an inventor
who whiffs a potion that makes him invisible while everyone thinks he committed suicide
and his body gone. He tries to fight crime or something like that.

J.UGiesy&J.B.Smith

Ebenezer Casket (1924.4-9) (this story is guaranteed to hold your interest to the last word) –
a young man knows he is about to die at 11:01 and he arranges his coffin, will and other
things even though he is perfectly fine. The man left his girlfriend two years ago after a fight
about a property which he refused to give her. He gives all his money to burial and charity
and wills the property to his ex-girlfriend He goes to die in a hospital where the doctors
believe he has taken poison and shove a tube down his throat to take it out even though he
did not do such a thing. He wakes up to find himself still alive. He goes to the astrologist who
told him his future only to be told by the latter that he missed the signs and replaced
impoverished with dead (and indeed the man sold all his property and gave it away for his
own burial). The man manages to procure some of his lost money by the corrupt undertaker
he bought the service from. He is convinced to go to his lost love whom he abandoned after
a fight two years ago with the little money he has. She agrees to accept him with the
property he gave her.

Julian Kilman (not supernatural – psychological, adventure)

The Mystery of Black Jean (1923.3) ("A story of Blood-Curdling Realism with a Smashing
Surprise at the End") – A narrator recalls an occurrence he had as a kid. An eccentric French-
Canadian raises two bears as laborers for a lime-kiln. He brutalizes one of the bears after
drinking one night and cuts its eye. The large woman living with him leaves him because of
that and the hurt-bear also takes his eye as revenge. A sinister woman who likes hurting kids
as a school-seamstress lives with the French Canadian. He tortures thebears to death. The
big woman returns one day, and the man accuses her of running away with some money for
which the woman blames him for murder. They both run to the cabin where apparently the
ex-school teacher kills them both for some reason and lets one of the bears drop their
bodies in the kiln.

The Affair of the Man in Scarlet (1923.4)(do you want a slice of life from the thirteenth
century? If so, don't fail to read) – A 13 th century French headsman is supposed to execute a
noble woman as a result of some obscure French politics between the church and the king.
The headman knows the woman's mother as he heard his executioner's sword rattling at the
time she was pregnant with her. This, according to tradition, means that the child must be
pricked with the sword or she will be executed later in life. The mother refuses to prick the
baby. A noble who is a friend of the woman convinces the executioner to marry the girl as
such an act, according to law, can save her from death. The executioner agrees. At night
when some party rides and violently opens the door to the executioner's home (it is not
clear who this party is) the executioner cuts the head of his newly wedded wife and shows it
to the party.

The Golden Caverns (1923.5) (Eerie adventure and mammoth treasure were found in) –
American adventurers in Brazil race an evil Spaniard in finding the lost ruins of a lost
civilization. After some of their members die in various ways they find a desert in the middle
of the rainforest within a series of manmade caverns lead them to a huge hoard of gold and
 17

gems. They manage to return to Rio after the Spaniard that chases them is killed by his
greedy men who also kill one another. Some other members of the expedition are killed or
die and the rest are betrayed by a South American member of the group who, together with
the Brazilian government kill almost all that remains of the expedition to get the gold and
the whereabouts of the cave. Two manage to escape with just one statue and some gems
(who later revealed to be replaced with fakes by a corrupt Brazilian hotel owner). No one
believes their story in America and the Brazilian government tries to convince them to
return by false promises of riches. They refuse.

The Well (1923.6) (a new story by Julian Kilman master of weird fiction) A farmer kills his
neighbor over a land dispute and drops his body in an ancient well nearby. The murdered
man's little daughter mysteriously sits daily near the well which drives the murderer crazy.
The man's wife and he do not speak to him for a long a time for some reason and a lightning
cracks a tree near the well revealing a skeleton of a man who died many years ago making
the well a local attraction to see the reassembled skeleton. All these happenings slowly drive
the man insane. In a stormy night he plunges into the well screaming.

The Black Patch (1923.9) (an odd little tale by the author of "the well") – A man must travel
to his nephew and give him a heavy gold bar as a legacy somehow connected to him. He
never saw the nephew before who appears to be a man with a black patch. He finds out the
man is an imposter and at night he sees two men fighting outside his room. He gropes in the
dark and finds his finger in the empty eye-socket of one of the men. He chases the man who
somehow plunges to his death. He returns to find the pretender is the man on the floor with
a fake eye patch while his nephew was probably the man killed because of him.

J.M. Leahy

Draconda (1923.11- 1924.7) (a tremendous novel of weird adventure on the planet Venus) –
A scientist invents an anti-gravitational beam and uses it to create a spaceship. He convinces
two of his friends to travel with him to Venus. In Venus they land in an island and see a
world very much like earth except it has a dense cloud cluster all the time and a huge
mountain range cuts the world. They find earth animals which are almost exactly like those
home. They find some evidence of intelligent creatures living nearby – the leftovers of an
axe, a bridge, a house and a bonfire. Their spaceship is destroyed by a huge meteor. They
travel by boat to find civilization. They find traces of savage humans and a boat with a
beautiful dead woman covered in jewels. The scientist and his older friend start a fight due
to the desire of one of them to bury the lady with her precious jewels on them. They find
two living savages that are white like them. They are threatened by a savage raiding party.
The shoot the raiders and so are regarded as demi-gods with their thunder sticks. They come
to a settlement built on the ruins of an Egyptian-South American-like civilization. The
priestess of the settlement falls in love with the scientist. The narrator is shocked to find out
that girls in Venus rule society and are not meek to hit on boys. The war chief is jealous and
tries to kill the woman only to be shot be the narrator. The girl commits suicide because the
scientist does not like her as she is not pretty enough. They are coaxed by the priestess'
father to meet Draconda – their queen. They travel for days along settlements built upon the
ruins of a once-fabulous civilization. They reach the capital where they witness a human
sacrifice of two virgins. They save one of them and kill five people all the while saying how
inhuman these savages are who don't have value of human life. The savages try to rush
them. After killing many of the assailants the party agrees to a peace treaty and go with a
 18

high-ranking prince called the "wolf". He fools them be locking them in a tomb. One of the
friends is wounded badly in the leg and shouts "blanche" all the time. The girl they saved is
also with them and she falls in love with the scientist after seeing him and letting him caress
her. The queen demands that they will be released, and they are brought to her city of
Loom. The queen, Draconda, speaks English and she is the most beautiful woman in the
solar system. Apparently she also falls in love with the scientist after seeing him. The queen
shows her vast knowledge of 19th century European education.She tells them she does not
about the happenings of earth after the 1870s. As their dying friend regains consciousness
they all go to his room where the latter watches Draconda calls her "Blanche" in terror as the
queen fearfully recognizes him and he dies. The "wolf", jealous of the scientist tries to kill
him but Draconda, who was his former lover, kills him after he lacerates the scientist. It is
revealed that Draconda and the scientist had many dreams about each other without
meeting. Draconda tells the narrator that she is both 125 years old and 25 years old. The
woman they saved becomes jealous of Draconda and claims that according to Venusian law
the scientist is her husband after the episode in the cave. The scientist tells her he does not
love her, and the girl is agitated and vows revenge on Draconda and the scientist. She tells
the anti-rational high priest with whom Draconda quarrels for political power about what
happens in hopes that he will spread the news about Draconda's infatuation with the
stranger who killed so many of them. Draconda tells the two that she, somehow, has
complete memories from each lifetime she lived starting in a prehistoric, ice-age life and
ending in the late 19th century before reincarnating in Venus as the queen. Her last life was
as a woman named Blanche (though she was always named Draconda aside from that time)
who was betrayed by their former friend and murdered for some unclear reason with an
arrow. Then the narrative changes to an all-out war in which the jilted girl they saved forms
a huge rebellion consisting of hundreds of thousands warriors which conquers many of
Draconda's cities, enlisting her brother and later killing him and kidnapping her sister. In a
Hellenistic-like war the armies finally clash with Draconda the winner (though her sister was
decapitated) who decapitates the jilted girl. The scientist and Draconda live happily ever
after. They create a more rational and scientific society on Venus and even broadcast the
story of the narrator (the other friend) to Earth. The friend goes on a long journey with a
Venusianbeyond the huge mountain range that splits the planet and never returns.

J.M. Alvey

Tragedy Island (1924.4)(if you like a creepy story of a haunted house you will enjoy) – A man
visits his friend who lives on a tiny island with a huge house with many rooms at different
floors. Former inhabitants of the house have all committed suicide as they believe the house
is haunted (it is unclear why). The friend becomes mad one night and kills himself for some
bizarre voice he hears. The narrator finds out that the voice is just the wailing of the wind on
some sea cave next to the island the omits strange noises at a certain period of the year.

Spirits (1924. 5/6/7) (a droll little tale with a chuckle at the end) – a, probably, black and
naïve man walks home at night after hearing a sermon about undead spirits. He meets a
hanged man who coaxes him to give him money for a bottle of blood only to discover, at the
end, that the man is a puppet used by a bootlegger to force-sell liquer to gullible, religious
people.

O.A Kline(Supernatural – SF mix)

 19

- The Thing of a Thousand Shapes (1923.3-4)(Don't start this story late at night)(the last
thrilling chapters of The Thing of a Thousand Shapes a Weird Novel) – An orphaned boy
returns to his beloved uncle's funeral as the latter took care of him in his adolescent years.
The uncle asked not to be cremated or buried or that his body will be left alone without
touching it until rigor mortis catches up with it. The uncle is also an experimental psycho-
hypnotist. During the nightly vigil in the uncle's mansion the narrator and two neighbors see
a number of white animals creeping the house. One of the neighbors, a German, calls the
deceased a vampire when he notices a white material coming out of its nose. The neighbor's
wife dies and others become sick as the uncle lies in a coffin in the study. The narrator hears
voices at night and finds a book in which the uncle writes about experimenting with deep
hypnosis so that one seems dead but is able to manifest things with his mind made of
"psychoplasm". The superstitious neighbors try to drive a stake through his heart but the
narrator together with an old friend of his uncle and his beautiful daughter fool the mob and
revive the uncle. It is unclear why the uncle constantly tried to call his nephew for help as it
seems the former was perfectly fine the whole time. The narrator marries the beautiful
daughter of his uncle's friend.

The Phantom Wolfhead (1923.6) (Otis Adelbert Kline author of "The Thing of a Thousand
Shapes", spins another "spooky" yarn for the readers of Weird Tales) An emaciated man
approaches a detective and a doctor for not being able to sleep due to a ghostly dog that
appears in his room. The man is the guardian of a little girl who inherited millions after her
parents died in the Titanic. The girl had a dog from her parents which is shot down by the
haunted man as the dog threatens him all the time. It is revealed that while the girl sleeps
she unwillingly manifests phantoms with her mind made from "psychoplasm". The man dies
from fear and the doctor finds out that he slowly tried to poisoned the girl using arsenic.

The Corpse (1923.7) (Otis Adelbert Kline spins another grisly yarn) – A cop spends the night
in a morgue after a body was stolen. One of the corpses gets up and talks to the cop saying it
was poisoned by his wife but that he is okay now. The unconvinced cop tries to kill the dead
man but loses consciousness. Upon waking it is revealed that the missing body is the body of
the corpse's wife who eloped with another man who killed her several days after. The cop
makes sure the corpse that talked to him is dead and he finds out it has already started to
have rigor mortis which means it was dead for quite some time. The cop sees signs that
confirm the reality of the body getting up and talking to him.

The Cup of Blood (1923.9) (the ghastly secret of bludmanton castle is revealed in a
harrowing way in… a condensed novel) – two veterans of WWI travel Scotland. They hear a
story about a local lord gone mad after believing his wife cheated on him killing her lover
and the wife. His body disappears when he is buried in a special tomb and the wailing of
ghostly woman are heard in the castle. The castle is abandoned and remains so when the
two travelers reach it for the night. After the narrator's friend disappears at night and the
narrator hears voices in the deserted castle he loses consciousness. It is revealed that the
friend tripped into a secret chamber in which three skeletons lay. The walls of the room had
the carved story of the woman. Her crazy husband locked her with the body of her lover
whose blood he took out and placed in a cup next to her. The crazed husband died soon
after and wanted to prolong his wife's torment by throwing his own body into the place he
locked her. Sher cried for help for many days, but everyone was afraid of a "ghost". The
friend's calls for help at night were also perceived by the narrator as ghostly cries after the
 20

former broke his leg in the fall to the room. The friend hears mores code from the wall and
helps his friend out. The two reveal the story to the neighboring village.

The Malignant Entity (1924. 5\6\7) (this mystery story will hold your interest to the end) –
The skeleton of a professor who tries to create life from inert matter is found at his home.
After a cop also turns to a skeleton at the doctor's home two scientists (a psychologist and a
chemist) find out that the professor created a liquid-like, huge-cell that devours flesh.
Chasing the nucleus through the house they capture it. After discussing how a
creature ,created from inert matter, can live and have some intelligence they burn the thing
and probably find out that the life essence of a person who died at the home manifested
itself into this creature.

Paul Ellsworth Triem

Vials of insects (1923.5) (here's a story so unusual that you'll want to read it twice) – A
Chinese gentleman has a loyal butler who also smuggles illegal drugs into the U.S. A man
who is jealous of the butler as a woman he loves has some feeling towards the butler
snitches on the butler even though he himself is a known bootlegger. The Chinese
gentleman uses infected mosquitoes and sneaks them into the snitch's room. The snitch dies
horridly and the gentleman feels sorry for the lonely woman both men loved.

The Evening Wolves (1923.6-7) (Paul Ellsworth Triem's Latest Novel – An Exciting Tale of
Weird Events) (the weird adventures of ah wing reach an astonishing end in the final
installment of)

The head of an international thieves group goes to a mysterious mastermind who is half
German half Chinese to help him get rid of the group after they hunt him for stealing an
extremely seductive diamond stolen from a philanthropic old woman. The mastermind
barricades the head of the thieves in a mysterious house. Using his wits, he lures the bandits
one after the other to the house and kills them in crafty ways. He kills all the thieves and
finally, in the presence of their former leader, throws the unique diamond into the sea
forcing the leader to live as a beggar in Chinatown. It is revealed that the old woman from
whom the jewel was stolen took the half-Chinese man as a boy when no one wanted him.

Paul Suter

Beyond the Door (1923.4) (Creeping Horror Lurked) – A reclusive man becomes insane after
witnessing the suicide of the only girl who loved him whom he shunned. He told her that she
is no dog to beg him his love. She killed herself by throwing herself to a well in the
basement. The man hides her body as for the police not to blame him for her death. The
man has nightmares about dogs and creatures that haunt him. He sees creepy fingers trying
to enter his bedroom and hears voices at night like rats tunneling in the walls and steps and
knocks at his lonely house. He begins to walk in his sleep to the basement imagining walking
his dog outside. Finally, he awakes and sees that the thing next to him is not a dog. He tries
to enter the well but the slab that covers it smashes him somehow.

The Guard of Honor (1923.7) (the author of "beyond the door" spins another eerie tale in his
masterful style) the friends of an old dead man talk at his wake. One of them tells the rest
 21

that the dead man lost his memory when he was 20 and remembers nothing about his
childhood. After having a dream next to the body, he tells his friends the dream. He is the
dead man and he walk to an old mansion where he is greeted by mysterious old people and
their beautiful granddaughter. The man becomes young again and relives a romantic
evening with the girl. He wakes late at night to find out that the mansion is ruined and
deserted and that it all was a dream. He comes back to the door and remembers the place
burnt down and he witnessed his love dying. He comes back to the door, apparently dying
and delirious to join the girl again.

Prisoners of the Dead (1923.11) (an exceptional ghost story by the author of "beyond the
door") – A man who lives with his dying uncle agrees to never marry the girl he loves if his
uncle is in the house. The uncle dies but the man sees his ghost at the study and becomes
deranged. After consulting with his girl, he finds out that the house-caretaker and their
neighbor followed his uncle's will promising them 5% of the deceased money if they prevent
the marriage. The two, it is revealed, made a wax doll to fool the man claiming they see
nothing when they enter the room with him.

Preston Langley Hickey

The Cauldron – a column of "true" stories submitted by readers in which they describe
strange phenomenon that happened to them.

1923.6 – a man and his wife see a specter descending on their dying baby daughter. A
reporter is shot in a riot and sees a courtroom with an elderly man that judges him. A riveter
falls from a twelfth story into a truck filled with cardboard that, luckily, just stopped beneath
the place he fell from saving his life.

1923.7 – A man sneaks into a museum and imagines Rembrandt's famous painting of a
vivisection lesson comes to life and he is vivisected. He wakes with the museum staff around
him and an unexplained gash on his arm. A woman lives in a place that served as a hospital
during the civil war. She constantly sees the ghost of a nun and later finds out such a nun
was really part of the staff many years ago. A disused railway line has rumors of having a
ghost train that passes there at night. A man sleeps in a foreign town and sees the door of
his room opened by a woman. He rushes after her only to find her gone and the house
locked, including all the windows, he deduces it is the ghost of his wife.

1923.9 – a man visits a haunted house. Hearing voices at night he finds out it is dog. Three
friends visit Constantinople. An old soothsayer warns them not to sleep at night in a local
oasis. They refuse to listen. One of the friends dies at night and the other two barely escape
death as they feel weak and nauseous. The man who died had malaria. A detective is invited
by his Chinese friend to dinner. The Chinese lets him breath something and the man loses
consciousness while some hands choke him. He wakes up in his own apartment with a
blackjack he noticed in his friend's apartment. He finds out his Chinese friend was murdered
by his brother at night after the former tried to kill him.

1923.10 – (while the columns of the cauldron are open to all those knowing of or having
experienced genuinely weird or horrifying adventures, the editor wishes to make plain that
no more manuscripts dealing with ghosts or any phase of spiritualism will be considered,
unless they are of unusual merit. This step is taken because the cauldron is not a department
of psychic phenomena, and to discourage authors from submitting articles along these lines,
scores of which are received daily. What the cauldron wants, as we state in our heading, are
 22

"true adventures of terror," and not impossible "spirit" stories) a boy has a fit and is
mistaken for dead. He runs from his coffin at night before burial and starts a new life after
discovering he does not like anyone around him. He is about to get married. A Radio
operator invents a time television (or what we may now call a television) when a shadow
leaps from the screen and tries to kill him, he shoots the screen.

Seabury Quinn

The Phantom Farm House (1923.10) (here's a story of creeping horror that rises gradually, to
a powerful climax it's a story not easily forgotten) – An invalid minister recuperates in a
sanitarium that is next to a dark forest. He befriends and falls in love with a girl who lives on
farm in the woods. The people of the sanitarium insist that there is no house in the woods
other than a burnt farmhouse which was the site of hideous crimes committed by a family
long ago. The sanitarium's gardener insists that there are werewolves in the woods. The
girl's parents and the girl herself are nice to the narrator but they seem a little canine to him
with a long forefinger and bloodred stains in their nails. Eventually a group of bizarre, wild
dogs eat the sanitarium's sheep which agitates the gardener. The man confesses his love to
the girl and wants to marry her only for the latter to insist on him coming at dawn and
praying next to three graves in the cornfield near the house. As he plans to do so two, huge
dogs try to assault him with a little dog defending him. He returns at dawn and does as the
girl wanted. He hears a scream and wakes up to see the farmhouse deserted and long burnt-
down. The gardener picks him up.

Weird Crime 1 (1923.10) (a series of remarkable articles) – The story of the mass child killer –
the French noble Gilles De Lavell who in the 15 th century tortured to death hundreds of
toddlers until he was tried executed by the local church.

Weird Crimes 2 (1923.11) (a vivid series of fact articles) – the story of two people who in
1922, separately, robbed houses after reading obituaries and breaking into houses of people
who went to the cemetery. The two are caught and convicted. Another story of a black
graveyard caretaker who in 1922 fooled black people into buying expensive coffins only later
to convince his assistants that the coffins were rented. The graves were soon reopened, the
bodies dumped, and the coffins recycled for future use. He is caught and sentenced to ten
years of hard labor in prison.

Weird Crimes 3 (1924.1) – the story of the Bavarian-Murderer who in 1804 enticed young
women to come to his home to see their future in his magic ball while he tied them, stripped
them from their clothes (he also told them to come with their best clothes and jewelry to
rob them) and mutilated them until they died. He was sentenced to death.

Weird Crimes 4 (1924.2) – the story of the Austrian (probably Jewish) cannibal Swiatek who
kidnapped kids from the poverty-stricken Jewish hamlet of Polomyja to murder and eat
them. H started his acts after munching the burnt remains of a Jewish tavern owner. He
commits suicide before his death sentence commences.

Weird Crimes 5 (1924.4) – The story of 18 th century gentle-woman Mary Blandy who was
sentenced to death after poisoning her father claiming she put a powder in his food thought
to be a love elixir that will change his mind about her beloved whom her father refused her
to marry. The reason for this is the lover's insidious lies about a woman and a child he left
without divorcing. The story depicts Mary as a righteous, slightly gullible, used by her evil
 23

lover and as a woman without social connections which caused an insensible jury to reach its
grim verdict.

Weird Crimes 6 (1924.5/6/7) – The story of Gilles Garnier who was accused in the 16 th
century to be a werewolf. The man thought himself to be a wolf and attacked people in
France by running on all fours, naked, and howling like wolf. He was sentenced to death by
burning.

Vincent Starrett

Penelope (1923.5) (here's a grotesque fantastic tale) – A man finds out that he was born
under an obscure star named Penelope. When the star passes close to Earth he finds out he
is affected by the gravity of this star and walks, like a fly, on the ceiling of his room. Slipping
outside he barely manages to catch the railings of fence before flying into space. A woman
finds him, and he manages to convince her he is not mad. Slipping, he almost falls into space
and the woman runs, scared. He manages to return to his room and sleep waking up to see
everything normal. He manages to find the woman, with whom he fell in love and who is
conveniently called Penelope, and the two get married.

Riders in the dark (1923.7) (another grim tale by Vincent Starett) – a band of killers (it is
unknown where or when) decide to assassinate a lawyer. Coming with their horses they fall
in love with his beautiful wife and when she sacrifices herself for her man the killers start
shooting one another later crying for killing the woman. The woman, her husband the gang
leader and the narrator's rival in the gang, are all dead.

The Money Lender (1923.9) (a five-minute yarn with an unexpected twist at the end) – a fat
money lender refuses to give a debtor another week for repaying the debt after the latter
repeatedly fails to pay on time (the money-lender gave him many extra weeks before). The
money lender also gives him an expensive cigar as a token of good-will and an extra day. The
narrative, for some reason, portrays the lender as an evil man for doing those things. The
"good" debtor decides to murder the lender. He smokes his cigar near the office of the
debtor. The lender goes out, a gust of wind flies the cigar ashes to the lender, he is
temporarily blinded as he crosses the road and gets run down by a car.

Valma Clark

The Two men who murdered each other(1923. 7)(the tragic story of a Greek vase told in a
masterly way, a remarkable novelette) Two college friends fight over a piece of ancient
Greek pottery they find in the Acropolis each taking one fragment of the vase. The two
escape from a sinking ship and find themselves in a deserted little, rocky island. One of them
thinks he kills the other and escapes from the island. Guilt-ridden he hides in a shack near
the sea for forty years living as a hermit. The narrator later finds the "murdered " friend to
be a rich, greedy, (Jewish) collector. The latter is revealed to believe he killed his friend while
escaping the island later marrying his love interest. The narrator makes the two meet but
the hermit is dying and cannot grasp reality other than offering his fragment to his
despicable friend.
 24

Zillah (1924.3) (an unusual novelette) – a young narrator lives in a construction camp with
his fellow workers. The camp is ruled by a violent, misogynistic slob who constantly beats his
wife, a ragged gypsy woman who ran from her gipsy husband, because he feels like he owns
her by doing that. The woman receives a mail with an earing her ex-husband once gave her,
and she is ready for his return and his revenge on her. One night the jilted husband enters
her cabin and she decides to help him kill her abusive partner choosing death instead of life
as the punching bag of her current partner. Her ex-husband takes her with him after several
months.

1924.11-1930.9

A. Leslie

The Moon dance (1926.5)(verse) – a poem about jungle drums that create shadows on an
island. The shadows leave when the drumming stops. (the poem comes just before a story
about "African Voodoo rites".

Elysium (1926.9) (verse) – a poem- a lover muses about his loved while being at sea and
fighting a terrible storm.

Grave Chains (1926.10) (verse) – a poem about someone who lost his\her loved one and is
thrilled to hear her\his ghost at night.

November (1926.11) (verse) – a "warrior priest" looks at autumn at the still green forest and
it becomes brown in repentance. The priest moves on.

Fame (1927.1) (verse) – in a deserted temple stands a deserted altar for "the god without a
name". Only sounds from the spheres fill the temple. The road to the place is filled with
bones. Those who come to the temple do not look back.

Wolf (1927.3) (verse) – a poem about the monstrous shape of the wolf. With its steel teeth
and claws and huge shadows it threatens the speaker. Yet, it seems this wolf is in fact some
metaphor for some lust that chokes the speaker who feels imprisoned by the world.

Ship Magic (1927.4) (verse) – a poem about ghost ships that universally travel the world in
exotic places and at misty nights.

Memories (1927.5) (Verse) – some ghosts haunt the speaker about some lust he has for
some woman who has lips "stained scarlet with the bloody wine of hell".

As Always (1927.7) (Verse) – a poem about the everlasting images of the Iliad and Odyssey
with every generation and his men dreaming about a different Helen and burning Troy and
sailing Odysseus.

September (1927.9) (verse) – a poem about a personification of Autumn as a drunken monk

who drinks summer's wine and tells war stories that paint the trees with fire.

The Poet (1928.3) (verse) – a poem about the potent power of the poet to make every
historical place or event grandiose and much more impressive and beautiful.

Black Mora (1928.8) (Verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – a poem about a famous pirate
who became an admiral of Spain when this state failed to deal with him.
 25

Cravtheen the Harper (1928.9) (Verse) – Cravetheen plays the harp by the moonlight and
murdered women ghosts try to capture him but his music saves him. Banshees and
Leprechauns hear it at night.

The Witch Girl (1929.5) (verse) – the speaker is a girl who sees things on abandoned places
of nature because when she was born she was touched by leprhecunes. She had but one
love who turned to be a vampire.

The Haunted Lake (1929.11) (verse) – another poem by Leslie about a haunted place in
nature – this time a lake with dead spirits and drowned creatures who hide from the moon-
light.

Circe (1930.1) (verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – the speaker describes how he was
enchanted by a beautiful white woman worshipped by inhuman, wispy, flying abominations.
He is now one of these abominations.

Witches' Eve (1930.3) (verse) – the speaker is in a moonlit moor with disgusting night
creatures. She sees a monstrous figure in the air – a witch on a broom.

Voodoo (1930.4) (verse) – a subtle poem about the darkness that envelops a voodoo
ceremony with blood and shadows. It seems Leslie tries to portray the exact, generic
themes that makes 90% of the magazine into verse.

A. Merritt

The Woman of the Wood (1026.8) (when the peasants attacked the forest, the forest struck
back - a tale of graphic action, strange murders, uncanny mystery) – a WWI veteran sojourns
in France at an inn in a lonely wood. He enjoys a certain part of the forest where he imagines
the trees to be anthropomorphic. One day, after witnessing a reclusive neighbor and his two
sons chop a tree at his special place, he is coaxed by a voice in the forest that lets him "see"
and "hear" and "speak". He sees and hears beautiful white gowned women with alien green
eyes and their swarthy green-clad men (with alien brown eyes without pupils). They tell him
that they fight against the three men in their cabin and show him the wounded tree to be a
dying fey. The ask him to kill the men. He goes to the men's cabin and they tell him they are
descendants of peasants who were abused by nobles to live in the outskirts of the forest and
were not even allowed to forage within. They say the trees have killed them for many years
and they also saw the women of the woods mocking them and threatening them. They tell
the man that he is the ambassador of the trees and so he should tell the trees that they are
going to chop the whole magical grove today. The man goes to the fairies but they are gone
and he questions his sanity. Suddenly he is enraged by the woodcutters and fights with them
when they arrive to the grove. The trees coax him to kill one attacker and he murders one of
woodcutters with the others being killed by the trees. He is shocked from his act but the
trees, and one wood-woman especially beg him to stay and revel with them. He runs and
they try to convince him to stay. He goes back to the inn and then regrets his refusal. He
knows that he will never be offered to join the fey again. The next morning the innkeeper
goes to visit his woodcutter neighbor. He tells the man that the woodcutters were killed by
falling trees but that he found a button from his coat lying in the hands of one of the men.
He tells the WWI veteran that he must leave. The man is heartbroken knowing that he could
never join the fey and that his peaceful sojourn must end. Fantasy, quite interesting that
WWI veterans mostly crop up with supernatural events. More interior illustrations than
other stories.
 26

Alvin F. Harlow (people used to believe)

The Indestructible Bone (1927.9) (one of the peculiar beliefs that were held by our
ancestors) – a mishmash of the Talmudic belief about a bone that remains even thousands
of years after death and one that will succinate life when the Messiah comes. He jumbles
with the old Hebrew names (like, Jehushuang – the idiot could not even understand that
there is no "ang" at the end). He tells how this tale was rekindled in Christian belief until the
18th century.

Some "Old Masters" (1927.10) (peculiar beliefs that were held by our ancestors)- the author
mocks medieval painters who depicted Biblical scenes with contemporary paraphernalia
such as guns, European attire and anachronists Christian attributes.

The Werewolf (1927.11) (one of the weird beliefs of our ancestors) – the author tells about
the wide phenomena of believing in werewolves and how some people believed themselves
werewolves in the 17th century. The church fought these werewolves but at times some
heathens and heretics were believed to be killed by werewolves.

The Dragon and his Kinsmen (1927.12) (the dragon, the griffin, the wyvern and the
hippogriff) – the author tells about medieval dragons and how many other, imaginary,
creatures like dragons were depicted by Medieval Europeans up to the 18 th century.

Conceptions of Deity (1928.1) (curious concepts of God held by our ancestors) – the author
tells about depictions of God in Medieval art and paintings – from a hand to an old man to a
pope to a three headed monstrosity.

The Barnacle Goose (1928.2) (one of the curious superstitions of our ancestors) – the belief
of a sea fowl long-believed to be the offspring of sea parasite. Some even believed it to be
some kind of fish.

The Vampire (1928.3) (one of the weird concepts held by our ancestors) – the vampire myth
and how it started in Eastern Europe only to later mix with local legends of central Europe.
People used to believe they have to chop the head of the body when a cat passes on it or to
put a stick through its heart. This practice only stopped in the mid-19 th century.

The Familiar (1928.4) (one of the weird…) some historical anecdotes about spirits (good or
bad) believed to be inhabited in animal or pure spirit form and who helped great magic
users. The anecdotes are taken from Solomon to 17 th century England where several people
confessed or were snitched on for having spirits with funny names who helped them.

The Basilisk (1928.5) (One of the strange creatures believed in by our ancestors) – the story
of some snake, lizard or dragon that is first described by Greek Historians. This, apparently
small creature looks and acts like a cobra (in the original version) but is believed to kill
people with his gaze.

The Fad for Relics (1928.6) (Some strange beliefs were held by our ancestors) – the story of
how Christians in the middle-ages amassed pieces of saints, angels, concepts and
astronomical phenomena (like piece from the star of Bethlehem, a feather from the angel
Michael, A bone from the holy spirit, the blood of Jesus, the sweat of John the Baptist etc.)
These pieces were considered holy and sometimes they were whipped by the monks to
make them work better. They were also easily given to anyone who wanted to bring them to
 27

his church (though they somehow also managed to remain – perhaps they weremagically
duplicated?)

Weird Recipes (1928.7) (Some of the strange beliefs of our ancestors) – some weird
ingredients used for early modern medicine. They mostly involved skulls and impossible to
get thingamajigs. They were also taken, aside from orally or rubbed, as a talisman that was
hung on the neck.

Wonderfully Preserved Relics (1928.8) (Strange beliefs regarding the relics of the saints) –
The ridiculous belief in relics which is not plausible as many skulls belong to the same saint
and many pieces of cloth and wood are claimed to be thousands of years old although there
is enough evidence that they are not. Some are even tears, breath, dung heaps or soot.

The Serpent in Eden (1928.9) (What species was the serpent? Our ancestors asked) – the
debate about the Biblical snake's true zoological nature – was it a huge lizard? A snake with
two long legs, a fish?

The Phoenix (1928.10) (One of the strange beliefs of our ancestors) –from Herodotus' tale of
the Egyptian creature in the Sun-god temple and mummy wrappings to Pliny's description of
it rising from the ashes to later Greek, Jewish (Ezekiel the Dramatist) and Christian telling of
the bird's habitation at Heliopolis and its immortality and sweet song.

The Fairy Court (1928.11) (One of the Strange…) – the belief on the fairy kingdom that
started in England at the middle ages. It was first believed to be the copulation of Caesar and
the fairy Morgana which later got into Arthurian legend. Then, Shakespeare hauled it into
Titania and Oberon's kingdom of fairies and the names stuck. Mab, was Oberon's original
wife in legend but was replaced and turned into an ugly hag of nightmares in Shakespeare's
version.

Lilith (1928.12) (Another of the strange beliefs of our ancestors) – Inana, Istar, Lilith and the
Jewish folklore of how she was Adams wife and later a demon. Christians described her as
eating children and connected here with snake women or Lamia – a goat, lizard woman who
lures men with her beautiful upper body.

The Resurrecting snake (1929.1) (Another of the strange…) – this time it is a South American
snake that is believed, by 17th century European zoologists, to eat whole animals and then
get eaten and rotten by time and animals. The creature then gets back to life.

Pope Joan (1929.2) (One of the strange beliefs of our ancestors) – the belief that in the 9 th
century a woman, in man's clothing, was the Pope. The belief started in the 13 th century and
remained until the middle 19th century when historians refuted that myth.

May Dew (1929.3) (One of the strange superstitions of our ancestors) – the belief, starting
from Roman and Barbaric traditions about flower and spring goddesses, that May-eve is the
time to dance and celebrate the blossoms made by powers of Nature and that if someone
washes his face in May-eve dew he will become beautiful. Many women in Europe did this
practice as late as the 19th century.

The Unicorn (1929.4) (One of the strange beliefs…) – The unicorn first appears in 5 th century
B.C Greek texts and is believed to be in India and to cure poison. He is aggressive but likable
to girls. It appears in many European texts until the 19 th century and was believed to be real.
 28

The Cock (1929.5) (One of the curious animals believed in by our ancestors) – The belief on a
half chicken half reptile poisonous creature that hatches from the egg of rooster on which a
toad sat. It started in the middle ages and remained until the late 18 th century in which the
creatures was believed to be a walking snake.

The Mouse Legend (1929.6) (one of the curious weird beliefs of our ancestors) –the story
about a medieval lordling or king who burned or killed hungry peasants and the latter turned
into mice or rats and haunted him until they devoured him completely.

Salty Superstitions (1929.7) (some of the weird beliefs of our ancestors) – how salt was
considered an omen of bad luck or good luck in medieval, European, society.

The Murderer's Touch (1929.8) (One of the curious superstitions of our ancestors) – the
Medieval belief that a murderer's body reacts to the presence of its killer even many years
after the deed – these can be opening of the eyes or more often bleeding.

The Salamander (1929.9) (One of the curious monsters believed by our ancestors) This time
it is about the mythical Salamander who was believed since ancient times to be an extremely
poisonous lizard that can freeze people and survive life on fire. This creature was ordered
into the four elements (fire, the rest being the undine-water, the sylph-air, the gnome-
earth). It appears the lizard is now recognized as one of the poisonous lizards but it cannot
survive fire.

The Roc (1929.10) (giant bird of ancient Jewish and Arabic legend) – the misinformed Harlow
tells that the roc is first mentioned in Jewish legends (wrong, in fact it does not appear in
Jewish legends at all – at least until modern times) and is a huge bird that became popular
after Sinbad's stories had appeared in the English Arabian Nights. This belief in a giant flying
bird stayed until the 18th century at least. Harlow says that "for all Oriental peoples,
including the Jews of centuries ago, believed firmly in its existence" – does that means that
Jews are no longer Orientals? I don't know.

Anthony Rud

The Parasitic Hand (1926.11) (a terrific life-and-death struggle between a living man and a
hand that groped among his vitals) - a man comes to a surgeon with a little growth of a hand
on his side. He always had that growth only it has become much larger in the last 3 months.
It looks like a baby's hand. The doctor tells him he was with a twin at birth and his cells
assimilated the twin and the hand is all that is left of it. Several days later the growth is much
larger and a month later it has an arm and looks to belong to 15 years-old. It also responds.
The doctor removes the hand in a horrible operation in which the hand keeps on moving and
tries to kill its host. The operation is successful though several nurses collapse. Several
months later the patient returns and reports he feels an inner hand clutching at his organs.
The doctor sees, through x-rays, that there is an imprint of a hand that pushes through the
organs though there is no hand there. The man dies after he screams that the hand goes for
his heart. At an autopsy they find finger prints on the heart.

The Endocrine Monster (1927.4) (Those who came near the cabin of the beautiful Bonita
were found in the jungle with the life crushed out of their bodies) – A young student asks his
friend about a female hamster he has that breaks through metal bars. The professor tells
him the following story about himself. Some European adventurers, the narrator among
them, arrive at some South American village to investigate the existence of some demon
 29

who kill foreigners by breaking their bodies and disappearing. As they arrive to the village
they encounter a beautiful, but manly, girl named Bonita who teases them. Two of the group
court her and disappear. As they try to find their friends they come across their bodies and
follow the tracks to the cabin of Bonita. Bonita tries to fool them but one of the adventurers
find a huge boot that was used by Bonita to make monster tracks. She gets enraged picks up
one of them and breaks his back. She hurls another into a tree and he also dies. She almost
kills the narrator. As they are about to fight her a huge snake bites her and she dies. The
professor explains that she had some mishap at her endocrine gland making her adrenaline
surge much larger thus she became manly and superhumanly strong and violent. He tells
him that had she continued without the snake-bite she would have died several months
later as this is the fate of such people with this malady. He tells the student how he did the
same with the hamster that is also about to die.

The Witch-Baiter (1927.12) (a torture-tale of the witchcraft craze in Holland – a Dutch zealot,
fanatic superstition, and a way of reckoning) – a 17 th century judge who believes torturing
little girls to confess to them being witches is justice is kidnapped by a mob. His eyes are
covered and he is forced to make a judgment about a witch he cannot hear or see. He tells
the mob to torture her and when she confesses he tells them to hang her. His eyes are
uncovered and some different masked-people are there who tell him he is unjust and cruel
and so they torture him horribly and when he confesses they tell him he has nothing to
confess about and continue with the torture. He feels guilty and is taken, broken, to his
house where he finds out he ordered his own daughter to be tortured and hanged earlier
that night.

The Spectral Lover (1928.4) (Barney came back from beyond the grave to terrify the girl that
had refused his love when he was alive) – a young school-teacher believes a young man who
tried to woo her unsuccessfully and threatened to get her from beyond the grave is now,
after death, haunting her. She is taken to a hospital where a doctor fails to make her better.
A Catholic priest uses some psychology and after finding out the man was with another
woman and then committed suicide after the woman's family threatened him, manages to
convince the girl the man (who was a hypnotist) is a coward and a weakling thus breaking
the hypnosis he induced on her (to make her respect him).

Arlton Eadie

Flames of Destiny (1928.3) (Back through the mists of time, to the days of Cromwell, rolled
the years, and brought romance and high adventure) – a dying occultist comes to his friend
in some inn and hypnotizes him. The friend awakes at 17 th century England as his previous
incarnation. He is a captain of Cromwell who refuses to witness the burning of some
beautiful accused by a corrupt rich man to be a witch. Cromwell orders to execute the man
(because he has some dealings with the rich man) and in the ensuing chaos he rescues to girl
but both get shot and die together promising to meet again in a next life (she also gives him
half a crucifix). The man awakens in the inn with the friend gone and crucifix at his hand. A
girl appears at the door and she looks just like the "witch". She tells him she is the occultist's
sister and that he is dead. He shows her the crucifix and she remember her past life. They
marry.

The Phantom Fiddler (1928.6) (In the cellars beneath the old English tavern was committed
an atrocious crime—a fascinating ghost-story) – a doctor goes to help some old sailor at
some warehouse at the docks in which he serves as watchman. While tending to the old
 30

man he finds out the place is haunted by some invisible violin player. He decides to come
again and watch the place, instead of the old man, with some young clerk who works in the
company to which the warehouse belongs to. It seems the warehouse stands at the place
where one of England's most notorious old sailor-inns and brothel once was. As the violin
music starts they follow it to the kitchen and pry-loose some logs to enter a hidden cellar.
There they find a scene of an old abandoned party with mucked wine and disintegrated food
and costumes as if the party stopped suddenly. There are also many kegs of exquisite
alcohol. The music comes from one of the kegs and they open it to find a crumbling violin
and a clothed and preserved body (the alcohol preserved it). As they pick the body up it
starts making eerie sounds so the doctor drops his lantern in fear on the alcohol and the
whole place starts burning. The two escape but the place and its secrets are burned to crisp.

The White Vampire (a tale of an Arab slave-trader – an albino lion – and that strange being,
the White Vampire, whom the natives dreaded) – some Englishmen try to stop an evil Arab
slave-trader in Africa. The slaves are afraid that the Arab will unleash a "white Vampire" on
them. They track the slaver and are captured by him. He gives an albino lion to attack them
and they see the corpse-like "White Vampire". They are saved by some soldiers who arrive.
They capture the slaver and tell him he is the vampire. They give him a pistol to kill himself.
He shoots himself.

The Ghost Ship (1929.2) (Captain Frewin, having lost one ship through his infatuation for a
girl, wrecked another in the same spot) – the protagonist boards a steamer whose captain
died. The new captain is revealed to be a man who sunk a huge liner with many passengers
because he failed to helm the ship during a misty night instead fawning on a beautiful girl. At
night the ship observes a huge liner that follows them. Some days later the liner is on a
collision course with them and they see it is the old ship that the captain sunk many years
ago. The ghost of the young captain salutes to his older self and a beautiful woman, the
same siren that caused the captain to ignore his duties, stands next to him and sings, The
captain decides to follow the ship, even though it is dangerous, and the ship smashes on the
same reefs it did many years before. The protagonist learns, at a hospital, that the captain
survived the second crash but sailors witnessed a beautiful, naked, siren girl that sang to the
captain and to whom he swam, kissed and went below the waves with.

The Immortal Hand (1929.3) (a ghost-story of Shakespeare and Stratford-Avon – three

tourists make a startling discovery) – three Shakespeare enthusiasts go to his country-side
historical neighborhood and spend the night at the house of some old lady who is the
descendant of one of Shakespeare's players. At their room they find Shakespeare's hand
that starts to write about a secret room. They find the room and see many of Shakespeare's
manuscripts and lost plays and the man himself who starts writing. They wake up to find the
secret room is no longer there with only vacant space with ancient stones that remain.

The World-Wrecker (1929.4-6) (a stirring three-part weird-scientific serial about a scientist

who pulled the world from the position in the solar system) – An English reporter
investigates some letters sent by an anonymous sender who threatens to pull the Earth from
its orbit by using a special gas (the scientific explanation is so ridiculous and nonsensical) if
he doesn't get world domination. He goes to some local Astronomer whose beautiful,
academic secretary explains the thing possible. He also saves the smart girl and the
professor from the leak of some gas. He falls in love with the secretary. He then finds out
that the Astronomer is the culprit but he is knocked senseless by him. He is released by the
 31

man and his goons after he finds out that the woman he is in love with is a puppet of the evil
dude. He tries to tell the cops about it but they refuse to believe. The evil dude is also a rich
producer of coal and convinces the leading firms to use his fuel which, secretly, has the
material needed for releasing the gas. The protagonist tries following the evil guy with the
help of a bum who was once a soldier that served under him but fails miserably.
Nevertheless, he finds a message that the girl leaves him in which he discovers where the
gas production is made. The Earth drifts from orbit. The girl tries to save the world by finding
out how to neutralize the astronomer's plight. She fools him to reveal his evil plot and how
he intends to kill everyone and run away from Earth with her (to fucking where? The
universe is not just teeming with inhabitable planets) on his weird spaceship. He also tells
her how to revert his deed – by sailing with huge liners that use his fuel in the Pacific instead
of the Atlantic. The protagonist and his friend manage to sneak into the evil dude's factory
and the girl manages to escape to them. They kill the scientist and sail the Pacific – the world
is saved and the two marry.

Warning Wings (1929.9) (The master of the vessel heeded the warning in the white wings of
the moth that fluttered over the compass) – a man stops the protagonist when he tries to
squash a moth gently cups it and releases it outside. He explains that when he was a young
captain he captained a small ship and one night a moth methodically tapped S.O.S and
perched on the compass so as to beg the captain to change course. The captain reluctantly
decides to do so (in which point the moth dies) and finds out that in their new route there is
a stranded ship with thousands of people that could have died without the moth's
intervention. Eadie and ships – a thing.

The Scourge of Egypt (1929.10) (A strange tale of a mummy, a scarab, and Kephra-Ophis,
slave-driver for that Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites) – a friend who is into mummies
and science tells the protagonist, an Egyptologist, to observe a mummy. The protagonist
discovers that the mummy is of the head-slaver of the Israelites in Egypt during Seti's reign
(the Biblical story). The friend stupidly goes to a hypnotist who can merge souls and grey
matter of dead bodies. The friend's wife (Esther – yes we get it!) tells him that she is secretly
a Jew (apparently it is a bad thing to be in the U.S. at the 1929) and that the slaver's spirit
will try to whip her because she is a Jew (how the hell should the slaver spirit know that – it
makes no bloody sense). The friend drugs his wife and continues in the procedure. The
slaver's spirit enters him and he wants to ship his wife to death. They manage to hold him
and he enters a coma. The Jewish wife threatens the hypnotist that she knows he intends to
rob her comatose husband and so she points a gun at him and he revives her husband. So,
now Jews enter into the racial fiasco that dominates the magazine. It is interesting to note
how race is perceived in many of the magazine' stories as an ethnic constant thing (unlike
the American melting pot liberal notion of a state) that goes back thousands of years. If you
had an ancient ancestor who is black you are tainted or if you are somewhat Oriental or
Indian or whatever race you will never be free from it. Nazi Germany mentality in the U.S.

The Flowing death (1930.3) (A weird-scientific story of microbes that got beyond control and
swept over England in a deluge of death) – a man who courts a girl whose dad is a famous
biologist tries to show interest for her father's work. The father created some protozoa that
can eat flesh and multiply (for some stupid reason). The man breaks the glass of the thing
and after several days the millions of protozoa devour half the neighborhood. The professor
and protagonist try to get help but fail. The things destroy London and the man and his
fiancée decide to commit suicide and not get eaten by the world-destroying thing. The man
 32

wakes up to find out it was all a dream and that he lost consciousness when he entered the
laboratory. Weird Scientific = alien invasion (or aliens trying to destroy Earth or the Galaxy),
Transmigration of Souls by machines or scientific means, protozoan monsters, crazy
scientists trying to destroy the world – these four concepts are repeated throughout this
period)

The Hound of Duncardin (1930.8) (Faithful even in death to his murdered master, the
phantom deerhound came baying across the moors) – a WWI veteran is lost in Scotland but
saved by some mysterious dog. The castle he finds himself in is, miraculously, his wartime
friend's estate. He learns that his friend's brother has died mysteriously. The place also holds
the step-mother of this guy and her son from another man. The friend begins to get very
sick. The dog makes the narrator and the castle's caretaker go to the brother's tomb where
they find he died from arsenic. The woman stops them and tries to shoot them but (unclear
how) kills herself instead.

Eadie tries everything – from mad scientists to ghosts to supernatural creatures. He is not
focused in the least.

The Invisible Bond (1930.9) (a strange story of wild horror was told by the man who was
picked up in a boat off the African coast) – a shipwreck survivor on the coast of Africa tells
his story before dying. Their party was saved by blacks but one woman needed a blood
transfusion and a black man gave her his blood. Because black savages has tainted blood the
girl becomes insane with murder and lust and becomes native. The blacks kidnap one of the
survivors and in a blood ceremony let the woman with the black man's blood cut his throat
and drink his blood. The survivors manage to kill the leaders of the blacks and the woman's
husband also kills his tainted wife. The blacks slaughter all the survivors accept the narrator
who manages to escape. He dies soon after telling his story.

Arthur J.Burks (Estil Critchie)

Thus Spake the Prophetess (1924.11) (as Critchie) (Haitan Tale – Crimes of Guillaume San) -

Voodoo (1924.12) (as Critchie) (Haiti – Worship of the Green Serpent) -

Luisma's Return (1925.1) (Haiti, Death of Henri I, Emperor of the North) – The story of Henri I
the cruel dictator of Haiti who forced his soldiers to march to their deaths and took his lead
general's wife. The bereaved general survives the fall and makes the dictator believe he
came back from the dead. The dictator commits suicide with a silver bullet from fear.

The Broken-Lamp Chimney (1925.2) (strange tales from Santo Domingo no. I) – The tale of a
wicked woman who kills her husband for her black lover and remorselessly cuts at his organs
with a lamp-chimney (whatever that is). Her lover cowers and tells the police about the
crime when asked. The woman is killed by a fire-squad and her gunshot wounds form the
shape of a lamp-chimney.

Desert of the Dead (1925.3) (strange tales from Santo Domingo no.2) – the narrator visits
madrigal in Santo Domingo to find a place called "the desert of the dead" which the local
population refuses to talk about and superstitiously make crosses in the sand whenever one
mentions the name. After traveling in a jungle, the narrator reaches an enclosed desert. He
sleeps at night and dreams about a Dominican general who leads his man to the desert
where the forces of his rival are mustered. He blows the entrance thus trapping both forces
inside. A fire breaks and the two forces, revealed to be consisted of family members, kill
 33

each other violently. The fire finishes the rest. The general jumps to his death in madness.
The narrator wakes up and returns to Madrigal where a local man he met asks whether hi
found the desert. The narrator scares him off by mechanically drawing crosses on the sand.

Strange Tales From Santo Domingo No.3 Daylight Shadows (1925.4) (Desert Heat and
Madness) –the narrator goes to Neiba with a friend through the Dominican desert at broad
daylight. Their water runs out and his mule cannot go any further so his friend goes to the
beckoning palm trees that are always further away than they seem to call for help. The
narrator starts imagining that he casts no shadow while other shadows (of dead people)
gather around him. He thinks he finds water only to find out it is a mirage finally believing to
find real water as the shadows are about to claim him. He sees some Dominican soldiers
who surround him and he hits their officer and faints. He wakes up in the soldier's barracks
where the wounded officer tells him his friend arrived and they sent help only to find him in
the middle of the desert off the beaten-track with a huge swollen tongue and half-mad as he
hit him.

Strange Tales From Santo Domingo no.4 – The Sorrowful Sisterhood (1925.5) (an adventure
of the Dominican Bandit Jose Espinosa) – In the capitol of Santo Domingo there is a bad
neighborhood ruled by a dirty, corrupt man. This man protects a serial killer and cannibal
who escapes to him. After the latter fails to pay for the services the former supplies him
(mostly using his brothel) the corrupt man contacts the narrator, an American intelligence
agent in Santo Domingo to kill the murderer. As the narrator enters the brothel to kill the
murderer one of the working girls tells him that it is a trap. As she finishes saying that the
corrupt owner of the place together with his body guard enter the room and beat the girl
with a special and vicious whip until all her clothes are ripped and she is slashed all over her
back. The murderer enters the room and tries to kill the agent but the girl jumps and gets
the bullet instead. The agent blows his whistle and the police comes (though it is said that
the police is controlled by a crooked officer who is the owner's pet). The girl then proceeds
to burn the brothel and commits suicide by jumping into the fire.

Strange Tales From Santo Domingo no.5 – The Phantom Chibo. (1925.6) (the bandit Jose
Espinosa lures his victims to a quagmire) – the murderer from the last trail keeps taunting
the narrator as he escapes from prison and starts a reign of terror in one of the
neighborhoods of the capitol. He sends letters to the narrator where he invites him to a
swamp. The narrator comes with his best agent. There are rumors that a ghost of some lamb
brays at this swamp. Following the sound of the lamb the narrator's agent is killed by a bullet
to his head and the narrator is knocked unconscious. The narrator gets a letter explaining
that the murderer toys with him. In town the narrator finds a crippled, mute, idiot boy who
mimics the sound of lambs. The narrator gets another letter inviting him to the swamp. This
time the narrator orders a squad to hide nearby and when he hears the sound of the lamb
he looks for the idiot. He sees movement at the water and his squad opens fire and kills the
murderer and the boy on his shoulders. It is revealed that they were father and son.

Black Medicine (1925.8) (Complete Novelette of Haitian Voodoo) – an American sojourner in

the American controlled colony of Haiti travels one night to find a bizarre, huge black man
who entices him to wander to the jungle outside Port-au-Prince and observe the Voodoo
ceremony in there. The man, foolishly, obliges even though he knows the body of a
mutilated American soldier was found in that very same place. He sneaks into the jungle and
watches a huge bonfire with naked black people dancing around. Next to him is the weird
 34

black man who does not see him even though the narrator says the former can see perfectly
in the dark. The black man descends into the bonfire and is revealed to be a Vodun high-
priest. He beheads one of the dancers because he asked them to hunt down the American
and they lost him in the jungle. The party starts hunting the American. The American
deduces that the blacks try to do something bad to the whites so he follows them to save
the white colony.He follows then through the jungle for several days and witnesses a
Voodoo ceremony in which he has a vision (by drinking, unnoticed, from a filthy bottle a
black woman left) of the French army defeated by the blacks more than a hundred years
ago. He finds out that they need the blood of a white child to complete the ceremony. The
high priest goes to find the blood. The protagonist follows him through the jungle to Saint
Domingo. He finds the high priest after the latter killed a boy but his Dominican father
caught him and started torturing him to death. The narrator is later found in Haiti, delirious.
After some days he regains his sanity but no one believes his story.

Vale of the Corbies (1925.11) (the beating of unseen wings filled the valley of ravens) –a man
has a recurring dream since he was a boy – he walks in a misty valley surrounded by
multiplying ravens that harass him. After many years he decides to assault the bloody
ravens. He kills one of the ravens but the creature returns to life and all the rest of the
ravens bite him. He wakes up with many red dots on his body. He tries not to sleep for
several but finally falls asleep and dies. His brother tells the reader that he found the body of
his brother filled with red dots and red from fever yet it remains unclear whether he died
from fever or was it something supernatural.

When the Graves were Opened (1925.12) (The Sepulchers Yawned and the Dead came into
Jerusalem) – a scientist invites his atheist friend to try a new time-machine he invented. The
machine actually separates the spirit from the body so the spirit can go wherever it wants in
time (though not coming back without the help of the machine, for some reason). The friend
wants to prove that the New Testament story is bogus so he travels to Jesus crucifixion to
see if the dead came back to life and what happened to them. He witnesses the whole story
as it was narrated by the gospels. He witnesses the dead coming back to life only to be
goaded by Pilate to live in a leper community. They decide to pray to God for death (it is
unclear why they obey Pilate who is obviously afraid of them). Jesus comes to take them to
heaven. The friend remains with the dead Pilate's shade who washes his hands for eternity
as the machine broke in the present. The friend is convicted for murdering his friend but he
has a manuscript written by the dead friend while he was hooked to the machine. He says
that his friend's atheism was punished to be forever with Pilate but he is also condemned to
death. (unclear if this overtly Christian, Evangelist story is moralistic or not)

Something Toothsome(1926.3) (a weird crime and a hideously deformed face) – two naval
dentists want to be popular pulp smiths. One of them tells the other how he can write about
a killer who uses half a jaw of a Cro-Magnon on a man after poisoning him thus fooling the
investigators. The guards listen to the story. One of the dentists sees a horrible face without
the upper jaw. The same night one of the dentists dies from poisoning with the same bite
marks mentioned in the story of the other dentist. The suspicion falls on him and his boots
are covered in mud that leads to the room o the other dentist. As he is relieved and sent to
prison the real killer muses in his room how the dentist broke his upper jaw many years ago
and how he avenged himself after hearing the other dentist's story. He takes his false jaw
out and his hideous face shows in the mirror. Luckily for the dentist an officer passes by and
sees the hideous face.
 35

The Ghost of Steamboat Coulee (1926.5 – cover story) (Shivery tale of dreadful happenings
in a rockbound western gulch, with the howling bobcats for chorus) – a man who got sick
from inhaling poisoned gas as a soldier in WWI travels the U.S. as a tramp. He finds a solitary
cabin where a couple lives with their son. They offer him food and a house in solitary gulch.
At night, the man is haunted by wailing bobcats and he sees the ghost of a man being
murdered by the person who offered him the cabin. The next night he is visited by the wife
of the man who offered him the cabin. She shows him she is mute because her tongue was
removed. Her husband comes and starts chasing her through the wall as they disappear like
ghosts. He sees some other ghostly people being murdered by the man and his evil son. He
sees the man rips his wife's tongue. Finally, he sees the apparition of the woman telling her
husband and son she snitched on their murderous spree. The man rips her tongue but then
the police comes and hangs them. The man awakens to find himself handcuffed by the local
police who blamed him for stealing. He says he got food form the cabin and they tell him the
place is abandoned for twenty years. He tells them about the couple and murders and the
officer tells him that happened many years ago. They release him as they believe he was
haunted by ghosts. They find him a menial job and his health improves.

Asphodel (1926.6) (the lilies of death grew beautiful under the old hermit's care, but terrible
was their potent – a tale of mystic horror) – the narrator follows a weird hermit for some
reason. The reticent hermit leads him to his cabin in the woods that is right next to a huge
plantation of Asphodels (some kind of flower). The smell of the flowers is intoxicating. Once
inside the narrator dreams the old man is turning some beautiful girls into the flowers and
when he picks one flower a red blood-like fluid oozes out. He wakes from the dream and
runs from the place noticing a red drop of blood coming out from one of the flowers. (it
seems the man tries to make his stories weirder)

Orbit of Souls (1926.12) (the tale of a businessman with heart of stone, and the eery horror
that befell him)–an elderly businessman fools some old investors into buying swamp land.
His secretary, quite ashamed of the ordeal, decides to fool the man, together with one of
the old conned ladies. The old lady, wearing a straw hat, comes to the office and tells the
businessman that all the investors decided to come but they all died in a train accident and
that they will haunt his soul like wolves for all eternity. The secretary fools his boss into
telling him about the accident and also that no lady visited him and that it was all a dream.
The old man is shaken and decides to sojourn in the woods. There he sees baby footprints in
the mud and some prowling wolves. At night he sees a wolf next to his window with a straw
hat. The man calls his secretary to come and be with him as he is afraid. The same day some
old lady with a straw hat is killed by a train at the exact time when the businessman saw the
wolf. The secretary tells hiss boss about it and it makes the man even more afraid. He tells
his boss that it was a joke but his boss does not believe him. At night the secretary hears the
tapping of a dog's tail but sees nothing, he doesn't know that the old man has become
feverish and that his foot taps on the floor. They go on fishing the next day and the
businessman sees a yellow dog darting from the woods believing it to be an omen of his
soul. At night he dies after having a stroke while his secretary believes he makes the sounds
of a dog. The house burns down and the secretary escapes. He sees a pack of wolves running
after a scared yellow dog. Later he meets some hillbillies who tell him they lost their yellow
dog and that they have a pet wolf who likes to wear straw hats.

The whole story tries to do its best to rationalize every happening so that every supernatural
element is snuffed.
 36

Faces (1927.4) (Strange shapes and weird faces peered out of the jungle at the American
officer – a ghost-story of Santo Domingo) – an American officer and a pilot crash on some
swamps next to Haiti. The pilot dies but the officer starts seeing his ghost and the ghosts of
everyone who died in the swamp. He does not remember how he got out of the jungle but
the natives tell his commander that a pilot took him out and then returned to the jungle. The
commander does not believe the officer when he tells him the pilot died. He is considered
insane.

The Invading Horde (1927.11) (a weird-scientific story of America far in the future – Asiatic
hordes invade City of the East in giant submarines) – far in the future the world is divided to
East city and West city. For some bizarre reason East city is in America and includes all the
white races while West city dominates the rest of the world and includes all the other races.
The White races city is based on naked "brown" slaves who live in the dumps of a lower city.
The "real" whites live thousands of meters on huge skyscrapers and fly from place to place
with some flying harnesses. The protagonist is the would-be-mayor of this city as he marries
the daughter of the leading engineer in the city. The engineers are the highest class of
society in this city and only they can fly above a certain level of the city skyline. Women and
men are equal (although the story does not mention even one woman who has any real
power and gives commands). The west border of this huge city is defended by a huge
electro-magnetic death-trap ray. The east is a huge wall that prevents the sea to wash over
the city. A huge submarine comes to this sea-wall and destroys it – killing many servitors.
The father-in-law of the protagonist dies by some colored assassins. The couple fails to save
the city and eventually the colored hordes kill everyone but the couple. They explain that
the white race cannot live with the other races as the differences are too big. They are given
a choice to die, by the Asian commander, and they write their story, fly to the sky and drop
down to crash on the sea.

Racist as Hell but the Whites lose at the end.

Bells of Oceana (1927.12) (a gooseflesh story of the sea by the author of "The Invading
Horde" and "The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee") –an American Marine commander sails to
the east in a soldier's ship. At night he witnesses strange things – he sees a dead man's face
at his porthole and hears some bells. His Sargent comes and tells him that one of lookouts is
missing. They see some shadows and some seaweed trailing the ship. Then they see some
naked, beautiful girl (with big boobs) in the night water who seduces one of the soldiers to
jump over. Then the two naked bodies of the lookouts is flung to the ship, the second is
carried by the woman who has the lower half of sea-serpent. She seduces the narrator who
jumps over and only manages to escape back into the ship by some miracle. He awakes at
his cabin and it is morning. The Sargant does not remember anything and tells the narrator
he was dreaming. The clothes of the narrator are indeed dry but his hair is with salt-crust
and smells like seaweed. Two lookouts are also missing.

Three Coffins (1928.5) (A West Indian tale, as eery and creepy as any that Lieutenant Burks
has ever written) – an American who works to erect a prison at some deserted island in the
West Indies has to take three coffins on board his ship so that the dead from the expedition
could be buried quick. He thinks that the blacks he hired for the job will become
superstitious and will mutiny. One black dies mysteriously on the trip there. The island itself
is rumored to be a horrible place where many ghosts live after some West Indies tyrant
 37

dropped his many enemies on this deserted island to die. The man has three white
lieutenants and one old black wise man who helps him. The whites laugh about their own
bodies being entered into the coffins. Once on the island they mistakenly unearth a grave
and one of the white lieutenants laughs at the blacks reluctant to keep on working and he
desecrate the grave and takes the skull as souvenir. The skeleton appears to be that of a
woman as it is adorned with earrings and bracelets which the lieutenant drops into the sea.
At night the guy who took the skull dies from a gash to his neck and the skull has blood on its
teeth. The following day another lieutenant dies at bed as his head gets bashed by a rock. A
mysterious, womanly, white-clad figure with bracelets appears at night and laughs. The third
lieutenant decides to kill himself and another black guy also throws himself of the rock.
Through all this the old black guy seems the only one willing to help the narrator. A South
American el president, the one who ordered the prison, appears and agrees to take the
narrator and his black workers to South America for some respite before returning. Once
there, one of the coffins erupts and the white body of one of the dead men floats. The blacks
run in fear. After a year of living in shame as failing to finish the prospect the narrator
discovers a local legend about a white guy who was swindled by blacks. Apparently, the
South American dictator was unable to pay for the job and decided to scheme with the black
old man and his workers (and a local woman) to kill the white prospectors and make their
chief so scared that he will leave the job and blame it on himself.

Invisible Threads (1928.9-10) (a two-part story of occult vengeance, and the use of psychic
power to bring retribution upon evil-doers) – after answering a newspaper request for a
helper the narrator meets a mysterious man who shows him how he hypnotizes two men
and uses their disembodied spirits to track murderers, frauds and thieves and then scare the
shit out of them so they either confess or commit suicide. The man convinces the mysterious
man to teach him how to do it he tells him it will take some time and that he will teach him
in the future. He starts joining the two hypnotized men to track villains and one time he
finds out that someone is using the mysterious string of suicides and confessions to extort
money from rich people. He finds out this man is the mysterious man's brother. The good
brother confronts his own brother and the latter assassinates him during a trance thus
forcing the two entranced men (not the brothers) to remain without a soul and become
robotic and stupid. The narrator tells the press everything and the brother is brought to
justice. Nevertheless, he tells the press that he can save the two men if he gets released and
exonerated. Public pressure convinces the police to do so and so he makes the two men
alive again and escapes with all the money. He dies on his way down the stairs for some
reason.

Arthur Thatcher

The Valley of Teeheemen (1924.12-1925.1) (two-part novel airplane falls into strange valley)
– several Americans crash into a mysterious valley around Cuba. In the valley they find a
roaring dinosaur and four dark people who are sacrificed to it (the woman is blonde and has
lighter skin) believing in the divinity of the dinosaurs. They kill the dinosaur and save the
savages who think they are gods. They let the savages live in their makeshift camp for some
time learning their language. They play part in the political turmoil in the Teeheemen society
as there are those who refuse to admit the divinity of the dinosaurs. The white woman in
the group is kidnapped by the high priest, together with one of the men and a native girl
(who calls the white girl "my white sister) to be taken as his wife while the rest join a rebel
and fight against the king and high priest's men. Eventually they conquer half the capital.
 38

The captives are to be sacrificed and the rest of the party infiltrate at night and kills the high
priest and his bodyguard but are taken to die in a chamber. They blow the chamber and the
rebel's soldiers conquer the palace. As they are about to go into a series of caves that wind
out of the valley the white girl is captured by a huge caveman who is about to rape her in his
stone hut when she is rescued by her friends. The cavemen are slaughtered. They exit the
cave and return home on a steamer. The man who saved the woman marries her.

The Last of the Teeheemen (1925.3-4) (two part serial dog-faced savages and strange beasts)
– The men from the last adventure return to the valley to help a man find his lost daughter
(he saw pictures of the men of teeheemen the heroes took in their last adventure and
recognizes the clothes as the ones of the men who kidnapped his daughter in the jungle four
years ago). They find the city deserted with dog-faced men enslaving the remaining
populations. They find out that a cannibal tribe of dog-faced men enslaved the people of the
valley and made them like cattle for their cannibalistic tendencies. The men rescue the
leader of the valley and together they rescue all the people from captivity, killing hundreds
of the dog-faced savages with the help of the "white gods". Meanwhile one of the party
tracks the daughter who has been enslaved by the king of the savages but the last dinosaur
(the teeheemen) attacks them. He kills it but loses his way in the jungle. The two are
captured by the cannibals. The cannibals besiege the city of Teeheemen. The defenders use
bombs and guns and arrows to kill thousands of the cannibals but they keep swarming. A
small group rescues the two captives and after killing more of the cannibals everyone
retreats from the valley, exploding the cave entrance to the valley. The cannibals are
trapped in the valley while the Teeheemen live in the outside caves and go out to the world
outside. The two captives (the lost daughter and one of the original group) marry.

The White Queen of the Coroloans (1925.7-8) (Two-part Serial of strange adventures in
Africa – two part serial) – Two American adventurers are shipwrecked in an African beach.
They find two beautiful. Lean and muscular white women and one black man who are in
hiding. The two girls are sisters of a white man who ruled the people of the Coroloans and
the black man is one of their household. The eldest was queen of the people but was
deposed by a fat, black, evil queen. They are captured after three weeks in which the
Americans miraculously learn the language of these people (their language is barbaric so
they learn it fast though the sentences they hear are not simple at all except a weird
omission of "I", just like the story of the Teeheemen where the savages make very complex
sentences but, for some reason, speak of themselves in the third body). The fat queen
tortures the former queen but let her survive so that she will fight in the arena of the tribe
against leopards and lions. For some reason they leave the guns with the Americans. The
odd rule of fighting in the arena is that anyone who wants to help those inside can do so and
with any weapon of their choice. The Americans ask to fight in the arena together with the
two girls and, using their "thunder sticks", easily dispatch the animals. At the same time, a
rival tribe attacks the city. It appears that the evil queen, for some obscure reason, has
ruined her diplomatic relations with the only neighboring tribe by kidnapped many of its
warriors to die in the arena. As the fight goes on, the former queen escapes with her sister
and the American through some tunnels leaving many bodies of her former subjects behind
(for some reason she does not recognize any of her people and treats them like garbage).
She unites with the king of the rival tribe with whom she has a far better relationship than
the one she has with her own people. The Americans order the queen to hide in the
 39

dangerous jungle while they, the men whom she barely knows, will fight with their "thunder
sticks" with the army of the rival tribe against her own people. The queen demurs to this
stupid proposition. The battle ends with the loss of the Coroloans with their black queen
wounded and hiding behind their walls. Unsurprisingly the girls are nowhere to be found in
the dangerous jungle where they were left. The girls are kidnapped by the queen's men.
Instead of killing them immediately she intends, again,to let them fight with animals in the
arena (it is unclear why the queen, whose city is under siege, does not run or plan anything
to save herself or the city and only cares about the girls dying by leopards in the arena). The
"white males" understand that the girls were kidnapped into the city. They join forces with
the besieging army and enter the secret passage (For some obscure reason the kidnappers,
who entered through the same passage and knew the "white males" passed through it with
the girls, believe that the white men will never find the passage again if they put some
leaves on it). Slowly they slaughter the Corolans until they reach the girls and save them
from the leopards. The girls show the men some diaries left by their parents in which, it is
foreclosed, that the girls are rich Americans. They decide to leave their people, whom they
hate, and live with the men with whom they fall in love ("the white males will save us").

The Last of the Mayas (1929.6-7) (a two part serial of weird adventures in Yucutan, a strange
native tribe, and strange animals) – Just like Thatcher's other stories – two white men and a
white woman are lost in some South American jungle. They are captured by brutish natives
who are ruled by a white queen in a city built by ancient white people (because non-whites
could never build stone cities no?). These people are threatened by huge gorillas that rape
and kill their women and kill their men. After using their "boom-sticks" they impress the
natives and they teach them their language which they catch in less than a month (like
Thatcher's other stupid stories). The natives, for some reason, use pronouns but don't have
an "I" (just like Thatcher's other stories). The queen (as always) falls in love with the big,
muscular white man (the other white girl is in love with the other member of the group). A
huge native that looks like these gorillas and is the queen's bodyguard is jealous and so plots
to kill the queen and the white men and rule instead. He opens the door for the migrating,
crazy gorillas, and they kidnap the naked queen and the other white girl. The white girl kills
the gorilla with her boom stick and the queen is saved by the muscular man. (there is some
scene where the narrator subtly chastises the white girl for wanting to dress and the queen
for boldly walking naked in the jungle after the man sees her). They learn that while they
saved the girls the gorilla-like bodyguard has seized the throne. They enlist some loyal
guards and friendly neighbors with huge mammoth creatures (how the hell did such a huge
place is not noticed by all the expeditions) to destroy the city and make the gorilla-chief run
away. Somehow the two white girls are captured (as in every Thatcher story – a siege, a
kidnapping and so on). They are taken by the gorilla-man to get forced marry so that he
could fuck them (it is very curious that even in such a stupid story the etiquette of the U.S.
prevails even in barbaric tribes of gorilla-man in the jungle). The muscular American
challenges the gorilla man to a duel with sword and defeats him – the latter plunging to his
death. The queen marries to muscular American and the two other Americans leave to get
married back home.

August Derleth

Bat's Belfry (1926.5) (Gruesome was the discovery Sir Harry Barclay made in the vaults of
Lohrville Manor, and fearful was the doom that overtook them) – a man who dabbles in
sorcery enters with his two mates into a haunted house with many "Weird" books. There the
 40

three find a basement that holds an evil baronet who is also a vampire. Four girls accompany
that evil master and they seduce the men at night and suck the life out of them. Two of the
friends run mad from the house but the third stays and tries to fight the vampires. He fails
because he worships Satan and must invoke God. Aside from the clumsy plot the story uses
Stoker's Dracula as influence. The inclusion of certain books help create a Weird library.

The Elixir of Life (with Marc R. Schorer) (1926.7) one ingredient was needed to compound
the potion which should restore the duke's health – and terribly did the duke pay) an Italian
duke asks an alchemist to give him some elixir. The alchemist says he is missing a final
ingredient – the life blood of a child. The duke asks the alchemist's servant to kill some boy
from the street and bring it. While the duke leaves the servant returns with the body of a
boy and alchemist takes his blood to mix the potion. The duke returns and drinks the potion
muttering something about his son being late from his plays. The alchemist escapes and the
duke uncover the sheet that hangs over the body of the child discovering it to be his son's
body.

The Marmoset (with Marc R. Schorer) (1926.9) (a short tale of Messer Mari the magician, an
intelligent pet monkey, and a poisoned stiletto) –a Florentine duke tries to kill a local
magician. The magician's pet monkey discovers the hidden assassin and the magician fools
the man to think he has subtle poisons to kill him. The assassin escapes but then returns and
kills the magician and his Marmoset.

The Coffin of Lissa (1926.10)( A short tale of the horrors of the Inquisition—a story of
frightful tortures under a coffin-lid) – The story is basically a confused description of a man
being tortured by the Spanish inquisition under Torquemada. He is placed in a coffin and
some things happen to him but it is quite hard to understand what exactly happens – he is
strapped to an open coffin (how strapped? It is a coffin) but he can sit. Rats bite him, but he
is inside the coffin. The coffin lid is slowly placed on the coffin but he cannot see anything as
it is pitch dark. The coffin lid squashes him even though he says it will take hours for the lid
to be placed above him. This confused narrative is terminated with the narrator losing
consciousness and wondering why he is in an insane asylum.

The Night Rider (1927.1) (a short ghost story) – a man in Renaissance Italy hears horse
footsteps at night and wakes a woman (it is unclear if they are married or if she just lives
there or perhaps she is a servant) and tells here to watch the road where the sound comes
from. He sees a silvery rider that looks like his son with a wound in his stomach. The woman
is angry and goes back to sleep. In the morning a messenger comes and tells the man his son
was killed in battle – he was shot in the stomach riding his horse at midnight. The man tells
the woman that they saw a man that looked like his son riding a horse next to his house at
midnight. The woman laughs and tells him she saw nothing last night.

The River (1927.2) (the song of the Volga boatmen rose on the night breeze, foretelling
death and destruction) –a Russian engineer and an English professor build a dam on the
Volga. The local population refuses to help with this endeavor and tells them the ghosts of
exploited Volga-boatmen will stop them. A strange Hunchback tells the engineer that the
Volga spirits will sing tonight. People start dying in mysterious accidents every time the
hunchback comes and says something about the song of the Volga spirits. The engineer
finally stays alone and his house, built on the Volga, is destroyed by the river after he sees
the spirits at night. The engineer dies and his bloated body is found by the hunchback.
 41

The Black Castle (with Marc Shorer) 1927.5 (The shade of Armand Champoy worked on the
count de Chevaux's fears by influencing the count's son – an eery ghost-tale) – the astral
spirit of a dead man possess the hand of a cruel count and writes a threatening note in
which he blames the count for his death and the impoverishment and sufferings of his
family. He tells the count that he will possess his son and will kill him. After some months,
the count suspects his son is possessed by the spirit and kills him. The astral spirit possess his
hand again and tells him he just threatened the count so that he will kill his own son. The
heartbroken count goes to the window and shouts only to be killed by lightning that topples
the tower. A laughter is heard.

The Turret Room (1927.9) (a five-minute ghost-story of the old-fashioned kind – Lord Alving
spends a night in a haunted room of the castle) – an English noble tells another gathering of
nobles about a party he had with other English nobles in which he volunteered to spend a
night in a haunted room of a castle. He is mocked by one the nobles that if he doesn't see a
ghost he will send one up to him. As the night goes on the mocking noble appears and
silently answers some trivial questions with motions. When the noble looks out the window
he sees this noble has gone. In the morning he is told that noble died just before he saw him
at his room.

The Sleepers (1927.12) (a five-minute ghost-story – the passenger was annoyed at finding his
berth occupied by a specter) – a man who sits somewhere with his friend around a fire
(although it is stated that there is a door there – it is very confusing to understand where
they are) tells about an event he experienced. A weird man in conductor clothes also sits
with them but they cannot see his face. He and another man were alone at some train cabin
at night when he saw someone sleeping on his cabin. He calls the conductor and they find
out the man is a ghost. The whole train is filled with ghosts.A weird conductor comes and
disappears. The weird man who sits with them tells them he only wanted to check what was
wrong. Then the ghosts disappear and the current conductor tells the narrator that there
was a crash last year where all the people in that train died. The narrator asks the weird
conductor who sits with them how did he know that the conductor only wanted to check
something as all the passengers died.

Messy Ghost Story – Shitty like all of Derleth's stories.

The Tenant (1928.3) (strange disappearances of children, and the final vanishing of the
scientist himself, gave an unhealthy name to the house) – a friend visits his old pal who
inherited a huge mansion from his missing grandfather. The grandfather was a scientist
whom everyone hated and thought to breed some monster at his mansion feeding children
to it. The butler tells the narrator that he hears voices from the cellar and when they
investigate it they see a new wall, they break the wall and see black goo al around it. That
night the butler is taken by a slimy gooish creature and the two friends run outside. Almost
the same like "Ooze".

Riders in the Sky (with Marc R. Schorer) (1928.5) (The archeologist looked too closely upon
the eery rites of that ancient Babylonian temple) – an archeologist and his helper sleep next
to some Babylonian ruin. Their local servants run away. The two find out that at night some
mysterious, formless, tentacled, gooey, aliens come to worship the moon-god. The professor
is hypnotized by them and goes to the sacrificial table. The aliens take him (probably to
space or the moon). Several days later they do the same with the helper.Alien abduction.
 42

The Philosopher’s Stone (1928.6) (A short tale of the Borgias—Messer Orsini was no match
for the guile of the noted poisoners) – another of Derleth's stories about the Borgias. Orciny
– the enemy of the Borgia's gets the Philosopher's Stone and is ordered not to open it until
midnight. He also plans an all-out attack on the Borgias. When the time arrives, he opens the
vial with the stone and breaths some fumes. He reads the message inside the vial which tells
him it was a poisonous gas sent by the Borgias. He dies and the Borgias attack the place by
surprise.

The Three-Storied House (1928.7) (Strangely depressing teas the effect of certain houses on
Johnson, but there v:as a valid reason for this) a man is afraid of three-story houses. When
asked why he tells how he lived on the third floor of such a house. He, and the other
tenants, including the landlord, has never seen the inhabitants of the second floor as they
paid rent for life and never appear on dinners or anytime. Nevertheless, they make a lot of -
noise at night – screaming, sobbing, moving furniture and pounding. When the narrator
decides to check on them after an extremely noisy night he uses his key that miraculously
opens one of the doors – the noise ceases suddenly and the place is completely empty and
dusty from many years of being deserted.

The Owl on the Moor (1928.9) (with Marc R. Schorer) (Strange deaths occurred on the lonely
moor, and terrible was the experience of him who investigated them) – a man who lives on
the moor is fascinated with some woman who lives there alone. Many men are killed on the
moor. When he investigates the house of the girl it is empty with a huge owl who perches
there. When he witnesses a man, who is attacked by an owl on the moor he shoots the owl
and he sees the body of a girl next to the attacked man.

The Conradi Affair (1928.10) (with March R. Schorer) (five-minute story of overdeveloped
microbes and the bizarre fate of a bacteriologist) – a professor creates a huge colony of giant
germs. He feeds them and make them fast (cannibalistically eating each other). They escape
and it him. Then they eat themselves and die.

A lot of Derleth's stories are diary entries.

The Tenant at Number Seven (1928.11) (The ancient Roman medallion was bought by a
strange man who lived at St. John's Wood – a bizarre little ghost-story) – an antiquarian IS
CONFRONTED BY A MAN WHO BEGS HIM TO SELL A Roman medallion for 5 pounds. He
refuses and goes home but the man stalks him. Tomorrow the man returns and the
antiquarian capitulates. He writes the man's name and address and gives him the medallion.
Another man appears 10 minutes later and asks to buy the medallion when the shopkeeper
tells him he sold it to a certain man the new buyer claims that this man sold him the
medallion many years ago for 5 pound and then asked to buy it back but died 5 years ago.
They go to the man's address and find an abandoned house with the medallion and the
man's clothing and glasses (which were on him when he bought the medallion and stalked
the man) but in a very bad state of deterioration.

The Statement of Justin Parker (1928.12) (These African pigmies shot through their blow-
guns clusters of microbes that devoured whatever they touched) – a man meets his friend
who was in Africa for many years and acts erratically. Four years later he finds him extremely
scared in his huge mansion. He tells him that he found a huge diamond in Africa at some
tribe of pigmies that were probably descendants of ancient Egyptians. He steals the
diamond. These pigmies had a special weapon that involved shooting capsules with huge
 43

microbe colonies that devour people in seconds. He suspects he is hunted by them. Several
days later he disappears and the narrator finds a pool with his glasses on it at some
abandoned chapel next to the mansion. He notifies the police to track pigmies who are
about to leave the country but he does not believe they will find the diamond. Concerning
Africans – everything is permitted – you can steal from them as they are not really people.
You will be punished though.

An occurrence in an Antique Shop (1929.1) (a very brief tale about an uncanny obsession,
and the strange death of an antiquary) – a man sees that his antiquarian friend is afraid of
some wood carving. The thing just appeared in his store and he believes the carving, which
depicts a pirate pointing a sword to a sailor, shows the sword entering the body of the sailor
as time goes on (the sword getting more in the chest as time goes on). Sometime later the
antiquarian dies with some strange mark on his chest. The carving's sword is clean but the
point that enters the body is filled with dust (unclear what that fact suppose to mean).

Melodie in E Minor (1929.2) (a very short ghost-tale – Amy played that piece by Rachminoff
until it drove her husband to desperation) – a spiteful woman tortures her once-rich but now
working class husband, as she also must work now, by playing a certain tune over and over
on their piano. The husband kills her but the piano keeps on playing after she dies. The
husband dies suddenly.

The Deserted Garden (1929.3) (He investigated the mysterious death of his predecessor –
and himself fell victim to an elemental spirit) – a man reads about a murder at some
mysterious garden and goes to visit. The place has an ancient tombstone. Asking the hotel
owners in which he sleeps they tell him about the time of year and the fact that Pan and his
bacchanalian minions dance at this time of year (May eve). The man spens the night there
and sees greenish lights, horrible music and Pan. He loses consciousness and his head bumps
the tombstone – he dies. In the morning people arrive to see his body with a Pan flute in his
hands and many hoof-prints around his body. It is interesting to note that the same issue
had a story about Pan (Whitehead's "People of Pan") and May-eve (Harlow's "May Dew").

A Dinner at Imola (1929.4) (Abandoning poison for once Caesar Borgia took an unusual way
to rid himself of an enemy) – Machiavelli is invited to dinner with the Borgia and the duke
uses some magical candles to show everyone he can burn to death every rebellious lordling.

The House on the Highway (1929.6) (a strange little story is this – a five minute tale by a
popular Weird Tales author) – two travelers whose car broke down enter a decrepit house
on the road inhabited by an old man who tells them his daughter left him 7 years ago and
that they can sleep ain the house as he has many visitors – his dead wife, sister and parents.
The two think the dying old man is crazy and go to sleep but hear many visitors at night. As
day breaks they fail to find the man and going to a nearby house they find out the owner of
that house is the daughter and that her father is dead for seven years.

Old Mark (1929.8) (a strange lifeless creature loped across the moors – a tale of old Roman
ruins in England) – an archeologist uncovers the sealed vase of a Roman-era wizard's familiar
in a Briton ruin. The familiar kills him and the protagonist, another archeologist, finds out
what happens. With the help of some priest they kill the creature with some blessed cross
but not before the creature kills another curious man. Tries to be Lovecraftian but the
religious themes mar it.
 44

Scarlatti's Bottle (1929.11) (a brief story of poison and medieval revenge, in the days of the
Borgias – a grim little tale) – another of Derleth's Borgia stories. An Italian, renaissance duke
angers a local sorcerer who forces him to carry a bottle with a note in it but which he cannot
open. The curiosity-crazed duke opens the bottle and fights with some invisible creature and
dies. The note says that an imp was imprisoned there and that the duke would probably
hate to free it.

The Inheritors (1929.12) (a brief story about a ghastly curse that struck on a certain day in
each year) – a man is invited by his friend to his huge mansion. There is a curse in the
mansion that everyone who stays in it at a certain date is killed. It is the result of some curse
by a man betrayed by his wife and friend. The current owner thinks he is not the last
descendant of that line but he actually is and so when the clock chimes he dies and the curse
is lifted.

A Matter of Sight (1930.1) (a curious story about a man who possessed strange vision that
was not hampered by vision) – the narrator meets a strange man on a cross-European train.
The man tells him he can go the fourth dimension and see the past and the future. He tells
him about many historical incidents. He tells the narrator he was tortured by the Boxers in
China and so got his vision. When the narrator leaves the train the man removes his glasses
and the narrator sees he has no eyes.

The Lilac Bush (1930.2) (a very brief tale – the children were unjustly blamed for the picking
of Lilacs) – two children tell their mother that man takes flowers from their lilac bush their
late-grandfather had planted. The woman finds no such man and is angry with the kids. On
the way home, some days later, she sees the same flowers on her father's grave. She
imagines herself putting them there when she was young. I think the story tries to say that
her father's ghost had put them there?

(The Pacer) (With Marc R. Schorer) (1930.3) (Day after day that maddening pacing went on,
and the man who investigated it blundered into grisly horror) – a man rents a haunted
house. The house was inhabited by some scientist who managed to capture souls and place
them in some bodies. He died in a mysterious way and everyone who opens the door of one
room in the second floor dies. The man hears voices from the second floor and decides to
open it. Before doing so he reads a fragment of the scientist's diary in which he finds out
they scientist may have captured a soul of an evil cosmic, inhuman, entity. The man opens
the door and sees some shade that chases him around the house. He locks the door but the
creature opens it. The police finds his body the next day. (If the creature is so powerful why
did it pace the room upstairs as if trapped – this powerful entity cannot open doors? It later
opened the locked door of the room in which the protagonist hid – it makes no bloody
sense)

The Portrait (1930.4) (a brief weird tale of medieval times and the use of black magic to
destroy an enemy) – again, Derleth writes about Renaissance Italy where the dukes try to kill
each other. This time it is a duke who buys a portrait of his enemy. He gives it to a local
wizard who kills the enemy with the painting. The painting starts to change as it frowns and
its eyes follow the duke. The wizard told him that if the killed enemy would know that he
died because of him the painting will haunt him. The duke becomes deranged and decides to
destroy the painting with a knife. They find his body in the morning stabbed all over. The
painting is ruined but its mouth can be seen – it is grinning.
 45

The Whistler (1930.5) (Who was it whose eery whistle came out of the darkness there on the
African veldt?) – some Englishmen are besieged in an African jungle by a witch doctor and
his hordes. One of the scouts disappears and the captain and some men go searching. They
hear his whistles in the dark but the captain orders them to shoot the bushes where the
voices come from. They shoot and see the body of the witch doctor. They also find the
bleached skull of their missing friend.

Across the Hall (1930.6) (brief and pathetic little tale is this, about a girl who could not finish
writing her letter) – a typical American ghost story of some tenant who writes a story only to
be disturbed by a girl from the across the hall who asks for ink. In the morning he questions
about the girl and finds out there is no such girl and that the room has been empty for many
years its girl tenant committed suicide after writing a letter begging her lover for money. The
narrator finds the letter and sees some strange symbols that follow the old letter and which
were recently made.

"Just a Song at Twilight" (1930.8) (the notes of the old familiar tune came floating eerily
through the somber darkness of the house) – a family adopts a boy who just appears, alone,
at their doorstep when he is five. After some years the boy is dying and a strange singing
voice is heard. The boy is revealed to be the reincarnation of the dead son of the family who
lived in the house before they died of a broken heart. The woman's voice is his mother's
ghost. The boy dies and he goes with his mother.

B.Wallis

John Caroll, Legionary of Rome (1924.11) (Do You Believe A memory can be inherited? Read
this startling tale) – a man sleeps in England only to vividly re-experience his previous life as
a Roman legionary. He falls in love with a prisoner who is about to get tortured. Murdering
many of his comrades he escapes to the mountains with the girl. The two commit suicide
after their escape is blocked. The man awakens only to hear screams of help he saves a girl
who is about to fall from a cliff finding out it is the girl he saved as a Roman soldier. She
vaguely remembers him from her previous life.

The Whistling Monsters (1926.8) (Frightful beasts that were neither flesh nor fish, neither
bird nor reptile, but combined the hideous qualities of all four) – a young college graduate
and a simpleton cowboy middle-aged search for gold in South America. They do not like
each other and constantly disagree and ridicule one another. They are kidnapped by weird
Indians and are tied together and lowered into a dark ravine with an ominous pool in it. The
two manage to cut the ropes but an army of octopus, jelly, rubber-like creatures descend on
them and they barely manage to escape with one saving the other and vice versa. The scare
the Indians who kidnapped them and manage to get back to civilization. The rocks they used
to fight the monsters are still with them and they find out they are precious ores for nuclear
fission. They become rich. And decide to go back with an expedition to kill the creatures.

Fly Island (1927.8) (gigantic insects flashed through the air and stung to death all men or
animals that approached their lair) – two castaways find an island. They find Ambergris on
the island next to the body of some white man (he has a "white man's skull"). After
calculating that the thing is worth 2000 dollars they discover a nest of huge hornet-fly-like
feet long insects that almost kill them. They decide to split with one baiting the swarm while
the othersneaking into their boat. They decide to meet at sunset when the insects are less
 46

active. The man on the boat gets panicked at night when the insects start buzzing and he
does not stop as his friend tries to swim to him. The friend on the boat is swarmed and
killed. The other man desperately returns to the island. He is saved by a hurricane that
sweeps the flies. He returns to the boat and sails on.

The Flying Death (1928.11) (a dread monster comes from the sky, and the horror of its
coming robs mankind of its age-old sense of security) – a huge floating monster, that looks
like a cloudy sinewy blob, terrorizes some seaside American town. It smothers its victims,
sucks their blood and then flies with its victims and hurls them many meters down. An artist
and a paleontologist are attacked by the monster but manage to wound it and it escapes.
From its remains some scientists assume it comes from the Pacific and it represents a
species of unknown horrors that prey on mankind as an apex predator. I liked the way the
story ends without exterminating the creature – it is still here.

Winged Vengeance (1929.9) (Little scarlet flies whipped through the air, and where they
struck life was wiped out, and death and terror stalked) – a stupid story about a Philippine
with Spanish blood who decides to kill the son of the man who disposed his family (the story
treats the American colonization of the Philippines as a blessing for the place's people). He
gives the son a parcel with red flies that instantly put the man, his wife and his friend in
terrible pain and then in a coma from which he is suppose to die in 24 hours. For some
unclear reason and foolish plot device the avenger decides to play a game with the
protagonist (another friend of the son who witnesses all that happens to his friends) in
which he should guess who he is (how the hell should the protagonist know who this nobody
is) and then he will give him some antidote. The protagonist refuses and tries to find a
doctor. This causes the evil man to come with the antidote, dressed like a woman and
threaten the protagonist (why? He said that only he knows the antidote! Why should he
come all this way to thwart HIS OWN PLOT? IT IS SO STUPID). Together with a house-maid
the two manage to pin down the man and two killer flies bite him. Upon dying he tells them
how to use the antidote if they use it on him. They do so and revive their friends but the evil
guy becomes derange for some reason and is taken to the loony bin. As stupid a story as one
can get.

Bassett Morgan

Laocoon (1926.7)(weird surgery- great sea dragons- the fate of chuengching the leper- and
the dread that fell upon Willoughby) – an intern is offered a job at some far away island. He
reaches the island to find his professor, who is searching for mythical sea dragons (and
ridiculed by the academy for it) thin, haggard and in a hurry to feed the previous assistant.
The intern reads the diary of the professor to find out he managed to find a sea dragon and
also implanted his assistant brain inside the dragon after the former discovered he is a leper
and his body will soon crumble. The Chinese assistant seemed happy at first and things went
on smoothly until he became more beast than human, finally finding a female sea dragon
mate and became aggressive to the professor. The assistant thinks the professor wants to
perform the same surgery on him. He runs to find the professor but only manages to see him
pleads with his former assistant to help him lure another sea dragon so that they can
implant his (the professor's) brain inside it so that he could search the fathoms of he ocean.
The former-assistant-now-sea-dragon eats him instead. The intern runs from the island with
the servants.
 47

The Head (1927.2) (a weird and terrible tale of horror and surgery in the jungle wilderness,
by the author of "Laocoon") – two anthropologists live in the jungles of the West indies to
study some tribe. One of them hooks with a local "brown" girl that the local chieftain-
magician wants. The chieftain invites the man into some fishing trip in which he kills and
decapitates the man. His friend is constantly harassed by his friend's lover to avenge her
lover's death. When the man refuses to do so she sends her pet monkey to steal the
decapitated head that is now a trophy to the chieftain. The enraged chieftain comes with
some black warriors but the brown girl shoots him and the rest flee. The chieftain is still alive
and the girl is about to kill him but the friend prevents her from doing so. In some unclear
turn of events the girl is stabbed to death by her struggle with the friend to kill the chieftain.
The friend becomes insane for many hours and as he returns to his senses he sees that he
performed so bizarre surgery on both bodies. The girl is dead but the chieftain is alive. The
chieftain regains consciousness and pets the monkey. When the warriors return he tells
them not to harm the friend. The friend finds out that he did a brain transplant (with a knife,
a candle, and in very few hours) and that the girl's brain is inside the body of the chieftain.
The friend leaves this accursed place after he is nursed to health by the chieftain. The friend
does not know if the girl's brain will win or the chieftain's body for the personality of the
chieftain.

Gray Ghouls (1927.7) (a creepy weird tale of the South Seas, giant apes and eery murders – a
startling story of surgery) – an American tracks a white man who gone rogue in Papua. He
believes him to help the local trade of shrunken heads by killing whites. When he gets to him
he finds a Kurtz like white-lord who lords over his natives, marrying their less-black girls. The
narrator finds out the man married an half-white native who tried to kill him. He did a brain-
transplant on her, after a pet ape killed her. He moved her brain to the orang-utang.
Whenever he tried to marry other locals the ape-woman killed them and he did another
brain transplant on other apes. The apes held him prisoner and force him to stay and rule
the savages. The narrator offers his help, though he really wants to escape and leave him
there. When a local tribe attacks the ape-guarded place the apes join forces with the natives
to kill the invaders. The two white men run for it while the attack is on and the fat white lord
tries to take his current infatuation. As they reach the boat they find out the apes have
destroyed part of it. The ape-woman returns and kills the girl. The locals try to stop the
white men as they know thee apes will tear them apart if he leaves. After shooting their
bullets at the ape woman she grabs the white lord and dies with him as she drowns. The
protagonist grows a little insane and returns to his own domain in New-Guinea.

Heart of Darkness Sick… Rather cool when you think about it. Colonialism and Horror

The Wolf-Woman (1927.9) (they dug her out of a glacier, this golden-haired vampire of the
North, and she called the white wolves her bidding) – a group scientists have discovered a
way to revive frozen animals and spread through the North pole to find the body of a fellow
scientist and some other frozen people. They find a local Indian who carves a beautiful
woman statue and when asked about it he points them to some frozen cave. They find a
frozen, naked, and beautiful woman surrounded by extinct white wolves. They unfreeze
them by chiseling, warming and injecting some serum unto them. The wolves become active
and are leashed and the woman, though silent, manages to enthrall one of the scientists and
drinks his blood completely. She then waltzes around, flying above the Ice and frees her
wolves. Then she goes on a rampage of killing – massacring all the scientist groups with her
wolves. One of the scientists, with the aid of some half-breed who acts as his helper,
 48

barricades himself in some cabin with holy symbols. Although he was tasted by the woman
and yearns to come to her he is leashed to the cabin by the helper who uses religious and
magical wards to save his master. They manage to get one of the helpers to sneak and warn
the other scientist parties. They manage to group to one of these parties and this party
makes camp, with all the magical symbols and protections, above a frozen mammoth. They
unfreeze the mammoth (even though they are besieged daily by this invincible witch and her
wolves – they have time apparently) and when the mammoth becomes alive again it breaks
from the camp and escapes only to be controlled by the witch. The Indian who joins the
group carves another statue of the woman but when the protagonist begs to pay all of his
money to have this statue the man refuses. The witch manages to enthrall one of the
scientists and he becomes her slave. She drinks all his blood and, riding the mammoth, is
about to kill all the men of the expedition when the mammoth accidently steps on the
carved statue of his mistress. She disappears and the animals escape.

The Devils of Po Sung (1927.12) (a creepy, powerful tale of brain transplantation – a pirate
story of the South Seas) – an American pearl-trader has his ship wrecked by some insane-
black-magic-Chinese-scientist-pirate. He is stranded on a Papuan shore ruled by an evil
sorcerer. The sorcerer tortures some native girls and is convinced to let the white man do his
technological magic (dynamite) to stop the pirate as he encroaches on the sorcerers
territory. Taking the girl while the sorcerer and his tribe of cannibals sleep after drinking
heavily he sails along the river with a little boat to face the pirate. After seeing a talking
crocodile and two talking apes (revealed to be former people) he reaches a wall of man-
eating orchids that almost kills him. He manages to blow the huge wall of death-flowers and
finds himself at the beautiful, but depraved kingdom of the Chinese pirate. The domineering,
and insane, pirate tells him about his scientific prowess and how he cultivated man-eating
orchids from the bodies of his victims. He also tells him how he transplanted brains from
human to animal. He then leaves the protagonist in his domain while the latter finds out he
is slowly drugged by Opium in his food for a future brain-transplant to some little monkey.
The girl he took with him is also brain-transplanted to some ape. He manages to stop the
surgeon who is about to sedate him. He sees the ship of the pirate returning. He tries to
commit suicide but just before doing that he sees that man-now-apes and the man-now-
crocodile wreaking havoc and killing everyone on land. The ape-girl saves him before
confronting the pirate and tearing him apart. The protagonist manages to escape to the
sorcerer lands where he is received as a hero and granted a box filled with huge pearls.

The Skeleton Under the Lamp (1928.5) (Unspeakable orgies took place under the blazing
eyes of the Skeleton under the Lamp—a weird tale of hypnosis) – a recently released convict
and his black friend from jail fail to find work. They go to live with some evil and mysterious,
rich extremely emaciated-old-man who promises them to live in abundance if they become
his servants. They clean the place and cook and find out the place is beautiful and filled with
food. Nevertheless, the released prisoner gets some glimpses of poverty and lack of food.
After his friend and he collapse they are fed by a benign doctor who lives nearby and who
tells the protagonist how many people die of hunger at this place. The protagonist also
witnesses demons (male and female) masquerading in the house at certain nights dancing
and doing some BDSM sessions. A local girl is also hired as help and unwillingly hypnotized
to participate in the orgies in which the old man abuses her. Somehow the protagonist
manages to convince the girl's fiancée to leave the place and he and the black friend also
manage to escape. The old man, meanwhile, keep on painting his own portraits an hang
them around the house, laughing manically After three years the protagonist learns how the
 49

girl and her now-husband return to the house as the old man died and inherited the house
to the couple. The protagonist returns to the house as helper and finds out the girl is abused
by demons and the spirit of the old man that haunts the house through the paintings. He
participates in a huge BDSM orgy with the girl, the demons and the spirit of the old man (the
husband works most of the time and is absent). He decides to burn the house and remove
the evil influence it has on the hypnotized girl. He is arrested after burning the house and is
about to get a long time in prison. He hopes the benign doctor will save him.

Bimini (1929.1) (Captain Elk, incredibly aged, persuaded Commander Crayne to take him to
that basin of immortality in the North) – a very garbled and weird story about a 160-year-old
man who was (I think, it is very hard to understand the garbled plot) killed by an angry mob
who tried to rape a girl he smuggled on board but he and his girlfriend are taken by women
ghosts in the Aurora Borealis of whom his mother is one and given everlasting-life by the use
of radium (???). He organizes an expedition, as a rich man, to get back to the place he was
taken – a hole in the North Pole from which the Aurora emanates (and for some reason
nobody knows this huge geologic phenomenon). For some reason he wants to get there by
plane. The expedition's commander refuses to let him near the thing on the plane but seems
content when he ruses to the crater's edge and is approached by some huge radium nymph.
For some reason the captain refuses people to get near the crater even though he didn't
seem to care at first. One of the men runs to it to get immortality and get rich. The rest run
to save him but (there the plot begins to become even more unclear) then they are
approached by the huge nymphs who take two of them (the rich old guy and another), give
eternal life to the rest and some pieces of radium to make them rich. The plane crashes
when they return home and just three remain with immortality (one of them is black) and
white hair. Everywhere they go bad things happen but they remain alive. They seem content
with that.

Demon Doom of N'Yeng Sen (1929.8) (The author of the "Devils of Po Sung" returns to the
South Seas for another gripping tale of brain-transplantation) – the same protagonist from
"The Devils of Po Sung" is now a ship's captain who, with some Chinese surgeon and black
Malayan crew, help three Europeans to get human skin from Papua. They are attacked by
pirates and the captain's hand is severed only to get a new hand by the surgeon. This hand,
according to the Chinese, is the key to get the allegiance from some monks at the jungle
(what is this hand? Why did the Chinaman needed to transplant it into the captain's? How
did he get that hand? Unclear, Morgan's narrative jumps from place to place so rapidly and
nonchalantly that it is really hard to follow the logic of the plot). After going to some natives
the skin poachers flay a bronze girl alive for some reason. They are kidnapped by monkeys
(one of them is the mugger whose brain got transplanted in monkey from the previous
story, the other –a crocodile once robber and others who were natives and now nhabit
monkey bodies). They also take the three poachers. The Chinese surgeon agrees to switch
the creature's brains with that of the captured poachers. They arrive to the temple and
many apes attack them but become subservient when they see the transplanted hand.
Inside they visit the monks who punish the three poachers by taking their brains and putting
it into the apes. The flayed girl also gets a body (of one of the man). The captain gets many
pearls and Spa-treatment as a reward for all the horrors he witnessed. It is very hard to find
an overall generic style for Morgan. His stories are usually filled with Indochinese settings
and organ transplants but also European explorers at frozen places and the supernatural ,
dangerous entities (usually women) they meet there.
 50

Bertram Russel

The Bat-Men of Thorium (1928.5-7) (Three-part serial story of a giant submarine and a
strange land under the ocean bed) – three guys (the narrator captain, a scientist and a
Cockney seaman) go on a new, amazing submarine that can get to immense depths. They
are somehow sucked by a whirlpool and some giant octopus into an underground world
ruled by darkness and silence. They manage to find a lit place (greenish light that comes
from hell knows where) with a white forest filled with big white, violent0but-silent, animals.
They also find civilization of silent extremely ancient, white-men who communicate by
telepathy and can fly. They have also perfected science and can live forever. They find out
that the air in this world is artificially produced by some huge machine. The beautiful
daughter of these people leader is abducted by greenish ape-like creatures who live in the
darker side of this world in savage huts. They also kidnap the scientist who made the
protagonist's submarine They also torture the leader's son. The flying people decide to go to
war and annihilate the brutes. The narrator and his Cockney friend go in the submarine to
blast the brutes as the flying people gather to attack them from above. They manage to free
the girl, who saves the man by flying him over, but fail to save the professor. They return
again to save the professor but their weapons make the underworld burn thus making the
air system fail and the world to die. Everyone dies, including the flying-men but the three
manage to stay alive with the breathing apparatus they have on the submarine. The
protagonist says a final goodbye to the beautiful flying woman he saved and they share a
final kiss (on his helmet) before she covers herself with her wings and die. The crawl
upwards the breathing-machine long shaft and after many days of hard climbing they reach
a cave in an almost abandoned Japanese-controlled island in Polynesia.

The Scourge of B'moth (A sinister conspiracy against the rule of man, and the up-rising of the
entire animal kingdom) – a Lovecraftian story about a psychologist who witnesses strange
feelings of destruction and chaos and sees his psychiatrist friend going insane. His patient is
also a mad person who worships the master and destruction before dying and his water-
glass glowing. Another black man worships this master, B'moth, and tries to kill himself.
Around the world many cults are revealed who worship this creature. The protagonist learns
that the entity is Behemoth (he was to dumb to understand that) – an uncaring power that
wishes to revert civilization into the watery, moist violence of primal life. The protagonist is
helped by an occultist and a detective and they witness a cult that has sex with many people
and animals and then starts eating each other, fighting and sacrificing people to some
alligators. After killing some of the cultists and escaping the detective is killed by his dog.
They learn about an onslaught of all the sea monsters and wild animals and warn the
governments. The governments use its armies to kill the marauding creatures and after
killing most of the wild animals on the planet everything is A. O.K. Feels like a Lovecraftian
Video Game.

Charles Hilan Craig

Damned (1925.5) (bitter woe was the math of this Russian peasant's crime) (the story of an
evil mistake) – a poor Russian peasant wants to get his beautiful daughter to America. He
decides to murder a rich traveler and his daughter and steal their money. He manages to kill
the man but the girl escapes. He finds no money on the man and deduces the girl has it. As
he returns home he finds out the girl escaped to his house and his wife fed her and told her
to sleep next to his daughter. The man decides to kill her in her sleep and steal the money.
At night he mistakenly kills his daughter. The girl escaped earlier that night and swapped
 51

places with the man's daughter, even giving her crucifix only later to go to town and call the
soldiers. The soldiers arrive at the house and find the man laughing maniacally.

Darkness (1925.9) (terror seized this man when he found he could no longer see) (fate
laughed harshly at this victim of the power that lies in suggestion) –a boy fears blindness as
his father was hurt in an explosion and lost his eyesight. A gypsy curses him that he will be
blind and then die after he blinds her horse accidently. All his life he is afraid for his eyes and
tries to prevent any event that will make him blind. At 19 he goes to hike with friends and
staying alone at the cabin at night he sees shadows that go for his eyes. He drinks from A
BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL AND GOES TO SLEEP. He wakes up and hears the clock rings 07:00. He
sees nothing, not even the lamp on his bedside or the flashlight's light. He assumes he drank
bad alcohol that made him blind and so he kills himself. It is revealed that the clock is late,
the lamp went down and flashlight's battery is empty. Thus, the Gypsy was right- he was
blind to the fact he was not blind and then he died.

Stealers of Souls (1926.1) (complete novelette – eery revenge Rolf Jaeke, the hunchback) – a
crazy, villainous, hunchback is sentenced to death after brutally killing a boy (and some
animals) for experimental reasons(he tries to capture their souls). The hunchback curses all
the jury and the judge. In his prison cell he uses his psychic ability to control the minds of his
victims and so frames for murder, kills, maims and makes crazy all of those who sent him to
prison. The son of the judge witnesses his father killing himself and so kills the hunchback in
cold blood. He is not framed for this murder.

The Curse (1926.3) (Egyptian Story of Reincarnation) –an American Egyptologist is engrossed
in his work in Egypt after he accidently killed his loved one. He is a shade of himself. With the
help of his Arab guide he finds a lost tomb of a cursed princess in the desert. He goes alone
and finds out the princess was killed by her lover after her father found out their love story
(the lover was a lowly army man). The pharaoh made a ballot and the soldier had to kill his
loved princess. Nevertheless, the princess cursed the soldier that he will forever kill her in
her many reincarnations and will kill himself afterwards. The walls start to close around him
as he sees the face of his loved girl in the face of the mummy. He wakes up and sees the
mummy went outside the tomb with a dagger in her chest. He runs outside to the desert
mad. Again, a story of Egyptian reincarnation with a princess and her lover…

The Ruler of destiny (1927.4) (a master scientist seeks to destroy the world with a deadly gas
that kills every living thing it touches) – an evil scientist invents poisonous gas that keeps on
fuming, ad infinitum. The world is on the brink of a world war (in an imaginary 1933 future)
and when the airplanes of the enemy arrive he suggests to the government that they will
give him leadership if he manages to kill the army of the enemies. As they refuse he gets into
a anti-gas bubble and uses the gas to kill all the enemies and his own country. As they still
refuse to bend to his will he kills them all and starts killing the rest of the world. When the
world is almost dead the nations stop fighting and capitulate to his demands but he does not
manage to stop the gas from pouring thus killing all the people, animals and plants in the
world and eventually himself as he tries to commit suicide but only fails although the bubble
eventually fails and he dies too.

The Gray Rider (1927.11) (speed, more speed, was Lear's utmost desire, and he could not
bear it when the Gray Rider passed him) – a car racer is the best in the business. He always
wins until one gray Rider manages to pass him one time. Agitated he faces the racer and
decides to beat him. Even though no one else can see the Rider or confirm his existence the
 52

man decides to drive faster and faster in the next race as the Rider hounds his tail. He loses
and his car crashes after finishing. He awakes in the hospital and is told he won. He tells
them that the Gray Rider has beat him. His manager tells him there is no Gray Rider. The
racer sees the rider next to his manager, screams that he is there, the manager sees no one
and the racer dies.

The Man who Walked Upon the Air (1930.7) (The aviator had a weird experience, and on its
heels followed realization of the truth) – an aviator obsessed with flying and walking the air,
after watching some magic trick as a child, finds his airplane destroyed and his parachute
disfunctioning. He manages to will himself to fly around and comes safely to the ground. He
later finds out in a newspaper that he is actually dead. Hilan-Craig's stories are ghost stories
with some twist or some "unusual" stories without "supernatural" element. They seem
much in tune with the first incarnation of the magazine.

Clark Ashton Smith

A Fable (1927.8) (Verse) – a fisherman will find some jars with demons in them that the
ocean will reveal. All the ancient wonders of the world, and Atlantis, will reemerge as a
result of this.

Interrogation (1927.9) (verse) – a lover asks his loved if she\he knows about the power and
triumph of nothingness and Death inherent in the cosmos and within our psyche and our
own bodies.

The Saturnine (1927.12) (verse – unlike other poems in the magazine it has a nice borderline
and some art attached) – a poem about a dark fantasy land, ruled by a mysterious queen, in
Saturn. The poem reminds me of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories in their style and imagery)

The Ninth Skeleton (1928.9) (a bizarre and fantastic tale, about the procession of nine grisly
skeletons that horrified the dreamy lover) – a man is lost in the woods as he is about to meet
his lover. He sees huge cairns with skeletons who carry skeleton infants. He is led to believe
he is to be buried with them. He wakes up and sees his girlfriend above him telling him he
fell asleep.

Warning (1928.10) (verse) – a drug-like voice of "the fen" make people go to it. Those people
get into the dead hands of these creatures in the swamp and are killed.

Sonnet (1929.4) (verse) – a poem about an empress who wants to see some monsters
because of some lost love.

Nyctalops (1929.10) (verse) – a poem in which the speaker asks the reader who can
somehow see in the dark what he sees – night spirits, dust of life (dead people?), nightmares
and black suns that illuminate everything.

The Nightmare Tarn (1929.11) (verse) – in a dying world of ash the speaker juxtaposes the
dying world to his own entombment and his inability to save his crying love from horrible
monsters.

Fantaisie d'Antan (1929.12) (Verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – the usual Smithean poem
– a bizarre landscape with dreamy-space setting in which many mythological creatures come
and parade and fuck.
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Ougabalys (1930.1) (verse) – a poem about a king who ruled some mysterious land with
diamonds and weird shit. The kingdom is now underwater with only slimy sea creatures to
adore its splendors.

Shadows (1930.2) (verse) – a poem about shadows that pass through Eerie Fantasy settings
and strange planets.

The End of the Story (1930.5) (a strange tale about a lamia who dwelt beneath the ruins of
the castle of Faussesflammes) – In the imaginary late 18 th century French province of
Averoigne the protagonist is lost in a storm and goes to some lone monastery. The friendly
monk there shows him around. In the library he finds a treasure of manuscripts and a
forbidden book. When the monk goes to work the next day the protagonist sneaks into the
library and reads the forbidden folio which tells about a fairy land beneath some nearby
castle. The protagonist hikes to this castle and underground and the disgusting fungus-filled
caverns become a beautiful fantasy land. The beautiful queen of this place invites him to
dinner and has sex with him. In the morning the monk comes to this land and banishes the
queen with some scripture. The place reverts back to the disgusting underground tunel that
it is. The man is told it was an illusion of some vampire spirit. Nevertheless, like the man who
wrote the folio, the protagonist vows to return.

The Last Incantation (1930.6) (A poetic and fanciful tale about a king who invoked the aid

of magic to summon his lost love) – a dark fantasy about the same land described in
"Ougabalys" in which a decadent, ancient sorcerer tries to reanimate his long lost love. He
fails because his heart is that of an old man and not the young heart of a lover. A serious
approach to the future style of Vance – a decadent world with dark fantasy elements.

Sadastor (1930.7) (A prose poem of unutterable beauty – an interplanetary story that is

different from any you have ever read) – a poetic short tale about a demon that consoles a
heart-broken lamia in ancient Egypt. He tells her of his journeys as a young demon and how
he found a dead planet in a far away galaxy in which all the oceans were dead. He finds a last
pool of the last ocean with a dying siren within. She tells him how she must die with the
planet's oceans and of her life in them. Dark, Poetic, Fantasy. The site of fantasy is not a
different world but rather a time from the long past or some other planet.

The Phantoms of Fire (1930.9) (Jonas McGillicuddy came back to a flame-swept world as he
turned his steps homeward) – a tramp returns to his family after 3 years of leaving them to
their misery. He finds out the place is all burned but his house intact. He sees his family but
without his son and then a firestorm hits him. When he wakes up he sees the place burned
to the ground while he is intact. He asks a neighbor who tells him his family died in a fire
four days ago and his son was dead for almost a year.

Clyde Burt Clason

Lochinvar Lodge(cover story) (1926.3) (Two men and a Girl Come to Grips With the Thing in
the Castle) –two man and one woman decide to enter an abandoned castle whose owners
mysteriously disappeared many years ago after dancing in a party. The three are soon
trapped inside the castle. The narrator and the girl are separated from the strong, young
man whom they have just met that night. They go the battlements and proclaim their love
for one another. The other man comes back wounded and tells them he has battled a troll.
The fights against the door and a monstrous dwarf grapples him. He manages to throw it
 54

away. The three, stupidly, go to the basement of the castle and battle the dwarf (is it the
same dwarf?) on the edge of a weird pit. The dwarf beats them all and the man loses
consciousness. In the morning the man finds nothing and his girl and the other man are
missing. The narrator tells the story so that people will come and help him search the pit.
Monster Horror with some Fantasy Elements (Troll, Dwarf or some other Norse mythology
creature, the story is filled with allusions to Norse mythology)

C.M. Eddy Jr.

With Weapons of Stone (1924.12) (cavemen primitive love and a saber-tooth) – a prehistoric
girl loves a man in her tribe but a huge, violent man craves her. The man she loves goes to
hunt a sabre-tooth but the big man plans to kill him. As the two fight a sabre-tooth attacks
the big man. The man kills the sabre-tooth after it kills the big man.

Arhl-a of the cave (1925.1) (Zurd the coward – and the love of Arhl-a for Wagh the mighty) –
A prehistoric woman is kidnapped by an ape-like, coward man of the tribe from her
muscular and brave man. She kills her assailant in a cave because he means to rape her.
Meanwhile her man tracks the cave but she is already gone. She is kidnapped by a gorilla
(who also wants to rape her?) and her man fight with the gorilla over her. He cleaves the
gorilla's skull with his stone axe and reunites with his girl.

The better Choice (1925.3) (inventor kills himself to test machine for returning the dead) –An
inventor kills himself and asks his friend to revive him using an invention he created to test
it. After dying he is taken by a psychopomp to see his death by hanging after he kills his
friend twenty years later as his friend betrayed him and ruined his commercial success as an
inventor. He sees his wife and little kids gather around his body in the present with his friend
trying to revive him with the serum. In a last effort he destroys the machine before he is
revived to prevent his horrible death 20 years later and die respectfully now.

Daft, Dumb and Blind (1925.4) (a grisly story of the obscene legions of hell) –a poet comes
back from WWI daft, blind, dumb, and crippled. After living six years in a house where a man
delving into the occult died mysteriously a hundred years before his servant runs out
screaming. Investigating the house, a doctor hears the cripple write on his typewriter but
entering the room he finds the man dead with horror on his face. The manuscript he left
drives the doctor mad. The manuscript describes the last moments of the man where many
evil spirits are doing some orgies around him though he can just feel their presence as they
torture him in their revels. A bit later he can hear them and finally he sees them as he dies.
Another hand writes after he is dead telling that spirits live forever unlike men who delve
into secrets beyond their grasp.

Cristel Hastings

Fear (1926.7) (Verse) – the speaker is afraid of the dark and personifies its grip on his heart
and dreams.

Painted Dragons (1927.5) (Verse) – a poem about Oriental dragons on Chinese clots and
buildings. The speaker is half-scared of their mysterious grin and twisted shapes.

The Swamp (1927.8) (Verse) – a swamp at night is very silent, icky, and foreboding.

An old House (1927.11) (verse) – a poem about an abandoned house where all the ghosts
and old memories gather and coax people to visit it.
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The Jungle (1927.12) (verse) – a poem about a quit, rotting jungle filled with snakes and
other reptiles among the miasmic swamps.

The Phantom (1928.4) (verse) – a poem about winds that come from ocean depths and
make trees and windows swing in a scary way.

Neptune's Neighbors (1929.4) (verse) – a poem about drowned sailors and their sunken
boats. Forgotten by landlubbers.

The Haunted House (1929.5) (verse) – the speaker talks about an abandoned house whose
spirits haunt the area at night and that he prefers to take another road when traveling there
even by day.

Swamp Symphony (1930.3) (verse) – a poem about frogs in a swamp who sing about the
monsters in the swamp and the dead things in it. The monsters and ghosts and spirits are
portrayed as lonely and victimized.

David H. Keller

The Little Husbands (1928.7) (A fantastic little story about a race of giant Amazons who went
hunting to get husbands for themselves) – an explorer of the Amazon finds a diary in a
bottle. In it is the story of another explorer who was left alone in the Bolivian jungle only to
be kidnapped by a 20-meter woman. The woman is part of a group of 18 giant-women who
kidnap men (they like white, intelligent men but will suffice with blacks when whites are not
around) and use them as dolls. It is hinted that they also use them sexually to reproduce
although the size difference makes it quite impossible. When the men cease to amuse them,
they kill them like bugs and take another man. Nevertheless, they "marry" these men and
won't take another man without killing the previous one each one has. The narrator
becomes ill after 4 years in their prison-doll-house in the jungle and delirious finds out his
"wife" has kidnapped another man. She mercy-kill him like a cockroach and takes the other
man who continues another entry in the journal saying that the previous owner of the diary
asked him before death to put it in a bottle and drop it into the Amazon river when his
owner jogs with his on her backpack.

The Dogs of Salem (1928.9) (two cobblers were charged with witchcraft and consorting with
the Evil One – a strange tale of Colonial superstition) – two young cobblers in 17 th century
Salem make the whole town jealous. The judge has two daughters who fall in love with the
cobblers and so he is only too eager to persecute them for witchcraft when the jealous
people blame them for witchcraft. They bribe the jailer and put two dogs in their cells with a
letter that tells the town they turned into dogs and that they want to run to the devil in the
forest. The townspeople hang the dogs and the two escape with the girls to another state.

The Jelly-Fish (1929.1) (In stupefied horror the students watched the hanging drop of water
and its living contents, under the microscope) – a stupid story about a professor that boasts
to his students that he can become as big as the sun and as small as an amoeba. When
confronted by his angry students he gets smaller and asks them to show on video what he is
doing inside the microscope. They are surprised to see him on screen after he disappears. He
is eaten by a microscopic jelly fish (why didn't he become big again? It is so stupid).

The Damsel and her Cat (1929.4) (the high-born maiden lay in a deathlike swoon but outside
the castle terrible things were happening) – a Medieval lady girl afflicted with acute sleep-
spells gets a huge cat. Goats and babies begin to get blood-sucked and people report they
 56

see the girl's figure. The girl's priest puts a trap to the apparition, a vampire that looks like
the girl as the cat sucks a bit of her soul every night, and burns a cross on its head. The
apparition becomes a dead cat and the girl awakes in the morning with the brand of a cross
on her forehead.

The Battle of the Toads (1929.10) (A whimsical weird story telling how Cecil, son of James,
became Overlord of Cornwall) – this (what I think later readers would have dubbed Vancian)
story is about an adventurous Medieval knight who wants to rule Cornwell he meets a monk
that looks like a toad who tells him about his plan for world (and even galaxy) domination
and his desire for a body guard. The monk's dfriends – all toad-like people gather at night
and the toad monk tries to drink a frog in a bottle that is apparently the devil in disguise. The
devil melts the monk and the knight takes pity on the frog and releases it. The frog turns into
the devil, kills the toads and grants the knight three wishes. The knight becomes the rich,
powerful lord of Cornwell. The nonchalant way the knight treats the magical things around
him and his mention of giants and dragons and fairies he encountered feels like a
contemporary Fantasy story in the vein of Vance's Dying Earth. The only missing link is
another world as this is a Medieval Europe setting. Still, it is getting close to our modern
concept of mainstream Fantasy.

The Tailed Man of Cornwell (1929.11) (Another whimsical weird story about Cecil, son of
James, Overlord of Cornwell) – another Cecil-story in which the whimsical lord tries to help
one of his knights who fell in love with the Irish queen. The queen refuses to marry him
because he is Cornish and has a tale. She refuses to believe his lack of one. The queen
besieges the castle for vengeance against the tailed-knight who seduced her but Cecil
manages to fool her into thinking he removed the tail from his knight. As in the previous
story the England portrayed is a magical, whimsical land of adventure and Fantasy but in a
light-hearted way.

No Other man (1929.12) (Another whimsical weird story about Cecil, son of James, Overlord
of Cornwall) – this time, Cecil "saves" a princess from a shape shifting dragon. He soon finds
out she ran away due to her parents selling her to get married to some old Jew (I don't know
if he means money-lender or an actual Jew – if the latter it shows Keller's lack of minimal
cultural understanding of Jews who cannot marry gentiles and even more so in the Middle
ages). He fools the townspeople that he frightened the dragon into the girl's stomach and
that he can escape any time. He "saves" the Jew by taking the girl home as his plaything. The
bravado and the way Fantasy and fact are mingled in a not-commitment way is interesting)

Creation Unforgivable (1930.4) (a tragic story about an author who lived altogether to vividly
in his literary work) – a pulp fiction author in the vein of E.R Burroughs is so enmeshed with
his creation (some cave men, a sexy jungle girl, ape-creatures battles) that he tiptoes from
his house to write (his wife is angry when he does that) after some days that his wife
prevented him from doing so. He is worried that his creations will die if he does not finish
the thing. He trips and falls on some root after he hears a clamor at the outside cabin where
his typewriter is. In the morning he finds his story ruined by a storm but the manuscript is
filled with blood. He also sees ape footprints and other primal-creature's footprints leading
to some cave. He is too scared to check the cave. Keller's stories seem more sophisticated
than the usual garbage in the magazine. This story also mocks pulp fiction as the
protagonist's wife mocks him for his worn-out plot and generic themes.

Dick Heine
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The Jungle Presence (1925.2) (it was no dream this hideous nightmare) – a man who works
in delivery in Burma feels a dark jungle presence near him at night. He takes Heroine and
goes to sleep. After some hallucinations of death, he opens his eyes and sees a huge cobra
that is about to kill him. He tries to telepathically call his Chinese servant and the servant
does come (though it is not clear whether from the telepathy) and saves him.

The Fiend of the Seine (1925.11) (Horror-Tale of Paris) – a Parisian rafts man takes his boat
at night and gathers all the suicides of the Seine to chop them up and sell them to doctors
who need to practice and experiment on bodies. One day two prominent doctors come to
him and talk about how they disowned their children for running with their loved ones
without presenting them to their parents first. The body gatherer gives them two heads that
he found last night and they are revealed to be their children – the two committed suicide
together. The two brutally kill the man and when the police comes it does not punish them
and even thanks them.

A Creeping, Crawling Thing (1926.9) (diabolical was Le Ristaut's Murderous plan to send a
poisoned lizard after his enemy, but fate took a hand in the game) –a French kingpin uses
the services of an assassin who uses a poisoned lizard to kill his victims. For some unknown
reason the two sneak into the house of a Marquise the kingpin wants to kill to get some
papers (it is not clear why he needs to kill him to get the papers and why he uses the lizard
or goes with the assassin – the story doesn't make a slightest sense). They find out that the
marquise is in fact a wax doll and that they are trapped as the window is now locked. They
decide to kill the inhabitant of a room next by and sneak from the house (again. It is not
clear why they don't just smash the glass and escape). They are caught by the marquise's
wife who recognizes the kingpin. She arrests the assassin and kills the kingpin with the lizard
and then kills the lizard.

The Algerian Cave (1927.7) (Reincarnation played strange pranks in the lives of Paul
Mitrande and Louis Fanon) – the narrator's painter friend draws a picture about two Roman
soldiers in a treasure cave. When he publishes the painting in a gallery (and wins first prize) a
man approaches and shoots him. In prison the narrator asks the shooter for his motive and
he tells him the painting is real as both were Roman soldiers in past-lives and his friend last
reincarnation found a treasure cave in Egypt with him. The friend wounded him and stole
the treasure. He lived as a slave for most of his life for this while his friend lived as king in
Sicily. After being born again he started to remember his past life and when he saw the
painting he knew its painter was his ex-friend. After telling this to his revived friend the
friend remembers his past life and convinces the authorities to release the man after some
time in prison. He also gives him 10,000 dollars.

Don Robert Catlin

The Unearthly (1927.2) (the arts of the magician astounded everyone, but the skeptic
brought the camera to bear on his achievements) – an Egyptian magician is invited to a
competition arranged by some skeptic. The skeptic offers 5 thousand dollars to the magician
if he will do his unexplained trick in a place and time of the skeptic's choosing. A crowd
gathers into the place of competition – a large outdoor place lighted with brilliant electric
light. The magician uses a rope that goes up to the sky. His servant climbs the rope. The
magician climbs after him – chops him to pieces, his dismembered organs drop from the sky.
The magician returns puts the bloody body-parts on a carpet and then the servant emerges
intact. The skeptic tells them that he is not convinced until he will see a recording of the
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show made live by a hidden spectator he told to do so before. The magician accepts but
takes the camera for a second and "accidently" breaks it. The skeptic is forced to pay the
5000 dollars.

Listening Death (1927.5) (Through weeks that seemed eternities the pugilist lay on the
operating table in the doctor's laboratory and listened) – a run-down ex-professional boxer,
goes to the doctor who gives him some serum that suspendes his animation. For 4 months
he does not revive him until, after calling his friend neurologists, he tells them about his
illegal experiment and shows them that he can revive the man so that they will later do the
same to genius minds of the state whose brain can be kept for future generations. As the
man revives and offered a 1000 dollar payment for his unwilling participation in the
experiment the doctor decides to try the serum himself. The pugilist takes the antidote (the
only one as there is no formula or anything else left) and threatens to break it. He tells the
surgeons that he was awake, in his mind, the whole time for those 4 months and that he
wants revenge. One of the surgeons struggles with him and the antidote vial breaks on the
floor. The rest decide to mercy-kill the doctor.

The Impossible (1927.7) (Travis sought out the source of the tricks of Black Magic, and was
trailed across the world by a malignant Chinaman) – a man who traveled the world in search
of black magic goes to his local club and demonstrates his powers to his friends. He tells
them that his goal is to rid the world of superstitions (by teaching everyone black magic???).
As he does his miracles an old Chinaman appears and tells that the man is a liar. The man
confesses that he stole the Chinaman book of dark magic because the Chinese (and
Egyptians and Blacks and other non-whites) use black magic to make people afraid of the
unknown but white people will teach everyone black magic so that it will not be scary. He
shoots the Chinaman but he manages to kill the man. Both die. Had it been written today I
would read it as a parody of the stupid logic of early 20 th century racism and colonialism.

The Soul-Ray (1927.10) (a weird adventure befell the young man who consented to let
Professor Latour experiment on him) – a young man applies for work at the laboratory of
some insane professor. The professor explains how he developed a method to photograph
souls of animals and insects. He manages to mesmerize the man and force him into a glass
container where he is about to kill him with poisonous gas and take a photo of his soul
departing. As he watches the camera he decides to save the man, and get killed somehow,
because he sees the man's soul as a saint's halo unlike the soul of the animals he killed
which looked like dots or squares.

Donald Edward Keyhoe

The Grim Passenger (1925.4) (was the steamship Titanic destroyed by an Egyptian curse) –
The myth of the "the unlucky Mummy" (a myth that started in 1912 about a coffin that had
nothing to do with actual disasters other than a news reporter who believed, for some
reason, it is cursed and died several years later) depicted as actual fact telling how its
discoverer, museum curators and later the Titanic were all destroyed by the mummy inside
(in fact the "unlucky mummy" does not have a mummy inside it and it is still in the English
museum instead of on the bottom of the Atlantic).

The Mystery Under the Sea (1926.1) (submarine pirates – the Guam Cables – and a giant
cuttlefish) – a naval officer tries to find out what happened to a military nautical airplane
whose pilots disappeared in the pacific. He finds the plane but kidnapped by pirates with a
 59

submarine. They force him and the captured pilots to get something from the wreck of an
undersea derelict of a German warship. As they search the ship a huge cuttlefish attacks
them. For some odd reason all the pirates join the search. While the navy members go back
the pirates are killed by the cuttlefish. As they cannot return to the submarine (unclear why)
they cut the conveniently-near undersea telegraph-cable to notify the authorities about
their location. They are saved.

Through the Vortex (1926.7) (startling thrill-tale about one who was sucked through the
vortex into a murky land of terrible beasts and green-hued men) – an experiment pilot is
sucked through an air tunnel into a flying island. The island is an amalgamation of garbage
and dust and is populated by huge, snake-like monsters and semi-intelligent green apes.
After killing the leader of the green apes, the pilot finds a crashed blimp. Inside he finds
three Americans who traveled in the dirigible after WWI and were sucked through the same
vortex with most of the crew dying in the process. The three survivors include a scientist, his
beautiful daughter and a man who is in love with the daughter. The pilot devises a plan to
leave the horrible place and includes the creation of a huge, padded canister, a large
parachute and observing radio signals to know where to fall. The pilot reveals to the
survivors the new developments in the modern world and especially radio channels. The girl
is enthusiastic to hear the music. The girl falls in love with the pilot which convinces the man
to kill him by giving him to the green apes who throw him into the lower plateau with all the
monsters. The pilot manages to escape the monsters and returns to the blimp. He knocks
the man unconscious and they exile him to the green apes who befriend him. They manage
to build the canister but the man returns with his green ape friends and they almost manage
to stop them when the island starts to crumble. The monsters from the lower region run
amok and kill the apes and the man. The scientist, pilot and the girl enter the canister and
manage to return home without much trouble. The pilot marries the girl.Ridiculous pseudo-
science. SF elements strongest.

The Master of Doom (1927.5) (a weird-scientific tale that sweeps 500 years into the future –
a mad scientist remakes the earth to his own liking) – an army pilot who flies a beautiful girl
finds out that the Philippines have sunk beneath the ocean during the flight. As he and his
crew crash-land on a bizarre island they are kidnapped by an old, crazy scientist and his
lackies. The scientist tells him about his plan to submerge the Earth with some device he has
and making it in his image. The scientist deep freezes the pilot for 500 hundred years after
he refuses to be one of his servants. When the man awakens he finds the world to be only
habitable at the Equator as all the rest of the world sunk under water, the doings of the mad
scientist. The world is organized to districts whose people act as specific slaves to the
scientist who is revered as a god. With the help of a rebellious young man the pilot plans a
suicide mission to assassinate the scientist only to find out he is about to marry the girl he
flew 500 years ago. He also finds out there are no planes or ships in this new world. As he is
about to kill the scientist and die in the process some helicopters arrive with blonde Viking-
like beautiful people. The save the day and kill the scientist and his lackeys who flee the
place. He reveals that the are true Americans, who survived the submission of the world and
lived for hundreds of years as science-based, freedom fighters and survivors. They rule the
new world and the pilot proposes to the girl.

Donald Wandrei
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The Red Brain (1927.10) (great dust-clouds engulf the universe, and the Red Brain is created
to drive back the swirling menace) – billions of years in the future the universe is dying and
only dust remains. The only star in which there are still intelligent lives is a dead sun on
which life developed very late in the universe life cycle. After millions of years in which wars
almost annihilate the species that lives on this planet a long-lasting peace makes those
creatures look like huge floating brains on mists after another millions of years. These most
intelligent creatures who ever lived in the universe try to devise a plan to stop the dust but
fail. They combine all their intelligence to create a red brain – extremely superior and
smarter than all of them though they cannot understand the depth of its thoughts. The brain
finds an answer to stop the dust but it kills all the other brains in thoughts of hatred and
insanity. The Red Brain is the savior of the universe but it is completely mad. Quite good.

Sonnets of the Midnight Hours (1928.5)(1&2) (verse) – two poems, the first is about a man
who becomes a tree as he walks around a scary forest and is then eaten by flowers. The
second is about a man that is thrown into a large pile of bodies with hungry worms and rats
but he states that it will take him many years to die for some reason. He also calls the
corpses his friends and he appears to be glad they are around him and sad when they are
taken from him by the vermin.

Sonnets of the Midnight Hours (1928.6)(3. Purple) (verse) – the speaker is in a purple world
with purple sky, Earth and everything else. He rides a purple hyppogriph and soars to the sky
where the purple cosmos drowns him.

Sonnets of the Midnight Hours (1928.7) (4. The Eye) (verse) – the speaker is frightened to
open the window but is compelled to do so. When he opens it he sees a huge unblinking
eye.

Sonnets… (1928.8) (5. The Grip of Evil Dream) (verse) – the speaker dreams he is in a huge
tomb filled with ghosts and corpses as one body approaches him, touches and lick him and
then is about to talk to him but he awakes.

Sonnets… (1928.9) (5.As I remember) (verse; decorations by Hugh Rankin) – the speaker is
tortured by metal beasts and lunar sorceries and bells. His torment ands when he hears a big
laughing sound that ends in silence.

Sonnets… (1928.10) (7. The Statues) (verse) – the speaker knocks on a huge door and is
surrounded by dead birds and black leopards. He is led by these creatures to huge, black
marble statues who laugh at him but are silent when he passes them.

Sonnets… (1928.11) (8. The Creatures) (verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – Flying creatures
haunt the moon-filled night. They came from some cosmic layer. The speaker hears some
screams of the creatures' prey and wakes to find his face eaten by such creature.

Sonnets… (1928.12) (9.The Head) (verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – the speaker sees a
detached head that jumps at him and splits.

Sonnets… (1929.1) (10. The Red Specter) (verse) – in a pool of blood and red mists the
speaker sees some red horrors that make him flee in disgust and horror.

Sonnets… (1929.2) (11. Doom) (verse) – a poem about the heat-death of the world where
even God dies. With all the Colter, Worrell, Whitehead, Quinn and other Christian moralists
it is quite bizarre to see a work that bluntly states that God dies.
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Sonnets… (1929.3) (12. A Vision of the Future) (verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – the
speaker is in the future where everything is dry and dead with disgusting, ancient ruins. Yet,
there is still life at the ocean's depths where he witness a huge, pulpy creature that scares
him.

The Shadow of Nightmare (1929.5) (From a strange nightmare country in the Himalayas
stark madness found its way into the outer world) – The protagonist has a friend who likes
to collect Gothic novels and tries to find "true" horror stories. He is in possession of a
manuscript from 10,000 years ago of a society of madmen who killed every sane baby they
had (I think Wandrei does not understand what insanity is). He becomes scared after reading
the manuscript and translating and is haunted by things that he believe crawl on him even
though no one can see them. He dies. The story includes a short survey of 19 th century
Gothic fiction (he slams most of it) and how Gothic = Horror. Furthermore, he mentions Poe
as the master and Lovecraft as his successor.

Marmora (1930.5) (verse) – Like Chambers' Carcosa poem this poem is about a dark fantasy
land called Marmora.

The Worm-King (1930.6) (Verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) an ode to the worm that rules
our graves.

The Green Flame (1930.7) (a brief story about a living jewel that glowed with a bright green
flame) – a puzzling story about a grandson who watches his grandfather gawking above his
huge emeralds. The grandson plans to murder the grandfather after he sees a huge emerald.
Planning to kill him he enters his room but the grandfather is dead and the emerald
becomes much bigger and a fire erupts from its center to destroy the place and perhaps all
creation (it is unclear from the story).

E.F. Benson

The Wishing Well (1929.7) (a weird Cornish superstition, and the gruesome power of an
elemental – a tale by a well-known British writer) – This quaint and not-so-pulpy story
(regarding the style of writing, content and the pace) by the English novelist, biographer,
memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer Edward Fredric Benson tells of a Cornish
spinster whose father is infatuated with old wells used for witchcraft in the village. The
woman is also quite friendly and like a local old herbalist and healer. Another local witch dies
some days before. The herbalist's son returns home and the spinster falls in love with him.
She witnesses the dead witches spirit at a cemetery near the wells but is not tempted to
wish for his love. She tries to show her affection to the man be he falls in love with a young
girl. She eavesdrops on the two as they confess their love for one another and how they find
the spinster's moves on the man ridiculous. He also says how his mother the herbalist mocks
the spinster and laughs at her tries on her son. The woman is angry and kisses the witch's
ghost at night thus absorbing her power. She writes the man's name on a paper and puts it
in the well. The man becomes sick but his mother finds out the curse and replaces the sheet
of paper with the spinster's name. The spinster becomes sick and when she tries to check on
the note to see what happened she is confronted by the once-friendly herbalist who drowns
her.

The Hanging of Alfred Wadham (1929.8) (Evil apparitions haunted the good priest who could
not save an innocent man from execution as a murderer) – a local priest hears a confession
from some criminal about a murder he committed. Meanwhile an innocent man is about to
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get hanged on this murder. The priest cannot tell the police who the murderer is because he
is bound to leave a confession confidential. The innocent man is hanged and the priest gets
visits by his apparition which haunts him. He is convinced it is an evil spirit or a demon in the
guise of the innocent man and finally uses a cross and a prayer to drive the demon off. The
guilty man commits suicide and leaves a confession.

The Witch-ball (1929.10) (A strange tale of clairvoyance and occult mysteries by a well-
known British writer of weird fiction) – a woman and her cousin buy a magic ball. The occult-
sensitive husband of the woman sees that the ball tries to tell him something. Visiting an
abandoned house in the moors the sensitive husband feels a dark presence connected with
the ball. The cousin and husband look at the ball and by the husband's occult powers they
see that it belonged to a woman murdered by her husband and buried beneath the house's
willow trees (the woman's decaying body even appears to them, standing outside their
house). They notify the police and the body is found.

The Bed by the Window (1929.11) (From the Present he looked into the gruesome Future
and witnessed a shocking murder) – a friend tells the narrator about the illusion of time and
that past, present and future are the same, unstable thing. The narrator lives in a hotel and
is fixated upon a date next to his bed that always comes to his mind even though this is not
the current date. He dreams about murder and this date. He sees hatred and violence
between the hotel owner and his wife even though everyone else sees they are amiable to
one another and even the narrator cannot see hatred between them when he observes
them closer. When the date arrives the hotel proprietor is murdered by her husband.

The Shuttered Room (1929.12) (a ghastly horror hovered over the house – a tale of
clairvoyance, by a well-known British writer of weird stories) – a typical ghost tale about a
couple who inherit a house in which their two bachelor uncles lived. One of them went
missing while the other died recently mumbling his brother's name in fear. The woman has
some ghostly apparitions appear before her and the couple sees the missing brother's death
scene portrayed before them in a ghostly way. They search the place and find the missing
brother's body in the dilapidated garden. The other brother killed him for some reason and
his ghost tried to tell them where he is buried so that they could bury him. He gets buried
next to his brother.

Benson's stories (I need to find out if they were first published in WT – probably not) are
classic British supernatural stories – ghosts, angry spirits, witches, clairvoyance that haunt a
modern England country-side. I think de Grandin does the same in a pulpy, trashy way in
which beautiful, naked women and action-oriented narrative dominate these, mainly
Christian, tropes.

James Lamp (1930.6) (Another fine tale by one of the best-known British writers

of occult stories) – a regular ghost story about a man servant that works in a mansion who
kills his wife. He reports her missing. The narrator, a friend of the mansion's owner, visits the
friend and the two witness some apparitions of the woman. The servant acts erratically.
They wake up at night to hear the ghost woman forcing her husband to go to the beach
where he dropped her body. Their two bodies are found the next day – the woman, dead for
at least a week with a bullet wound at her head and the husband, recently dead with the
hands of the woman on his throat. Typical British ghost stories.

E. Hoffman Price
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The Raja's Gift (1925.1) (Oriental Tale – one crowded hour of glorious life) – a Persian
bodyguard of an Indian Raja gets one wish from his Raja for years of faithful service. The
Persian was a beggar as a child. He watched the royal procession of the Raja, an event that
changed his life. From that moment on he decided that the pinnacle of his life would be to
ride the elephant in this royal procession. He tells the Raja that that is his wish but the Raja
is reluctant to grant him this wish. The reason for that is that the Raja knows that such a
procession would mark him, in the eyes of royalty, as a threat and so they will try to
assassinate him shortly after. Although the Raja tries to tempt the Persian with vast amounts
of jewelry and concubines the Persian still wants the royal procession. The Raja secretly
orders his men to kill the Persian at the pinnacle of the procession so that he would die as a
Raja and not assassinated afterwards as a commoner. It is revealed that the shot missed but
that somehow (perhaps suicide) the Persian died at the procession.

The Stranger From Kurdistan (1925.7) (blasphemies of the devil-worshippers receive a

strange rebuke) – a regal wanderer enters a mysterious tower next to the ruins of a huge,
ancient city. After he passes the scores of guards that guard each passageway of this
spiraling tower he witnesses a mock-mass enacted by 77 people. He stops the ceremony and
tells the head priest that this is ridiculous and disgusting. When asked who he is he tells
them he is Satan. They do not believe him so he burns them all in an infernal halo. He walks
outside and has a subtle monologue with Jesus (who is not present) in which he decries the
poor material that his followers is made of nowadays.

The Sultan's Jest (1925.9) (strange was the Sultan's whim, but stranger the whim of Amru) –
an angry Sultan punishes his favorite concubine and her lover, another courtier, with
choosing a glass of wine and giving the other another glass, one of them poisoned thus
forcing to other to live in guilt for killing his lover. The man kills himself after thinking the
wine is poisoned thus showing the Sultan he died by his own hand. The sultan tells him none
of the glasses were poisoned thus forcing both to live in guilt and the Sultan drinks the wine
to prove it. Unbeknownst to the sultan is that the man's friend, his scribe, poisoned both
cups so that none of the lovers will suffer.

The Prophet's grandchildren (1925.10) (Sulu Folk-Tale explains why Mohammedans never
eat pork - The fanatic Muslims of Indonesia tell how Mohammad and Jesus were rival
prophets. When Mohammad invites Jesus to a party to mock him Jesus ascents. In the party
Mohammad forces Jesus to do a miracle but Jesus refuses to do so for entertainment. Then
he tells him to prophesize but Jesus refuses from the same reason. Then he demurs as
Mohammad laughs at him. Jesus tells Mohammad that he will regret the prophecy but
Mohammad ignores him and tells him to tell the crowd what is hidden behind the door. The
door conceals Mohammad's two grandchildren. Jesus says that there are two beasts behind
the door which were never before seen in the world. Mohammad laughs and tells the men
to open the door. To Mohammad's amazement there are two pigs, creatures that were
never seen before, behind the door. From then on, the Muslims eat no pork.

Adam, to Lilith (1926.1) (verse) – The speaker is in a boring state of life and he talks to Lilith
who seduced him with her long hair and perfumes and how he was unable to escape her
grasp.

The Word of Santiago (1926.2) (Malik Taus, the stranger form Kurdistan, abandons his
follower) – another story about the devil doing his suave walkabouts. A Satan-worshipping
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fencer asks Satan to help him in a duel to death with a French dueling-master. Satan does
not wish for the fight to happen as he says the Frenchmen acts in a way that pleases Satan.
The man refuses to capitulate and thrashes his shrine for Satan. The French man arrives at
forest of the duel at night and after several minutes the Spaniard arrives, though there is
some strange ambience to the scene. The two fence like masters until the Spaniard slips and
the French stabs him only to be blasted by some infernal light. As his butler wakes him up
(the Spaniard is gone) they drive back to their place and find a car-wreck. Inside is the body
of the Spaniard. Satan arrives, in his suave manlike form, to tell them the Spaniard is dead
for several hours and that his willpower alone came to fence with the French thus fulfilling
his promise.

Astarte (1926.3) (verse) – a poem about the alluring, oriental, statue of the goddess Astarte
that lulls men as a drug. The poem subtly ridicules the worshippers of the statue.

The dreamer of Atlanaat (1926.7) (An orientale of Strange thrills – the lord of the world, and
the fierce sultan of Angor-Lama) A brave swordsman who rose to the ranks of captain in the
royal guards of a sultan is revealed to be the son of a man who was killed by the sultan's
father. The vizier of the sultan who is jealous of the friendship between the swordsman and
the sultan masquerades as an assassin and accidently "drops" an incriminating sword so that
the sultan will suspect the swordsman. The swordsman is banished. Brooding in the moor's
outskirts he meets a veiled dervish who makes him follow him through a jungle. Inside they
enter a temple where the dervish claims to be a prophet of an entity stronger than God or
Satan. The prophet asks the swordsman to kill the sultan. The swordsman chops off the head
of the entity that sits on the throne instead of listening to the dervish. The sultan appears
and reveals the dervish to be the swordsman's grandfather and the entity as the vizier. The
sultan planned this all along to check whether the vizier was trustworthy after consulting
with the dervish.

The Peacock's Shadow (1926.11) (a tale of devil-worship and the Adytum of Darkness – a
mystery story of graphic action and exotic imagery) – the French fencer from "the Word of
Santiago" uses his younger American helper (whom he annoyingly treats like an inferior
throughout the story and is also the narrator) to locate a missing mummy. They break into
the house of a rich Frenchman and find many things made with human skin plus the
mummy, without its coffin, lying on the Frenchman's bed. They also see a portrait of a
beautiful woman whom the older French fencer says was the late depraved Frenchman's
wife. They see that the depraved man courts a woman that looks just like his old wife. After
doing some surveillance the narrator follows the girl one night as she enters a weird castle
with some cultists worshipping a symbol of a peacock. The depraved Frenchman tells her
they worship Satan and that his friend was Santiago whom the French fencer invited to a
duel with the latter being killed by driving too fast as a result of him doing Satan's bidding
and fooling him by turning all the clocks in his house backwards so that he will fail to reach
the duel in time and thus will be spared by Satan who didn't like the duel. The girl seems
fond of worshipping Satan but the depraved Frenchman drops something into her wine
knocking her unconscious. Then he calls his cultists and they are about to embalm her in a
coffin and send her soul to his dead friend as a gift of forgiveness by burying her mummified
corpse next to Santiago's mummified corpse. The fencer is hidden in the coffin and as it is
opened to embalm the girl he jumps out – using a camera's flash to blind the dozens of
worshippers and then knocking all of them unconscious by hitting their heads one after the
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other (how this impossible feat is achieved – it is unknown). The narrator grabs the girl and
they drive to the Frenchman's house where he explains that the girl is the niece of the
depraved Frenchman's wife.

Dumb

Apricots from Ispahan (1926.12) (an orientale about Absal the scribe, Musa the gardner, Zaid
the astrologer a Kashmiri girl and the sultan of Djalan-batu( -A Sultan only cares about
planting some apricots instead of ruling his kingdom. His scribe must do all state duties but
he doesn't get to be Vizier because of a scheming astrologer who controls the Sultan. He
uses the lust of the royal gardener to some dancing girl. He tries to buy this slave girl but is
outbid by the Sultan's slave purchaser. The scribe plots to become a vizier. He switches the
trees so that the Sultan plants nectarines instead of apricots and fools the gardener to
believe the slave girl will run with him if he will just uproot all the trees the Sultan planted.
He then promises the gardener a horse so that the two could run away. He then snitches to
the guard to stop the gardener. The Sultan is outraged and orders to execute the gardener
but the scribe manages to convince him that the astrologer is a charlatan because he
promised that planting the trees at that hour will be fortunate to the fruit. The sultan is
convinced and exiles the astrologer, making the scribe vizier and giving the slave girl to the
gardener.

Saladin's Throng-Rug (1927.10) (an eery murder, and a descendant of Saladin – a tale that
breaths the weird mystery of the Orient) – an American who collects rare rugs finds an
extremely rare rug. He fails to bid the highest bid on it even though he tries to fool everyone
it is worthless. The person who buys it thanks the man and explains he is a descendant of
Saladin and that the rug is a gift to his ancestor given to him by some prince. It is priceless.
He invites the man to his home where he gives him an extremely expensive and rare Persian
rug. He also gives him a glimpse on a rare perfume he has that is in a huge jar. A small whiff
from it makes the man almost crazy with longing and the Arab tells him he intends to die in
this jar – dying from loveliness. He also glimpses the beautiful wife of this man – a woman
from the silk road states (Gudjarati or something). The man tells his rival rug collector about
how he got the rare Persian rug and the rival fools the Arab's wife by telling her the rug is old
and replaces it with a cheap, new rug. As the man learns about it he manages to take the rug
back to the Arab but the Arab takes the rug, drinks poison and shows the man that he killed
his wife by inserting her into the jar.

An extremely Orientalist tale with sentences that talk about the inability of the Arab world
to understand the greatness of their past and culture. Only white people can understand the
magic of the Orient.

The Infidel's Daughter(1927.12) (Landon built a ziggurat in Feringhistan that he might aspire
to the Hundred and One Strange Kisses of Sarpanit) – an American who was raised in some
Arab place and who is also married to some Persian princess or something leaves everything
behind to scour the world (non-European world). In his exotic travels he comes upon a vision
of a beautiful girl who tells him her secret name. This demon\girl\spirit is Sarpanit "the
daughter of the lion", a mysterious creature that lures men to some bizarre ritual called the
undren and one kisses which leaves the practitioner dry as a husk. He and his elderly servant
reach to some tomb in the Arabian desert and the man uncovers some tablets that explain
how to summon the creature. He returns to the U.S. to build a ziggurat and do all the
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ceremonies for the summoning. Meanwhile he meets a beautiful and mysterious girl that
incurred the wrath of a local KKK-like mysteries mask-wearing organization whose members
want a protestant, pure, Anglo-Saxon America. She is whipped, almost to death, and the
man brings her to his ziggurat. There the girl behaves erratically. The organization tries to
break into the house at night and kill all inside. Meanwhile the man does the last ritual and
when it fails he fins out that the girl is, in fact, Sarpanit. She gives him the choice of assuming
the hundred-and-one-kiss ritual or live a long, boring life. He chooses to receive her
pleasures and when the men enter to kill everyone they find the place deserted and the
protagonist a dried husk. They become insane.

The KKK-like organization is portrayed as evil. Retarded bastards but the Oriental people are
depicted as no less dangerous.

The Girl From Samarcand (1929.5) (A beautiful and fantastic tale of an Oriental rug and
the superb beauty of the girl who crossed the Border) – a man, fascinated with the Arab and
Muslim Orient, becomes estranged from his wife due to his infatuation with Middle-Eastern
rugs. His wife leaves him when he gets a new rug that causes him to drink Arak all day and
stare at the rug. A girl he met in Arabia comes to him one night from the carpet and it is
discovered he met her 20 years ago for one night in an Arab town. She wove her spirit into
the rug and sent her younger sprit to him. He decides to go with her and leaves his spirit
behind as the two step on the rug and move on. Much more gentle and sophisticated than
the SF or Horror stories – the Oriental fantasies of Price and Owen are way more artistic and
less pulpy than most of the rest of the magazine.

A Jest and a Vengeance (1929.9) (a bizarre orientale breathing the witchery of the
East – a story of the Dreamer of Atlanaat) – the same dude from "The Dreamer of
Atlanaat" is now a threatened sultan whose kingdom is on the verge of rebellion and
he is hunted by assassins and Western interlopers. He uses his Dervish old friend (the
same dude from the other story) to wreck vengeance upon the son of his former friend
who tries to kill him and become a modern sultan. The son is kidnapped and the
dervish takes his sultan to the same hidden temple in the jungle in which he sees a
beautiful girl who leads him into a dark place in which he sees a man who sleeps and
whom the girl says is actually the creator of this world whose dream we all live in.
She can change the world by whispering things to his ears. The sultan tells her to
whisper that the son will become sultan and that he will be haunted day and night by
assassins, rebels and Western interlopers.

Thirsty Blades (with Otis Adelbert kline) (1930.2) (A swift-moving tale of devil-
worshippers of Kurdistan, and the colossal issues that hung upon the clash of blades)
– Another story in Price's mythological Orientales. This time the Dervish that
reappears in his stories helps a man to defeat Satan and get the Oriental girl by
convincing a sultan that he is the chosen one. Some demon worshippers fool the
sultan and the Farangi chosen one is captured and taken to be sacrificed at the hidden
palace of this Satan. The dervish mysteriously convinces the sultan that he was wrong
and they fight the gang of devil worshippers, kill their leader and release the chosen
one to do a sword fight with a sleeping Satan who just awoke. The man defeats Satan
in combat and gets the girl.

Price also has his own Mythology.

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Edmond Hamilton

Across Space (1926.9) (a shaft of red light stabs the sky, and Mars hurtles in flaming
destruction straight toward earth) – Mars stops spinning around the sun and is flung into
Earth. Two scientists try to prevent the destruction of the Earth by traveling to Easter island
where one of scientists believes, after looking at many clues, some inhuman aliens dwell and
are the cause for this. They reach the island and find it deserted with whitelike, powdery,
substance all that remains of the island's inhabitants. The two witness a huge red beam that
pierces the sky when Mars is aligned with the Earth. They crawl to the crater where this
beam emanates every midnight to see white, inhuman winged-figures that resemble the
Moai statues of the island. They capture the two scientists. The scientists are taken into a
capsule-like elevator and hurled into the center of the Earth. They see a huge metal city
inhabited by the creatures and some pinkish, headless, boneless bipedal brutes, but the city
is mostly deserted. They are taken into a prison where they find a scientist they once knew
who disappeared years ago (the older scientist decided to travel to Easter island after Mars
came to Earth when he thought about the missing scientist). The missing scientist is missing
both legs and part of a hand with horribly drawn tissue where the stumps are. He tells them
the creatures captured him and he learned their bird-like language. They experimented on
him to make a horrible weapon (the white-powder is the result of such weapon). He tells
them that the creatures came from Mars hundreds of thousands of years ago. Mars is
controlled by an evil, exploitative monarchy of scientists and the disenfranchised masses are
slaves to it. Some brilliant slaves decided to invent spaceships (without telling the secrets of
it to the monarchy who did not know how to make ships even though they had all the best
scientist in Mars!!!) and escape to Earth to start a new life. The aliens prospered on Earth
and erected big cities on the only continent their bodies allowed (Atlantis?). The continent
began to sink and they moved into a huge underground city. Their numbers dwindled, so far
from the sun, and they now posses no more than several thousands. They created the
headless beasts to replace their dwindling workforce. They invented a ray that will bring
Mars' atmosphere close to that of Earth so that Mars' inhabitants could fly up(down) and
take it from Men. The Martians they contacted through radio found the idea sound. The
three manage to use telepathy to make the dumb servile creatures open their cells. They
sneak into the crater in order to use a repellent ray that will haul Mars back into space. They
manage to do so but the mangled scientist is dead by the dumb brutes. They know that the
Martians will use the ray again so the older scientist tells the young narrator to go and get
help as he tries to stop the Martian hordes until the green ray finished its course. He tells
him to contact the air force and writes a letter to the pilot who brought them to the island.
The narrator escapes and then the crater explodes – the narrator opens the letter and sees it
is addressed to him saying that the older scientist decided to sacrifice himself and use both
rays together so that the Martians will never pose a threat to Earth. The narrator says that
now Mars is no longer close to Earth but revolves around Jupiter. A huge statue is erected
for the brave scientist who sacrificed himself.

The Metal Giants (1926.12) (huge metal monsters spread terror through the land – the tale
of a Frankenstein that turned on its creator) – a scientist invents an artificial brain but the
academy mocks him and with the media drives him out of the university. His friends don't
hear from him for 4 years. After 4 years an army of metal giants wreak havoc on an
American town and advances to Washington. The army is killed by some gas these creatures
shoot. One of the scientist's friends try to locate the scientist and finds his empty cabin. In it
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he discovers that the scientist managed to perfect the brain into a vastly intelligent, but
inhuman, creature. This mechanic construct manages to become locomotive and creates a
vast army of robots to conquer the world. The scientist manages to escape and understand
the brain's inventions. The friend goes manages to locate the brain, using the diary, and sees
a huge wheel driven by the scientist. The wheel is made from the same material the robots
are made. The wheel manages to destroy several robots but is stopped by one of the giant
robots that haul him from the machine and smashes his body against a tree. Nevertheless,
the robot is smashed by the collapsing wheel and in turn it also smashes the place where the
floating, mechanical brain stands. All the robots cease to function and the friend buries the
scientist who seems peaceful now that the damage he caused stopped.

Written 60 years before Terminator

The Atomic Conquerors (1927.2) (up from an infra-universe hidden in a grain of sand poured
a host of invaders bent on conquering the world) –an American traveler visits Scotland and
hears about some strange ruins in the hills. On his way there he finds an older man who tells
him how he and his friend – a bereaved academic whose colleague stole his research and
was kicked from the university for blaming his colleague – researched the ruins. They found
out that it was a place ruled by ancient beings who came from a microscopic world. They
waged war on beings from a dimension much larger from our Earth (to which our world is
microscopic). They lost and the higher-beings trapped them in their world with some
technology that prevents them from using their size-changing inventions. The friend
becomes insane and manages to break the technology that trapped the microscopic people.
He mimics their technology and shrinks into their world. He returns with some weapon that
stuns the man. He tells him that he decided to destroy our world and let the microscopic
people rule it. Many spaceships come from the micro-world and the man sees that they are
reptilians. They enlarge themselves and go to the super-world. Meanwhile the friend
manages to escape and meets the traveler. They both creep on the mad scientist but he
manages to stun the traveler. He grapples with his former helper but many spaceships arrive
from the micro-world and use some freezing weapon to kill both the mad scientist and his
assailant. The traveler hides in cabin. The spaceships go to some English cities and freeze to
death many of its inhabitants. The Royal air-force is ready for them in London and by
suicide-crashing their planes into the spaceships they manage to make the invaders flee.
They send a larger force to capture the place where they gather but all soldiers are
annihilated by the freezing weapon. As more spaceships emerge from the grain-world on the
hill some ships return from the super-world only 5 ships remain as they were beaten by the
super-worlders. A force of super-worlders return and make the reptilians flee. The traveler
sees that they are human in appearance but look much more regal, intelligent ands serene.
They use their tech to better imprison the reptilians in their grain-world.

Evolution Island (1927.3) (Brilling looses a spawning horror on the world, threatening to
wipe out all life, animal and human) – some professor finds out that evolution is not a logical
outcome of natural selection but instead the emanations of some unseen ray that the Earth
emits. He builds a ray that can play with evolution and quickly evolve a creature until it
perishes (or devolve it until it is primordial goo). He goes to an island with his helper and
experiments there but his helper decides to use the ray on itself thus becoming an octopus-
like evil mind that is bent on world destruction (it is not clear why). He uses the ray to evolve
all creatures on the island until they die and only the plants continue to evolve into semi-
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intelligent, and mobile, shell troopers. The professor escapes and contacts his friend. The
two go to the island but are captured by the evil servant. The professor manages to free
himself and as he struggles with the crazy brain-blob the friend uses the ray to devolve
everything on the island – the professor and his friend are immune as they wear some kind
of cord.

The Moon Menace (1927.9) (a terrific prospect faced a darkened world, with the moon men
its masters from pole to pole) – a scientist and his helper enounce the world that they
managed to communicate with aliens on the moon. When they fail to deliver their promise
of evidence the world ridicules them but a day after the whole world is plunged into a
special darkness. Light cannot be produced by any means. (the description of this plight is
powerful with scenes that reminds one of Saramago's Blindness) An aviator who was on the
way to see the scientist manages to get to his house through the darkness. He finds the
helper who explains how the scientist and him managed to communicate with the moon
men who convinced them to build some matter-transfer thingamajig. The aliens fooled them
and immediately killed the scientist as they approached. Apparently, they live in a dying
world in the center of the moon where no light penetrates so they are extremely sensitive to
light and even shrivel and die when too much light gets to them. Before they come they
asked the room they will emerge from to be completely darkand explain the scientist how to
build a night vision goggles. The scientist had built three of these before the aliens came.
The helper manages to escape but he is too afraid to move and he witnesses the creatures
building a machine that seeps all light from the world. Then, they build a huge matter-
transfer something. They pour from the moon into the Earth to conquer it. When all the
aliens from the moon come to Earth they build huge war-machines. Then the helper decides
to run. He uses to goggles to see in the dark and finds the aviator. The two try and fight the
aliens by shooting some of them and thus leading them away from the darkness machine.
They manage to do so but the helper sacrifices himself after the aviator is captured and
manages to destroy the machine thus killing all the light sensitive aliens.

The Time Raider (1927.10-1928.1) (a four-part serial story about an entity from far in the
future, that sweeps back through time for its victims) – a professor who searches the Angor
Wat is attacked by a time warping creature that tries to grab him. He manages to escape but
finds out that three years have passed. The creature haunts him and he manages to slip a
paper about time travel, learned by being grabbed by the creature, to his friend. The friend
who witnesses the professor disappear decides to build a time machine with his helper. It
takes them several months to build a flying time, machine and they use it to travel 20,000
years into the future on around the same lines they believe the creature disappeared into.
They find a mostly frozen Earth with a huge gleaming city next to them. As they approach
the city o foot, hiding their craft, they are attacked by some knights who capture them. The
helper is taken into some kind of an arena where he meets an 19 th century Englishman who
tells him they are about to fight as gladiators for the amusement of the people who
captured him. The protagonist is hauled into a colosseum where all the time-gladiators duel
one another. He fights and kills some Borgia henchman. After some days he understands
that the people who captured him can raise the dead without their souls and use them as
mindless slaves. After he is forced to duel with his English new-friend he refuses and the two
see the time-monster grabbing some more warriors from the past and they are herded into
a subterranean city where tens of thousands of warriors from all Earth's history are
crammed together to drink and fight.Some of the best warriors, who won enough duels, are
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used as guards. There the protagonist finds out that the Englishman has three friends – a
Roman legionary, an Inca warrior and a French fencer. They help him to find his scientist
friend but they fail to find their missing friend that inaugurated the whole adventure. The
decadent patricians who rule this city are revealed to be the debauched castaways of some
benign city who plan to conquer it once again with all the warriors. The time monster is their
God. They decide to run away. They manage to stage with the help of their friends and the
two manage a narrow escape. When they reach the far-city they find out that it is protected
with some force field. These people are very nice and believe in racial intermixing. The evil
guys in the other city are Blonde assholes who believe in racial purity (their buildings show
that – in the inter-mixed city every race has a different geometrical shape for the house and
now the buildings in the city portray various shapes side by side and together while the evil
guys only have cylindrical houses). They teach the mind-reading people of the city how to
build a time-machine and in several days they build hundreds of flying battleships and
launch an attack. They manage to destroy the enemy fleet, with heavy loses to themselves,
but the time raider arrives and the fleet chases it. The scientist and friend go to the city to
save their friends but they find out that the horde has almost broke loose from the pit city
and is about to invade the good-guys city. They decide, in a very stupid and unbelievable
way, to stand at the stairs and fight, the six of them, the tens of thousands of warriors. For
some miraculous reason they manage to fight, non-stop, for many hours while going up tens
of thousands of stairs and killing hundreds of the hardened warriors. When they reach the
top they find out that one of the warriors is the scientist they wanted to save and it seems
he was hit in the head and lost all-memory. When the scientist sees him he runs to him and
tells him he is his friend. The memory-loss-scientist recognize him and manages to save the
other scientist from another warrior who charges him. The memory-loss-scientist hurls
himself on the attacker and the two plunge to their deaths. Then the good guys arrive with
their ships and capture the time raider that suddenly appeared. They save the six guys and
destroy the city and the horde killing everyone with some sound waves. The scientist and
the narrator return all their friends to their own times and each give the two his weapon.
The two return to their own time and they live together as two bachelors.

A men-only Fantasy without any logic. Men, Men, Men.

The Dimension Horror (1928.6) (Millions of lives were blotted out in the frightful catastrophe
that came upon the earth out of the fifth dimension) – Much like Hamilton's previous "The
Moon Menace" and "The Atomic conqueror" – a scientist that is ridiculed by the academy
decides to contact some aliens from the 5th dimension. He builds a machine that lets them
come to Earth. They invent a machine that destroys all metal on Earth thus destroying
human civilization. They capture the scientist who manages to escape and together with
some friend they manage to destroy the portal that enables the beetle-man from the 5 th
dimension to conquer earth. The scientist, as in previous stories, sacrifices himself to do so.
Seems like the same story told for the third time by Hamilton. Like a myth.

Crashing Suns (1928.8) (a two-part tale of a hundred thousands years in the future – when
our universe is threatened with destruction) – in the future, mankind has settled all of the
Solar system and a little beyond. Scientists discover that a sun is going to get in orbit with
the solar system and destroy all life in it. They invent a ship that will reach the sun quick and
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try to do something (unclear what exactly). The protagonist, a veteran captain, and his friend
and head scientist, travel to that sun. They see that the sun is controlled from some planet in
its orbit. When they reach the planet they are captured by some globular creatures. The
scientist discovers they want to crash their sun on our Solar system because their sun is
dying. They manage to escape and kill some globular aliens and their ray-firing disk. They
return to Earth and then go back to the sun and manage to get a whole fleet to intercept the
aliens. Their scientist friend remains behind on Earth and they think he is too scared and
scold him for that. The fleet manages to destroy the alien fleet but is too late for the sun to
get into crashing orbit with our solar system. The scientist arrives on his ship and uses a
device that splits the sun into two smaller suns that escape the orbit of our system. He dies
in the process and the Earth is saved.

The Polar Doom (1928.11) (From under the polar ice a horror out of long-dead ages is
loosed upon the world to spread terror and destruction) – an expedition to the North pole
uncovers an ancient city of metal domes frozen in ice. They unfreeze the ice and activate,
unwittingly, a series of thermal devices that unfreeze the whole city. Toad-like creatures
emerge from the opening dome and kill most of the expedition. They use aircraft to
decimate some Northern cities in Canada and the U.S. Some of them are shot down by
contemporary aircraft but they destroy all the planes that intercept them. An aviator who
was sent to find the missing expedition finds out that only one scientist survives and that the
scientist's brother has turned rogue and plots with the creatures to destroy Earth (he
became insane for some reason). The scientist tells him that these creatures ruled the Earth
many millions of years ago and that the ice-ages destroyed them. They use thermal devices
to stay alive and they use a huge heat ray to finish their revival. The two sneak into the
domed city and destroy the device, killing the brother and killing all the creatures by the
returning cold. Yet another – "scientist uncovered alien who destroyed Earth then I
destroyed his thingamajig and his race died"

The Star-Stealers (1929.2) (a dread menace from outside the universe threatens to drag the
solar system to destruction in the cold outer space) – just like in "Crashing Suns" some aliens
drive their sun to crash on our sun. Again, a group of human space-captains (this time there
is even a woman-officer with them) lead and expedition that dies completely, the
protagonists are held captives (this time their ship stays outside the city for 2 months with
crew on it – what the hell did they do all this time? They were told to wait and they did it
marvelously). Again, some alien that looks like shit (this time like a flying octopus) tells the
scientist-guy of the group about their stupid past (their sun died… blah bla). This time, a
member is taken by the aliens to get vivisected for their science. Again, they escape and a
fleet arrives to kill the bad guys while at the last minute they manage to destroy a magic
switch that stops the sun.

The Sea Horror (1929.3) (in their cities in the ocean depths the slug-people launched their
war against the civilization of man) – Another formulaic narrative of Hamilton – the same as
before. This time it is a new submarine and a professor who just happened to get
underwater when an ancient undersea, intelligent beings, decided to flood the world with
their machines because the oceans are dwindling (apparently Hamilton has not heard of the
fact that most of the planet is fucking water). As in all of his stories the craft's group
iscaptured. Meanwhile, as in all of his similar stories the "horror" begins when all the world's
oceans fill up and drown many nations. As in all of his stories the group escapes and warn
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the government (and takes the narrator with them because… science?). The governments of
the world build a fleet of submarines that, as in all of Hamilton's stories, are mostly
destroyed by some "magnetic machine" only for the protagonist's submarine to save the day
by ramming into a "switch room" that magically destroys the underwater city and all of the
slug creature's cities around the world. This happens because… science!.

Within the Nebula (1929.5) (The great nebula expands, threatening to engulf the entire
universe in fiery destruction) Just like Hamilton's other stories – this time a nebula is on a
crashing course to the universe and a human and two aliens are sent on a new ship to
investigate just days before the catastrophe. Once there they find a planet within the nebula
and are (guess what) captured by more alieny aliens than the ones in the human's ship.
Again the alieny aliens explain their stupid history and how there planet is dying and how
they destroy the universe for their planet to live by using some machine with a magic switch
that destroys their world and stops the threat if someone will be so kind as to press on it.
The heroes (surprise, surprise) escape and push the switch. The alieny aliens die and the
three heroes return to get a medal. At least Hamilton accepts inhuman creatures as cool.

The Abysmal Invaders (a horror out of long-dead ages crashes gigantically through the night
in an avalanche of destruction and death) – the same Hamiltonian formula only with huge
dinosaurs and lizard man riding them – A paleontologist is missing in a swamp and then an
army of lizardmen on dinosaurs slaughter the people of a small American town near the
swamps. A friend of the professor follow the lizards into an underground lava-world where
he is captured and finds the professor who tells him about how was also kidnapped and how
the lizards communicated with him about their past in which (as usual) they ruled the world
millions of years ago but went underground and now they must conquer the world because
the lava is rising and they have a machine that lets them go above but this machine has a
magic switch that can also destroy their world. The two escape, the professor sacrifices
himself and pushes the switch and the lizardmen and dinosaurs die.

Outside the Universe (1929.7-10) (a colossal four-part serial novel about outer space- three
universes in a desperate fight to the death) – a galactic space captain and his fleet observe a
huge fleet from another galaxy bent on conquering the Milky-Way. After losing all of the
fleet except their own ship the captain manages to reach the galactic fleet and a battle
ensues. The fleet is destroyed after giving a good fight because the enemy has stupid
"magnet ships" (like in many of Hamilton's stories). The crew manages to hijack an enemy
ship (by jumping in 1000 light year speed from space craft to space craft – Hamilton is dumb
as usual). They are shocked to find the crew being "serpent men" (their own crew has spider
men, jelly men, bat men robot men, crab men but lo! Serpent men is too horrible). After
killing the serpent crew with crowbars and losing almost all of the crew (Hamilton is always
so casual about millions of men dying) they learn that the invaders come from the same
stupid dying galaxy motif that every other Hamilton story has. They know that the only way
to win is to contact the Andromeda galaxy whose inhabitants once defeated the invaders.
They manage to fool the enemy fleet and get to Andromeda. They are ambushed by serpent
ships and after a losing battle they are boarded and taken to the dead galaxy of the serpents.
They see the serpents construct a huge ship that can destroy suns (why didn't they attack
when the shit was completed? Why did they had to warn the stupid galaxy of their efforts to
destroy it?) After a short battle some manage to escape but the rest are taken to some
museum where they are injected with some serum that lets them live forever as living
immobile, statues. The escaped ship returns and frees them (how the hell did that happen).
The very few survivors manage to escape the pursuers and continue to Andromeda. The
Andromedans save the crew when 500 serpent-ships pursue them and the creatures seem
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to be composed of green gas that is somehow solid. The Andromedans can move suns and
their planet is all tidy and brilliant. Their seat of power is huge planet without buildings or
forests just huge plains of black grass. They live underground in white halls. The creatures
agree to help the Milky Way galaxy. They communicate with tablets of image but produce
no sound. They have huge ships that can destroy suns. The serpent ships attack and manage
to steal the sun destroyers and also one of the protagonist's crew. The Andromedans decide
to give the huge fleet's command to the human (why? Oh, why? He doesn't know their
language, he has no knowledge of how to move their ships, they say they do so because he
was once at the serpent's galaxy – so what' he was a prisoner for a week he barely seen
anything, god it makes no bloody sense) The Andromedan fleet goes to the dead galaxy that
for some reason has a huge force field around it and one gate through which to pass (I think
Hamilton does not understand the size of galaxies). After a costly battle they take the "gate"
and then go to the main planet of the galaxy/ the place is empty. It seems the whole galaxy
has gone somewhere else. They deduce that the whole fucking galaxy is now on its way to
the Milky Way. They fight the serpents on our planet after they are lured to some traps and
after a huge battle that last 15 pages the Milky Way fleet arrives to fight the serpents too.
The protagonist shows how good a captain he is by losing almost all of the 200,000 ships he
commanded (he loses 190,000) against the inferior and half as large fleet of the serpents.
Even then the fleet is almost destroyed and only the miraculous attack of the missing sun-
killer ships saves the day. And even that is made in a stupid, irresponsible way – they use the
ships to destroy many star systems by crashing two suns so that the last surviving ship of the
snakes (the huger star killer they built) will get destroyed (why? There could have been other
people at that system, the narrative never tells us what the snakes did with the local
populations of these systems and even if they killed them all the refugees will have no home
to return to, how stupid a plot could be).

The Life-Masters (1930.1) (great masses of protoplasm formed in the seas and advanced
upon the land in a wave of destruction and death) – the same formula of a great disaster
caused by crazy scientists – this time four scientists decide to create protoplasmic life and
then, for unknown reason, decide to destroy all life on the planet and create new life. They
do so, as in any other Hamilton story, with a device that has a magic switch that kills all the
evil-doers if only one pilot and brave scientist will do so. Is in other Hamilton stories they are
captured, they escape, they press the switch – all good. I feel like Prupp or Campbell reading
Hamilton – the save plot devices repeat over and over in slightly different order.

The Comet drivers (1930.2) (From the void of space it came, a cosmic vampire looting the
lives of universes – a weird-scientific novelette) – the same galactic fleet saves galaxy from a
huge object hurling into it – this time a bigger-than-sun comet. The fleet arrives to the
comet, attacked by square spaceships, the fleet is destroyed, they discover the comet is
inhabited by three worlds and ooze-like creatures. They take them captive and tell them
their history and how their comet is dying and they must crash into other galaxies to give it
strength (again Hamilton shows he knows shit about basic physics). They escape. One of
them apparently betrays them. The traitor was, in fact, loyal and he tricked the creatures
only to find the magic switch as backup arrives and they destroy the comet.

The Plant Revolt (1930.4) (On a mountain-top was created a horror that set the plant
kingdom in a wild revolt against man and animals) – a mad scientist does something with the
atmosphere that makes plants carnivorous, mobile, insane creatures that mingle to become
a huge octopus-like monstrosities. As usual, a scientist escapes the carnage to find his friend,
another scientist, battling the evil scientist. The evil scientist tells about his crazy plan
(animals are shit, plants are good) and how it can all be reverted with a magic switch (this
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time the two must break it down methodically and it takes them some time). The evil
scientist is defeated – eaten by the plant-creatures and now everyone can eat a carrot
without getting eaten by it in turn. Again, Hamilton uses the same terminology – "it is now
that we understand the casual things that led up to the terror that enveloped the world…
bla, bla,bla"

The sun People (1930.5) (a Thrilling novelette about a race of people living in the interior of
a gigantic sun) – The same old formula of a space captain and his crew saving the galaxy
from some colossal danger. This time it is suns that stop being pulled by gravity to the center
of the universe. The trouble emanates from the main sun in the galaxy. A special ship is built
to explore the sun (if they had the technology why didn't they do so earlier – as in all
Hamilton's stories – there is a problem and then, by chance, they develop a technological
marvel in two days that changes the way science works). They find space and some planets
in the sun and some cube people who attack them and have a machine that causes the
problem. As always this machine is operated by some magic lever. They kill some cube
people, find out they only do so to save their world for some odd reason, they smash the
lever, kill all the aliens and go back home.

The Death Lord (1930.7) (all life in Chicago was blotted out by a virulent plague – a story of a
bacteriologist's lust for power) – some mad scientist threatens to destroy Chicago if his
demands to rule the world fail. The governments ignore him and he kills all the people of
Chicago by using some weird ray that multiplies germs to dangerous levels. When he does
the same in Philadelphia the world is in chaos and it would have only taken one more city to
make the world capitulate to his demands. Some bacteriologists are after him and manage
to corner him. One of them is even more enmeshed in it than the others and he also says
that he recognizes the work of a fellow bacteriologist who disappeared several years before.
They use some special suits and manage to corner the guy at New York by using some x-ray
analyzer. They find him at a roof only to find out he is their friend who actually killed the
missing professor and used his theories to kill all these people to rule the world. They kill
him.

Pigmy Island (1930.8) (a powerful story of tiny men and giant rats and snakes – a vivid tale of
super-science) – a man is shipwrecked to some island and taken by a scientist who has a lab
there. The man finds out he turned all his fellow professors to tiny men and he also does the
same to him. The tiny professors come at night and save him. They battle some rats and
decide to get the enlarging serum from the scientist. They enter his room but he traps them
and is about to smash them. They manage to make him fall and shoot him dead with his (to
them huge) gun. They use the serum, get large again and burn the place down.

Eli Colter

Farthingale's Poppy (1925.7) (Four men make a tremendous effort to revive the dead) – A
man dies without any signs that anything bad has ever happened to him. His four friends
gather and talk about him with the group divided between scientific hardheads and
spiritualists. The spiritualists are convinced that the friend is not dead (even though
entombed for two months in a sarcophagus) as they believe the latter's delving into Eastern
mysticism has left his astral body outside his physical body. They show the scientific group
proof by observing a poppy plant (the friend was fond of poppies after serving in WWI) in
the scientist's house that suddenly sprouts a red poppy where only whites have bloomed
before. They remove the friend's coffin from the sarcophagus and find the body well-
preserved without rigor mortis. They hold hands and recite some mumbo-jumbo about
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believing the friend into his body and the man comes back to life thanking his friends. The
scientist's red poppy in his pocket turns white.

The Deadly Amanita (1925.12) (poisonous mushrooms – the harsh penance of Henry
Wytten) – a famous author talks to another author about another author. The famous
author, 15 years before, came to an old hermit to find some material for an interesting story
for a magazine. The hermit loves mushrooms and tells him his story. He was a poet who
lived in an ignoramus society that wished him to do menial labor. He married a rich girl who
loathed his work and after being rejected 16 times she burns his poems. He fixes her dinner
and she dies as he put (mistakenly or not) a deadly mushroom in her meal. He finds out,
many years later, that one of his manuscripts was accepted and published to Literary
acclaim. Yet, he punishes himself for killing his wife (mistakenly?). The author convinces the
man to cease his hermit days and he becomes a famous writer.

On the Dead Man Chest (1926.1-5) (four-part occult serial – spirit return) – an extremely ugly
but very cordial and intelligent man who is also a member of an anti-religious club confesses
his belief in god and the transmigration of souls to his close friends. He claims that he is
about to die and that God will put his soul in a better body. He makes his friend promise him
that they will cease their atheistic ways if he will indeed prove to them that he returned
from the dead in a new body. He dies soon after. The club finds another man to replace him
– an extremely beautiful man. Meanwhile the body, which is ordered by the will to remain in
the custody of one of the club's member, becomes prettier from day to day. The leader of
the club is furious and refuses to admit the change. The Deadman's friend become very close
with the new beautiful man. When the club's leader and the friend crash their car on the
road only the friend is hurt and so the beautiful man who hears about it volunteers to
donate blood. The friend is saved and during his sojourn in the hospital with the new friend
he finds out that the new friend and one of the nurses fall in love. Nevertheless, the
beautiful new friend refuses to go with the nurse telling her he is on parole and must go
back to prison. Meanwhile the friend finds out that the body of his old friend looks just like
his new friend. The atheist-club leader capitulates and agrees that there may be God in
heaven. The rest of the club show signs of repentance for their atheism. Finally the beautiful
man admits to the repentant club that he is the ugly friend who died and prayed to God to
come back so that his friends won't live in sin. He fades away and the body in the coffin
becomes ashes. The club decides to follow his will and make the atheist club a protestant
chapel. Disgustingly religious and preachy. I wonder why WT would publish such a thing that
belongs in a religious magazine.

The Corpus Delicti (1926.10) (Burgensdorf heard Hasting's boastful story – and then out of
the clouds there flashed the wrath of the almighty) Four companions sit around a fire as one
of them tells his story. He was in love with two women when he was in the "tropics" – one
native the other white but quite lascivious. He decides to marry the native girl. Nevertheless,
he soon gets bored of her and goes back to the scrupulous one. She decides to marry
someone else. He convinces her to wait with her decision. His wife murders her and
mutilates her body and then commits suicide. The man escapes. One of the companions who
does not like the man for some reason he himself is not aware of begins acting crazy,
murdering the man who told the story claiming he was about to marry the white woman.
Blue fire reaches from the sky after them murderer breaks the back of the man and invoking
God and the body is gone. Then the man regains consciousness and sleepily asks where did
the man who told the story went. The two find out he lost his memory 20 years ago for two
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years and that he now also elapsed into unconsciousness. He goes to sleep as the two swear
never to tell the story as there is no body to prove he killed someone and he seems to be
unaware of the murder.

The Greatest Gift (1927.3) (throughout the ages Lenore Andless paid in anguish of soul for a
moment of cruel pride) – a girl is torn by the sudden cold-shoulder her lover gives her. The
two are infatuated with each other but suddenly the man feels trapped and enslaved and
wants to kill her for some reason. A broken girl dreams at night how she meets Jesus who
talks to her about karma and lets her see how she (her previous incarnation) was once a
roman princess. She sees that her lover was one of her slaves whom she flogged, perhaps to
death, for daring to kiss her footprints in the dust. After thinking about doing a "womanly"
thing such as shrouding her reasons in mystery and telling her lover she thinks they should
not be together because of some vague thing she decides this is vain and disgusting. She
calls her lover and tells him he is free and that she will never try to chain him as her once
incarnation did. The man tells her he loves her.

The Last Horror (1927.1) (missing) –Three friends investigate a scream they hear in a
mountain and discover an apparently abandoned room with human bones. They are locked
inside and taken by a black person who covers all his body. He takes them to a big
underground complex inhabited by huge black servants and one white scientist. He tells
them he is a black man born with white hands. He wants to be a complete white man as he
was educated as a white man and tried all his life to be a white man. With the help of a lot of
money he accumulated by helping a rich white man he has the means to become white. He
kidnapped a white scientist who is the best skin surgeon in the world and offered him a
million dollars for helping him become white. It seems that he lured white men into his
home and grafted their skin (after offering them money and other things) and hair. He is
almost there and only the face remains. He forces one of the kidnapped friends into the
operating table and for several weeks grafts parts of his white skin replacing them with
those of his own. The friend returns after two weeks into the room where the rest of his
friends are held (they have a nice bath, bed, books and food) and they see he has black
stripes of flesh on his thighs. The black man is now white and he tells them he is going to go
out, after he poisoned the rest of his household, with the scientist and blast the place with
them still inside as they proved to be a nuisance and may tell on him. One of the friends tells
him that he is not really white because a true white man would not do such horrible things.
He tells him that black people slowly develop their own culture and one that is on par with
white culture. Although most of the black people are below the average of the white man
one of a thousand of them, under white civilization, has started to show themselves equal to
white man without mixing with them. He tells him he has a black heart. The black\white man
kills himself muttering"a white heart". The leave with the scientist who lights a fuse to blow
this horrible place up. He remembers that he forgot to take the check which is in the pocket
of the now-dead man. He returns, the friends run a way and the whole place is blown to
Smithereens. The three are mentally-shaken and would probably remain in shock for the
rest of their lives.

The Dark Chrysalis (1927.6) (here we have, at last, the epic of the microbe-hunters – a three-
part scientific thriller-tale about cancer) – an eccentric young boy who has no formal
education and is fascinated by bugs lives with his devoted mom in some rural area. He
becomes infatuated with germs and manages to convince a (crooked, in my opinion)
professor to be his guide about cancer. He decides to rid the world of cancer after the
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professor's assistant tells him she believes in him and he falls in love with her. After
procuring a man who dies from cancerfrom the professor and making some rodents get
cancer he manages to identify, with the help of his two college assistants that cancer is
actually (wait for it !!!) the product of some invisible germs. He manages to make them
visible and finds out they crawl around certain people. Those whom they crawl around and
are not cleanly enough get cancer. He discovers that his beloved mom contracted these
germs. They fail to find a cure as they also find out their friend and the mother got cancer.
After 3 years the boy is convinced by his girlfriend to pray to God. And so miraculously he
dreams about the cure -snake poison, water and air (ether? What the hell is that thing) he
manages to create a serum after killing hundreds of innocent animals. He refuses to try it on
humans but his dying friend takes the shot anyway. The friend is cured. He refuses to try it
on his mother but she convinces him to do so. After he gives her the vaccine his cured friend
dies from the vaccination. They find out the friend took a wrong vial. The mother is okay and
the scientist takes his girlfriend home to meet his now-not-jealous mother. The local people
want to burn the place after mishearing that the scientist killed his own mom (he went
around town crying "I killed my mom" so there…). They manage to convince the crazy horde
that the inventor cured cancer. The whole world is cured from cancer and the scientist
becomes super-famous (but not rich as he refuses to take money). He finally wants to find
another incurable disease.

The Golden Whistle (1928.1) (Suelivor came from a far-planet, searching the worlds for a
soul that he could draw to him by atomic vibration) – Some alien-demon who has lived for
many a Millenia goes to Earth to seduce a beautiful, mysterious singer and eat her soul. The
narrator also falls in love with the singer but she falls in love with the alien-demon (who
looks like a regular male). Choosing to do a very peculiar thing the singer locks the narrator
in a closet every night the demon comes in a sound-proof room. The demon uses a golden
flute to vibrate her soul but instead it ends vibrating the narrator's soul. He goes to his
bizarre, sorcerer (but good) friend who tells him about the real nature of the space-demon.
Together with the singer they fool the demon to leave his flute with her and the narrator
takes the flute to his friend so that he could rig it and get rid of the demon – breaking his
atoms to many parts and vanishing him into the void. The narrator is locked again in the
closet and then he begins to play. The demon disintegrates. The singer is heart-broken but
manages to get over it and she marries the narrator.

The Curse of a Song (1928.3) (a powerful story – a ghost-tale about a malignant hatred that
comes back from the grave to blight the lives of two lovers) – a man becomes crazy after he
believed his fiancée cheated on him. He becomes obsessed with a song he heard when he
thought he saw his girl cheating on him. For some stupid reason he links this hatred for the
song and his downfall to his loving brother. He curses his brother that whenever the song
will be heard by his family he will haunt them. The daughter of this brother is the only one in
the family who believes this story and really fears the song. She falls in love with some man
but she links the song with him and is scared. She reveals to the protagonist (a friend of the
family) that she actually sees her crazy dead uncle each time she hears the song, with him
becoming more material from time to time. After her boyfriend confronts her about her fear
of him she confesses about the phenomenon. Together with the protagonist they decide to
sing the song each night until the ghost will come to hate the song and run away. As the
ghost becomes more material and they more haggard the boyfriend goes to some
engineering job and says he will keep thinking good thoughts at the same moments they
sing the song. The ghost becomes corporeal and the protagonist manages to hold it back
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physically while the song reaches its last crescendo. The ghost disappears. The boyfriend
sends a telegram in which he says a tree fell and killed his friend but that the girl's voice
warned him and he was saved. At their wedding they sing the song and the ghost tries to
manifest but fails completely and disappears forever. They also teach the song to their
daughters. It is interesting that Colter often depicts supernatural phenomena as a result of
human belief. This belief, while false in essence, is connected with evil powers. God and
Christian (probably Protestant) faith are the only "real" supernatural forces – that is, the only
forces that have existence on their own regardless of belief.

The Man in the Green Coat (1928.8) (a fascinating story of the supernatural, in the best vein
of this well-known author) – a man is fascinated that his friend whom he left poor uneployed
chemist is now a rich man and married to a smart, beautiful wife. He is also perplexed as to
the presence of some weird mute, ugly, man in a green coat. The friend tells his story – he
traveled as a hobo to some village where he happened upon a house with a weird man in a
green coat in it. Asking the people, they told him the place belonged to some scientist who
ran away after his daughter died. The man returns to the house and finds a diary that
explains how to make gold from metal. One component is missing from the formula. The
mute man appears and explains that he will make him rich as a lot of money is buried in the
place of the girl's grave. Apparently, the girl is still alive and her evil father sent her to an
insane asylum after making her mute for many years. He also made the man in the green
coat mute for life. The man tired to torture the man in the green coat because he refused to
tell him the formula to the gold-making potion. The man was afraid that it will make the evil
scientist greedy and crazy as it surly did. The man and the narrator manage to sneak the girl
out of the asylum but giving her some potion that makes her appear dead. They become rich
and marry. The man in the green coat loved the woman but understood he is too old and
ugly for her. It is revealed that he is also dead and that it is his ghost that made, and still
makes, all these appearances.

The Vengeance of the Dead (1929.2) (a two-part serial story of a strange monster whose
ghastly depredations terrified the guests at Waggener Wilds) – Some rich guy from a rich
family gets together with his younger brother who has just returned from Mexico as an
occultist. They gather with their young, rich, lazy friends on the beach and meet a new rich
bastard which everyone likes and he is very pretty (I must note that Colter describes man as
Quinn describes women – in a very graphic, erotic way) .The occultist brother hates the guy
but doesn't know why. The brothers bring the band to their huge lake-side log-mansion
which they haven't visited since their father died. The caretaker hates the new rich guy but
smiles to the younger brother. A tramp who lives with the caretaker is about to leave and
shows his hate to the new rich guy – apparently he was his subordinate at WWI and
witnessed him and his lieutenant doing some weird shit that involved turning into wolves
and killing people. As night approaches the tramp leaves and the protagonist finds out the
caretaker is deathly ill. He drives to a nearby village but fails to find a doctor. On the way
there he finds an extremely frightened tramp who says the werewolf officer is hunting. The
protagonist had found, before meeting the tramp, the ripped body of one of the caretaker's
dogs. The narrator returns home to see his caretaker fine. The party finds the pretty snob
dead with a knife buried in his chest. The party blames the younger brother who confesses
that he would have killed the evil man as he was responsible for the death of his loved one.
Like in "The Golden Whistle" the caretaker reveals to the younger brother that he killed the
man with his astral body as the man was an evil spirit from another planet that has become
a werewolf\vampire\soul eater (he ridiculously says that he is all of them). He killed his
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daughter and sucked her soul and so he did a ceremony and got out of his body to kill the
evil dude when he was out feeding. The narrator hears this, unknown to the brother and
caretaker, and blames the hobo that he met earlier as the killer framing him because he saw
his body before when he drove home.

Elwyn J. Owens

Six Bearded Men (1924.11) (bizzare tale of conscious) – a money-lender is visited by six
bearded men who put a spell on him and cut him piece by piece for the financial ruin he
invoked on various people. He probably wakes up and fins out it was dream. He tells his
secretary to call all the people he loaned money to and free them from their mortgages.

Black Temple Band (1924.12) (six black-robed men and a weird cave) – six men in black
covers subdue an old artist who creates lifelike wax dolls using unknown technological
means. They force him to open his lab in the forest and are convinced to rob and kill the
men instead of just destroying his life work and killing him. They try to drown him in a green
pool but he somehow (it is written so badly and vaguely that the reader cannot understand a
thing) electrocutes them.

Dead in three hours (1926.3) (thrills – perils – a cyclone – and sudden death) (a wild night of
adventures with three fiendish men with red turbans) –a man goes at a stormy night to his
sister's house only to enter the wrong house. Three red turbaned men blame him for being a
burglar and tie him down. The do a strange ceremony with a statue of a half-woman-half-
animal. The blame him for trying to steal their holy grail. They bring wine to the statue with
their grail. They take him down the stairs to a dank basement where they want to tie him
with wired cable into an open sewer so that he will die. One of the red bearded men decided
to rebel and do not tie the man right. The three quarrel in a strange language. A storm
breaks the house and the three men die. The man lives and goes to his sister's house.
Another strange story about some bearded men. The plot is dreamlike with no clear
connection between one part and another and everything happens as deus ex machina.

Knights of the Red Owl (1926.4) (a portly businessman undergoes a wild night of terror) – a
fat man is accepted by some bizarre organization and is ordered by it to go straight home
without looking back. He goes on foot, after bitching about it, when he hears a cry for help
from a girl. He enters a decrepit house in which some dream-like unclear descriptions of an
old lady who kills a semi-naked young one traps the fat man and forces him to meet her
"family" of black robed creatures and kiss some skeletons. The ordeal ends with the fat man
giving the old lady a ring that his mother gave him (the old woman claims she knew his long-
dead mother) and he promises to give her a lot of money to feed her bizarre family. He runs
from the house (even though the old lady told him he can go) and the creatures run after
him. When he reaches his home it is revealed that the whole vent was the weird cult
masquerading for some obscure reason. Yet another story by Owens where the reader does
not know whether the plot is meant to be dreamlike or is it just extremely bad writing.

Everil Worrell

The Bird of Space (1926.9) (From a dark star, warmed by internal heat, a green-hued man
comes to Earth to take back captives to the cattle-pens of Furos) – A man who travels an
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inter-state night train is kidnapped, together with five others by a green, humanoid alien.
The alien tells him he was chosen by him to be an interpreter. The alien knows English as he
lived on Earth for many years masquerading as a freak-show specimen. He has hypnotic
green eyes and possess a cutting device that can chop through anything. The six are locked
in Castle Rock. The alien keeps the five prisoners drugged and sometimes feed them. The
narrator is kept awake to help the alien. The alien waits for a space-bird to take him to his
planet – a sun that has cooled down to become a dark planet. The man learns that they are
to become slaves for the dominant race of this planet and eventually used as cattle. When
the nightmarish space-bird arrives, the narrator falls into a crack and the alien believes him
dead. He puts spacesuits on the five unconscious prisoners and leaves the narrator alone in
the desert night.

Cattle of Furos (1926.10) (Frank Alsion pursues the green-faced man and the girl in red to
the dark star – a sequel to "The Bird of Space") – The protagonist from the previous story
goes back to where he was kidnapped to mount the bird of space and rescue the girl in red.
He packs a revolver and poison. He finds the bird but is soon captured by a snakelike
creature. He is hurled into space and finds himself at the dark star and in captivity. His
captor is revealed to be one of the eight wise-men who rile the dark star. The star is muddy,
dark and filled with snakelike monsters. He finds a haggard version of the girl in red who tells
him she is the property of his captor and that he likes her to sing and drinks her blood. The
protagonist finds out that one of the human captives, an American pilot, started a slave
rebellion with the aid of one the wise-men who rebelled against the cruel ways of his
people. The protagonist is meant to kill the bird of space because it is a religious symbol for
the slaves. The wise-men built a spaceship to enslave the people of Earth but the existence
of the bird stirs religious tendencies in the people who might rebel if they, instead of a
foreign alien like the protagonist, will kill the bird. The protagonist tells the girl in red about
his plans to poison the council and run away when he reaches the bird. He reaches the bird
and fools the council with a bottle of poison that looks like their favorite morsel. The girl
manages to sneak into the bird with two snake suits meant to let them survive in space.
They jump on the bird and fly to Earth. Science Fantasy. Some strong elements in the way
the planet is described yet it is not elaborated enough. The plot is pretty hackneyed and
unreliable.

Leonora (1927.1) (a modern version of the old German legend of Leonora, by the author of
"the Bird of Space") – a sixteen-year-old country side girl is fascinated by a mysterious car
that stops at some crossroad at midnight every month. She is infatuated by the mysterious
dark stranger who talk courteously to her. After some months of dreaming she decides to
get in the car as the stranger waits for her. The car travels all night and the reticent stranger
barely reveals his face. They reach into a graveyard and the girl smells rotten earth coming
from the stranger. The man forcefully takes her from the car into a coffin and unburied
patch of earth. The girl sees that the man's face is like a skeleton and as she fights with him
his gloved hands come loose and she remains with a bony finger. The girl is found raving
mad with the finger two days later. She is institutionalized in an asylum and writes about
what happens to her a year later only to stress that Death is waiting for her soon. She dies.
The Nurse who finds the diary explains that the girl psychologically suggested to herself the
whole based on her name and the place this girl plays in the 18 th century tale of Leonora.

The Canal (1927.12) (through the night flapped evil shapes, vampire-things of loathsome
aspect – a shuddery horror-tale) – a man is entranced by a dilapidated junk yard next to the
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river. He really likes graves and abandoned places. He sees, at night, a beautiful girl in a
ship's wreck that stands on the almost-stagnant waters but she does not allow him to come
closer. She tells him she hates the people of the city and that she and her father live on this
sunken barge – she takes a night vigil her father a day vigil. After many nights of pleading to
come to this mysterious girl she makes him swear that he will do anything he can for her
when the water stops running through the canal. When they do the man understands that
the girl is a vampire and that she hates him. He is forced to do her bidding. He finds out that
her father is a corpse and that she probably became a vampire and killed a little boy. When
the town's people tried to lynch her, her father hid her at the barge and died. As vampires
cannot cross running water she stayed there for many years. She forces the man to blow a
cavern and many huge bats, vampires in disguise (only girl vampires are described) fall upon
a camping site next to the derelict river-site. They fool many campers that they are damsels
in distress and turn them all to vampires. The man rigs the whole place with a lot of T.N.T
and kills everyone including himself leaving only his notes for his motive.

From Beyond (1928.4) (a strange gift of occult sensitiveness was Sheila's, and strange were
the consequences of her weird clairvoyance) – a girl who sensed the Lusitania's sinking and
her lover's death from appendicitis and an angry Indian mob who lynched him is about to
get married to a man who does not believe her powers. When she senses something bad is
about to happen to her he dismisses it and she is forced to go out. When she does not return
he searches for her and finds her almost dead after a drug addict tried to rape her after
hitting her head with an iron bar. The family's dog attacks him and he runs. The man carries
the girl to the house where the girl regains consciousness and tells him that she will never
live happily with him if he refuses to believe her powers she tells him that he will find
something that will prove her words to him and that her dead lover told her in her
unconscious state that he orchestrated the whole thing from beyond the grave so that the
man will believe her story (a part of it was how the doctor who operated on him while he
had the appendicitis looked like – an information no one could have had). The man searches
the car and finds a diary in which the drug addict who hid in the car writes that he was the
doctor and that he dreamt of the girl and even took her picture from the lynched man and
that he is cross-eyed – the information the girl told the man before (that her lover was
operated by a cross-eyed man).

The Elemental Law (1928.6) (A weird story of aviation and reincarnation—indescribably eery
were the faces that stared out of the black pool) – two men crash land on the Sahara Desert.
They discover a woman who also crash landed on the beach of the desert. I think the story
means to tell that one of the men and the woman competed for who reached Africa first
with the plan and that a big prize waited for the first to do so. The woman is the man's
fiancée and she hates him and only marries him for his money. She did the trip only to beat
him so that she won't have to marry him. Miraculously the other man also knows her as she
was his lover and the two were about to get married when he enlisted to the army in WWI.
It appears that the woman's friend became mentally unstable after her investor husband
killed himself over failed speculation. She is left with a baby and is unable to sustain herself.
The woman helps her but she needs money so she ditched her poor lover and decided to
marry the rich ace-pilot bastard. The man's plane is fine but without fuel and the woman's
plane has fuel but is thrashed. The man threatens the two that he is going to fly the plane
and get help (though it is hinted that he may fail and the two that stay will probably die)
because he wants to get the money for the prize and force the girl to marry him. For some
unclear reason he travels the dunes. When morning arrives he returns haunted and tells
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them he found a pool of bodies with all the dead people he killed or wronged in many
incarnations. He tells the two that for centuries the three meet in their lives with him being
mostly a barbarian who rapes the girl and kills the other man – her lover. He also tells how
he killed his best friend in WWI because he was as good a pilot as he – he managed to run
him over with his plane when the friend crash landed safely. He also killed another friend by
stabbing him and taking a diamond the two found in WWI. The bastard then goes to the
plane but then a shadow plane arrives and kills the man just as he killed his friend. The two
bury the douc bag and return home rich and married.

Vulture Crag (1928.8) (a weird-scientific tale of projection to other planets, by the author of
"The Bird of Space" and "Cattle of Furos") – a man is entranced by a close acquaintance who
is a mysterious scientist. The man tries to travel to space by freezing people and projecting
their minds to infinity by a machine he creates. Unbeknownst to the man the evil scientist
tries to freeze his body and leave him dead because he covets his fiancée which also begs to
join the journey to outer space. The man manages to escape as he is strapped to be frozen
and an angry mob attacks the place. Somehow, he frees his girl and after some struggle with
the evil scientist the place burns down with everyone inside except the man and his fiancée.
She tells him that she experienced eternity but that only God could properly separate soul
from body.

The Rays of the Moon (1928.9) (a gruesome graveyard tale – about a grave robber and the
dire retribution that befell him) – an evil student of medicine makes a girl kill herself by
making her fall in love with him and then shunning her. His friend murders a woman to
experiment on her body. The friend dies from fever. The man opens graves to learn about
the human body. He gets the body of a shrouded girl who just died and then he is caught by
the lights of the moon. His spirit departs and the shrouded girl tells him he came just at the
time of year when the spirits of the dead go to heaven and are stuck on the moon. He
witnesses the spirit of his friend being tortured by the woman he killed. The girl let him go
back to Earth and tells him he has another chance of redemption. He finds out that the girl's
body starts moving and that she is the girl that drank poison because of him. She asks him to
help her out the grave but, for some unclear reason, he refuses. She begins to shout and he
kills her. He is caught by the police. He thinks that the girl must have been buried alive and
mistaken for dead and that he really killed her and missed his chance of redemption – he is
about to get tortured for eternity on the moon.

An Adventure in Anesthesia (1929.2) (The new gas used at the hospital drove one man to
suicide, and had a startling and weird effect on another) – a man is treated with some gas for
his appendix surgery. He finds himself at limbo and chooses to go with his self that is more
evil. He finds himself at hell and a demon escorts him and shows him many people who
suffer there (he justifies a woman that is constantly killed by her husband being there even
though she was the victim of her violent husband when she was alive as her fault). He marks
the man on his head so that he will become a devil on Earth and return to hell as a worker.
The man becomes evil on the hospital but becomes humane again when he witnesses the
eyes of the angelic nurse whom he liked. He becomes good again. (This disgustingly Christian
moral story explains that some people are born without souls due to some evolutionary
quirk that made people evolve from monkeys and people who are created by God it also
explains why imaginative and non-realistic people who like Fantasy are the good guys and
the realistic-practical ones are Evil).
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The Gray Killer (1929.11) (Through the wards of a hospital slithered a strange, horrifying
creature, carrying shocking death to his victims) – a woman who is hospitalized due to some
rusty nail she stepped on (which caused blood poisoning) awakes at night to see a grey-
figured emaciated grey, ugly man with huge feet who offers her a sedative. She refuses
when she smells a horrible odor from the sedative. The creature tells her he is certain doctor
who works in the hospital. He angrily leaves, after threatening her, and gives the shot to
some cancer victim. When she tells the nurses, in the morning about the strange man they
are angry at her for doubting the goodly doctor whose name she repeated. The dying cancer
victim miraculously heals. The same thing is repeated the following night and this time he
shoots a crash victim. The same thing happens in the morning. The following night a boy
who just had his utensils removed is brutally murdered. The following night the same thing
happens with a new-born baby. The two "healed" patients now have leprosy. The girl begs
the staff to believe her about the evil doctor but they think her mad and decide to confine
her into a mental asylum (it is interesting that many stories portray an extremely easy way
for locking people in a mental asylum – one doctor says it and is done). Before sending her
there the lepor cancer-victim disappears. The following night the girl is taken to stroll the
beach with some doctor and they find the woman's cannibalized body. At night she is
kidnapped by the grey doctor who binds her and is about to torture her for some
space=God. While taking her they see a nurse (the nurse is portrayed earlier as an evil nurse
who cares nothing about the patients) who just ignores the horrible thing. At the last minute
the girl is saved by this nurse and some other doctor. It is revealed that the man just lied
about his identity as he was not the doctor he claimed to be. The nurse cooperated with this
crazy asshole because he made love to her (an ugly, disgusting stranger, who just arrives one
night). The man is also revealed to be an alien from our solar system (some pseudo-scientific
planet) in which everyone cannibalizes one another as they live forever. To eat each other
they infect their victims with leprosy as it becomes more tasty. They also worship some evil
space-God who demands horrible sacrifices (children). The creature's legs are snake-like
fingers (when the nurse got fucked by this creature she didn't see anything peculiar?). He
was a high-preist of this god but betrayed it by saving some about-to-be-sacrificed girl. The
angry god took him and stranded him on Earth.

Worrell tries to mingle aliens with gods and spirits but in a Christian cosmos. Like in
Lovecraft's stories the cosmos is teaming with horrible, decadent, evil aliens but whereas
Lovecraft's aliens are impossible to comprehend (motives, Philosophy,Even nature) Worrell's
evil entities are part of a good\evil Christian universe in which God's providence exists as an
antithesis to these dark creatures.

Light-Echoes (1930.5) (An occult-scientific story that goes beyond Einstein in the daring
audacity of its science) – a subtle, touching story about a woman whose scientist husband
died. The girl of this woman tells of how her mother barely dealt with this loss as the
scientist and his wife were very close and in love. The scientist had some theory about the
physical quality of spirit (this is one of the few plausible explanations of wacky science in
WT). The woman starts seeing the light-echoes of her dead husband and tries getting in
contact with him but without much avail. The girl, who will be later a scientist too watches
her mother die from a heart attack when her love for her husband is too much. The girl see
the two as a young couple holding her as a baby in some vision affected by her
understanding of her father's theory of light-echoes which is actually the souls. The wife is
operated on ,post-mortem, and it is found her heart ceased to work when her husband died
but it kept on going on love. Touching and very out of place in the trashy magazine.
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Francis Hard

The Great Panjandrum (1924.11) (African Voodoo and Chicago Spirit made a hero out of
George Washington) – A simple-minded black man thwarts a plot of Voodoo priests and
black intellectuals to create an African republic in Chicago. Fearing the white men will
retaliate he tells the cops about that. They do not believe him and he tries to stop the great
Voodoo priest alone. He is subdued but some cops followed him so he manages to draw
their attention thus revealing the hidden plotters. He returns home to his wife.

The Dark Pool (1925.4) (verse) – a poem about a disgusting swamp with poisonous flowers
and gases. Evil spirits and undead sing there and cast their spells.

The Death Angel (1925.9) (verse) – a drowning man sees a beautiful girl who beckons him to
join her. He manages to break free from her spell but his friend dies but is seems the
speaker is jealous of him.

Frank Belknap Long

The Desert Lich (1924.11) (a necrophilic tale) – an Arab narrator who sells women is
imprisoned by a man who bought an unfaithful wife from the narrator. He drops the man
into a cavern with only the body of the woman inside making the narrator go mad with fright
and hunger for the body. He is finally released by the angered man.

Death-Waters (1924.12) (snakes and a black man in a black lake) - a cruel American
explorer goes to Honduras and finds a mysterious lake. He forces a native to drink the foul
waters of the lake. The man screams and the explorer beats him until he drinks the water.
The native suddenly seems content and as they go out of the lake many snakes obey the
native and swarm the boat. The explorer dies.

The Ocean Leech (1925.1) (uncanny monster oozes over the side of the ship) - an inert
captain tells about his experience at sea. A huge octopus-like creature seizes the ship and
sucks the life out of several crewmen. His first mate saves the day when he marches the men
below deck and saves the captain from being consumed (though quite enjoyably as the
captain experiences himself being sucked) by burning the thing. The first mate mysteriously
disappears after they reach land.

Men who Walk upon the air (1925.5) (walking gibbets – skeletons – and the old age of
Francois Villon) –a medieval French hobo finds himself next to dump. Just outside it dangles
a hanged-man from a tree. Inside the hut he finds a woman who offers him a meal in return
for him taking down the body of her husband from the tree. The man agrees but after he
eats dinner he refuses until he gets a kiss. The woman finally demurs to this request. After
the old hobo kisses her the dead husband enters the home and pulls his wife by the hair and
hangs her. In the morning the hobo goes outside the hut to find two rotting bodies (one of
them belongs to the woman he met last night) dangling side by side.

The Devil-God(1925.6) (the king read poetry so the state took measures to protect itself) –in
an unclear time and place a certain black society lives in the jungle. An opportunist man
suggests the wiseman of this society to call a forest-demon to kill the king because the latter
is an unfit ruler who writes poetry all day. The shaman does so. At night a weird boy comes
to the shaman and confesses that he killed the king several nights before. The shaman is
now king and so his curse should affect him as the king was already dead when the
invocation started. The opportunist and the shaman's daughter plotted the whole thing to
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rule this society. The shaman runs and is hunted by a bat-like horror that chops his arms and
head. The following morning the two plotters meet and observe the head of the shaman
inside some leaves. It is not exactly clear if he was, indeed, killed by a demon as the man
says "why did he not stay and have it out with the forest-devil". Likewise, it is unclear how
the head wrapped itself into the leaves. Perhaps it was all a hoax made by the plotters?
Unclear.

Stallions of the Moon (1925.8) (Verse) – a poem about horses riding in a fantasy land. The
horses fly into the red stars and await the speaker and the reader to ride them.

The were-snake (1925.9) (Arthur fights with the goddess Ishtar in her subterranean retreat) -
a man sleeps a night at a temple of Ishtar because the locals tell horrible stories about a
beautiful creature that seduces men to their deaths. He stays the night even though the
beautiful daughter of an archeologist tells him not to. At night he sees huge green eyes, like
those of an insect that seduce him to come near. The archeologist daughter suddenly
appears and is kidnapped by the creature. The man chops the head of the creature with a
stone. In the morning they reveal the beheaded body of a woman and the head of a cobra.
The story mentions some names from Lovecraft's stories.

The Sea Thing (1925.12) (out of the ocean came a gulping thing that lived on blood) – a
captain of a small, sea-stranded, ship witnesses the death of most of his crewmates by
malaria. The seven remaining people are starving. Then, a weird Spaniard approaches the
ship and tells how his crewmates were all dead, leaving him alone with a boat full of food.
The man cures several of the sick sailors. Nevertheless, the men start to be sick again and a
horrible stench covers the ship and especially the new Spaniard's. Several crew members die
mysteriously as if their blood was drained from them. The Spaniard acts more strangely as
the days go by. The captain, in an extremely convenient coincidence, finds a book on ship
which tells the story of a weird Spaniard who lived 300 hundred years before who was a
sailor who jumped to sea and disappeared only to be spotted years later as a blood-sucking
fishman. The captain and a mate ambush the Spaniard at night and kill it. The young mate is
dead because the captain acted very slowly (it may be hinted that he threw the mate
overboard even though he was still alive). The vampire-seaman-Spaniard seems happy to be
killed. The wind returns and the captain sails home with the three members left. (aside from
the captain being extremely stupid and useless, like the one in "the ocean lich", and the
incredulous finding of the book, the story works)

The Inland Sea (1926.3) (Verse) – a poem about a distant shore where no one lives and in
the prehistoric land a giant lizard that lives in the water scares all the other beasts.

The Dog-Eared God (1926.11) (There were strange Icings in the old forgotten days in Egypt,
and they would not brook irreverent modem prying) –an old Jewish professor and the
narrator, who is his young friend, observe a mummy the professor procured. The professor
illegally gathers mummies because he has a theory that the Egyptians worshipped real
monsters from another plane of existence. The observe a monstrous mummy. At night the
narrator dreams a bout a procession of semi-humanoids in a red desert burying a huge
monster they call their king who will be resurrected 30,000 years later by a furless creature.
The man awakens and the mummy gets out of its wrappings and is revealed to be a hideous
monster. The monster burns the professor who is at least happy to see his theories were
right. The narrator runs far away and later reads in a newspaper that 40 hooded figures with
fur and burnt faces rescued the monster from the fire.
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Advice (1927.6) (verse) – a short poem about some Kobolods and Goblins that cause
mischief at your house

The Man With a Thousand Legs (1927.8)(a horror-tale of the sea – a bizarre and fantastic
story about a weird a terrible monster) –a young mad scientist wants to prove that he can
graft some ethereal, yet slimy, tentacles into living creatures (what the hell is the purpose of
such an effort? It is so dumb). He kidnaps some children for his experiments. He then tries
the thing on itself and he hides inside a disgusting pool prowling passing humans. He
manages to control the thing and become human again for some time hiding in a room. He
fails miserably and goes to the sea, only to kill several people and ships. He somehow dies.
Some hobo finds his experiment and tries it on himself before thrashing the machine. It
seems he is also affected like the scientist and that the horror will continue.

The White People (1927.11) (verse) – a poem about mysterious entities who lived in ancient
times and now haunt the woods and dance in abandoned wilds till the end of time.

Night Trees (1928.3) (verse) – a poem about a disfigured forest that was once beautiful bit is
now disgusting and scary by night. (perhaps it is about the difference between the beautiful
woods at day and how they become scary at night).

The Space-Eaters (1928.7) (A tremendous menace closed in upon the earth from outside the
solar system—a powerful story of uncanny horror) (extremely important for the Ph.D.) –
Long tells how he and Lovecraft sit when Lovecraft laments his inability to write true horror
instead of cheap yarns. He wants to write about Horror itself and how it is the manifestation
of unworldly creatures that nimble through reality to reach the minds of men and eat them
too. The two are aroused by a neighbor who tells them how his brain is being chewed after a
formless thing fell on him in the woods. He has a huge hole in his head but no bullet wound.
As he screams that his mind is getting eaten and runs outside the two try to find him when
they realize reality is being munched by some creatures who start to form above the place.
They find the neighbor dead and the two escape to sea as the town burns. The oddly use
some cross-symbol with fire to stop the creatures and convince themselves that the
creatures are formless thus making them disappear. After many months Lovecraft writes his
masterpiece – a story about the event they experienced. Several weeks later he calls Long
screaming that his mind gets eaten by the things who have returned. Long reaches to
Lovecraft's house in New York only to find him screaming and holding his head. The
creatures disappear in an explosion that happened because of some symbols that appeared
for no reason. Lovecraft is dead.

You Can't Kill a Ghost (1928.8) (An eery ghost-tale of Haiti – a weird adventure in a ruthless
land, in which a phantom is the hero) – an American traveler is mistakenly taken as a rebel
spy by a corrupt Haitian government. At cell he meets black ex-generals and political
prisoners who tell him he is about to get court marshaled and shot just like them.
Nevertheless, they tell him how to escape if he wishes it. He manages to escape but is
almost caught when a big, mysterious, black man helps him escape and even hauls him. As
some soldiers try to shoot them the man intervenes and they scream in panic as they tell
him they did not know who he was. He hauls him to an American ship and swims to shore
even though he is shot many times. He later finds out that this was the president of Haiti and
that he was assassinated just before his prison escape.
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The Hounds of Tindalos (1929.3) (a tale of unutterable horror – of a pursuit by loathsome

entities through the ages and through the dimensions) – a Lovecraftian tale in which the
protagonist visits his writer friend who takes drugs to reach time-before-time. He meets a
disgusting, amorphous, omniscient, uncaring creature that haunts him. He begs the friend to
help him renovate his house to prevent sharp angles through which the creature may find
him. After an Earthquake the house is cracked enough to make sharp lines, the creatures
enter, decapitate the man's head and leave bluish goo on his body.

The Red Fetish (1930.1) (Weird adventures among savage head-hunters – a red-headed man
runs afoul of cannibals) – two shipwrecks survive for several days on an island they are afraid
of moving to a nearby island with fruit and water because it is infested with cannibals. The
cannibals like redheads for their shrunken-heads collection. They decide to swim instead of
killing each other at night and cannibalizing each other. They swim 30 kilometers, even
though they haven't drunk or eaten almost anything for three days because why not. They
see the cannibals gather on the shore to eat them. Some sharks eat the redhead but the
other manages to get on shore and drink some water. The cannibals surround him but treat
him as a god because he gave them a gift – the sharks spat the head of the redhead and the
cannibals shrunken it – oh joy. The man is rescued three months later as a madman.

The Horror on Dagoth Wold (1930.2) (verse) – a poem about an old man who explains to the
speaker about magical, discarded stuff (some immaterial) one can get from his dreams and
the world's dreams.

On Icy Kinrath (1930.4) (vrese; decoration by C.C. Senf) – The speaker dreams about being in
a horrible, frozen place at some island with monstrous flying creatures. The speaker is
attacked by one of the flying creatures.

The Black Druid (1930.7) (a short tale that compresses a world of cosmic horror in its few
pages) – an archeologist learns that druids (pre Saxon and Latin race of demons according to
the story) have clothes that can curse people who wear them. His cloak is misplaced and as
he wears it he becomes a monster. He manages to use his Anglo-Saxon and Latin heritage to
break free from this evil menace. His neighbor tells him how a monstrous figure left a cloak
outside his door. He dreams about his ancestors killing some monsters at a bygone age. The
Horror Long creates, together with Howard, Lovecraft and others is that remains from a
bygone age haunt the "new" Anglo-Saxon civilization. This haunting is also echoed in the way
the Anglo Saxon civilization will become a corrupt culture meant to be replaced by barbarian
hordes who are evil but also beneficial in making society "clean" again.

A Visitor from Egypt (1930.9) (Wild panic resulted from the visit to the museum of this
strange being from abroad) – a famous professor visits a museum's curator in order to see a
new 8,000-year-old mummy. Soon, the curator suspects the professor is not who he says he
is. A fire starts and the curator sees that the professor is the cause of all the mayhem as he
steals the new mummy. The curator is about to act but he sees the professor is without
clothes and has a reptilian body. The creature sucks the life from the curator so that when
they find his body it is believed he was long dead.

Frank H. Mochnant
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The Derelict Mine (1926.4-6) (three-part mystery serial, which rises to a ghastly climax) – the
narrator is the son of a mine purveyor who suddenly becomes prosperous after the sinking
of the Titanic – an event that seems very close to the narrator's parents. The son overhears
his parents mention his name during their nightly talk while talking about the newspaper.
The kid finds the paper at night and sees his name among the Titanic casualties – he finds
out he had an uncle. The kid goes to college and becomes a supervisor like his father after
many years of study. He loves a girl but his father seems angry when he mentions her family
name. The man does not know why his father is so against their love. Meanwhile the father's
mine closes down and a new mine is opened. Smoke and sounds come from the old mine
even though it is abandoned. The man goes there several times but finds nothing even
though he notices a strange light from the distance which disappears when he comes
nearer. The mine itself had a landslide so it is impossible to go deeper than 30 feet which is
not enough for harvesting zinc (the light the man notices and the smells he smells tell him
that someone is mining zinc in the old mine). Some people say they noticed someone that
looked like the devil prowling the mine's ruins. The protagonist's father suspects his evil
brother is still alive. The father commits suicide after reading some letter and the son tries to
find out why. He is approached by a well-covered old man who tells him to follow him into
an old cabin next to the old mine. There the old man is revealed to be the evil uncle. For
some reason (the plot maybe hints that it was caused by some African disease or magic) the
uncle looks hideous with monstrous eyes. Apparently, the protagonist's father and uncle
fought to win the hand of some girl and the uncle lost. The uncle traps the protagonist in the
old mine but promises to release him when he dies as he only has very little left to live. He
also reveals that the protagonist's lover is, in fact, his daughter (meaning that that two are
cousins). The mine belongs, according to law, to the evil uncle and he leaves it to his
daughter and its government to the protagonist. The uncle asks to be hauled into a weird
pyramid-like tomb and dropped into a shaft in the ground. A messy plot enfolds in which the
uncle dies, is buried in the weird pyramid coffin, returns to life and squashed by an elevator.
The protagonist barely manages to escape the mine after he finds the note his evil uncle left
him about where the mine's key can be found. The protagonist loses consciousness and is
found by some mine workers and after several weeks is back to normal health. His lover\
cousin returns and they plan to get married. They open some letters the uncle left and see
some correspondence with an English professor about a mysterious pyramid-like
contraption found in Africa asking the uncle's daughter to send him some photographs of it.
The protagonist is happy when the professor does not answer back.

Frank Owen

Hunger (1925.2) (tormented by the gnawing of the rat Mel Curran commits murder) – an
extremely idiotic elderly man-creature craves food in the streets. He barges into a restaurant
and steals some food. The proprietor tries to shoot him but the man kills him with a platter.
The story jumps several months later where the man enjoys a meal and is unaware that he is
going to the electric chair.

The Wind that Tramps the World (1925.4) (a tale of sweetness and light and exquisite music)
- an Englishman sojourns in a mysterious mountain-dump in the Himalayas. There he meets
an old Chinaman who lives in a strange pagoda with howling winds, a mysterious lantern and
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jug as he listens to the winds. The old man tells him his story: he was on of the best
horticulturists in the world and his garden in Southern China was his life. One day a beautiful
orchid grows in his garden and he falls in love with him. An evil wind that destroys cities
woos the flower but the flower loves the Chinaman so the wind kidnaps it. The man goes to
a wise, 140-years-old Indian who tells him about a forgotten city in the Himalayas where all
the winds congregate. The old man lives in that place for 40 years and tries to listen to the
wind that kidnapped his flower. Several days after the Englishman decides to live with the
old man a monstrous wind comes screaming and roaring into the house the old man says
that this is the wind-that-tramps-world (the kidnapper) and after a long fight, in which a
sweet voice echoes in the wind the wind escapes. As the dawn rises the Englishman finds the
old Chinaman dead but he looks younger and with a smile on his face. In the jug before him,
where only a dead branch was planted, the Englishman finds a beautiful orchid. He places
that orchid on the breast of the dead Chinaman and leaves the house.

Black hill (1925.6) (the golden Buddha brought misery and terror to Cass Ledyard) –A
scientist moves to a haunted house with his beautiful daughter. A novelist moves to live with
them while he and the girl fall in love. The scientist is an eccentric recluse who runs away
every night. They also have a gorilla-like, ex-convict, servant. The novelist and the girl tell the
household they are engaged. The gorilla-like servant runs away in anger as he fancied he will
marry the girl. Some night after that there is a power-surge and the scientist is agitated to
find the door to his study open with his most prized possession gone – a golden Buddha
statue. After he angrily kicks the novelist out of his home he tells him about the statue. 10
years ago two Arab guides and he smuggled themselves to Tibet to steal the most prized
possession of the Tibetans – a golden Buddha, rumored to be stolen by the Tibetans from
the Chinese. He steals the statue but causes the death of its two elderly guardians for they
are blamed because of the theft and killed by the cruel and sadistic Dalai Lama. His conscious
troubles him for 10 years as he believes the ghosts of the murdered men haunt him. He feels
free now that the Lama servants, so he believes, stole the statue. The novelist believe it was
the gorilla-like servant who stole them but after marrying the girl he finds out she stole the
statue because it troubled her father for many years.

The Lantern-Maker (1925.8) (Yin Wen's Mind stopped like a clock that has run down) (a
poetic fantasy , about old Yin Wen and his forty-year love for Taki) – the Western narrator is
in Canton. He sees a beautiful lantern shop run by a shriveled old man. The man tells him
about his youth where a beautiful and mysterious girl came to his shop and was entranced
by the lanterns. The two fall in love. At the festival of lights, the man loses his beautiful girl,
just before they are about to get married, to a rich merchant who has a golden lantern on
his paraquat. The girl disappears into the man's wagon and the man is unable to find her.
The old man tells the narrator that he works on the most beautiful lantern to seduce her
back even though he does not know where she is. The narrator sees the almost-done lantern
and it is indescribable as it is too beautiful to describe. The narrator goes to a tea shop and
asks the vendor about the old man wondering how a beautiful girl could fall in love with this
most ugly man. The vendor tells him that the old man is making his lantern for 40 years and
who knows if the girl is still living and that she is probably old and ugly like the lantern maker
himself. He tells the narrator that the memory of the girl and the making of the lantern has
turned the old man's life into a fantasy for many years and that the story is not so sad
because of it.
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The Yellow Pool (1925.10) (His China Girl Harmonized with the tint that he loved) (he spent
his life in bondage to a color) – a scientist who likes the color yellowand finds a vcure to
yellow fever is lost in the yellow swamps of panama. After three days he returns half-mad.
Regaining consciousness, he becomes monomaniac for yellow. He builds a yellow house next
to the yellow swamp with everything inside the house yellow. He finds a Chinese girl who is
veerybeautiful and yellow and forces her to stand nude under the yellow sun next to the
yellow pool in his yellow house. When the girl starts using make-up to become whiter the
man kills her next to the pool until she becomes blue and so he is shocked by her color. The
woman dies and drops into the pool. The man is now old and lives alone in his bizarre house
worshiping the yellow color by the pool.

The Fan (1925.12) (vampire tale of China) –a beautiful woman seduces men who sacrifice
everything to be with her. When they are left with nothing they are found dead without
their lips. The woman has a marvelous fan next to her all the time. People shun the woman
and blame her for being a witch. She grows old and fat and ugly. She manages to convince a
European to hear her sing and she becomes young and beautiful again but when the man
becomes entranced he notices that the fan she has is composed of lips that sing love song
and try to kiss her. He runs away, breaking the spell and making the fat woman fall, and
probably die. The lips on the fan kiss her body. (another oriental fantasy that is well
portrayed)

The Silent Trees (1926.5) (great was the beauty of lunpei lo, dwarfing even the beauty of
that magnificent house in the drab city of silence) – an American finds a weird man next to a
tea house. The man tells him about a beautiful woman who went away thus making the
garden he lived in a desolate and silent place. He asks the American if he wants to see the
place. The American agrees and as the two sail on a boat in a pitch-black darkness the
American falls asleep. He wakes up in a beautiful place that is utterly silent with no sound at
all not even his own. He finds a house that is even more beautiful than the rest of the place
but in it lies a girl that dwarfs the beauty of the place. The girl disappears and the American
feels his heart broken and is only left with a purple diadem the girl wore. He wakes up to
find himself in an Opium den. The proprietor tells him about an old tale where a wizard that
looked just like the man next to the tea house. The wizard who lived thousands of years ago
kidnapped a beautiful girl but was heartbroken when she committed suicide. The proprietor
tells him he must have heard the story before taking the opium. Nevertheless, the American
still holds a mysterious purple diadem.

Seven Minutes (1926.10) (The physician’s wife lost her soul—so the physician crossed the
borders of life in search of it) – A scientist who dabbles in the occult has a black servant and
friend whom he conducts experiments with. His wife had an heart attack and so he used
some adrenalin on her heart after seven minutes she was clinically dead. The wife returns to
life but is alien in her behavior – she chants weirdly beautiful tunes, does not speak or
understand what she is being told and is fascinated by nature. The doctor summons an old
Indian shaman but she is revealed to be a charlatan. He decides to ask his black servant\
friend to revive him with adrenalin after he swallows a poison that stops his heart so that he
could reach the spirit of his wife and make her return to her beautiful body. While the
doctor is dead and the servant is about to give him adrenalin the wife, fascinated by the
burning fire in the hearth, gets engulfed by flames. By the time the friend manages to douse
the flames she is badly burnt and dead. Seven minutes has already passed so the servant
understands that reviving the doctor would be similar to what happened to his wife and he
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decides to let the two die peacefully. He observes a smile on the doctor's lips which makes
him deduce that the husband found his wife after death.

The Dream Peddler (1927.1) (an odd tale about an old man who was able to make the
dreams of his young friend come true) – two men meet at a restaurant. The one is a bored
detective and the other is an emaciated middle-aged man who sells dreams. He convinces
the detective to come with him to his house to smoke something and be hypnotized. In the
dream he induces on the detective the man falls in love with some beautiful girl in a cottage
who tells him about Japanese tea-ceremonies. The detective becomes addicted to the
dream and begs the dream-peddler to hypnotize him again which he grants the following
night where the man meets the girl again on some sea-side cliff. The peddler tells him the
price for the dream is not money and the addicted-detective follows the peddler who tells
him he must browse his wares in the countryside. In the countryside the detective discovers
the peddler is actually quite wealthy with a black servant and carriage. They stop next to a
cottage and there the detective sees the woman he dreamed about. The peddler tells him at
dinner where the three sit that he used methods from psychoanalysis to induce the dream
(the smoke being nothing but tobacco). He tells the detective the price for the dream is for
him to marry the girl. It is unclear why the girl agrees to get married to a man she never met
before. It is unclear why the peddler wants his daughter to get married to a poor detective.
The psychoanalysis explanation of the peddler is interesting (about how SF is psychological
in nature at the time). The Story itself is self-reflexive about pulp fiction magazines as dream
peddlers.

The Blue City (1927.9) (a Chinese tale – the story of the beautiful and eery adventure that
befell Hwei-Ti) – ax extremely wealthy Chinaman becomes depressed and teams up with an
old Chinese mystic who shows him a bridge to a moon city. As they climb the bridge at night
they witness a beautiful girl who sings to the man and kisses him. The old man becomes
agitated when the sun starts to rise and the whole place becomes misty pink he runs witht
the rich man like a madman down the bridge. He explains that too much beauty will burn
the rich man. The rich man becomes even more depressed and forces the old man to take
him again to the moon city. Once there he decides to stay with the girl and watch the dawn.
The sight of the city at dawn is so beautiful that is burnt from the beauty. The girl awakens
his soul and tells him he can live with her forever now when his body does not exist
anymore.

The Purple Sea (1928.2) (another exquisite Chinese fantasy, as full of color as was "The Wind
that Tramps the World" ) – an amnesiac Chinese wakes up on some beach next to a purple
sea. He is taken from the island by a golden ship captained by a huge, intelligent brute and
his beastly, stupid, marines. The ship is horrible with rats, bugs and violence but after a
nightly raid (probably) the Chinese sees that the ship now holds a beautiful Chinese dancer.
He kisses her later that night but the captain sees that and tries to kill them both. He jumps
to the purple sea with the girl but loses consciousness. He wakes up on the same coral beach
believing he dreamed the whole thing but then he sees the girl who claims she has found
some habitation on this island. It is unclear if the man is dreaming and this is his death vision
or if the whole thing actually happened.

The Tinkle of the Camel's Bell (1928.12) (a Chinese fantasy about Li Kan and his wanderings,
and a superbly beautiful woman who was incredibly aged) – a rich hotel owner goes on an
adventure. He fools a crooked ex-criminal and steals his fire opal. He finds himself at the
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outskirts of some city next to a beautiful deserted house. He enters the beautiful gardens
and house and meets a beautiful lady who gives him a drink that makes him forgetful. He is
enamored with her and gives her the fire opal. Upon touching it its fire is extinguished. This
makes the man afraid to touch the woman even though she hints that she would like that.
After many weeks of being trapped at this mysterious house with magically appearing food
and nightly visits by invisible Skeleton hands. He goes to the library and reads an entry about
a woman who made a pact with dark powers to live forever and devour the souls of men
until the day her identity will be discovered. He feels himself being crushed and he awakes
to find himself on the road with no house nearby. He goes back to his hotel and tells his
story to visitors. He keeps the dead fire-opal as souvenir.

G. Appleby Terrill

The Supreme Witch (1926.10) (there were terrors that Nora Shafto dreaded worse than
death, but she had witch's craft enough to protect herself) –an old English councilor talks
with fellow plotters about the witchcraft trials abolition. He tells them how, as a boy, he
witnessed an innocent woman accused of witchcraft. He falls in love with her daughter 13
years later. The daughter refuses his advances when she finds out he is not going to marry
her (she is lowborn unlike him). He uses his influence to forcefully abduct her brother to
marine service. On the way to the ship a black mare emerges from the forest and attack the
men trying to drag the brother away. The mare is wounded and escapes. Meanwhile the girl
is found with a bruised shoulder and is accused of witchcraft like her mother. The councilor
(than sheriff) tries to extort the girl by giving her and her brother freedom if she will only
yield to him, she refuses. She is locked in the same cell her mother was hanged from. When
the execution day arrives, she tells him she will use greater sorcery so that he will never
have her. He tells the hangmen and the rest involved that he pardons the girl and that they
will release her into his home. The sky darkens and becomejust like the day of her mother's
execution. The people around the sheriff become erratic and believe it is 13 years before.
They hang the girl, relieving that day 13 years before. The sheriff sees the body of the girl
and is maddened with grief. After finishing the story, the parson who hears this tells him that
he thinks God intervened and the girl was no witch.Again, Fantasy (or the supernatural) is
interconnected here with Christian religious beliefs. Witches are portrayed as saints.

G.G. Pendarves

The Return (1927.4) (by the Well of Tiz in the desert of Tlat Jim McCurdie was buried, at
least so thought Arnold Drysdale) – an evil explorer who inaugurated the murder of a fellow
researcher by some ambush in the desert is about to marry and ruin a rich heiress. The ghost
of the explorer visits him and accuses him of the murder and of abusing some woman who
bore him an illegitimate son causing the death of the two as paupers at some far away
dump. The evil man tries to shoot the ghost and when he finds out it is a ghost he collapses
and dies (perhaps from a heart attack or something).

The Power of the Dog (1927.8) (a tale of Arabian black magic, and the terrifying fate that
befell two Englishmen at the hands of Daouad) a colonial supervisor in Arabia is missing his
head clerk. He knows that a local black wizard is the cause to whom the missing friend called
a "dog". Every Arab in the vicinity is afraid of this Arab. He sees this Arab torturing a dog and
stops it. The Arab takes the dog and the white man tries to stop him. The Arab does some
magic and shows a gray desert with a horde of Arab warriors and tents in which he and his
lackies torture a dog who has eyes just like his missing friend. As the Englishman fails to kill
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the Arab the Arab is about to turn him too into a dog. The dog leaps at the wizard and both
fall into a river and die. The man takes the dog's body and finds out he has the exact same
eyes as his missing friend.

The Lord of Tarn (1927.11) (a tale of monstrous cats, the diabolical Eorl of Cumberland, and
the evil rites in the spectral abbey on Monk's Rock) – an epistolary story where a girl
becomes infatuated with an extremely adept musician at some mansion. The musician is, in
fact, a priest of some mysterious cult that was destroyed a thousand years ago and which
worshipped cats and even became cats themselves. The man hypnotizes the girl and takes
her to a swamp where the old cult hideout, an abbey, restructures itself. The dead cultists
return from the dead and march out of swamp. An occultist professor saves the day (he is in
constant epistolary connection with the girl's fiancée) and kills the Monk-cat before he fully
transforms. They both plunge from a cliff but the professor manages to survive the ordeal.

The Eight Green Man (1928.3) (an uncanny horror befell the guests of the innkeeper when
the Green Men held their revels) – an adventurer returns to the U.S. and travels with his
young, vain and stupid friend. They reach a weird rural place to which the adventurer
refuses to enter but is so annoyed by the humiliating remarks of his friend that he finally
capitulates. They find an inn at this place with seven green giant shrubs that look like men.
The innkeeper goads them to come back tomorrow night and feeds them (though the
adventurer refuses to eat). They spend the next day at another inn whose innkeeper tells
them about the gibbering creature that is his son and how the "green men" are actually the
souls of the people the evil innkeeper takes (the son was once normal but changed horridly
after the evil innkeeper did his thing on him – becoming the sixth green man). The stupid
friend insists on going to the evil inn to some party and the adventurer goes with him. He
manages to escape but his friend become a huge, shambling idiot and now the inn has eight
green men at the front.

The Doomed Treveans (1928.5) (The curse of Jabez Penhale descended through the
centuries upon the heirs of the Lamoma estate and claimed its victims) – After a girl refuses
to be sold by her family to a rich man she elopes with her loved one – a poor neighbor to the
rich man. This happened in the 15 th century and the bereaved, old, rich man curses the
couple that every son they have with blue eyes will die at his 21th birthday. An occult
professor helps his friend, a descendant of the cursed family, because his son has blue eyes
and has just reached maturity. The man talks with the young son who reveals that a local
doctor appeared a year prior and that he became his acquaintance. The doctor and the
occult professor meet and the former ridicules the boy and the professor for believing in the
curse. The professor finds out how the previous members of the family, with blue eyes, died.
The professor deduces that each time they are killed by a higher form of existence – stone,
weed, eagle, horse. He tells the boy that now a man will be responsible for his death. The
doctor laughs at them. At the night of the birthday the doctor arrives and joins the professor
at his vigil for the safety of the young boy. A weird youth arrives at the castle and starts
playing an eerie music on his violin which causes the doctor to jump and say evil things thus
revealing himself as the spirit of the old-man. The professor uses some incantations and will-
power and the doctor is destroyed. The youth is revealed to be a helper of the professor but
he then mysteriously disappears in front of their eyes.

The Laughing Thing (1929.5) (Eldred Werne wielded more power dead than alive—a power¬
ful ghost-story) – A rich bastard who already made his wife dead and his young son
miserable decides to swindle an old man by making him sell his property for a fraction of tits
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worth. The man curses him that he will make him pay much more. The man soon dies. The
brother-in-law of the rich man (the narrator) arrives at the mansion and sees that the people
inside are besieged by a laughing cackle at night and loud voices. The rich bastard refuses to
go away and forces his 8-year-old-son to suffer horrible nights. Eventually, the narrator sees
that spirits attack the house but the rich bastard still refuses. His boy runs at night screaming
and is found dead with a horrible smile on his face and his eyes filled with horror. The rich
bastard leaves and the narrator decides to stay so that he could "guide the soul of the little
boy" whatever the meaning of this stupid decision.

The Footprint (1930.5) (Back from the gates of hell came Jerry's grandfather –a grim story of
black magic and evil rites) – a friend invites the protagonist to his mansion which he
inherited from his evil grandfather who recently died. They fall for a trap the dead
grandfather placed – a book in the library which they get interested in and which coax them
to do some stupid ritual. The ritual opens hell (though only the friend sees it) and the
grandfather tortures the friend and scares him with some burning huge footprints. The
house is hellishly hot and the friend runs to some cliff as if chased by demons. He falls from a
cliff and his body is burned to a crisp.

Gaston Leroux

The Inn of Terror (1929.8) (a tale of stark realism and gripping horror by the author
of "The Phantom of the Opera") a translation of one of Leroux' stories. The man died
in 1927 and I don't know how WT got the rights to publish this story.(translated by
Mildred Prochet). The story also got a cover art.

The Woman With the Velvet Collar (1929.10) (A vivid story of a weird Corsican
vendetta and a ghastly revenge—by the author of “The Phantom of the Opera”) –
This is also a translation. It also got a cover art. The known story about a beautiful
girl with a collar whose head falls when the collar is removed. This time the magazine
does not say who translated the original French. Why?

The Mystery of the Four Husbands (1929.12) (a vivid weird mystery-story of a

gloriously beautiful woman and her four murdered husbands).

In Letters of Fire (1930.3) (a devil-tale by the author of "The Phantom of the Opera"
– an eery story of the man who could not lose)

George Ballard Bowers

The White Superiority (1925.2) (Saking found that Americans excelled the fillipinos in one
thing) – a man asked a savage Philippine wise-man how are white people superior to
Philippines. The wise man cannot ridicule his people so he tells him that white people can
use pipes to make water run upstream thus sating both sides.

A GaddaanAlaad (1925.3) (Fillipino Crime and Retribution) – a tale of a Philippine rich man
who kills two little boys in anger. His little daughter is sick and he does a Philippine ceremony
in which he invites many people, lets them eat and confess the crime so the spirits of the
dead will stop harming his family. After the ceremony his daughter dies and a person
snitches on him so that he is arrested.
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The Contra-Talisman (1926.4) (tale of fillipino superstition – and an anting anting) – a

colonial captain in the Philippines finds out that a neighboring town of black people has
been invaded by natives who killed some of its people and plundered Chinese shops killing
their owners. He manages to track them down fooling some guards that he killed their
friends. To finally convince their leader he fools them to think that the magic their talismans
hold (with bugs and coconut oil) was negated by his own magic. He finds the leader who
surrenders and all goes peacefully. Another tale by Bowers which ridicules native beliefs and
show the superiority of the white man.

The Charm that failed (1926.6) (a tale of fillipino superstition – the warrior suddenly
remembered the talisman, but to no avail) – Yet another tale that ridicules the stupid beliefs
of the people of the Philippines. The narrator is the captain of a platoon that saves the
Philippines from themselves as they are cruel to one another and in constant civil wars. They
find an enemy soldier who thinks himself invisible after using a talisman. At night the
imprisoned soldier believes the talisman works again and uses it to fly after running over a
cliff… he dies.

George C. Wallis &B.Wallis

The Star Shell (1926.11-1927.3) (a four-part weird-scientific serial about a thrilling voyage to
the planet Jupiter) – A scientist invents a gravity-defying flying machine and decides to travel
to Jupiter. He invites an Indian friend and also the narrator of the story (a strong-bodied
American) to join the trip. An evil Jewish-German-Polish mongrel-alcoholic-professor who is
jealous of the inventor decides to steal the ship but the three manage to enter it before it
shuts into space thus hurling the four into Jupiter with immense speed that cause the four to
lose consciousness. When the four regain consciousness, they find out that they travel
extremely fast and will come to Jupiter's moon – Europa – in two or three days. They reckon
that they will run out of air as they are now four instead of three and that they will need to
get rid of the professor (it stupidly refutes the fact that the narrator claims earlier that the
ship was built for a much slower travel in space thus thinking the trip will be many months
with air supplied for that amount of months – how did one extra-man dropped the oxygen
levels so that they will only last 4 days???) They land on Europa and find out it has a cycle of
48 hours of freezing temperatures with all things dead with later 24 hours of suddenly
emerging oxygen (the frozen oxygen ludicrously becoming liquid and gas). They leave the
servile, but good-hearted, Indian with the professor as they travel into the suddenly-lush
moon. They find a house with a telescope that vaporizes their camera. They return to find
the evil professor escaping with their ship and an unconscious Indian. They return to the
house as the cycle almost ends with them about to freeze to death only to be accepted by
the people inside. The aliens look like human Caucasians and they tell them telepathically
about their civilization on Jupiter (apparently the authors didn't know that Jupiter is a gas
giant with no solid matter to create civilization and with so great gravity as to squash any
living creature). They are in constant war with a race of inferior humans who are sturdier but
less refined – stupid and evil. They tell them that they thought them to be these people but
that they received a message from their planet that they captured the evil professor and
sent information for the researchers to help the Earthlings. They travel by spaceship to
Jupiter only to find out that their landing zone was eradicated by these evil, inferior-humans.
The inferior savages attack the group and they kill dozens of them. The savages use green
fire – some radioactive material – as a weapon and the Earthlings discover that the Jovians
(the civilized people of Jupiter) are pacifists and refuse to eat meat or attack the savages
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even though they have superior technology. They are forced to ride some horse-like
creatures into a huge red forest. They understand that they will need several years to cross
the dangerous forest (the story believes that the red spot on Jupiter is this forest which
makes no sense as the spot is twice the size of Earth and to travel a forest that size would
require dozens of years) .The forest is inhabitedby dangerous serpents that walk on two
legs, cannibal gorilla-like creatures and red vegetation that sprouts poisonous fumes. The
group manages to escape the forest after encountering elephant like creatures that almost
trample them, gorilla-like creatures that kidnap them for a meal and red sprouts that almost
intoxicate and kill them. They do so by rummaging through the wreckage of a ship that
miraculously crashes next to them (although the Jovians say before that such accidents are
so rare they only occur once a lifetime. Considering the size of the forest this fortunate crash
has about the chance of winning the lottery). They are picked by some ship and discover that
the savages decided to make an all-out attack on the civilized Jovians (concerning the size of
the planet makes the very few cities they encounter and the very small number of Jovians,
some hundreds of thousands, seems odd). The Jovians decide to make a council that will
decide if they will stop their pacifistic ways or let the savages kill them. The Earthlings are
used by some members of the council to teach the Jovians how to kill and to explain the
logic of exterminating the savages as they themselves killed inferior races that threatened
them for the good of mankind. The extremely smart and beautiful queen of Jupiter (again
the story contradicts itself as it says the queen is chosen every year but all the council
members are males – what happens to the queen after this year? Is she ceremoniously
eaten?) is supposed to decide as the vote is divided evenly. As she is about to decide the evil
"mongrel-Jew-Polish-German" professor that traveled with the group shoots his gun and
some savages come in an airship and kidnap the queen. The Jovians refuse to punish him as
they believe his shame for doing these bad things is enough. He also confesses that one of
the council-members plotted with him but this member did not know that the queen will be
kidnapped by the savages. The group wishes to kill the "mongrel" but decide to rescue the
queen instead. They sneak into "Savage" territory by flying to a nearby place and then
dressing up as dirty savages leaving some of them friends to guard the ship. They manage to
reach the main "city" of them and witness the horde humiliating "civilized" prisoners and the
queen. Nevertheless, they are caught after one of them intervenes when one of the savages
tries to hit the caged queen. The "king" of the savages, a more intelligent and civilized brute
(he tells them he was captured by the civilized Jovians from an early age and learned their
culture) tries to convince them to help him build military technology so that they could rule
the world with him. When they refuse he threatens to torture them with the green fire. They
are rescued at night by their friends and decide to create a diversion to save the queen –
they burn most of the city on its inhabitants. After some fights in which some of their Jovian
friends are dead they manage to rescue the queen who boards the stolen spaceship while
they must fidget their way to the countryside and again into the dread red forest. They
manage to escape and reach the forest only to find all of their Jovian friends dead from the
poisonous red spores of the red-weed. Their Indian friend is still alive due to his Earthling
metabolism or something of the like. They understand they are stuck as the only people in
their group who knew how to fly the ship are dead. They make a last stand against the horse
that tries to recapture them and kill many of them. They are barricaded in the ship as the
horde uses the green fire to burn it around them. Another spaceship comes at the nick of
time to shoot heat rays at the barbarians. The "king" probably dies in this attack. They make
their ship operational and fly back to the capitol knowing the battle with the rest of the
hordes started.They use flying craft with bombs and kill all the "savages" who attack the
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civilized people killing hundreds of thousands. As the Earth is not aligned with Jupiter they
decide to live in the palace for several months until Earth and Jupiter are in line. The queen
wants to marry the scientist but it creates a rift with some of the nobles. The evil professor
tells them that the former head of the council, who was against violence against the savages
for he is pacifistic, is about to burn their spaceship. They go at night to the spaceship and are
caught by some savages and the former councilman who betrays the evil professor and
drops him and the rest of the party in the spaceship. He is about to burn it with green fire (if
he is pacifistic why does he kills them – it makes no bloody sense). They decide to use the
ship just before they are burned (it means to wait until the morning so that they will face the
sun). They manage to crash on Earth on some deserted island but when a ship finally arrives
to take them the evil professor takes the ship but fails to operate it and it explodes – killing
the evil professor. They return home and mourn they departure from Jupiter and the loss of
the spaceship.

Gordon Phillip England

The Master of Hell (1925.2) (Dream Fantasy a glimpse of the pit and the devil) – a man,
accidently, attaches his mind to his soul when it departs at night. He visits hell and sees
some demons torturing souls. They chase after him until he comes back to his body.
Apparently, he was diagnosed as having cataleptic fit during his departure. He continues to
have nightmares for the rest of his life.

Adventure of an Astral (1925.3) (Weird story in lighter vein) – a man who likes to astral
project swears to his devout wife that he will stop doing it. As his addiction to projection is
hard to get rid of he becomes addicted to gambling. He is harassed by a Russian to whom he
owes money and astral projects to escape. After several weeks he returns to his body to find
himself embalmed and trapped in a safe in ship that sunk. A young man seduces his wife
while also astral projecting and torturing the man for his loss. The man manages to steal the
body of the young man while the latter projects. He lives as the young man with his wife and
never projects again.

The House, The Light, and the Man (1925.6) (a specter rose from the coffin – and the man's
mind gave way) – a light-hearted tale about a man who stands in a room inside a creepy
house and is afraid to turn of the light. He screams when the light is off. The story jumps
years back when this man, through a series of unfortunate events is trapped in a coffin-filled
office at night. He sees a figure emerges from the coffin and loses his sanity. It is revealed
that the figure was probably that of a burglar who hid in the coffin. The man is insane and
the creepy house is revealed to be a mad-house.

The Acid in the Laboratory (1925.11) (heartless and cruel was the physician but he knew
how to suffer) –a crazy doctor wants to kill his friend because a woman he loves prefers his
friend. He invents a type of acid that melts everything instantly. He lures his friend and
throws him into a bath he fills with the acid. He marries the woman but finds out she loves
the man he killed (she believes he is still alive as the police concluded his disappearance as
related debtors). He sees his wife kissing the picture of his friend and so he also drops her
into the pool of acid. He fills another tub of acid just in case he wants to kill someone else
(the story does not justify this idiotic decision and it is unclear how he bathes when his tub is
filled with this dangerous thing). The spirits of the people he killed haunt him at night and so
he finds himself sleepwalking into the bath of acid. Instead of emptying the bath, or going
somewhere else he decides to stay awake for six days next to the tub and when he finally
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falls asleep the spirits make him enter the bath. For some odd reason he writes his story for
the police to frame him after death.

The Fourth Victim (1927.1) (missing) – Three friends walk at night. One of them is assaulted
by a rich young man who blames him for winning a girl they both wooed. They fight and the
rich guy is knocked unconscious. He barely manages to get up with his pride and body hurt.
The next day the rich guy leaves for India. After six years the rich guy returns, fires all his
staff and only keep the company of a huge tiger and an Indian yogi. He invites the three men
as reconciliation. Although they suspect foul-play they decide to go. During the next month
he slowly gains their trust and tells them their futures separately. Unknown to them he
hypnotizes them and tells them to commit suicide. One by one they kill themselves. The
third friend discovers this and manages to confront the rich guy who attacks him but is killed
by the tiger who also kills the Indian but dies in the process. The narrator is the only one left
but he cannot do anything but write how he is forced to take a gun and shoot himself as the
hypnosis conditioning told him to.

White Orchids (1927.12) (the extravagant passion for rare flowers led to a weird and grisly
adventure, and disaster) – a flower collector who is in bitter rivalry with another man is
given the location of some dangerous, but beautiful, white orchids. He drinks too much and
babbles to his rival about the location. He then sobers up and chases his rival to South
America to find the flowers. He finds out a lot of skeletons next to the flowers and
understands the fragrance of the blossoms intoxicates people to come closer and then die
from the poisonous spores. He loses consciousness but manages to go back to safety. His
rival arrives and manages to get closer to the flowers, even taking one, before falling
unconscious. The narrator uses some lasso to bring him back, take the flower from him,
rousing him and shoving him again to the flowers to kill him. The rival dies. The narrator
becomes deranged and gets fever on his way home and is saved by some explorers. When
he finds out the flower is missing he becomes mad and almost kills the men before losing
consciousness. When he comes to his senses he is back in the U.S. he loses his interest in
flowers and feels remorse. He goes to the police station but no one believes his story. He
hits the police officer and is taken to madhouse. He tries to escape but plunges to his death
when a tree branch snaps.

Greye La Spina

The Tortoise-Shell Cat (1924.11) (a fascinating weird story of voodoo and witchcraft) – a girl
writes letters to her kin. The girl attends a girl's college in which a mysterious young girl and
her black maid enter her life. The girl can see at night and acts like a cat. Strange things
happen at the college as some jewels are stolen and a mysterious cat wreaks havoc at night.
The girl plays detective and finds out that the maid is bereaved ex-slave whom the
mysterious girl's father wronged. She avenged herself by using her Voodoo magic to turn the
girl into a cat that she controls in order to sully the family's honor. The ex-slave is apparently
the narrator's long-lost wife and the two run to Jamaica together.

The Remorse of Professor Panebianco (1925.1) (scientists try to find the physical qualities of
the human soul) – An Italian scientist tries to find a dying man for an experiment in which he
wants to trap a human soul in a vial. His wife loves him more than anything but he is so
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enmeshed in his work that he almost ignores her and hates her company. She asks to be
sacrificed by him for his experiment and he gladly accepts disappointing his wife who
understands he does not love her. He kills his wife but agrees to give her a last, fleeting,
dispassionate (on his part) kiss. He forgets to close the valve that corks the vial and thus her
spirit fades in the air. His colleagues come and see the grotesque scene apprehending him.
He feels remorse for granting his wife's dying wish which made him careless about the valve.

The Scarf of the Beloved (1925.2) (the looting of a grave and what befell thereafter) – a
grave robber who sells bodies to medical students finds out that the body he recently sold
has a scarf similar to that of his beloved betrothed. He runs after the wagon with the man
whom took the body out and finds out it holds the body of his loved one.

The Last Cigarette (1925.3) (fate played a strange prank upon this man who slew himself) –a
man that competes with another man for success in life fails and is about to lose everything.
He decides to kill himself and fool everyone that he was robbed writing a letter and
spreading some money in his apartment. As he hangs himself he sees his last cigarette
burning the letter and the house.

Invaders from the Dark (1925.4) (a novel of werewolves and occult evil) – a woman
mysteriously dies in a house explosion managing to hurl some documents for the author.
After many setbacks and disasters, the documents are printed. They tell the story of the
spinster woman whose educated niece goes to work at a mysterious mansion for a
mysterious man whom she admires. The niece marries the man to subdue local gossip but
several months later her husband dies because of his research. The spinster is invited to live
with the widow. It is revealed that the dead man and the niece do some occult research to
save mankind from supernatural evils coming from the old world and Asia.Soon it is
discovered that the widow is in love with a local, young businessman. Nevertheless, she
cannot marry him due to the close proximity of her late husband's mother and sister who
control the gossip around town. Moreover, an exotic Russian princess also vies for this man's
attention. It is hinted that she is cruel and unhuman with a fascination on wolves) she has
several in a metal cage) and who has a disfigured middle finger longer than the others by far.
Her mysteriousness and bizarre beauty cause the niece to suspect she is a supernatural
creature that came here to cause harm. The two dogs of the niece are blamed for some
mischief happening in town (with witnesses claiming to see a white, great dog) though there
is no proof they even left the house. The princess tries to defame the niece and ridicule her
aunt with the help of the gossips (the mother-in-law and sister-in-law of the niece) who bear
a grudge against the niece for not getting much in the will of her late husband. The princess
is a werewolf who tries to make the man, the niece loves, a werewolf like her by putting a
repulsive orchid on his clothes and giving him something nasty to drink. The aunt becomes
the niece's confidant and the two try to stop the princess' killing spree – two officers and
one little girl (the niece's niece) are missing and it is hinted that they were eaten by the
princess.The niece astral projects and finds out that her lover is controlled by the princess
who made him a werewolf. she goes back to her body. A huge explosion shatters the
princess' house and the princess' abused maid comes with a wolf to the house of the niece.
It is revealed that the princess' servant was jealous of the niece's lover and killed the
princess before blowing the house. The niece tries to life the curse from her lover and after
her aunt prays all night she manages to do so. The couple lives happily ever after – becoming
to fighters for good against the occult forces who invade the world. That is, until WWI breaks
and both volunteer to serve as a soldier and nurse. The two die. The aunt is left alone and
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starts to study the occult and when she wants to publish the story dark forces try to stop it
and kill her (which they eventually did).

The Gargoyle (1925.9-11) (three-part serial of devil-worship) – a lousy, pathetic, occultist

enlists the help of a young, handsome and unmarried, painter. The painter does anything he
can to show the occultist he is a loser and refuses to help him. After the painter accidently
takes a wrong turn he meets the occultist who claims he has seen the devil. The intrigued
painter goes with the occultist to the castle where their employer awaits them. The
employer refuses to meet them and tells the painter, via his servant, to walk up and down a
curve in the castle while a strange light illuminates him. The occultist is ignored. While
pacing a strange woman tells the painter to meet her at night. At night the painter meets
with a servant who tries to warn him not to cooperate with the master of the castle as he
wants to harm her protegee – the master's adopted sister and his cousin. It appears that the
master's mother has made some deal with the devil while pregnant to punish her cheating
husband and the result was the demonically deformed master. The following day the painter
meets the girl and is told beforehand that she had never seen a man in her life, being told
that the first she sees will be her lover. She believes the painter to be her lover and it is
hinted that the whole family worships Satan at regular basis which seems normal and casual
to the innocent girl. The painter is confronted by the veiled master who asks him to marry
his niece. The painter agrees after lashing out at the master. At night the old maid tells the
painter that she is actually the mother of the innocent girl and that her father is the castle's
owner who cheated on his wife with her. The cheated woman did some ceremony with the
devil to avenge herself on her cheating husband. The painter and the maid\mother sneaks
into the devil's chapel after they observe the girl entering the room of the master (the
painter first thinks she is having sex with him). At the chapel the painter observes the
master, his mother, the girl and the occultist doing some kind of ceremony. The painter is
unable to move. The master brandishes a knife and is about to sacrifice the girl when the
occultist saves her. The occultist sees the true face behind the veiled mask and runs
screaming from the room. The master is angry but does not complete the ceremony
afterwards. The next day the painter confronts the master with what he saw and demands
to get out from the castle with the girl (the bridge is not lowered so he is actually trapped
inside the moated castle). The master tells him that he will do the ceremony at the castle in
the evening and then he will let them go. The occultist tries to help them but is tricked to
stay outside the castle. The evening arrives and no minister arrives and there is neither any
sign that a wedding ceremony is about to begin. The painter and the girl are lured to the
ceremony chamber by the step-mother and the master. Thegirl's mother helps the occultist
to climb the wall after swimming in the snake infested moat. They lower the bridge and
press a mysterious button that opens up some traps in the castle. The occultist and the
mother come to see the step-mother trying to save the girl from the master. The painter is
hypnotized and the master is about to sacrifice the girl's soul and take possession of the
man's body. The occultist stares at the happenings with a gun in his hand but does not move
from some obscure reason. The step-mother accidently steps on a trap door and falls to her
death. The mother sacrifices herself to get the knife into her instead of her daughter, telling
the girl that she was her real mother. The occultist does not shoot all this time for some
reason. Then, the occultist saves the girl and the painter but refuses to kill the master. The
master escapes and the occultist tells the two to run while he prevents him from pressing
the button (he does not shoot again as he could have easily shot the master a million times),
The courageous painter who did nothing but to laugh on how the occultist is not manly
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enough even though the occultist was the one who did all the saving in this story, runs with
the girl while the occultist kills the master and himself by burning the castle (it is unclear why
this was necessary or how did it happen).

Fettered (1926.7-10) (a tale of midnight horror – occult evil that drew its chains about two
men and two women in the Northern woods) – two siblings go to live in an abandoned river
in the north. They meet a reclusive professor who locks his wife inside their home. The
scientist seems very rude to the brother. The sister glimpses the wife who seems beautiful
but very scary with red eyes. The professor meets the sister and tells her how much he cares
about his neighbors. He tells her that his wife is horrible and dangerous and they must never
invite her to their home willingly. The sister is not quite sure but agrees. Later that day the
brother tries to bring a beautiful woman to the siblings' home but the woman faints when
they come near the flowing river. The professor arrives and takes the woman who is actually
his wife, shouting at her. The brother thinks he is to rescue the poor woman from her evil
husband. The professor asks the sister to watch his house from afar while he is gone and to
make sure his wife does not escape. A torrent is pouring that evening and the brother
decides to rescue the wife even though his sister pleads with him not to let her enter their
home. The brother brings the wife nevertheless. At their home the wife entrances the
brother and the sister watches her do something to him while he sleeps. The wife threatens
her and tells her she will be hers first and then she will control her brother. The following
day the professor returns and the sister tells him about what happened. He tells her that his
wife is a murderous vampire and that he had to mutilate the body of boy that she
vampirically killed so that he will not turn into a vampire. He tells her that her brother was
bitten by his wife and that he will die and turn into a vampire if they will not do something
soon. He gives the reluctant brother a crucifix to put around his neck and does some other
occult thingamajigs to "cure" him. The sister falls in love with the professor. At night the
brother is controlled by the vampire whose face appears in the walls. He drops the crucifix
and starts destroying the other paraphernalia that the professor put. The sister manages to
put all things together and her brother is once again fine as he goes to sleep. A loud scream
of a woman and a wild gust of wind shakes the cabin and the sister, stupidly, opens the
door. The vampire enters and starts controlling the sister telling her how much she will like
to taste, kiss and caress her, even more than her brother. The professor rushes to the cabin
but his vampiric wife already starts biting the girl. The professor saves the girl but the wife
threatens them and leaves. When the brother awakes the professor tells the two how he did
his occult research, after WWI, in Germany with the daughter of his colleague falling in love
with him. He did not love her even though she was beautiful and brilliant because he felt
something "evil" in her. The girl was his current wife who tricked him into turning her father
into an evil spirit, became a semi-vampire herself (who creates other vampires but is not
dead like them) and married him using his conscious against him. The professor asks the two
to remain indoors as he watches outside. Meanwhile the brother observes the wife in the
window and gives her his gun telling her to hide in a cave from her demented husband. The
professor comes back to find what the brother did and he runs to the forest to prevent his
wife killing herself with the gun thus becoming a full vampire. The vampiric wife returns and
seduces the sister (with overtly lesbian innuendo) while her brother sleeps. As she is about
to drink her blood the professor enters and succumbs to his wife telling her to drain him and
that he will follow her if she releases her hold on the two. In the morning the two siblings
decide to leave but the professor enters and tells them he cut his wife's head off and burned
her body. The spell was broken after he did something he can never talk about (he probably
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had sex with the vampire). The three leave with the canoe and watch the wife's body burnt
to a crisp.Some subtle lesbian themes. Supernatural Horror. Some self-reflexive paragraphs
about horror stories.

A Suitor From the shades (1927.6) (a human, touching ghost-story about a lover who
returned from the grave to blight his sweetheart's happiness) – a beautiful tom-boy girl is
about to get married to her lover when her lame step-sister recognizes a spirit, that uses her
life force, tries to ruin the marriage. The spirit is that of a boy to whom the girl, when she
was 11, promised to marry after he saved her from drowning and then froze to death. The
girl's fiancée is also haunted by the spirit who tries to force upon him thoughts of some
prima donna. After the sprit manifests itself and forces himself on the sleeping girl and after
the spirit almost possess the fiancée in the wedding the girl decides to postpone the
marriage and calls to the a neighbor who is also a medium. The medium does some séance
in the presence of the two girls, the fiancée, the girl's father and a priest who is also a friend
of the family. In the séance the spirit manifests and tells them it will cease to haunt the girls
if the lame girl will be his company in the spirit realm (where he, apparently, has grown into
a man after dying) the lame girl visits there and says it is beautiful, peaceful and lonely and
she decides to die and thus make her sister happy.

Like most of her stories La Spina portrays a female-centered plot with genteel, wholesome
women who act like Victorian caricatures of religious femininity.

The Dead Wagon (1927.9) (a ghost-tale of the London Plague – a story of the curse that took
the first-born of Melverson Abbey) – an American who marries an English girl visits her
family's mansion near London. He notices that his father-in-law is afraid of some omens
related to the carvings on his door. The old man tells him about a belief in some curse that
haunts the family – every first-born dies before reaching maturity. The man will later find the
cause of this curse – a 17th century curse unleashed by some angry, plague-sick father whose
daughter was kidnapped, though somewhat willingly, by a lusty, later loving, lord Melverson.
At that night the man witnesses a hunchback and a plague wagon filled with bodies. A body
is hauled to wagon from the house. In the morning it is revealed that the only boy of
Melverson is dead. The man marries the woman and after his son reaches the age of two he
falls and is about to die. At night the wagon and hunchback come to the mansion and
Melverson shoots himself so that the hunchback will take his body instead thus breaking the
curse.

Henry S. Whitehead

The Door (1924.11) (Death and after)(a storiette of real distinction) – a man comes at night
to rob the house of his parents after almost getting run-over by a car. He tries to open the
door to their house but fails. People go up the stairs and he finds out they carry his own
body. They easily open the door he failed to unlock.

The Fireplace (1925.1) (a weird murder and a ghostly revenge) – A lawyer is approached by a
ghost in a hotel to help him avenge his murder by four prominent figures in Southern society
who murdered him for winning in Poker, disposing his body in a fireplace. He agrees but fails
to do so and when he returns to the hotel he is killed by the ghost who several years later
probably burns the four men in the same room they killed him.
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Sea Change (1925.2) (a Cretin, shipwrecked on a distant island) – a man is convinced that as
a baby he was diagnosed as having Congenital iodine deficiency syndrome (called a "cretin"
in that time) for not taking thyroids (it is not clear whether this was actually the case or if it
was some way for his mother to convince him to take thyroids all his life). He must take a pill
every day of his life. As he becomes a strong and healthy man he and his newly wed wife go
to sea. They are shipwrecked on a tiny island with only 44 people on it. As the two enjoy the
exotic scenery the man fears that his wife will discover his change into a cretin (as his pills
are gone). He swims deep into the ocean in hope of finding the wreck or dying as the result
of that. He finds out he is perfectly fine after hours of swimming and four days without the
pills. He returns to his wife a new, happy man discovering that he doesn't have (or never
had) the syndrome.

The Thin Match (1925.3) (to set something on fire was her highest wish) (a different story off
the beaten path) – the tale of a disfigured and ostracized match and its travels in a match-
box until it reaches the hand of an explorer who is half frozen to death and besieged by a
hungry lynx. The thin match, the last one the man has, uses all its strength to ignite the fire
and save the man who manages to make a fire and kill the lynx.

The Wonderful Thing (1925.7) (In the time of Zachary Taylor, even as it is today) – Just
before the civil war a young land surveyor who lives alone, aside for two freed slaves who
serve him, dreams about a wonderful day where he meets a beautiful girl. He cannot think
about anything else in the following month. One day he feels relieved from the dream and as
he takes a long ride with his horse he relives the dream and meets the beautiful girl who also
had the same dream. The two fall in love and the girl's parents are enthusiastic.

Across the Gulf (1926.5) (Carrington's mother appeared to him in a dream – and then the
very hand of death fell upon him) – a man is told by his mother that her mother came to her
in a dream after she died to warn her against something bad that is going to happen. The
mother dies. After many years working in a stressful job the man gets some time off and he
becomes a prefect in a Christian camp for kids. He is visited by his dead mother who covers
him with a blanket in his sleep. The next day he finds mushrooms and asks a camper to give
them to camp's professor to analyze them and if they are good to leave them in his cabin.
The boy leaves them in his cabin after telling another prefect to warn the man that they are
poisonous. The man fails to tell the protagonist. The protagonist almost dies after cooking
them but manages to save himself by eating mustard. He dreams on his mother tucking him
to sleep and he thanks her for warning him.

Jumbee (1926.9) (a story of weird native beliefs in America's newest possessions, the virgin
islands) – an eight-African man who lives in the West Indies tells the WWI veteran narrator
(who had a damaged lung from the war) about an experience he had in the island which
includes many native folk-tales. The man had an agreement with his friend that when one of
them dies they will tell the other about it. One night the man hears his friends' footsteps and
feels his presence. He understands that his friend died and asks him to go in peace. The
friend's presence is gone. He is notified that his friend died an hour later. On his way to his
now-dead friend's house he sees three floating figures of black women that watch him. He
stays for the vigil and when he goes out to his home an old, immobile woman, disappears
before his eyes and he sees a big, white dog that approaches him in a threatening way. The
man hits the dog with a stick and the dog disappears. He believes the dog to be a were-dog.
Another story that highlights the mystery and fantasy of the world outside America and how
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Americans experience that world after WWI. It seems that there is a subtle agreement in
many stories about the antithesis to American rationalism and utilitarianism in the world
outside and some beliefs about the growing involvement of the U.S. in this world as both
exotic and adventurous but also threatening and horrible. Here, as in other places,
Whitehead's narrative (a bit like that of Greye la Spina's) is more conservative with the
horror being more subtle and religious and the characters act in a more "wholesome" and
"agreeable" manner – respecting race and class and using "clean" language.

The Projection of Armand Dubois (1926.10) (a tale of voodoo in the Virgin islands – a specter
that threw vitriol – and a little goat that frightened Madame Du Chaillu) –an author of
supernatural stories talks to his elderly neighbor who tells him about her time in the Virgin
Islands. Being the wife of a local pastor, she tries to cash a sum of some debtors (with
interest). She manages to do so but procures the wrath of a local criminal. He threatens her
but pays the money. Some months later she sees his spirit wandering her room and is
startled by it. Sher finds out he died soon before. She believes he astral projected before
dying completely.

The Left Eye (1927.6) (a powerful story of crime and retribution – a tale of immense spiders
and a gruesome murder) – a white-trash asshole drunk who is also a failed farmer and a
bootlegger also has several kids from a white trash ugly-stupid-woman like him. They only
have one decent looking, kind-hearted and smart girl. This girl thinks about becoming a nun
after some reverend meets her. The drunkard father decides to sell his daughter to some
filthy brute for 200 dollars. When the girl shows reluctance to get married to this violent
bully the father hits her senseless. When the girl escapes to the reverend the father chases
her and smashes both her head and the reverend's to a pulp. Unfortunately for him he is
being observed and so he decides to escape into a tiny river-island next to Vermont. There,
he stumbles upon a huge nest of enormous spiders that eat him. His mummified body is
found several weeks later with a lot of gossamer web around him and immense spiders
crawling into tunnels beneath him.

The Shadows (1927.11) (a tale of West Indian Jumbee – a frightful thing leaped out of the
shadows as Old Morris met his death) – the narrator sojourns in the west Indies in a house
that once belonged to an eccentric man who lived to his 90s, looking much younger and who
had a lot of money from a mysterious source. The narrator starts seeing ghost furniture and
as no one is willing to tell him about the death of the previous owner of the house he asks
some old Creole woman who tells him the owner dealt with some Black magic and made a
pact with some Egyptian-Incan God. At night the narrator sees the ghost of the man and as
the date of the man's death comes (Christmas) he sees more and more details about his final
night- he is killed by a shadowy, huge, monster with a beak. He draws the ghost room and
shows it to his reluctant neighbors who refused to tell him anything about the owner's death
– they are shocked as the narrator coolly returns home.

The Cult of the Skull (1928.12) (The world revolution was to be financed by that skull which
contained the teeth of the haters of governments) – a man meets a strange doctor who tries
to poison him for no reason. He confronts the man when he sees him trying to kill a girl (he
later reveals it was just part of some communist ceremony with no actual harm being done
to the girl). The doctor explains that he has a skull with the teeth of all the haters of
governments and that soon the revolution to topple all world governments will start. The
protagonist smashes the skull and the doctor commits suicide. The skull is filled with
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diamonds. The protagonist robs the doctor and hides the evidence. (It seems that even a
reverend would justify extortion and robbery when dealing with Communists or anarchists)

The People of Pan (1929.3) (Under the surface of a West Indian island Canevin found a
strange people who worshipped Pan – then the catastrophe) – an American surveyor of
island woods finds a deserted island. He goes there with a black cook (the narrator laughs at
the fact he uses high words). Wandering alone he finds a weird phenomenon of some pool
that empties and then fills itself. He follows the stream to find a ladder that reaches many
meters underground. Inside he finds a series of caverns and a huge cavern with a huge
statue of a goat. He witnesses beautiful Greek-like people who worship and dance around
the statue. The friendly Greeks tell him they are remnants of some Atlantian survivors who
live underground because of their fear of Indians (it is peculiar that these people who have
no knowledge of the outside world and live as Ancient Greeks use American Geographic
names). They worship Pan and tell the protagonist that deadly fumes are released on the
island that kill everything on it four times a year. He learns the secret goes up and with some
help chop all the trees on the island and is commended by his superiors. He returns, a year
later, to the place but finds everyone dead. They failed to find a living creature to sacrifice to
Pan and the god killed them with poisonous vapors. The protagonist takes all their gold.

Black Tancrede (1929.6) (an eldritch story of a ghostly black hand, and an escaped Haitian
slave who was put to death by degrees) – the protagonist sojourns in the Virgin Islands. He
learns about a local Jumbee (ghost or zombie or African dead spirit) that haunts the hotel in
which he stays. The ghost is a man hunted by a cruel Haitian ruler who was turned over to
him after he ran to the Europeans. He was tortured horribly with his hands chopped slowly
and his body burned by iron brands and his legs crushed slowly. His hand went missing.
Finally, he stays at the room believed to be haunted and hears knocks on the door (as
everyone told him the ghost usually does) he manages to find the culprit – a huge spider
that hides in a conch. He breaks the conch only to find the spider being a black man's hand.
He burns it. (Quaint, like most of Whitehead's stories – like an old, rich American who travels
the colonial domains of the U.S. in a never-ending vacation.

Sweet Grass (1929.7) (a tale of the Virgin Islands, and west India Obeah, by the author of
"Jumbee" and "Black Tancrede") Again, Whitehead posits a colonial fantasy of voodoo and
good Western mores and the importance of fidelity and family. A bachelor lives in the
American colonial island of Santa Cruz. He sees a 15-year-old girl going almost naked at night
after swimming in the sea and almost fucks her but decides to let her go. He later marries a
respected Dutch lady and the two live happily until the woman enlists the girl as a
housemaid. The girl is the daughter of some local voodoo witch. Angry at not being fucked
by the man she curses him with poisoned shirt that almost makes him die and later with a
voodoo doll. The angry woman marches to the witch's house and threatens her and her child
with a machete to stop the curse. It works and the woman returns to be a good wife who
makes plum cakes and little babies.

The Lips (1929.9) (a powerful story of a slave-ship in the West-Indies and a savage hurt
inflicted by African witchcraft) – a slave-ship captain takes his cargo to the West Indies.
Among the slaves is a woman and her baby son. The man whips her when she does not
move fast enough and she bites him and whispers an incantation. After many days of
horrible pain in his neck the captain calls the ship's doctor who recoils in horror and forces
the people of the ship to refuse giving the captain a mirror to see the wound. After many
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weeks of pain the pain stops. The captain hears voices next to his ear and when he touches
the wound he is bitten. The captain decides to commit suicide after finding out that a
complete black woman's mouth has appeared on his neck.

The Tabernacle (1930.1) (a very ancient tale, reworked in a modern setting by a favorite
writer of weird stories) – a story about an immigrant to the U.S. from Eastern Europe who
hides some Eucharist to put on his bee-hives as he believes it will make them prosper. After
the man becomes rich he leaves the place and the buyer decides to kill the bees and take the
honey. He sees a huge amount of honey and is shocked to find in the hive a wax replica of a
church. Whitehead includes academic footnotes to the origins of this story and he is entitled
Ph.D. in the story.

The Shut Room (1939.4) (Eery manifestations took place in "The Coach and Horses" inn
where the English highwayman had been caught red-handed) – Another, "genteel" ghost-
story by Whitehead. This time it is in England where an American and his mysterious friend
try to solve a series of leather-theft at some inn. They find out that everything made of
leather disappears at night. They also find out there is a closed room in the inn where, a
hundred years prior, a notorious robber was killed by the King's men for robbing and
murdering a messenger of the king. The loyal inn keeper who also hated that his son goes
with such villains as the robber prevents him from joining him and snitches on the obber. He
is captured in his room but in the fight that ensues he is killed. His two favorite pistols in
their leather harness are taken (he tried to use them but the inn keeper, replaced them so
that the holster was empty). Understanding that the pistols and the trick is what makes the
ghost of this robber to steal the leather in the hotel they manage to get hold of the 140
years old guns and lure the ghost. They see the ghost at night and give it back the pistols
telling it to depart. The ghost disappears inside a wall. They break the wall the following day
and find the pistols and 80 pairs of leather boots. The ghost never haunts the place again.

H.G. Wells

The Stolen Body (1925.11) (Evil Entity Seizes a Man's Body and tries to destroy it) (it is
interesting that Wright chooses this story of Wells to reprint this story first published in the
Strand1898. He mentions Wells as the author of Men Like Gods published two years before
and his historical bestseller series Outline of History, published in 1920, which was the center
of a theological struggle at the time being overtly anti-racial and anti-religious) – two friends
try to reach one another by astral projection. One of the friends succeeds in entering a
dimension close to ours where evil spirits yearn to life. One such spirit possesses his body
and starts rampaging in London hitting many people and finally collapsing at some
construction site, breaking a leg, a hand and some ribs until exiting the body. Meanwhile the
trapped man tries to reach his friend by touching his inner eye and later using a medium.
When the spirit leaves the man gladly reenters his body.

The Valley of Spiders (1925.12) (through the air they drifted, gigantic, loathsome spiders)
this is a reprint of the 1903 story published in The Strand. It tells about a mysterious lord and
his two servants who follow him to a desolate place in pursuit of a young girl. The
womanizing lord, who every girl in his domain obeys, is infuriated with the girl refusing him.
She is wounded and with someone who helps her. As they reach this desolate road the three
are attacked by a swarm of flying cobwebs that are infested with feet-long spiders who kill
one of them, scare their horses and nearly kill the lord and one of the servants who secretly
hates him. The lord is angered by the fact that his servant saw him in a cowardly act and kills
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him and takes his horse. The lord is sure the girl is also dead if she had gone to this place but
he observes a bonfire in the distant at night. He decides to leave the hunt for now and
prepare a suitable web to capture the girl. (aside from some allusions to medieval society
this story takes place in an unknown time and place and can be read as dark-Fantasy, the
parallels between the huge spiders and the lord are artful)

A Dream of Armageddon (1926. 3) (in this novel the great English novelist pictures a world at
war) – A man meets an eccentric, emaciated man on a train who tells him how he spent he
last years dreaming a strange dream about the future. In this dream he was an important
figure who decided to leave everything for a woman. A war broke out and he refused to go
back to leadership position and stop it because he wanted to stay with the girl. Evantually
the two must flee as the world is engulfed in a horrendous war between Asians and
Europeans. His woman dies from a bullet and soon after he is also killed. The man keeps
having nightmares after that.

H.P Lovecraft

To a Dreamer (1924.11) – a poem about someone who watches a sleeping man and muses
about the marvelous Fantasy places he visits. He then sees the man's tortured face from a
nightmare and flees into the night in panic.

The Festival (1925.1)(Eldritch tale of New England Witchcraft) – Another Cthulhu Mythos
story about a man who visits his ancestry home in Kingsport, In the fictional region of
Arkham in New England. The narrator meets an odd bunch of decrepit people who are about
to pretend in the festival of Yule-tide. As he descends to the layers of the festival the
narrator sees horrible places of decay and monstrous creatures on which the procession
rides. He sees that the people whom he followed are actually creatures with human wax
masks. He runs away. He wakes up far from the caverns and is taken to an insane asylum
where he finds out (in the Necronomicon) that the evil and corruption seeping from his dead
ancestor gave life to these worm-people and their festivals.

The Statement of Randolph Carter (1925.2) (down into the tomb went his friend – he never
returned) – A man is accused of murdering his friend. He tells the police how he and his
friend explored a dark tomb in an ancient cemetery. His friend goes down and he is left
outside and communicates with his friend by radio. His friend screams that he should run
and close the slab over him. An inhuman voice comes through the radio and tells him his
friend is dead.

The Music of Erich Zann(1925.5) (a mystic tale of unutterable horror) – an American student
in France finds lodging in a windowless room at a dilapidated house in a mysterious and
ancient street in Paris. Above his apartment lives a mute, old man who plays the viola. As his
music is extremely bizarre the student pays him a visit only to find the old recluse extremely
terrified when asked to open the only window he has. After the music becomes louder and
more horrifying the student asks the old man about his peculiarities. The old man
communicates through written notes and promises the student to explain his condition by
writing long memoires. After he almost finishes writing the student arrives to find him
playing like a madman. During his playing the window shutters and the student sees that the
view outside is not that of Paris but of an alien space with alien creatures who live in the
void. An immense wind wrecks the room while the madman keeps on playing a most
horrible music. The narrator tries to save the old man but finds out his eyes are glassy and
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he is dead-like though he keeps on playing (the narrator refers to him as a creature from
that point on). The narrator escapes the room into the streets of Paris. He never manages to
find the place again.

The unnamable (1925.7) (an indescribable monstrosity with a thousand shapes of horror) – a
friend sits with another friend in an old cemetery. The first is scientific and the latter is an
author who writes purple prose that often calls monsters "unmentionable" or "unnamable".
The scientific friend laughs about this saying that everything in nature can be described and
writing such prose shows the inferiority of it. He prefers realistic prose. The friend tells him
about a monster that haunts the place and even attacked his ancestor. The monster is
hidden under a slab in a derelict house behind them. As midnight approaches the monster
comes out and both lose their consciousness. When they awake in the hospital (again, like in
most of Lovecraft's fiction it is unclear why the scary monster spared the protagonist) with
the friend acknowledging the fact that the monster had many shapes and was part corporeal
so it is indescribable.

The Temple (1925.9) (the lost land of Atlantis and a German U-boat) – an aristocratic, and
vain, German captain tells his story as diary entries found in a bottle. The officer sinks a
British cruiser with his submarine team. The crew goes outside to video the sinking and they
notice a body that clings to the U-boat. The body possess a brooch of some kind that one of
the sailors take. From then on comes a description of the crew sinking into madness,
believing the dead sailors are still alive. A strange flock of dolphin crams against the
submarine and does not go up for air nor is hampered by depths that should kill every
nautical mammal. The sub's engines are destroyed in a strange explosion and the U-boat
cannot navigate, and later emerge from the depths. The psychotic captain kills everyone
who show signs of mutiny and eventually kills all of his crew members whom he deems
lesser beings than him. The only one left is his lieutenant who is a Bavarian and thus
believed to be less refined and intelligent than the captain. The captain allows the lieutenant
to commit suicide by going outside at the immense depth. The narrator finds his sub in the
middle of an underground, immense, city. He sees a strange light in one of the city's temples
and decides to venture outside in underwater gear to investigate. The journal ends there.

The Tomb (1926.1) (Jervas Hyde Learns unutterable secrets in the tomb of his ancestors) –a
man in a madhouse relates how he got there. As a boy he was fascinated with a mysterious
tomb in the forest next to his home. As he grows up he finds out (whether it is true or not)
that the tomb belonged to some distant relatives who lived there. He dreams about a key
and voices from many ages and opens the tomb when he wakes up after finding the key to
the tomb. He sleeps many nights at the tomb in a coffin that has its name on it, conversing
with his dead relatives. He is found one day by a servant and taken as a madman for the
tomb is found locked and without signs of entry meaning that he imagined the whole thing
as he cannot remember where is the key. Nevertheless, when opening the tomb, they find
his name on one of the coffins.

The Cats of Ulthar (1926.2) (a short, fantastic tale) – in the city of Ulthar, which is a fantasy
setting but probably on this Earth as Africa is mentioned, live an old couple who slaughter
cats. One day a young, orphan boy from a traveling caravan arrives to the city. The boy only
has a little black cat as a companion but the cat is gone and the boy curses those who did
harm to the cat. The next day the caravan leaves but not cat is found in the city. The day
after all cats return to their owners and to the streets but they seem fatter and refuse to eat.
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The old couple disappears for a week until some neighbors break the door to their home.
They find two well-picked skeletons. The city passes a law that no cats should by harmed in
this city.

The Outsider (1926.4) (an outré masterpiece – one of the strangest stories ever written) –
Someone without memory of childhood finds himself alone in a dark forest within a decrepit
cathedral with tall towers. He tries to leave the forest but becomes to scared after some
wandering. The man decides to climb the tallest tower in the cathedral so that he may see
the sky. He is surprised to find, after a toilsome climb, that the whole cathedral and forest
are underground and that he reached the surface (Although he sees the moonlight before
he reaches the top so it is quite weird). Once outside he wanders the dark countryside and
sees a party filled with revelers he wants to talk with the people but they scream and run
away. The man sees a mirror and finds out he is a hideous monster. He crawls back to its
underground cathedral.Very Gothic and eerie. The dark world glimpsed in this story is quite
fitting to modern settings such as Ravenloft.

The Moon-bog (1926.6) (wild pipings lured the workers from the North to an eery doom in
the haunted bog near Kilderry) – the narrator visits a rich friend who came to Scotland to dry
a swamp and live in a nearby castle. The people in the next village shun the investor as they
believe the place to be filled with spirits and the like. The workers are always tired and the
work slackens. The narrator wakes up one night to see the workers walking spell-bound in
their sleep to the sounds of wild piping with ethereal white figures flying next to them. The
thing keeps on going until one night the narrator witnesses the workers drowning
themselves in the bog. The narrator's friend screams like a madman and the narrator sees
that he becomes a shadow.

He (1926.9) (he seemed incredibly aged, this night-prowler in the old alleys of New York – a
tale of black magic and stark horror) – The narrator is a failed poet who goes to New York for
inspiration but soon begins to loath the city. The narrator really likes Gothic sceneries and
antiquarian architecture. He meets an old gentleman dressed in old clothes. He convinces
him to follow him into an old house. In the house the old man shows the narrator how he
can time-travel with the house using the curtains. They travel to a time before New York was
built and then to a time in the future where the city is ruled by racially mixed hordes. The
narrator is shocked from that when angry Indian ghosts who inhabited the place before the
house was built come and kill the man. The house collapses and the narrator crawls, wound
away from the house. He cannot locate the house again.

Yule-Horror (1926.12) (verse) – as snow drops into the land and everything is silent and
dormant some lights show on the hills where the dead dance with spirits around a weird
altar. The place is a burying-mound of druids.

The Horror at Red Hook (1927.1) (the cults of darkness are rooted in blasphemies deeper
than the well of Democritus) – a detective investigates a strange antiquarian and sociologist
who lives in Red Hook, NY. The antiquarian deals with illegal immigrants and other filthy
immigrants from the Middle-East. It is rumored that he and them created a cult which
kidnaps local children for Satanic means. No matter what he does the man always alludes
him. The antiquarian becomes rich and starts to mingle with NY high-society. He finally
marries a famous, glamorous and young heiress. In their wedding day they take a fancy
cruise but both are mysteriously murdered by an invisible force and their bodies are taken
by mysterious foreigners who board the ship. The detective follows them into the basement
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of the sociologist apartment. He is sucked inside and experiences some horrors that involve
monstrous figures and human sacrifice and the reanimation of the sociologist's body. The
place collapses into some underground sea caverns and all are dead. The detective survives
and the police arrives to see the place which is littered with many skeletons of children. The
place is boarded up and cemented but the detective believes the horror still remains in the
sea caverns.

The White Ship (1927.3) (He sailed into the boundless sea, beyond the boundaries of fabled
Cathuria, and strange was his voyage) – a lighthouse keeper, the son and grandson of
lighthouse keepers, sees some white ship on the shores of his lonely island. He embarks on
the mysterious ship with its bearded and wise captain. They see many strange islands like
the island of lost poems and the island of unsatisfied delights until settling on some island
(Sona-Nyl, that vaguely sounds like the name of Lovecraft's ex-wife) which is quaint, relaxing
and a bit boring. He lives there for some "eons". The narrator decides to find some
mysterious island called Cathuria in which hope is found. He sails with the white ship again,
and against the captain's suggestions and eventually sees that there is no island only huge
waterfalls that fall into an endless abyss with inhuman creatures. He awakens to find himself
on the shores of his lighthouse island, alone. He finds no traces of the white ship aside from
some sail. The ship never comes again.

Pickman's Model (1927.10) (unutterable monstrosities crept out from the crumbling walls of
the cellars in an old New England city) – a man relates how he stopped visiting a missing
artist after he showed him his horrible pictures. The pictures are realistic in nature and
extremely powerful and beautiful in technique but depict horrible ghouls – monsters that
look like dead people with dog's heads half hooved feet and predatory hands. They are
depicted as eating humans, dancing in greaves, teaching kidnapped human children how to
eat human flesh and replace ghoul children with real humans. They are depicted as living in
the sewers, tunnels, caves, wells and subways of New England. They are also depicted as
pouring over an unsuspecting American population and kill them all. As they descend into
the artist's cellar they hear scraping sounds and some monstrous mumbling and running
from the old well inside the cellar – leading deep down. The man also notices a photograph
lying around and the artist tells him he photographs the cellar for backgrounds. After
shooting in the air the movement stops. At home the man finds out the photo depicts one of
the ghouls and it is a live photo.

A lot of artistic confessions and orientations – he mentions Smith.

The Call of Cthulhu (1928.2) (Slithering through the earth came the thoughts of Cthulhu, and
mankind faced the rule of an obscene and incredible monstrosity) – A man follows his dead
uncle's notes. The uncle searched for years to find information on a hidden Cthulhu cult that
originated in some Eskimo tribes or Arabia and have outgrowths in the U.S. This cult
worships "The Old Ones" – a race of ancient aliens that is now sleeping in ancient places
around the globe. One of these "Old Ones" is a huge, monstrous entity that serves as their
priest and God and sleeps in an underwater city called R'lyh. The notes spread across many
years with some being detective notes on a police raid on some Louisiana Voodoo gathering
where the worshippers worshipped Cthulhu, a Norwegian sailor who stumbled upon a island
which was actually the resurfaced peaks of R'lyh after some fight with cultist pirates and the
dreams of a young artist. Other people and especially academics and artists dream about the
sunken city. Apparently, the sailors released Cthulhu who kill them all and only one manages
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to survive. It is unclear why Cthulhu returned to his slumber after he was awakened. The
narrator claims that the cultists hunt down everyone who knows too much about Cthulhu
and that the Norwegian and his uncle were murdered by them.

The Lurking Fear(1928.6) (Slithering shadows of red madness 'poured out of the under¬
ground burrows beneath the Martense mansion) – some mysterious protagonist with
unclear motives goes with two muscled man to some rural mansion around which many
degenerate hoboes died mysteriously – they were torn apart by some malignant and
invisible force. The two men with him disappear mysteriously when they go to sleep in the
mansion. He takes another man and he too gets killed at night with half his hand munched.
The monster arrives at night but he cannot find it. The scared locals tell him that the owners
of the mansion disappeared in 1815 after more than a hundred years of living there. They
had some deformed eyes with eyes in different colors. Only one member of this inter-
married, secluded, family got out and saw the world. He was a good young man and when
he returned to his home he disappeared. His friend Asked the family and they told him he
got sick and died. When the friend opened his grave he found his skull bashed. Since then no
one got near the family's mansion until many years later they found it deserted. The
protagonist searches the grave of the son and finds a tunnel that leads deep inside the
mansion. There he is confronted by some amorphous monster that runs past him. The
monster is cornered at some barn and the barn is burned by the degenerate locals. No
bones are found. After some other people die the protagonist understands there are more
monsters. He goes to the mansion and manages to find another opening from which many
disgusting creatures go out. They look like tentacled monkeys with eyes in different color.
The narrator calls the police and they blast the whole mountain so that no creature is left
alive. I think Lovecraft doesn't understand how evolution or degeneration works.

The Silver Key (1929.1) (strange fancies had Randolph Carter, and the silver key in an old
attic was the clue that led him into forbidden paths) – a philosophical musings about Fantasy
and how children are close to it and have a better understanding of the uncaring universe.
Then the protagonist, which is the same from "The Statement of Randolph Carter", finds an
evil key. When going to his ruined ancestral home something happens and he becomes a
child again in his old childhood. He, as a boy, crawls down a mysterious tunnel and opens
something. It is then revealed that throughout his life, since opening the thing he had
recollections of future events. He disappears. Very pertinent to genre and Fantasy.

The Dunwich Horror (1929.4) (a colossal story of eery happenings in a drab New England
settlement – a tale of blood-chilling horror) – the protagonist visits an old decrepit
settlement in backwater New England. The degenerate inhabitants tell of huge invisible
monster that kils the inhabitants. Then a story unfurls about a crazy old man that worships
Yog-Sototh – a indifferent entity. He impregnates his albino idiot-daughter with the god and
she gives birth to a boy who has the lower part of a squid and another invisible monster. Like
Rud's story the other son is fed a lot of meat and hidden in a barn. Then the creature breaks
loose. His brother studies ancient manuscripts to destroy the world but is killed by some
professor in Arkham. The professor takes some men to hunt the creature and kills it.

The Ancient Track (1930.3) (verse) – the speaker walks in Lovecraft's fictional New England
(Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, Kingsport and the like) and hopes to tread in his childhood
lanes that he remembered as mysterious and haunting. He finds out he is lost in space as he
gets lost in the track. (Lovecraft's New England makes the U.S. a scary place even without
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the foreign immigrants who "tainted" it. It also serves as a vantage point to Cosmic Horror –
getting lost in space and time)

Recapture (1930.5) (verse) – the speaker finds out he is in a strange land with huge stairs
made by monstrous beings that kidnapped him.

Fungi from Yuggoth (1930.9)(parts 1&2) (verse; decoration by Hugh Rankin) – the speaker is
in a strange town and dead people without hands or head dance around him. In autumn a
strange wind sweeps the world which carries cosmic memories from alien planets and it also
sweeps our own dreams.

H. Thompson Rich

(the guy has some issues with objects – most of his stories are about objects that cause
havoc)

The Crimson Crucifix (1924.12)(a birthmark an innocent kiss and disaster) – a (quite stupid)
priest sees a brown crucifix-like birthmark baptizing a girl pronouncing her birthmark will
remain brown as long as she does not commit to lust. She falls in love with a man who
refuses to have sex with her before marriage so that the crucifix will not turn crimson. He
goes to war but gives her one kiss before going to WWI. She finds that her crucifix became
red and her father believes her lover took her virginity. He writes him an angry letter. The
girl manages to convince the priest to tell her father a single kiss can turn the crucifix red
and the father writes another letter of apology. The girl's lover comes at night and does not
believe her. She gets a letter the next day that he is got killed several days ago as he read a
demeaning letter from her never getting the second apology letter. He lost the will to live
and participated in a dangerous raid. The girl puts the cross of war her lover got over her red
crucifix.

The Orange Opal (1925.5) (when the stone turned red, ill-fate menaced its owner) – A British
navy officer wins a magic ring from an Indian at a card game. The ring is promised to change
color from orange to red when its owner is in danger. He and the narrator, a land-army
officer, fall in love with an American girl but she prefers the navy-man who offers her the
ring as an engagement present. As WWI starts and the navy-man is drafted the land-officer is
not for he is older and less fit. The navy-man asks his fiancée to give him the ring so that he
will know when danger is near in the war but she refuses. The land-officer courts the navy-
man's fiancée, while her betrothed is at war, in excuse to take the ring and thus prevent her
from warning her husband that he is in danger. He manages to do so and as the ring turns
red one day he hides the fact from everyone. Several days later German zeppelins bomb
London and the girl's father calls to tell him his daughter died in the raid. The man
understands that the ring now belongs to the woman and the warning was for her.

The Purple Cincture (1925.8) (the bite of plague-stricken spiders accomplished a frightful
revenge) – the narrator finds an old skeleton while hiking the woods. The skeleton is missing
a hand, a leg and a head. He finds the head and a journal. The journal tells the story of an
enraged entomologist who, thinking her unfaithful, poisoned his wife. He devises a plan to
punish her lover, his best friend, by using special spiders who were infected with a very cruel
disease. The disease makes the infected hand fall after some days of excruciating pain and
change of color. Then, a week later, the same thing happens with the leg, then the head. He
invites his friend and looses an infected spider on his sleeping body. The man is friend is
bitten. In the morning the friend admits he does not feel good. He goes for a hike. The friend
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gloats over the suffering of his friend and six months later goes for a hike as the friend does
not return. He finds the journal of the man, with some body parts that he touches, in which
the friend suspects that this friend infected him because he thought his wife unfaithful
which was exactly the opposite as both him and the wife were very loyal to the man. He lives
in the forest for months for fear of infecting the local population (it is unclear how the
crippled, sick friend survived in the woods for six months). As the man is shocked to find out
he killed his best friend and his wife for nothing the mutilated friend approaches and tells
him that he is also infected as he touched the hand. His head falls of. The skeleton proves
that the man suffered a similar fate.

The Sev'n-Ring'd Cup (1925.9) (thrills a-plenty are met with in the search for Jamshyd's cup)
– a bored woman who writes fiction for women decides to publish an add in the newspaper
to lure men with interesting stories. A man comes to her and tells her about a cipher he
received from his dead father who found a hidden treasure in Persia. The young woman
deciphers it easily and the man agrees for a fifty-fifty split of the shares. They go to Persia
and find the treasure but a strange figure lurks in the house and tries to reach the treasure
before them, eventually trapping them in an underground hall where the huge treasure is
found. They escape via a hidden tunnel and confront the attacker – the man's valet who
agrees to leave and never come back. The two become extremely rich and as the will of the
father prevents to split of the treasure they marry.

The Black Box (1925.12) (mystery tale of stark horror) – a friend visits his comrade in an
insane asylum. The friend tells him how he was engaged to a beautiful girl who was wooed
by a rival. The rival, seeing the two are about to get married, comes at night to the man and
tries to stab him. The friend is lightly wounded and manages to knock-out the assailant,
choking him and taking one of his eyes after he is knocked-down. The man then releases the
assailant to the swamps so that he will either die or be scared to attack him again. Cleaning
up the mess so that no-one will know of his evil deeds he fails to find the eye. Several
months later, during his marriage ceremony he gets a strange, oriental, box he is unable to
open. He suggests to the guests the box as a game. One of them manages to open it and
loses consciousness. The guests seem agitated and they tell him he should get rid of the box.
One of them tells him that he does not want to know what he did to the assailant (he
mentions the assailant by name). The man is puzzled and as he comes to his newly-wed at
night he finds that she opened the box and is now dead. He opens the box and there is the
eye of his assailant inside (it is unclear how the guest knew this was the assailant's eye, did
he have intimate connection with this eye-ball in the past?). He becomes insane. (it is
unclear how the girl died, who gave the box, how the attendants of the party recognized the
eye as belonging to the assailant, all of these make, what could have been a regular horror-
mystery story, a blunder of a very poorly-written story)

The Avenger (1926.1) (weird drama in one act) – a short play about a captain who tries to
rape a nun in a bombarded convent. The nun prays to God for death and she dies. The
frightened captain is soon killed by an unseen adversary (probably as part of some divine
retribution).

The Phantom Express (1926.10) (The ghost in this story was no ordinary specter—it was the
ghost of an express train) a tired locomotive conductor imagines seeing a ghost train at night
while driving the train. He also sees it on the way back though no one else is able to see it.
He observes the train lights plummeting further ahead into a ravine. He stops the train and
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saves everyone – the wind moved the tracks into a dead end that would have resulted in the
death of all on train. He deduces that he saw their own train as ghost that warned him of the
upcoming dangers.

H. Warner Munn

The Werewolf of Ponkeret (1925.7) (They Flayed him alive and wrote his story on his tanned
skin) – a man in France tells the narrator about his ancestor whose story was written on
flayed skin. The Hungarian ancestor was a shopkeeper that while driving in his wagon is
attacked by seven werewolves. He kills one of them and their leader, known as "master",
forces him to become a werewolf or die in turn. After some weeks the master confronts him
and forces him to go raiding with the pack for human flesh. As the months go by the new
werewolf enjoys his freedom but deep inside is torn due to his loss of humanity. He refuses
to obey the master but the master forces him to kill his wife and children. He is completely
broken when he wakes up from his werewolf form and finds out what he has done. He turns
himself in to the local militia and helps them hunt the pack and the "master". They succeed
in making the trap but the master escapes. The man is flayed alive as punishment and his
story is written on his own flesh. The descendant says that the fact that he is still alive hints
about the survival of the man's baby daughter and the confusion of the werewolf during the
act.

The City of Spiders (1926.11) (a complete novelette of shuddery horror and eery fascination
that will remain long in your memory) – an American meets a weird man on the train who
really hates spiders. The man explains that he is an entomologist who studied insects in
South America. As he traveled with some native servants he is besieged by a horse of huge
spiders and is later kidnapped by them. The spider king finds out that he is white and
decides to hypnotize him to see his memories. The spider is a reincarnation of a line of
spiders that ruled the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. Humans were their cattle
and working beasts. The men rebelled but were quenched by the huge spiders. The spiders
became almost extinct at the start of the ice age and humans started evolving into different
races and destroyed the spiders – most of whom are now tiny and unintelligent. The man
learns that the spiders want him to lead them to civilization so that they will destroy
mankind (they thought the world is still frozen and uninhabited). He leads them to some
cannibal tribe and while they kill and eat the tribe he burns the place – men and spider alike
– and runs away.

Again many racial fantasies about the history of the world and evolution – especially
regarding the differences in mankind.

The Return of the Master (1927.7) (the Werewolf of Ponkert returns from the pit of Hell to
thwart the sinister Master who has wrought his downfall) –after his French friend dies the
narrator from "The Werewolf of Ponkert" returns to France and there he meets an old
woman with a young body who reveals herself as the young assistant of his friend cursed by
the evil werewolf from the previous story. The narrator punches the Master from a train but
he becomes a huge bat. He shoots it but then he becomes a wolf. The Vampire/Werewolf
chases the two and turns the girl into a wolf. Aided by the dead friend whom the V/W
turned into a zombie they chase the narrator into an abandoned inn. Although the place is
rotten it takes them many minutes to break the door. Meanwhile the narrator manages to
light some candles that appear to scare the zombie and the v/W. Out of the blue the old
woman/cursed girl appears. As the candles are blown out, somehow, all the victims of the
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master appear, including the werewolf from the previous story who manages to kill the
Master after the narrator burns the inn. The girl turns young again and the narrator wants to
adopt her as his daughter. Messy plot with stupid cliffhangers that refute themselves such as
"I did not manage to hit him and I felt my power waning, everything went black. I hit him in
the face and he fell from the train", "I was alone in the room and knew no-one could help
me, the girl was standing there next to me, I was not alone". The Master, which was so
powerful in the previous tory is an old caricature of a duce bag that can do nothing. Stupid,
Stupid, Stupid story.

The Chain (1928.4) (a grim, terrible story of torture unendurable – a tale of frightful
vengeance in a medieval oubliette) – a man who tricked his cousin into a crumbling cliff thus
maiming him forever and who afterwards slept with his wife is shocked to understand his
crazy, count cousin knew all along. The crazy cousin drops him in his oubliette (he lives in a
horrible castle and is rumored to like torture people constantly). In it he is attacked by rats
and later tortures with some hot-red chain that burns him slowly until he loses any
semblance to a human being. He endures the torture long enough to make the burning
engine and steam explode and destroy the castle with everyone inside.

For people who like "The Saw" or other graphic torture.

The Werewolf's Daughter (1928.10-12) (A romantic story of the weird adventures that befel
the daughter of the Werewolf of Ponkert—a three-part serial) – the saintly daughter of the
man from "The Werewolf of Ponkert" is taken by a stupid and angry mob who thinks she is a
witch. Before that, one man, a stranger, falls in love with her and the two meet and he tells
her how he loves her as she tells him she is lonely and nobody loves her. The big, old guard
who saves her is attacked by the crazy mob. She is tortured and ridiculed and is about to get
burned at dawn. She makes a deal with the Master and it is revealed he is an hermaphrodite
spirit from another planet trapped by an evil Babylonian sorceress who vacated the body of
some wise white-wizard that now serves as the spiritual companion of the now-evil spirit.
The Master wants to die but he wishes to cause much harm and suffering to mankind before
that. The girl chooses to live happily with her lover with the price of the horrible suffering
her offspring will endure for many generations. The girl's huge adopting father prays to God
and become stronger. He picks his huge sword and tries to save his girl. The girl's lover
learns of her fate and arrives at the scene of her incarceration. He kills the hangman and
releases the girl but the whole town awakes and hunts them. The two escape and the huge
foster-father of the girl heroically stands at some pass and kills dozens of the town-folk who
try to pass him. He dies but the two managed to get away. The guards who hear about their
fallen captain slaughter the rest of the townsmen. After many adventures the two manage
to reach France and the narrator sums all the Werewolf trilogy and how it is historically
correct.

Howard R. Marsh

The Foot Fetish (1926.6)(cover-story) (a tale of mystery – slant-eyed zealots from the Gobi
hills and a beautiful American girl who bore the sacred birthmark) – a girl and her father visit
Chinatown and are harassed by some Chinese who observe a tooth-shaped birthmark on her
foot. Later that night the girl is kidnapped from her hotel room. As these people worship a
giant foot with that sign and they believe the girl to be some reincarnation of a lost princess.
A man who sleeps in the next room finds out about the kidnapping and with the girl's father
manages to track the kidnappers to a ship that just leaves the city. They are held by the
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captain and explain him the situation. The man decides to build a huge electric foot and
manages to track the kidnappers in the ship's passengers. The man, the professor and the
captain barge into the kidnappers' room, shoot them and rescue the girl. The man identifies
with the kidnappers when he sees the girl and wishes to worship the girl's foot. (even
though highly racist and filled with colonial white-supremacy the story is a bit subversive
pointing the origin of the kidnappers to uncultivated Chinese who are not even pure Chinese
and the fact that the protagonist identifies with the kidnappers in the end and becomes
himself a foot-fetishist)

J. Schlossel

Invaders From Outside (1925.1) (a planet from outer space wages war on the twelve worlds)
– hundreds of thousands of years before now our solar system was teeming with highly
advanced, spacefaring, peaceful and tolerant civilizations that traded with one another.
Then, a huge, earth-like spaceship arrives to our solar system from a dead galaxy inhabited
by "two-legged" creatures who wreak havoc and destroy several planets. The peace-loving
worlds are forced to learn the ancient art of creating war technologies and manage to kill
many of these fast-multiplying invaders. Eventually they succeed and the invaders are forced
to blow one of their conquered planets which results in the death of most life in our solar
system with the survivors forced to land on the barbaric, uncivilized world Earth which was
not harmed as most planets in the system.

Hurled Into the Infinite (1925.6-7) (Two Part Astronomical Story) – The narrator's fiancée is
missing and he sells everything he has, becomes a tramp and travels all over the U.S. to find
her. After three months, penniless, he shelters in an old, abandoned farmhouse only to find
out it is the hideout of secret cabal of geniuses who rule the world and try to make it a
better place to men although they are cold and calculating. They extrapolate that mankind
will overcrowd the planet and try to find means for colonizing distant planets outside our
solar system. As mechanical technology is unable to achieve it they decide to hurl a human
into space by sheer will-power. The narrator finds his sleep-induced fiancée on an altar with
a member of the group as both are about to participate in the journey. The narrator fights
with the member near the altar and the three are hauled into space into a weird planet. The
three are separated in the journey and the narrator finds himself in a poisonous forest with
bizarre reptiles and flying creatures. He also has the ability to jump very high as his muscles
are attuned to Earth's gravity and this planet's gravity is weaker. He wanders at night and
discovers a bonfire in the forest. It is surrounded by intelligent gorilla-like creatures and his
fiancée is with them. He tries to get to her only to see his nemesis (the society's member)
with a club. He is knocked unconscious after a short fight. He wakes up alone and finds some
of the intelligent gorillas hunting a less intelligent gorilla. He saves the lesser gorilla and
discovers that the more intelligent gorillas were doing a raid on the less intelligent ones to
get slaves and kill many of the lesser creatures. He finds his fiancée in one of their huts with
a wounded nemesis. The lesser gorillas threw a spear at the woman but he saved her and
got the spear instead. The nemesis explains how he always loved the woman as the two
knew each other before he joined the society. He used telepathy to communicate with the
gorillas and understand their status. His telepathic communication with the society reveals
that they are all in a coma and as long as they are not killed they will live forever as statues
that open the way to this planet. He explains, before he dies, that the only way to get back is
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using this form of mental power. The narrator and the woman live as gods with the gorillas
and he helps them build a steam engine. He recruits 500 of the most intelligent gorillas and
teaches them how to get into a deep trance and force their power-will to get back to Earth.
The gorilla he saved joins as his pet slave. After many months he manages to teach the
gorillas. After several days of hard concentration, the gorillas manage to open the bridge and
the narrator and his fiancée jump back to Earth with the pet gorilla joining them. When they
reach home the pet slave stays too long on the platform and is hauled back to his planet
(and probably back to Earth and so forth endlessly, which the narrator thinks likely but does
not much care). The two go back to the fiancée's parents who are looking for her and
accidently drop an oil lamp that burns the society's hideout.

A Message From Space (1926.3) (giant twin stars – an attempt to whirl a planet from its
orbit) –a radio-television enthusiast insists that he saw something on his t.v set for a whole
week. No one believes him. What he saw is a broadcast by an alien who tells him his story
with pictures. The alien is one of two ruling princes who rule a strange planet that revolves
around two suns – one big and almost dead and the other like our sun. The alien prince is
chosen and there is another hereditary prince. The chosen prince is the more powerful and
respected and is considered holy. Nevertheless, the current hereditary prince hates the
chosen one and tries to kill him. When he fails and the chosen prince devises a plan to help
the planet's inhabitants thrive in the harsh winters of the planet (every two weeks) the
hereditary prince decides to spin the planet off orbit thus endangering the whole planet. The
chosen prince is shocked and tries to wage war on the hereditary prince who has a better
military force. The chosen princes capitulates to the hereditary prince demands – he comes
to him and the latter sends him into space. As a final act of vengeance, the chosen prince
manages to kidnap the hereditary prince and take him with him to space to be imprisoned
there together until they die of hunger. (the story ignores the fact that they are now two in
space and their food will run out at half the time). The aliens, as in any other story, live in a
monarchy and as usual they invent ludicrous inventions. As in many other space stories in
WT the aliens have no war until the story starts.Again the incredulous narrator who sees
something no one is willing to believe.

J.U. Giesy

The Wicked Flea (1925.10) (riproaring story of a flea that grew to gigantic size) – a scientist
makes a flea as large as a cat by giving him meat with special vitamins. His daughter and her
fiancée are mildly interested in his experiment. The flea escapes and run amok among
several people in the neighborhood until shot to death by a half-witted officer.

Joel Martin Nichols

The Lure of Atlantis (1925.4) (Beneath the Sargasso Sea, in the grave of missing ships) – a
ship finds a sole survivor at sea who tells them his story. He and his archeologist friend go to
find Atlantis as this friend found proof the Egyptians and Mexicans were descendants of
people from Atlantis. They easily find the place and dive down. In a temple at the city they
find huge number of jewels and a crystal coffin with a beautiful woman. There is a
mysterious seaweed that plays tricks on them but the archeologist seems to not care about
it. As the two later fight about what to do with the treasure (the archeologist refuses to take
it) the narrator is banned from going under. The archeologist goes on numerous trips
underwater. Finally, the angered narrator goes down in an attempt to kill his friend as he
suspects the entombed woman loves his friend more than him. The friend is somehow
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warned by some mysterious power as he crouches near the woman and the seaweed helps
him to get rid of his treacherous friend. Several days later, as the archeologist fails to come
up the seaweed starts to engulf the ship and pull it downwards. The narrator wants to go
down with the ship and is jealous of the drowned sailors as the seaweed refuses to let him
down. The ship that saves him gets a same treatment but as it carries some chemicals they
are able to break free, much to the dismay of the archeologist's friend. He commits suicide
soon after and before he dies he makes the skipper promise him to bury him with nitrates
and iron so that his body will reach Atlantis.

The Hooded Death (1926.4) (two milk-white cobras guarded the jewels of the temple) – an
American mercenary guards an evil, huge man, his woman and her child for 10 months. At
night the guard he posted is murdered and the man he guards becomes insane after some
mysterious figures look from the window at him. The American talks to the woman who
raves how the crazy man killed her husband, killed his friend and his son (and she was
probably an accomplice) to take possession of some pearls hidden in an Indian temple in the
jungle. The American sneaks into the place he hidden the pearls. The woman races to a place
she believes the big man hides some cobras to commit suicide – she succeeds. The big man
enters and fights with the mercenary who manages to get the big man bit by the cobras and
then he drops him on them squashing them. He reveals to the big man he is the brother of
one of people he killed. It is unclear why he did not kill him before – the man sleeps next to
him every night and he gives him opium so that he is half-drugged all these 10 months he
was with them – stupid, stupid, stupid.

The Devil Ray (1926.5-7)(Three part-serial – purple beam of light shoots from the clouds,
bringing death to whatever it touches) – a man who loses his memory after bumping into a
mirror finds a note in his pocket with the name of a scientist who is missing for many
months. He becomes a thief and wanders to Austria with two crooks to steal diamonds from
a solitary castle. He and one of the crooks sneak into the castle and find a lot of high-tech
weaponry. He also notices a man that looks very familiar and seems to be a scientist trapped
at the castle. The criminal who goes with him dies from a purple projected by an airplane
beam that touches him. The man is now alone as the other criminal runs away after
discovering the death of his comrade. The man sneaks into a villa owned by the castle owner
after he rescues a girl and hitting a German who tries to hurt her even though she threatens
to kill the man if he tries to kill the German. Once inside he finds the diamonds but is hit by a
mirror and his memory returns – he is the son of the kidnapped scientist. The German comes
and the girl helps the man to get a sword as the two duel. The German tells him they plan to
install the new weapon to conquer the world and redeem Germany and Austria from their
defeat in WWI by reinstalling the Kaiser. The American kills the German. They sneak into the
castle and rescue the father, killing some guards and blowing the castle in the process. They
fly with a plane that parks outside the castle just as it explodes. They manage to find the car
with the death-ray on top and they manage to blow it even though they point the ray at
them (they maneuver the plane to escape the ray). The father tells his son how he was
kidnapped by his German scientist friend to invent the ray (the German knew how to make
part of it work and the father the other).

The City of Glass (1927.3) (a thrilling weird-scientific story of a race of Atlanteans in the
African desert – and the Battle of the Fungi) – the narrator travels with an archeologist, his
daughter and her husband. They go to the Sahara desert as the professor believes that the
survivors of Atlantis fled from their island, thousands of years ago, and raised a city, deep in
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the desert. When their Arab guides leave them for dead they are approached by a bizarre
man who manages to kidnap them by using some sort of sleeping spore-gas. The narrator
awakens in a domed, solarium-like city made from some glass-aloy. He is told by the
stranger that they are Atlanteans and that their technology has made them immortal. The
only draw-back was that their blood has become cold – hence the stifling heat that is in the
place, and that they had become so decadent from living so many years that no food, smell
or touch can ever please them and only extreme sensations, uncontrolled lust and evil
plotting make them somewhat content. They decide to rape the four so that their blood will
make the Atlanteans fertile again as they are sterile for many years. The extremely beautiful
and decadent queen yearns the narrator but he finds that the professor's son-in-law is mad
in his lust for the queen while he himself is in love with his wholesome wife. He tells the
queen about this and she decides to give this woman to a lecherous imp who is also one of
the nobles to get raped. The stranger, one of the queen's advisors, tells him how he can you
a dangerous mushroom they cultivated to sneak into the woman's rooms and save her. At
night he is attacked by the husband who thinks he is about to mate with the queen. The
narrator beats him and he madly runs into a moat filled with crocodiles. He finds out that
the advisor played them both against each other. The narrator hides a vial with many of the
deadly mushrooms. He uses the mushroom, that instantly grows to a monstrous size to
sneak into the girl's room. He saves her from the monstrous noble who tries to rape her by
killing it. They take her father and the three try to escape. The narrator uses his magic
mushrooms in an inhibitive way and the city is filled with mushrooms that also grow inside
the decadent Atlanteans with their "rotten" bodies. The city becomes a huge grave and the
survivors must use some sun-cannon to burn the huge mushrooms. They escape as the
dome crashes on the city and the place explodes. The narrator marries the now widowed
girl.

The Isle of Lost Souls (1928.12) (a serial story of the fourth dimension, buried treasure of the
Russian tsars, Bakelief Island, and weird adventures) – a man who wears a special ring is
approached by an evil psychiatrist and his helper. The two and the psychiatrist's wife are
reincarnations of some Russians involved in a 1928 quest to rob an ancient diamond of the
Romanoff. The woman is the reincarnation of the last family member of the tsar. All are
dead as the previous reincarnation of the evil psychiatrist decided to murder his companion
and take the diamond. In 2014 (the far future for these guys) the now psychiatrist manages
to track all four involved and hypnotizes them, attach them to a machine as all come back as
second spirits to their previous incarnation. The protagonist reveals that their spirits cannot
affect what happens unless all the four concentrate their psychic force. He also reveals that
his ring is the key as it exists both in the 2014 present and the 1928 expedition and has two
pills that are the only means of getting home again. The protagonist's ring is stolen by the
bad guy. The protagonist waits until a duel between the two past incarnations of him and
the evil professor ensues. The evil professor's lackey shoots the current incarnation of the
protagonist and the duel is about to end differently than it did in the past but the evil
professor past incarnation slips on a cliff's end and he dies. The two run to the ship but it is
shelled by the evil one's lackeys (I didn’t really understand the plot – why do they follow this
guy if their reason for finding the treasure is to put the Romanovs back in reign – they are
trying to kill the only Romanoff left by bombing the ship, it makes no bloody sense). They
follow the two into an underwater cavern that collapses and kills all but the two who slowly
die from drowning. Before dying they find the jewels in the cavern and the evil man's body
with the ring. The two incarnations trapped in their bodies use the ring to come back to their
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time, inherit the professor's riches, find the jewels and donate most of their money for
Russian orphans. (This is perhaps the only story where the future seems exactly like the 1928
present).

John Martin Leahy

The Voices from the Cliff (1925.5) (Strange Natural Phenomenon Reveals a brutal murder) –
a materialist scientist falls in love with a girl who decides to marry another man. He goes to
sea depressed. Meanwhile the girl is murdered – she is thrown off a cliff that is next to her
home. At the same time, sailors who are 80 miles from there see the scientist listen to voices
in the air and believe ghosts are talking to him. The scientist returns and frames the husband
who cracks and confesses. Confronted with questions about his supernatural rendezvous at
the time of the woman's murder he explains that the ship was directly in line with the cliff
and that the sails and mast functioned as transmitter so he had heard the murder due to this
rare natural phenomenon.

The Voice of Bills (1926.10) (a rationale ghost-story, which loses none of its thrill because the
reader feels that it could have happened!) – A man murders his friend in the woods after
many years he planned the thing (he murders him for some wrong he believes he
committed). Before dying the man tells his murderer that he will haunt him when the moon
is up. He buries his friend. The murderer comes back to his cabin to find three campers. He
suspiciously explains the blood on his hands as a cut he got. When the campers leave he
experiences many hours of anxiety believing his friend haunting him. He goes back to the
place of the murder and then back again to the cabin. He believes he hears a moan and
scratching on the door. He runs mad to the cabin of the campers and confess about the
murder. Two of the campers go back to the cabin and find out that the moan comes from an
open pot (the wind blows through it and makes the sound) and the scratching from some
rope that bangs on the door.

Drome (1927.1-4) (missing first page of the table of contents) – two adventurers are
approached by an old man who tells them about a mystery involving his grandfather. The
grandfather went on an expedition to Mount Rainier in Washington. The grandfather left a
journal in which he tells how he and his friends climbed the mountain and found an angelic
woman who traveled with a demonic entity she called "Drome" and which killed everyone in
the expedition instead of the grandfather who managed to graze it with his bullet. For years
the grandson hiked the mountain to find where these creatures lived but failed. A few days
before he approached the adventurers he read about a girl who was slashed and thrown to
her death on the mountain (the public believed it to be a fall) while her father imagined
heard the word "Drome". The two gear up and climb the mountain and after a day or two
reach a crevice in the stone that is barely observed. The believe the crevice is often closed
but opens after many years. One of the friends disappears when he tries to look inside the
small crevice. He finds his friend and they look at some alien writings. The friend tells him
that he saw the beautiful angelic woman. They try and catch her for about a week or so as
they descend deeper into the bowls of the Earth. There is a lengthy treatise on why the
pressure from the depth won't kill them. They find a skeleton of a "demon". They reach a
huge underground waterfall and find out they are being watched. As they pass a shaky,
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natural, stone bridge that covers a roaring river hundreds of meters down beneath them
they know an ambush is waiting for them next to some pylons. They see the angelic woman
with a demon leashed to her side. The demon attacks them and they manage to stay
balanced and shoot it but its leash traps the woman's hand and she almost falls to her death
into the river as the demon body's weight pulls her down. They manage to save her. The
woman is shaken and sad for the loss of her demon. Some other people who look like her
(silvery hair, beautiful Greek-statue-like features) come and she talks to them. By the use of
pictures, she asks them if they came alone. When they claim this positive the group is
relieved for some reason and hails them to follow them into an underground city. The group
is soon lost in a maze of underground tunnels. Led by Drorathusa, the angelic woman, the
narrator finds out the demon-creature was their hound-guide and with it dead they cannot
find the road back home. Lost in the maze they stumble upon an ancient temple with
monstrous figures carved in it. The Dromans fear it. Almost dead from thirst Drora finds an
underground spring and following it they eventually reach familiar caves. After some walking
they reach some caves thronged with fungus, some of it violent towards the group. They exit
a final cave only to reach into a huge, luminous cavern with a forest inside. In the forest they
are attacked by some leopard-snakes and tentacled monsters that try to hunt them from the
trees.Eventually they reach civilization which resembles old Greece. The people of Drome
are superstitious and they believe their famine and recent eclipses are because of the
newcomers. They all have white hair. The beautiful queen manages to save them from an
evil priest and eventually they learn the language and teach the people math. The people
begin to love them and the scientist marries the queen. The narrator recites how the evil
priest dies and how Drorathusa becomes the new high-priestess. They decide to hide Drome
from the world but to launch one final expedition to see the outer world.

In Amundsen's Tent (1928.1) (a horror lurked in Roald Amundsen's tent at the South Pole –
an utterly abominable and terrifying monstrosity) – some expedition finds a long-abandoned
tent in the South Pole that contains some manuscripts by Amundsen, a severed head and
the journal of the man whose head it is. In the journal there is the story of three explorers
that find the text. Only two look inside (not the narrator) but they refuse to describe what
they found only screaming and saying they are insane and that what is inside will make every
one mad. Apparently, there is the hibernating body of some alien. One of the two enters and
shoots the thing which awakes (though the narrator never sees it). As the tent begins to
move the three run away but are hunted by the creature (without the narrator describing it
even once). One by one their dogs disappear until eventually there is only one left who
claims the creature is about to enter his own tent.

The Isle of Fairy Morgana (1928.2) (a cruel murder took place on Flang island, hidden from
the world, yet Guy Oxford saw every frightful detail of the murder) – a violent, hermit who
travels the world on sea finds a castaway in a far abandoned island. Miraculously, it is the
same man his wife cheated him with. He frightens the man and convince him to go up a
mountain in the island where he slowly shoots him to death. Another ship miraculously
arrive after some hours (even though the narrative clearly states the island does not have
any ships coming to for many years). There is a criminologist on board who suspects the man
has committed murder and eventually goes to the scene of the crime and tells him he saw
the whole murder even though he was hundreds of kilometers from the place. He explains
that a fata morgana caused the murder scene to become a mirror from which he saw the
whole thing with his telescope.
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Dumb, dumb, dumb. Aside from the names that are interesting – the detective ship is called
"queen Mab" and the detective always says the "fairy Morgana" told him about the murder.
Names from Arthurian legends.

Leavenworth Macnab

The Hangings of Aspara (1925.6) (sensational newspaper hoaxes give tang to an execution) –
a comic (and critical) portrayal of sensational newspapers. The true story of a tabloid that
reviewed the hanging of Sam Aspara in 1905. With declining circulation, the tabloid is forced
to create sensationalism by anonymously sending a cake to the prisoner with tools to escape
and some postcards with deadly poison in them. Writing before-hand about those incidents
the tabloid is the first to publish the scoop.

Lake Desolation (1927.8) (verse) –a misty lake at night makes the speaker think of ghosts
and dead forces that hover around the lake.

Despair and the Soul (1927.11) (verse) – a poem about a woman who comes at night and
makes someone miserable. She is the personification of despair.

Dirge (1928.8) (verse) – the speaker is probably alone on some boat in a very dark place. He
only dimly sees some light in the East. There are trees nearby so I guess he is not alone at
sea. He thinks about his dead loved one.

Let Night Have Sway (1929.1) (verse) a poem about accepting the horrible feelings we have
and succumbing to the night of our souls.

Louise Garwood

Fayrian (1925.2) (She killed her husband and then found she wanted him) – A (probably
medieval) lady murders her lover for cheating on her with poison and blames his friend.
After his death she feels his sexual presence in nature around her and wishes to join him in
death because he is sexually teasing her until she cannot take it anymore. She tries to
convince the sheriff she is to blame but he does not believe her. As she understands she
robbed her lover from a noble death she decides to die in a splendid way and throws herself
from the cliff into the roaming sea below.

Candle-light (1925.11) (she returned from the grave, but he would not receive her) – a
widower waits for his dead wife to return. He is lonely and cold for many years. One night he
hears her coming but when she finally talks to him and long for them to be together he
shivers and is afraid to join her. She leaves heartbroken and confused and it is hinted the
whole thing was a dream. The next morning a new beautiful day shines and the man finds
some traces that proves the ghost of his wife was indeed at home.

Ghosts (1926.7) (verse) – the speaker hears voices of sobbing, walking and laughing when no
one is there.

The Living (1929.9) (verse) – the speaker mocks those who bring flowers to the dead and
prefers to wait until the corpse will nourish a flower to put it in his\her hair.

Murray Leinster

The Oldest Story in the World (1925.8) (blood-red rubies – an oriental raja – and a torture
chamber) – the narrator meets an eccentric man who hates the color red. He tells him, and
an acquaintance of the narrator who joins later, about an impoverished raja whose kingdom
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is on the brink of starvation and dilapidation. The raja only has some rubies that are
rumored to be worth ten times his kingdom. He kills everyone who comes near the jewels
when they are on him (he even kills a child that comes to close to his procession when he
walks around town). The storyteller tells about a man who lived thousands of years ago
(even though the raja is still alive) who fools the raja's wife into believing him a priest of
some bizarre, fertility deity (as she wants boys). He convinces her to show him the jewels,
then he kills her. He runs into a neighboring kingdom and does the same trick to kidnap the
local raja's beautiful wife. The raja apprehends the wife and the storyteller and tells them
that each have an opportunity to live if they can give him something more valuable than the
other (the other will be tortured to death). The woman promises a son to the raja and the
man, reluctantly, offers the rubies he stolen. The rubies are presented to the raja and his
wise-men recognize them as the fake, glass rubies of the neighboring raja who fools
everyone he has something of value in his decrepit kingdom (that is the reason why he
refuses anyone near them). The man is brought into a red room without any color except
red and is tortured by letting a red drizzle drop from the ceiling into his head. The storyteller
says this torture went on for thousands of years until everyone forgot about him. A red drop
of wine falls from a nearby waiter into the storytellers head and he screams like a madman.

The Strange People (1928.3-5)(They guarded their secret with their lives, and chose death in
preference to revealing the ghastly mystery – a three part serial) – a man who is sick from
his job as a clerk decides to go on an adventure after reading in a newspaper about some
mysterious people that popped out of nowhere and who live in a secluded community in
rural U.S. He also falls in love with a girl of these people after looking at her photograph. On
the way to the place he meets a mysterious man who becomes his friend and an angry,
violent man who becomes agitated after reading the same report the protagonist read about
the mysterious people. Once there the angry man goes to these people and is returned dead
the following day. His brother tries to bribe the protagonist and his new friend to go away
and say nothing about what they reveal but when they tell him his brother got murdered he
vows to kill these people. He also bribes the local sheriff. The two go to meet the mysterious
people and are almost killed by them. They appear to be completely ignorant about modern
technology and other basic things and also speak perfect English with some bizarre accent.
The protagonist sees the girl and saves her from the local sheriff who just arrives to arrest
the people who killed the angry man. The sheriff and the protagonist become enemies. The
protagonist manages to convince the strange people not to kill anybody (they seem eager to
kill everyone in a casual way). That night the girl comes to the protagonist with her father
and manages to convince them that he is in love with the girl and that he wishes only the
best for the strange people. He also finds out that his new friend is hiding something and is
not willing to believe his backstory. The strange people knock the sheriff unconscious and
want to kill him (in a casual way) but the protagonist manages to convince them otherwise.
After finding out the girl loves him the protagonist goes to the strange people and they tell
him they like him but they cannot agree to him being with the girl because she will tell their
secret and to do so will mean death to them both. After trying to get to the girl several times
the protagonist is taken out of the woods. When he tries to sneak back with his new friend
they witness the strange people dancing around fires wearing barbaric clothes. The
ceremony ends with the cops and the crooked sheriff shooting people. The strange people
escape accept one who commits suicide when he is captured. The sheriff and the brother
spread word to the ignorant idiots who surround the forest that the strange people
killedsome farmers and that they worship Satan. Nevertheless, they prevent the mob from
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killing the people. They capture the girl who tried to meet the protagonist and the
protagonist himself is held at the inn. He finds out that he is about to get shot by the
crooked sheriff. He manages to fool the brother into believing he knows the people's secret
(the brother seems to know the secret) and then he knocks him down and rescues the girl.
They decide to go back to the people after the friend arrives and tells them help is on the
way but that the roads are blocked by angry mobs. They return to the people who say they
now have to kill them both as the girl probably snitched on their secret to the protagonist.
Besieged by angry mobs the people decide to run away but the protagonist convinces them
to wait until help will arrive. Their homes are burnt by the crazy mob and the evil brother
tells them he will tell their secret if they don't surrender. For some stupid reason he comes
among them, kills his captured servant and is willing to believe they won't butcher him. They
butcher him. Then the American army arrive by planes and disperse the mob. The father of
the girl tells their secret – they are Eastern Europeans who were diagnosed as lepers by their
evil tyrant in Eastern Europe. They were sent to live as slaves at some gold mine in America.
They managed to escape bondage and lived, as lepers, at the hills around the mines. The
protagonist new-friend, revealed to be an immigration detective tells the people they are
not lepers and that they were fooled to believe so with the evil tyrant infecting them with
some skin condition. They are also not aliens as they lived there for more than 20 years so
they can stay. The protagonist marries the girl, lives with these people and have a kid.

The Murderer (1930.1) (Terrible was the murderer's fright as he saw his victim move and
sweep into his pocket the evidence of guilt) – a murderer who killed his uncle to get some
money remembers that he left his cigarette next to the victim. He goes back but fails to find
the cigarette and also hears some tapping noises and sees some movement around the dead
guy. He becomes deranged and believes the man to return to life. He loses consciousness
and sanity. It is revealed that the uncle's cat caused all the mischief. Leinster stories would
be best dubbed "Mystery" or "revealed supernatural Horror"

Nictzin Dyalhis

When the Green Star Waned (1925.4) (evil beings from the dark side of the moun attack
earth) – in the future (unclear how distant) the inhabitants of the solar system find out that
Earth (Aerth) has been silent for a long time (it is unclear why they did not check it before).
An expedition from Venus (Venehz) finds out that the people of the Earth, once advanced
like the rest of the solar system, has become savages under the control of some soulless,
constantly shifting, evil beings from the moon who subjugated them for food for their blob-
like pets. The downfall of mankind was the result of the "Monghulian" race using dark
technology from the moon to conquer the world with the lunar creatures conquering them
in turn as they opened a rift to the moon which helped the creatures reach Earth (it is later
revealed that these creatures had spaceships all along and that the earthmen also had
spaceships so it is unclear how they did not know one another or why the actions of the
"Monghulian" were necessary for the creatures to attack). Capturing one lunarian and
Earthman they find out what happened and after many experiments manage to find out
what destroys the creatures (harmony from music). The solar system come to Earth and kill
the invaders in a crafty move.

The Eternal Conflict (1925.10) (complete novelette of cosmic spaces – of heaven and hell) – a
businessman is a high-member of a cult that worships the goddess – an embodiment of love.
He treats a temple servant coldly (it is hinted she also provides sexual services) and goes into
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a deep trance in a secret chamber at the temple. His soul is hauled into space and after
covering an immense distance he reaches the realm of the goddess. The beautiful, energy-
made, goddess asks him to be a spy on the embodiment of hate. The man is hurled into his
realm. After getting filled with hate and being eaten by a huge toad (he rips its belly open),
getting burned with poisoned plants, seared alive in a boiling water, munched by huge
wolves and harassed by a crusader and his alien companions, he is taken to an evil city ruled
by a beautiful prince with a crown of flame. He manages to impress the prince and the
prince makes him his personal servant after he tells him he hates because he loves someone
very much. The prince gets him into his evil gathering in which he tells him how he plans to
destroy the embodiment of love. Then the prince reveals himself to be Lucifer and he tells
the man he knew all along he is a spy. After torturing and humiliating the man Lucifer plans
to trap him in a sun and suffer horrible anguish as he witnesses the destruction of love. Love
comes to his rescue and tries to haul him back to her realm. And there a fight ensues in
which love wins. Love lets the man stay sometime to recuperate. An archangel, even more
beautiful than love, approaches and tells the man that he must serve the almighty Presence
by warning Lucifer never to try such a thing again. The man does so. He then returns to his
body on Earth (5 weeks after he entered the trance) knowing that very soon he will leave his
Earthly body and rejoin the lady on her realm. He sells everything he has and give it to the
temple-servant who watched over him.

The Dark Lore (1927.10) (a tale of outer spaces and the lurid hells through which the soul of
Lura Veyle was hurled) – in an unspecified time and place a voluptuous, and evil woman
poisons her sister and her lover and learns the dark arts to gain more power. She summons a
demon who promises her a place in hell if she succumbs to him. The woman kills some
people with a gift the demon prince gives her and then goes to the prince who kills her body
and takes her soul. After some years as a spiritwho rules in hell she is stripped naked
because the prince now loves another woman from some distant planet. She is given to
some huge, lusty and violent demon who probably rapes her and humiliates her for many
centuries until he gives her to his army of demons to do the same. After being used and
thrown through the window she dies again only to become a "thinner" spirit. She escapes
some skeletons and then kills herself again only to become thicker again in some distant sea
of goo. She is killed again at sea by some octopus like creatures. She then goes to a big
empty, dark place and screams. Some furies, in a feminist-odd way, circle her and kiss her.
They burn and with three heads and as they start making her like them she remembers God
and her sister and becomes sorry for the evils she has done in life. The spirits kill her again.
As a drifting soul in an endless, empty void, she meets a messenger of mercy sent by her
sister and begs it to turn her into an ugly woman on Earth so that she can amend the bad
things she has done. The messenger agrees and she takes the body of an old, disgusting and
ugly woman. She helps people's souls by giving them hope.

Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno and some other weird shit.

The Oath of HulJok (1928.9) (Weirdly terrible was the lot of the Aerthons when the war-lords
of Venhez came in pursuit of the errant-Moun-thing) – the macho dudes from "When the
Green Star Waned" go to Earth to save their girls who were enthralled by the last surviving
Moon creature. They travel to Earth only to be captured by the offspring of the moon
creatures with humans from Earth. They manage to escape by threatening and enslaving a
woman-snake (a higher breed of moon creatures and humans). They beat her constantly.
They manage to rescue their friend from the man-eating creatures who rule Earth. They join
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the human rebels and after torturing some captives manage to invent some weapons that
help the humans to slaughter all the creatures that enslave them while also dying in their
thousands. The forces of Venus arrive and they slaughter all the remaining half-breeds. The
Moon creature is captured, the girls are free to slaughter all around them and the moon
creature is tortured by the humans and then taken to Venus for eternal torture by freezing
its body in metal.

Otis Adelbert Kline

The Phantom Rider (1924.11) (a western ghost story) – A rich, spoiled cowboy kills a man
without anyone knowing. He comes to town and gets into trouble. As he escapes from the
town he is chased by the ghost of the man he killed who finally hangs him.

The Bride of Osiris (1927.8-1927.10) (a three-part Egyptian serial story of Osiris, the Festival
of Re, strange murders, the Am-mits, and the dungeons of Karneter) – a man sits with his
fiancée at a café as the girl is troubled by a man who always watches her. As they go out she
is kidnapped by that man, thrown into a car, and her fiancée tries to save her – breaking the
car's windshield and managing to grab some talisman before the kidnappers kick him into
unconsciousness. He manages to convince the head detective in the local police force to let
him join another detective in the search for his fiancée. The girl is taken into an underground
place where she is attended by a fat girl and muscular, armored girl. The whole place is also
infested by huge, semi-naked blacks. She is approached by her kidnapper but as she recoils
from him he leaves and tells her maid to make her less scared. The detective and the fiancée
are fooled by some villains into an ambush and are kidnapped. They manage to escape after
being taken into a closed room. After hitting some people and sneaking in the mansion they
witness one of the kidnappers killing the villain who fooled them when he refuses to stay
with this group. They manage to get into a series of underground tunnels, built in the
mansion's cellar. They are sprayed with hashish and are taken to a court filled with Egyptian
looking guards and deities. At the head of the throne stands the man who kidnapped the girl
with a mask and a garment of Osiris. He cruelly punishes some of his servants for trifles. He
then tells the two detectives that they are now his subjects and that the fiancée is his now.
He makes the detective an electrician and the fiancée a royal bearer but he also tells them
that they will soon be executed after some festival. The detective becomes a slave-
electrician and falls in love with a temple girl harassed by a guard. He goes to some dark
place in the underground world where prisoners are kept to die in the darkness and helps an
old man claiming to be an ex-high priest. The fiancée meets his captive bride-to-be when he
is escorted by a huge muscular guard. The two try to escape and hit some guards (male and
female). They are captured. The detective tries to escape with the girl after she is harassed
by the guard. He hits the guard and the two try to escape. They fail and the girl is lashed
while the detective is sentenced to death. The fiancée is forced to learn a religious
ceremony. After some days he performs his religious duties in which he mimics the actions
of the place's pharaoh and enters with him into the temple. His fiancée witnesses a huge owl
with the face of her fiancée – she is told his spirit has departed. Meanwhile the detective is
freed from his cell by the priest he saved and the two sneak into the temple kill the Pharaoh
and the high priest and dress like them. When the fiancée arrives they tell him to wear the
pharaoh mask (they are both attired the same in the ceremony). They manage to fool
everyone until the fiancée tries to stop his girl from killing herself, believing him to be the
evil pharaoh. Together with the beautiful temple girl and the priest they manage to escape
into the temple and down its labyrinths. They find a submarine and the priest shoves them
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inside and sacrifices himself to wreck vengeance on those who imprisoned him. He destroys
the place as the party is launched through the water and to the shore of Chicago.

The Demon of Tlaxpam (1929.1) (Death struck again and again near Tlaxpan – a death that
flew through the air and sheared the heads off its victims) – an American agent goes to
Mexico to help with a local problem (why? Oh why?). People who travel a certain road are
constantly decapitated. Upon arrival a lowly Mexican tries to chop his head with a machete
but is knocked unconscious by the American. He is tortured to reveal the culprit but remains
silent. The American gets a troop of soldiers and they travel the road. Some are decapitated
mysteriously. They build their base at some old monastery governed by an old, friendly old
man. As more people are chopped the American uses a trick with some dummy but fails. He
goes, by accident, to talk with the old proprietor and finds him in a hidden, secret cavern
dressed like the devil with a weird weapon. The place is filled with skulls and the cooked
heads of the decapitated members of the troop. When confronted he tells the American
that he has some different racial decent than that of the ruling Mexicans and his sister was
raped and killed, his father and mother butchered and his brother decapitated after forced
labor by the cruel government. His mission is to decapitate as many governmental Mexicans
as possible and he invented a tool for that. He tries to kill the American but is beaten by him.
The American Mexican acquaintance manages to find the place after torturing the captured
lowlife.

But Was it? (1929.9) (verse) – a poem in which the speaker is uncertain whether the sounds
he hears on his windowsill are real. He thinks he sees a beautiful vampire perched on the
nearby tree.

The Bird-People (1930.1) (Something new in weird-scientific tales- the story of a country
lying in a different angle of vibration) – the narrator finds a survivor from a ship
missing since 1917. The survivor tells him how their ship, filled with soldiers and
passengers was hijacked by aliens from a different dimension or something like that.
In this world there are two intelligent species who vie for control and ruled by two
scientist emperors – one of bird-men (though they look more like men than birds)
and other of humans. The bird-men scientist kidnaps them for some odd reason but
treats them cordially even though it secretly kidnaps some of them and vivisects
them for fun. They are taken to watch gladiatorial games in which the daughter of
the enemy scientist is taken captive to fight a serpent bird monster. The protagonist
takes some guns and shoots the monster and then a fleet of the human nation
attacks the coliseum. One of the rays shot through one of the ships transfer the man
back into our Earth – he swims to a desert island and lives there for some years until
rescued by the narrator.

Oscar Cook

Si Urag of the Tail (1926.7)(terrific story of a man-eating orchid in the wilds of Borneo –
mystery tale of eery adventure in the jungle) – an American captain sends his native
platoons to investigate some disappearances in the jungle. When only one returns
screaming in horror and without an arm and a leg, dying shortly after, he decides to take his
troops to the place the dying man told him about before dying. Once in the clearance they
are ambushed by a strong man with a tail who lulls the party into sleep using some spores
and then kidnaps several of the man. After subduing him he tells them he serves a huge
orchid that saved him from a tribe of killer dwarves in the jungle. He brings human flesh to
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the plant. The party goes to the jungle and locate the flower. They shoot the huge orchid
dead when the tailed man jumps into the orchid's mouth as it enters the pool it blossoms
upon – probably dying in the process.Horror (not exactly supernatural but xenophobic)

The Creature of Man (1926.11) (a Chinese tale about a cruel mandarin and the terrible
deception that was practiced by his majordomo) – a Chinese governor is a cruel lord who
abuses his power to dominate his people. He orders a lowly servant who gives birth to be
killed and her offspring to die because her pain wails disturb his opium meditation.
Meanwhile he waits for one of his wives to give birth to a son as his dominion suffers from
famine and the priests said that only an heir to this lord will stop the famine. His head
servant finds out that his lord's wife is dead but given birth to a girl. He switches the boy
with the girl because the lord told him to kill the wife and her offspring if it is a girl. He also
bears a grudge against his lord for he executed his wife after raping her saying she is
lowborn and befouled his reputation. The famine stops and the boy lives a lordling. He falls
in love with the real heir to the cruel mandarin which is now a lowly servant in the master's
garden. The head servant sees that his master is close to death from obesity and drug abuse
and he finds the love affair. He gathers the people from the district next to a statue,
ceremoniously kills his master's son as the now-almost-dead master watches and reveals
that the servant in the garden, is indeed his highborn heir and was befouled by the lowborn
youngling he thought to be his son. The master is dead and the head servant decides to
spare the girl.

The Sacred Jars (1927.3) (the spirit of Glister walked by night, for the sacred buckle had been
stolen from his grave – a tale of Borneo) – a British officer who serves in Indonesia meets his
old friend – a proprietor of some hotel. At night he hears some noises and this friend tells
him it is the ghost of the previous proprietor who killed himself by drinking after falling in
love with a local girl – some kind of priestess – who later had to leave him. The priestess was
"married" to some jar that represents a god. They go the grave of the ex-proprietor only to
find it desecrated and the holy symbol that was buried with him, which is also a talisman
given to him by the girl, is gone. They also discover that some European assistant of the
manager is kidnapped. They deduce that the bad crops and sickness that befell the place is
understood by the natives as the revenge of the god for the priestess leaving him and going
with a European. They go to a hidden temple in the interior of the island to find many
natives worshiping there surrounded by skulls and shrunken heads. The girl emerges and
says how sorry she is for leaving the god. They see that the European is bound in one of the
huts and is probably about to get sacrificed. Suddenly, the huts begin to catch fire (the
source of which is not exactly clear). The place is ablaze and the two friends use the chaos to
rescue the man. They also shoot the girl who tries to stop them. A year later everything is
fine and the grave of ex-proprietor is never bothered again. The ghost disappeared.

Piecemeal (1930.2) (a grim, powerful story of a weird crime – a fearful fate befell
Mendingham on a London Houseboat) – a man who studies cannibals in Indonesia has an
unfaithful wife. After she divorces him he kidnaps her lover and cuts him piece by piece and
sends his pieces to her anonymously. Tracked by an acquaintance he is discovered to be
cooking the lover as this was the law in the cannibal's land. The acquaintance kills the crazy
cannibal who tries to kill him and burns the place. He only tells a reporter about this many
years later.

Paul Ernst
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The Temple of Serpents (1928.10) (A little carved snake of stone brought a terrifying
experience to the skeptical American) – a friend who lived in Africa tells his friend that he
got a petrified serpent-head by an evil shaman whom he took a picture of. This head can
grant wishes and then it will change color. The friend holds the head and wishes to meet the
man who made the head. He finds himself in an African jungle and as he struggles to get out
he gets into a pyramid with many stone serpents and men who turn into stone serpents. An
ugly, extremely old, man-creature meets him. He turns him into a petrified snake but he
manages to wish to come back home. He wakes up and his friend explains that he lost
consciousness probably due to some chemicals inside the serpent's head. The snake
changed color.

Beyond Power of Man (1928.12) (a powerful story of a strange monster, and a terrible night
spent in a supposedly haunted house) – a huge humanoid skeleton is found on some farm
and the anthropologist who discovered it finds out that the local farmer on whose property
the skeleton was found is haunted by a huge, invisible, ghost that tortures everyone who
enters the abandoned house next to where the skeleton was found. He offers 500 dollars to
the doctor to spend the night there as proof that people could live there and so he could sell
the house. The skeptical doctor accepts and writes a diary (apparently he can write in the
dark, and when he is tortured, burned and thrown) while spending the night there. Soon a
huge , invisible monster starts torturing him and squashes a rat. He becomes insane and
burns the house. He dies. It is unclear if he got insane or if there really is a humanoid giant
that tortures him.

A Witches Curse (1929.2) (a strange tale of Salem witchcraft, and the uncanny doom that
hung over a descendant of the Puritan witch-baiters) – a girl in Salem in 1692 plays a game
on an old lady she hates and claims she is turning her into a cat. The people execute her
even though the girl says it was only a game. The witch curses her that she will become a cat
and her 7th generation will also become a cat. In the 1929 present a 7 th generation
descendant on this girl marries a man but is really scared that she will turn into a cat just as
she suspects her ancestor did. Her eyes do look cat-like. The man's aunt arrives and she is
revealed to be a descendant of the witch. Although she claims otherwise she secretly tells
the girl that she is the witch and that she will become a cat. Slowly the girl's bones are
getting cat like and she gets fur. As doctors refuse to believe in the curse and uselessly try to
pass the girl from one to the other (thus refusing to admit they cannot do anything) the girl
eventually turns into a cat and runs from the house when her husband sees her in her full
cat-form.

The Black Monarch (1930.2-6) (A stupendous five-part serial story of incarnate evil – a tale of
an unthinkable doom hanging over mankind) – a ship's passenger whose father and family
friend died mysteriously after getting some ring awakes from nightmares in the ship with his
body half outside the ship. He meets a strange, huge, muscular man who also has a ring like
that and eventually throws it after he is almost pulled by a strange force into the water.
Talking with him the big man is revealed to be a professor who was taken, as an infant, from
an orphanage into the care of an eccentric man who trains him to be a fighter against evil.
The target they seek is the physical source of all evil on the planet. The man dies after
obtaining the ring but it reveals the location of the demon-lord. The passenger agrees to join
the big man and they go to Tunisia and manage to find a sea cave with huge snakes. The two
fall into a waterfall and barely manage to continue in the cave. The evil presence discovers
them as they find themselves in a huge, illuminated cavern. Inside the protagonist finds men
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that work like machines in perfect unison and are dumb and stupid. Some prefects, who are
a bit smarter, find him and throw him into a pit with serpents. The huge professor is also
captured but the mysterious lord of this place lets him, and the protagonist, live for some
evil reason. They find out that the place has 6000 people – the women are docile, dumb,
breeding machines who do nothing but stare and the men are handpicked for obedience
and unison and stupidity – those who show signs of free thought or curiosity or look a bit
different are killed. A mad surgeon is also one of the denizens of this place. The two meet
the crazy genius who talks in the voice of an enchanting women. They cannot get close to
the voice's source because of some force field and because of REZ's (the evil genius')
immense psychic powers. They manage to fool the automaton guards and get to the room of
REZ where they intend to break the huge diamond that gives him power. The protagonist
prevents this from happening because he is hypnotized by his ring (it is made fro the same
diamond). They reach the inner sanctum where they see a beautiful, dead girl from which
REZ's voice probably emanates. REZ himself shows up – he is a huge,huge man with skin that
looks like a mummy and with a huge Darth Vader-like helmet that makes him look even
goofier. He tells them he is 4500 years old and that he knows the secret of a very long life.
He is the smartest being to ever walk the Earth and he needed a bigger skull so that his brain
won't break it (this is why he took the Arab surgeon). He controls the Earth with millions of
unwilling servants and he wants to destroy civilization and make humanity a docile, animal-
like society that cannot harm anything and anyone. To do so he must kill everyone (by
making an apocalyptic WWII followed by a horrible pandemic and some natural disasters)
and make a race of humans that is more similar to his own dumb chattel of human-robots.
He shows the two how to escape only to make them see they cannot do so and he hints
about a horrible operation they are about to take. The operation is taking some piece of the
brain and using some drug to make people docile. He hopes to do this operation on the
millions of people left from the apocalypse (why the hell would they agree to go through this
procedure – stupid like hell). He gives the drug to the man and prepares to operate on the
huge professor. The man becomes as smart as a three year old but the mind control the evil
guy has on him is broken due to that. The professor tries teaching him to break the diamond
when they are next taken to the evil dude before the operation. The man manages to break
the diamond and the te professor and evil dude fight until the professor is smashed to a pulp
but he manages to kill the evil dude. They escape the guards (though they could have just as
easily commanded them as they are without a leader – stupid like hell), find out that the
dead girl is alive and well and American. They blow the place to smithereens and kill
everyone inside by some magic lever but the professor dies in the effort. The dumb man
slowly recovers most of his memories and marries the once-dead-girl. This theme of world
domination by some Egyptian or African or Chinese or mad scientist guy is extremely
overused in WT.

The Tree of Life (1930.9) (a peculiar story is this, about a tree whose leaves could revivify a
corpse) – a young man is picked to guard the body of some old woman in a blizzard. During
his vigil he kills a rat but another rat arrives with a green leaf (the protagonist is surprised to
see such a leaf in the middle of freezing winter), covers the rat's body and the rat returns to
life. The protagonist believes it is a leaf from a hidden tree of life that can resurrect people.
He tries to take the leaf and use it on the dead woman but he believes the ghost of her
daughter stops him (her daughter was a blind, dim-witted girl who was very connected to
her mother and who had died some time before). The woman's husband and the boy's
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father enter and the leaf is swept away in the wind. The world as a mysterious, fantastic
place.

Paul S. Powers

Monsters of the Pit (1925.6) (a thrilling tale of gigantic spiders) –the British narrator explains
how he lost his left hand. While working at port Said he meets a beautiful white girl among
the black people. He discovers from his black friend that she is the daughter of a weird
scientist. He manages to get friendly with her and finally they fall in love. She is reluctant to
let him meet her father as she says he is misanthropic. Finally, the father agrees to meet
him. At her home the father shows him how he creates deadly, huge germs. The scientist's
henchman throws the narrator into a black pit with man-sized spiders. The girl throws an axe
to the narrator who manages to kill some spiders before getting bitten by one. The scientist
comes to stop his daughter but is killed by the spiders. The narrator's hand is swollen and he
is about to die from the spider's poison when the girl chops his hand with the axe.

The Death-Cure (1925.7) (he restored life to the body but could not bring back the soul) –
two drug addicts unite forces to rob an apothecary. The chemist is glad to see the two
addicts and offers them drugs if they will do whatever he asks. They consent as their bodies
need the drug badly. The chemist puts poison in their syringes, without them knowing. The
morphine addict dies instantly and the cocaine addict, due to chemical solutions, stays
paralyzed but alive for an hour. The chemist puts something in the dead-man veins and he
comes back to life. He is angry and very different. Claiming that his soul is detached from the
body. He kills the chemist and dies again from blood loss. The police enter to find the second
addict at his last seconds before dying.

The Jungle Monsters (1926.3) (Frightful adventures among gigantic insects) – a shipwrecked
American tells a doctor who treats him how he lived with a tribal shaman who concocted a
potion that shrinks people. He tries the serum as he wants to prove the witch-doctor wrong
(and also to get high from taking what he thinks a hallucinogenic drug). He wakes up to find
himself no bigger than an inch. He is harassed by huge insects and almost gets eaten and
killed by various small creatures. Finally, he climbs an ant hill to find the place where the
doctor placed the antidote for him. An ant chops his legs and another sprays burning acid on
him but he manages to get to the antidote. He tells the incredulous doctor to kill every
insect he sees. Horror, Graphic, Disgusting, With some mild supernatural elements in the
form of the witch doctor.

The Life Serum (1926.6) (Dr. Biuret passed the borders of death – but a fate far worse than
death befell his young assistant) – The narrator is a lab assistant for some chemist who tries
to disconnect mind from body through the use of drugs and cannabis. The doctor is haunted
by his ex-teacher whose wife he (maybe) seduced which caused her to through acid on her
husband. The chemist manages to leave his body by using the drug and his assistant agrees
to try it to. They succeed and are happy of the discovery. They use an antidote to bring the
mind back because otherwise the body looks pretty much dead. The chemist decides to
eavesdrop on the professor who haunts him after he receives a threat letter from him. He
asks his assistant to do so because he himself have just used the drug for a long time when
he saw the professor and his body needs to clean itself as not to overdose. When the
assistant's mind is separated the professor enters the house and burns the chemist face with
acid then shooting him and himself. The police think the assistant is also dead and so he is
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buried and for three years he wanders the world without being able to communicate with
anyone. He tells his story.

Petersen Marsoni

Red Ether (1926.2-3) (two-part Scientific Romance of death-dealing rays) – the U.S. is
threatened by a mysterious voice from the radio that makes an ultimatum to the
government: either the U.S. disarms itself or the voice will disintegrate its congress'
members. The voice proves his power by disintegrating some buildings in the U.S. The
government offers prizes for information about the mysterious voice but no one can find a
huge power station that broadcasts unknown. An ex-engineer turned rancher decides to
check his heritage – a huge landmass with a forest and a creek. He finds a huge power
station and broadcasting satellite deep in the forest and next to the creek surrounded by an
electric fence. He loses consciousness from thirst and a stone he falls on. He wakes up with a
beautiful girl that treats his wounds. The girl and her mysterious father help needy kids
around the world but soon the man finds out they are the voice that threatened the U.S.
because they want to end all wars. The man and the girl fall in love. The U.S. government
refuses to cede to such demands. Some senators refuse to come to the senate (it is not
exactly clear if the scientist threatens to disintegrate the senators or the senate building – it
seems like the latter is the more plausible answer and so it is unclear why the senate and
president insist on coming to work at the building threatening their safety and that of the
U.S.) and are lynched by an angry mob. The man escapes from the compound and returns
with a gun. He finds the place ruined and finds out the girl thought he died in his escape and
decided to end the thing. Her father sees the destruction and miraculously forgets about the
whole thing after a short burst of madness. The man and the girl reunite.

(notice how the theme repeats itself – a voice in the radio of a scientist with immense power
who wants to change the geopolitical state of affairs. Unlike the moon terror here the
scientist is a good guy at heart) (engineer as hero.) (The girl is also an engineer) (fear of the
mob and the stupidity of the population) (U.S. government as mostly good and brave guys)

Ray Cummings

Explorers Into Infinity (1927.4-6) (A three-part interplanetary serial about a madcap

adventure and a thrilling voyage through space)(there is an interesting forward about SF
writing and about The Girl in the Golden Atom – Cummings previous story published in The
Thrill Book. – In the future mankind has colonized its nearest planets. a young man, who
works in the planetary mailing division, visits his friend – an old professor who has a son
(older than the friend) and17 year-old twins (a boy and a girl). After inventing a thingamajig
that can observe the space beyond the universe (the Professor believes we are like an atom
in a larger super-world that exists with a different time) the professor finds out there is a
beautiful half-sleeping girl threatened by a giant and some imps. As time works differently
(every year here is like the fraction of a second there) the family invented some time-space
traveling vehicle to move beyond time and space and get larger than the universe after
traveling far into space. The world in which the story takes place is probably in the future as
mankind colonized many planets in the solar system. After some mishap that the twins
caused in which their vehicle started growing to a size that could have threatened Earth the
older son and the younger son (one of the twins) get on board the vehicle and travel beyond
space and time. After two nerve-breaking weeks the brothers return with strange clothes.
For them it has been many months. They recite (in a very scientific and boring and technical
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and long detailed way) how they flew and enlarged themselves to travel millions of light
years. They manage to stop time and reach in time to save the girl from the giants and the
gnomes. They find out both giant and gnomes are invaders from a larger space trying to
subjugate this place (why they focus on this girl when they want to conquer this world is
beyond me). The two brothers come as giants and make the invaders escape by getting
smaller. The frightened girl faints but later regains consciousness and trusts her saviors who
become her size after returning to the ship. They meet her father and the decadent
civilization they inhabit which is peaceful and happy but prone to cruel invasions by the
giants from the larger world. They return to Earth after nearly a year with the decadents.
The older brother fell in love with the girl and decides to return and help her people from
the giants. He never comes back but the narrator does not lose hope.Most of the plot is
boring, pseudo-scientific hullaballoo with very little room for any story at all.

The Giant World (1928.1) (a three-part weird-scientific serial – a distant world – giants
growing into largeness unfathomable – eery adventures) – the protagonist from the
previous story is coaxed into finding the man who was lost in the previous story. The lost
boy's father requests this but dies when the protagonist comes to him. The twins take the
narrator into the last time-space-size ship and they reach the world the two brothers
reached to in the previous story. They find that only 6 months has passed in this world which
looks like the inside of a shell – closed by a hard substance with starts in it. This decadent,
peaceful, pastural, rural America-style place is a nice place to live in if it wasn't for some
giants who suddenly appeared and who leveled one of the only 3 small cities in this
miniature world (though every atom of it is a universe). The brother is about to get married
and the wife's sister is the obvious love interest of his brother. The sister and the protagonist
are also in love. Everything seems great until the giants reappear at the wedding and shrink
the sister and the bride and kidnap them on some bizarre mount. Another giant destroys a
second city. The whole place is in chaos and the brother and his love-interest (the bride's
sister) chase the miniature giants into the deserted, destroyed, city. There they hope to find
some "drugs" to make them small. They find a sleeping giant in the ruins but he is guarded
by a slug-predator that tries to attack them. The creature is meek and hurt and run away.
They manage to steal the "drug" and get larger while the brother battles the giant uintil he
knocks him unconscious, The girls are led into the larger world (how the hell do they get
large without breaking the whole place they emerge from?). The brother and the bride's
sister become friends with the giant they brained. Together with the friendly worm the
brother almost killed they become larger and enter the giant world reaching the full
potential of the "drug". This world is a barren wasteland with killer vines that look like blood
vessels (but later revealed to be inhabited by smart, civilized, beautiful people – the barren
wasteland being the disgusting place the inferior race of the kidnapper were thrown into by
the civilized people). The girls find out that they were taken to become wives of the larger
people as their wives are ugly. The kidnapper is revealed to be their leader. His plot is to
breed some kind of killer vine-creatures that will slaughter all their wives and kids and thus
the larger people will be free to kill the smaller people and take their wives (sooooo stupid,
so, so ,so stupid). A Vine captures one of the girls. The other is taken to the giant people city
to witness the carnage of the vine creatures. It is revealed that the technology for doing this
was taken from the smart, civilized, race that also inhabits this world. The fiancée's sister
and the groom's brother arrive with their new giant-friend who sacrifices himself to save the
other girl (the groom's sister) who was taken by the vine. They hurry to save the fiancée and
the brother manages to throw the evil giant leader into a lava pit (is ugly, stupid wife junps
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after him) (it is unclear where all the stupid, other giants are). They return to the smaller
world and then come back to our world to do a triple wedding. (although this story is
extremely stupid I should note the race thing that keeps on going and how technology is
dangerous in the hands of "uncivilized" races)

Robert E. Howard

Spear and Fang (1925.7) (tale of the cavemen – Neanderthals and Cro-Magnards – a
CroMagnon girl tries to flirt with another caveman who is a painter. He ignores her and as it
is inappropriate and impossible to woo freely in this savage society she leaves. She is
kidnapped by the son of an important member of the tribe who is about to rape her but a
cannibalistic, savage Neanderthal rips this man limb from limb. The Neanderthal kidnaps the
girl into the territory of the gorilla-like Neanderthals (who trespass on the Cro Magnon
territory which was formerly the Neanderthals before the Cro Magnon slaughtered them) as
he also wants to rape her. The painter follows some tracks and find the cave where the girl is
about to be brutally raped. He kills the savage and the girl is happy as she wooed the painter
without getting the tribe's wrath.

In the Forest of Villefere (1925.8) (If the werewolf is slain as a man, his ghost haunts the
slayer) –a medieval traveler in a French forest is warned by some peasants about a werewolf
that haunts the woods. He loses his way at dusk and a mysterious masked traveler with a
strange accent offers his help. The stranger tells the traveler that a werewolf that is killed in
a man's form will haunt the killer forever. As the moon rises he leads the traveler to a
deserted glade and starts acting erratically. He jumps at the traveler and his masks falls off
showing the face of a wolf. The man manages to kill him and chops him to pieces after he
turns completely into a wolf in his death throes.

Wolfhead (1926.4) (an evil something wrought frightful death) – a Frenchman tells how he
visited a friend who erected a castle in Africa. The man invites many European nobles to
party. Several days after the revelry starts black slaves begin to disappear, one nobleman
dies and a noblewoman is attacked. The narrator reveals it was one of the revelers who got
possessed by a wolf demon after killing it in human form when he was a soldier. The man
tries to fight the demon but fails. He convinces the Frenchman to lock him in the dungeon
around the full moon and hide his nature from them. The Frenchman black slave tells him
that one of the noblemen convinced the natives that the castle owner is a werewolf. The
Frenchman manages to save his friend but a horse of blacks attacks them and the castle.
They barely manage to escape. The possessed man begs the Frenchman to relase him so
that he will wreak havoc among the natives as a werewolf and will try to blow a warehouse
filled with gun powder that the natives center their forces around. He turns into a werewolf
and disappears. A huge explosion is heard. Sometime later the Frenchman goes through the
jungle at night and finds a hut where the possessed man stands. He tells him that the demon
spirit escaped his body to possess a crocodile. Maliciously racist but filled with potent
action.

The Lost Race (1927.1) (a bizarre romance of the cave-dwelling Picts, that half-mythical
people that inhabited people that inhabited Britain before he Gaels) – A Briton goes home
after some diplomatic mission in the wilder parts of England in the early Middle-Ages. He
rescues a wolf threatened by a panther. He follows the trails of the wolf only to find them
turning into two sets instead of four and then disappearing. He hears some voices and jumps
a tree only to find the leaders of one of the most notorious bandits in England traveling
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there. He jumps from the tree and kill the leader and his deputy but a third member runs to
call a raiding party that will hunt the man. He runs in the forest as his pursuers suddenly
stop. He does not understand why but then he gets hit in the head next to a cave complex.
He wakes up surrounded by short, dark people with complex obsidian weapons who haul
him into a huge series of ingenious cave systems. He witnesses a huge underground city
inhabited by these weird people. He is taken in front of an ancient sage who tells him he is
hundreds of years old as a result of a curse. He also tells him that he is a Pict and that their
race once ruled Britain after they conquered it from some red-haired giants. They were later
subjugated by Gaels who killed them and they intermingled with the red-haired giants
making some inferior squat-race people. The rest went underground and sometimes went
outside to hidden raids. Thus, the legends about dwarves and elves were created. He wants
to burn the man as revenge for what his ancestors did but the man is saved by a tribe-
member who tells him he was the wolf. He was cleverly disguised as a wolf to hunt (the
legend of werewolves started from this) and the man thought him to be a wolf. He helps him
to return home and gives him gifts telling him he is a chieftain among his people and will
ever see him as a friend.Racism and Race Wars with some Barbaric Exaltation and how
violence is justified. Some sentences remind Nazi sentiments.

The Song of the Bats (1927.5) (Verse) – a flock of bats fly into the night and tell how they
were once rulers of the Earth (probably demons) before king Solomon transformed them
into their current form.

The Ride of Falume (1927.10) (verse) – a poem about a Spanish knight who rides to the ends
of the world to find the specter of a slain knight. He finds hell but manages to escape and
vows never to do something of the like.

The Riders of Babylon (1928.1) (verse) – a poem about ancient Babylonia and how they
decimated the near East 3,000 years ago. These bloody empire and bloody warriors are
portrayed as horrible yet elevated beings.

Dream Snake (1928.2) (an eery story – an unusual tale – night by night the horror grew, until
it completely enmeshed the doomed man) – a man tells his friend about a dream he has
every night since he was a boy – he lives in Africa with some Indian servant when the servant
is missing and he is besieged by a huge snake that gets closer to him from night to night. The
friends awake to the his screams only to find him dead as if smothered by a huge snake.

The Hyena (1928.3) (Senecoza, the African fetish-man, chose a weird way to accomplish his
evil-purposes) – an American who works for some Boer falls in love with his bosses
daughter. He hates black people and knows they are evil and brutish but the stupid girl
believes in their equality. A local witch-doctor who is very muscular (it is also hinted he can
turn to a hyena) and tall makes the narrator feel inferior and he hates the way he looks at
the girl and how the girl is a little fascinated by the huge black man. One night a hyena
attacks the narrator as he walks with the girl but he manages to wound it and it goes away.
Some time later the two are attacked by many blacks led by the witch-doctor and the man is
taken to some cabin. He manages to kill his captor, warn the local Boers from an attack, kill
many black men, return and face the witch-doctor. The two shoot at each other as the girl
runs to call for help. When helps arrives a hyena attacks the narrator who shoots it. They
follow the trail of blood to see the hyena tracks lead to a cabin. Inside they find the body of
the witch-doctor. Racist as hell. The narrator is fascinated and even covets the black's
muscular body.
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Remembrance (1928.4) (verse) – someone remembers how 8,000 ago he killed a barbaric
man with his spear and that now this man haunts him in the lonely, wild, field.

SeaCurse (1928.5) (John Kulrek and Lie-lip Canool felt the baneful force of the old woman’s
curse—a weird tale of the sea) – after a girl is used by a local group of sailors she commits
suicide. After the sailors laugh at her mother when she sees her washed body the woman
curses them that their leader will suffer in hell and that his friend will kill him and he will
cause his friend's death and that his body will wash to her door and that she will spit on his
body. Indeed, some months later the sailor's friend returns and says his leader deserted the
ship. A mysterious ship arrives with skeletons for crew and they drop the sailor's body in
front of the old woman's door. His friend's knife is at his back and the friend confesses as he
is taken to the gallows. The old woman spits on the body and dies.

The Gates of Nineveh (1928.7) (verse) – a poem about the great Babylonian conqueror
Sargon who stands besides the gates of his city Nineveh and ponders his mighty military
strength and how it means nothing in the long run as even the gates of Nineveh will
eventually turn to dust after a millennia.

Red Shadows (1928.8) (Thrilling adventures and blood-freezing perils – red shadows on black
trails – savage witchcraft and the Black god) – a Puritan witch-hunter named Solomon Kane
sees a girl who was raped and tortured until she is dying. He vows vengeance. He tracks the
French villain and his crew of robbers and kill them one by one. The leader escapes. After
some years he tracks the man to Africa but he is taken captive by some huge Africans. The
leader has become a wizard-helper to some chief in Africa who worships some black god.
The previous witch-doctor helps Kane. Kane is about to be sacrificed after another black man
is sacrificed. The witch doctor animates the dead human sacrifice and he kills the king. The
village is in turmoil and Kane tracks the Frenchman to a forest where they duel until the
villain dies but not before he seriously wounds Kane. A really huge black man who was the
chief's bodyguard and who likes to beat gorillas to death in a fist-fight comes and is about to
kill Kane when an angry, very-huge gorilla comes to avenge the death of its female mate. It
kills the huge man.

The Harp of Alfred (1928.9) (verse; decorations by Hugh Rankin) – a poem about the English
king who spell-bound the attacking Danes with the magic of a lute player named Alfred.

Easter Island (1928.12) (verse) – an ode to the statues of Easter island that still stand on the
mysterious beach after witnessing horrible sacrifices made to them as they are in the image
of strange gods.

Skulls in the Stars (1929.1) (Another adventure of Solomon Kane by the author of "Red
Shadows" – as strange a ghost-tale as was ever penned) Kane walks at night at a road some
villagers claimed to be haunted by a monster. He witnesses a man mauled to death but a
shadow creature. He fights the thing and with his power of courage (?) manages to drive it
away even though wounded. The creature mumbles something about him being the spirit of
an insane man killed by his brother who lived in the swamp. With the local villagers Kane
confronts the evil brother, uncovers the place on the road where the brother was killed and
ties the man to the tree where he buried his brother. The shadow creature kills the brother
when night falls.

Crete (1929.2) (verse) – a poem about the dead ghosts of Crete looking from the depths of
the sea on Knossos and remember their glorious past.
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Moon mockery (1929.4) (verse) – the speaker sees a waning moon and finds out he died in
the same forest a hundred years ago.

Rattle of Bones (1929.6) (Solomon Kane, the puritanical Englishman and redresser of
wrongs, is trapped in an inn by a murderous landlord) – this time the traveler is trapped in a
lonely forest inn with a bandit who fools him to enter into a hidden room where a skeleton
is shackled. The bandit smashes the chain for some reason. The two believe that the
landlord is a crazy killer. Before the bandit manages to shoot the Englishman the crazy
landlord arrives and kills the bandit. The landlord tells Kane that he kills all his tenants
because he hates humanity after a local lord tortured him for years in a cell for a crime he
didn't commit. He also killed a sorcerer and shackled his bones so that it will not come and
kill him. The lights go out and the skeleton kills the landlord.

Forbidden Magic (1929.7) (verse) – the sleeping speaker is visited by a shapeless thing and
follows it to a place with moth-like dragons. The weird place has a wacky sky and the
speaker wakes from the dream and uses its fabrics to capture the moon. Howard is getting
good at his verse.

The Shadow Kingdom (1929.8) (Grisly serpent shapes slither through this tale of Kull the King
and Brule the Spear-slayer) – An Atlantean savage rules over Valusia – a decadent kingdom.
A savage Pict who is antagonistic to the king due to their tribes' troubled history tells the
king through a Pict emissary that he is threatened by snake people in the guise of humans in
his court. He learns from a savage warrior whom he become friends with that the snakes
and other monsters ruled this world and that savage tribes of men managed to kill almost all
of them. Some snakeman remain in decadent, old kingdoms. The two slaughter many snake
assassins and kill a snake imposter to Kull all in a bloody, savage, long descriptions of battle.
The Lost Race, Kull, Conan – all seem to be part of an overarching meta-history of savages
and warring races.

The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune (1929.9) (Another weird tale of Kull the King and Brule the
Spear-slayer – by the author of "The Shadow Kingdom") – Kull is existentially perplexed and
bored and after a beautiful palace courtesan tells him of some wizard who can cure his
philosophy he goes to the docks to see the wizard. The wizard is in a hall of mirrors and
convinces Kull that his identity is not a fixed thing, that the past and present are a never-
ending cycle of savagery and civilization and that reality is in the eye of the beholder. As days
go by the king becomes even more philosophical and spends his days in the hall of mirrors as
he gradually loses his grip on reality and slowly turns to mist and goes through the mirror
into another realm of existence. At the last second his killer friend arrives and kills the old
wizard. He tells the king that the girl was hired by a treasonous minister to make Kull
disappear. The king releases the girl and stays philosophical. He is not quite sure his
experience was a negative and that he may have passed into a better reality. The body of the
wizard stays to rot in the hall of mirrors. I like! The magic is represented in a subtle,
philosophical manner.

The Moor ghost (1929.9) (verse) – a simple poem about a ghost of a hanged man who
haunts the moors.

Skull Face (1929.10-12) (An astounding and fascinating story of London's Limehouse quarter
and a dire 'threat against all humanity) – an American Hashish addict who survived WWi and
became a broken man as a result is deep in addiction in a drug den at England. After a local
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girl pities him he is recruited by the lord of the place a rotten man with a skull face who has
immense power and connections. He gives him something to drink that cures him of his
addiction. He becomes much stronger, faster and smarter after drinking that. He is indebted
to Skull face who requests that he will work for him as a drug trafficker and impersonator.
The man agrees. He also saves the skull face from death when a detective is hidden in the
den but prevents the skull face's lackeys to kill the detective. He is requested to assassinate
someone but refuses. He is then told that he is not cured of the drug but only got addicted
to a much more potent substance. He squirms on the floor in immense pain and reluctantly
agrees to do the evil guy's bidding. The Oriental Circassian girl who took pity on him comes
to him and they fall in love – she is also a slave to the skull as she was sold to him as a girl.
She gives him some of the drug to survive longer. He goes to assassinate the man but
instead decides to tip the cops to come and raid the place. He was observed and the skull
does some ceremony of sacrifice in which he is the victim. The police raid starts sooner than
expected and he is saved but the skull man escapes and kills several cops by killer snakes.
The two track the skull to some antique-shop but don't find anything accept some mummy.
The Levantine proprietor sees the scorpion mark on the protagonist's hand and gives him
some address. They later find out that the dead mummy is the skull. They also reveal that it
was taken from the bottom of the ocean and is dated to be millions of years old. The
purpose of this skull (who is also Egyptian but not-exactly) is to unite the non-white races to
subjugate the white races (why? Oh fucking racist why? – if this creature is millions of years
old why should it care? It was born when people were chimps) . The detective is captured
and the man leaves the girl who just arrived (miraculously at his door) with some bodyguard.
He tracks the cult's hideout, drinks the remainder of the drug (a double dose) and goes on a
rampage of killing at the underground hideout. He saves the detective and the two kill and
kill and kill many blacks who are revealed to be the real enemy in a scene that is almost
taken from a Farzetta deptiction of Conan the Barbarian (the other races are just duped by
the evil guy). The man is captured by the evil guy who tells him about his plot to enslave the
white races kill the brown and yellow races and let the black races rule even though he says
they were once the slaves of his own race – the Atlanteans. He also tells him that there are
other ancient assholes like him lying at the bottom of the ocean. The man is saved by the
detective who shoots the evil guy even though he may still be alive (he escapes after getting
shot). They also take a vial that has 10% chance curing the guy from his addiction. They
escape and place mysteriously explodes with 10% of London's population (but they are
mostly the poor, immigrant guys so it doesn't matter). The man uses the antidote and after
some hours of a coma is all good. He gets the beautiful girl.

Dead Man's Hate (1930.1) (verse) – a poem about a man who was responsible for the
hanging of another man. When he spits on the hanged man's body and says he cannot harm
him like he promised the dead man gets free of the noose and chases the man until he kills
him.

The Fearsome Touch of death (1930.2) (Ghastly was the fear that gripped the man in the
silence and darkness –a blood-chilling story) – a man who agrees to do vigil for a person
without relatives whom he barely knew imagines that the body comes back to life. He
wanders around the house and feels a clammy hand – he dies from fear. It is revealed that
the wind only played tricks on him and that he touched gloves in the dark.

A song out of Midian (1930.4) (verse) – the poem is probably about Esther telling
Achashverush that she cannot live in the palace as she dreams about the desert and the
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wandering Isralites. Interesting how many authors distinguish between the Israelites and
Jews – the former are more like the noble savage and are Exotic and Oriental in a positive
way while he Jews are rotten and corrupt and form a dying race which is a source of evil.

Shadows on the Road (1930.5) (verse) – a poem about a Briton in the late classic times who
goes to Rome and sees its decadence and the horrible Barbarians who destroy it.

The Moon of Skulls (1930.6-7) (An adventurous story of mystery and horror in the
nightmarevalley of Negari—a tale of a mad people) – Kane returns to save an English girl
taken to slavery as an infant. He tracks her after many years of traveling into a West African
hell-hole built by ancient people and now ruled by a cruel, beautiful, black queen. He kills
some black guards and sneaks into the palace. He talks to the girl but then the queen arrives
and captures him. She offers him her body and her kingdom and she wants to rule the world.
He refuses and then escapes by knocking one of the guards. He manages to find the last
Atlantean priest (though "tainted" by "negro blood") ,tortured and in chains who,tells him
how his people ruled the earth hundreds of thousands of years ago and how they, as brown
people, enslaved the blacks and whites and reds. They dwindled and gone almost extinct
after Atlantis fall only to remain in far away satellite kingdoms. The African kingdom they are
in is the last one to be ruled by Atlanteans but they were killed by the blacks and only served
as priests for ceremonies the blacks are too stupid to discard or understand. He dies
(something about a magic skull of some Atlantean wizard) but manages to tell Kane where
the girl is and how to stop her sacrifice. Kane goes, kills some guard, smashes the magic skull
and all the blacks become insane and kill each other for some odd reason. He saves the girl
and kills some blacks before a magical earthquake erupts and destroys the city and its
inhabitants. Kane tells the girl how God is great and how he helped them. Smith ties his
other stories (Skullface, Kull, the lost race) into a historical ark of barbarians who destroy
decadent kingdoms. The barbarians are bad but civilization is even worse and when
decadent civilization remains to the onslaught of the barbarians only bad things happen.

The Hills of the dead (1930.8) (a story of Solomon Kane, the Puritan adventurer, and a gray
city of vampires) – going back to his voodoo acquaintance from the first story Kane decides
to penetrate Africa's heart and the voodoo man gives him some magic stick. He saves a girl
from a lion and the two are afterwards attacked by two zombie-vampire black men. Kane
uses the voodoo stick to kill them. He contacts the voodoo priest who inhabits the body of a
local tribesman (the girl's lover). Together, the two penetrate the city of vampires. They
drive them from the hills into the city by some magic of flesh-eating vultures (while Kane
defends their position with his pistol) and then burn the city when all the vampires hide in it.
Africa is represented as a dark fantasy land and the narrative even says so explicitly.

Black Chant Imperial (1930.9) (verse) – a poem about an army of the dark that conquers,
pillages and ride on to destroy the light and good.

Robert Lee Heiser

Adventure of Souls (1924.11) (spirit tale of the sea) – a sailor tells about his endeavors to
help the woman he loves. This woman loves another man who happens to be a wimpy
coward. He tries roughening him for her and fails which results in a final effort to take him to
sea as a sailor. In the ship the coward starts hallucinating. As the ship breaks upon a reef the
coward is goaded by a siren song to help the people and die. When the narrator returns
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home, he finds out that the woman he loves died right after going to sea which explains the
strange hallucinations and the siren song as the voices of the ghost of the coward's lover.

The Dreamer (1925.3) (Fascinating Weird romance by the author of "adventure of souls") –a
man dreams about a bank robber that always goes with a dog and a woman that joins him
and his band of thieves. He meets the girl from his dream some time later and she thinks he
is the bank robber as he looks like him and has a similar dog. He convinces her that he only
dreams about him. As the two are about to get married the woman goes for a final heist
with the thieves in which she confesses her love for the bank robber's doppelganger.
Meanwhile The doppelganger dreams about the robber telling on his friends to the police so
that the woman could get away from that life. As he, the dog and the woman fail to escape
he manages to stall the policemen, dying in the event and his fog's ear is clipped. The man
wakes up and a few days later is reunited with the woman. His dog's ear is also clipped. He
dreams no more.

Their Last Job (1926.6) (Toots O'Neal dreamed that one last crime would free him from
poverty – but dreadful was his awaking from the dream) – two elderly lunatics wander the
asylum. A man asks about them and is told their story. The two were ex-crooks who became
good. They had a son who left them from twenty-five years without sending them one word.
The two became impoverished as the old man becomes drunk from sorrow of his son leaving
them. The old woman convinces her husband to do one last crime to get enough money and
not end up in the poor house. The son returns and wants to surprise his parents by giving
them money and masquerading as another person. He tells his plan to the bartender at the
bar his father frequents the most. The old woman plans to murder the traveler who
wandered into her home with money and asked to live there a while. She asks her husband
to murder him and he decides to go drinking and think about it. The bartender tells him his
son is the wanderer and that he wants to surprise them. He returns home happy only to find
his wife with a roll of money and a bloody knife telling him she knew he was to scared to kill
the guest so she killed him instead. The two become insane.

Who Killed Jack Robbins (1927.8) (don Quixote and Sancho Panza are evoked out of mist and
moon-beams to save Kitty Robbins from a gruesome murder) – a beautiful woman, believed
dead, narrates the story to some desperate, and horny, storyteller. She tells him that her
husband was actually a robber and when he revealed it to her and his girl accomplice she
threatened to snitch on him. He shows her a lot of money and decides to kill her, telling the
girl to go outside without the money. She manages to escape into an inner locked room. He
suggests her to die quickly from his knife and not from starvation. She grabs some metal ball
and falls asleep. In her trance she is transcended into a magical realm where don Quixote
and Sancho Penza give her some electric bolt charm. She uses the charm, to kill the killer
husband in her dream. She wakes up when the police arrive. Her husband is dead and no
one knows why. When she tells them what happened she is taken into a mad asylum. She
escapes and lives by the beach.

The Head from Ecuador (1928.11) (The sight of that shriveled head and red hair, with the
tattoo-marks he knew so well, was too much for Dan Hack) – a circus owner loses his circus
one gambling night when he observes one of his men cheating on the cards and robbing his
fellow circus-men. He tried to win by preventing his tricks but finally the cheat manages to
win without tricks. There is a girl in the circus whom the circus owner, the cheat and a man
who shrinks heads fall in love with. After the circus owner leaves the cheat harasses the girl
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who tries to avoid him. The girl confronts the shrunken-heads guy and tells him he is a nigger
and an Indian. He tells her she is also an Indian but she becomes angry and tells him it is not
true. (Interesting how the trope accepts his moves as an Indian but gets agitated when they
believe he has nigger blood) The shrunken head collector attacks the girl and tattoos
something on her forehead and leaves. The circus needs some shrunken heads and goes to
Ecuador. The girl disappears and the expedition shows the new circus owner the heads. He
sees one head with the tattoo and becomes grieved and mad (thinking it is the girl) and
commits suicide. It is revealed that the circus owner is an Indian and married the girl and
that the shrunken-heads guy was his friend and it was all planned before to make the cheat
crazy.

Robert S. Carr

The Composite brain (1925.3) (Insane scientist creates a monster out of living tissue) –an
insane scientist and his helper create a monster from dead cells which is controlled by
psychic powers. The nephew of the doctor is thrown to the monster by him with no
apparent reason. The two kidnap a top scientist to use his brain for the monster but the
scientist uses his will to control the monster and he kills the two and burns the monster.

The Flying Halfback (1925.9) (Chong Wo-lung accomplished a spectacular exit for Tommy
Kee) –two Chinese immigrants to America, one a scientist the other a football player, are
rivals in love of another Chinese immigrant girl. The scientist invents an anti-gravity suit and
fools the football player to use it in a game making him fly into space.

Spider-Bite (1926.6) (great white Egyptian tomb-spiders – a resurrected mummy – and the
jewels of Ahma-Ka in the chamber of the pool) – archeologists open a tomb in Egypt that is
filled with weird resin-like substance and a huge number of spiders. At the center of the
room lies the mummy of a long-dead scribe. The archeologists manage to let the spiders
stuff themselves with the resin and fill the mummy with the resin. The mummy awakens and
is infuriated about the archeologists stealing the treasures of the tomb. The mummy tries to
kill them but a huge spider bites it and it dies again squashing the huge spider as thousands
of huge spiders cover the body and try to reach the archeologists who barely manage to
escape from the tomb.

The Caves of Kooli-Kan (1926.11) (verse) – in a savage, barren land, there are the caves of
Kooli-Kan. The river that leads to the caves is thronged with boats on which hairy monsters
philosophize about horrible things as the sky grows red. The monsters reach the caves and
climb stairs made from bones. The caves are slimy because they are filled with sin due to
them being the birth place of a horrible creature. Many horrible monsters flap and run amok
in these caves.

Soul-Catcher (1927.3) (When Old John could not save the bodies of the emergency cases
that came to him, he drained their souls) the narrator, an orderly at some hospital, tells how
one of the emergency surgeons refused to let anyone in while he worked. One day the
orderly discovers, by stealthily entering the operating room that those who are beyond
physical help are drained from their souls by some apparatus the doctor uses. Their souls,
some gaseous substance, are placed in jars at the cupboard. One day, the orderly also finds
out that the doctor likes to Astral Project. Sometime later the doctor is found dead, his face
looks as if his soul exploded from the inside. The orderly finds out that some malfunction at
the elevator's engine made the cupboard with the souls to fall. The doctor was probably in
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the Astral realm when all the souls escaped and tried to take possession of his body. With all
of them inside at once the doctor's soul exploded.

Phantom Fingers (1927.5) (A gruesome tale of a cocain fiend, and the gripping hands of the
phantom that sought his throat at night) – after a cocaine addict goes to a séance he falls in
love with the young girl who serves as medium and enthralled by the riches in the house she
lives in. He is also scared of her father who has very strong hands. At the séance he is
threatened by the spirit of his father that is angry over his addiction. Another ghost he sees
is that of a victim he ran over in a hit-and-run accident he was involved in. To kill any
witnesses, to rape the girl, to kill the scarey father and to steal the loot he decides to get
many doses of cocaine. Armed with a gun and blackjack he returns to the flat at night, kills
the father and as he is about to rape the girl she summons the ghost of her father who kills
him with his strong, ghostly hands.

Fog-Faces (1927.6) (Verse) – a poem about a fog that is actually some ghosts and evil spirits
that haunt the bog, doing the bidding of their spectral Master.

Beethoven (1927.8) (Verse) – the speaker hears some Beethoven and thinks about skulls,
moons, ghouls in dark woods. Graveyards, desolate space, ghosts in caves, snakes with
heads of women. The speaker does not wish to think about those things anymore ("like a
vampire flapping home").

The Chant of the Grave-Digger (1928.1) (verse) – a poem about a little song a grave digger
sings as he buries someone. The song is mostly about Death being the great leveler and
everyone gets to be worm-dinner.

Whispers (1928.4) (creeping horror slithers through this strange tale by the young author of
"The Rampant Age") ("The Rampant Age" is a relatively successful book written in 1928by
Carr and which became a movie in 1930 – he was 17 when writing it) – a contractor tries to
reach a lonely farmhouse in some backwater swamp land inhabited by rednecks. After the
locals give him the creeps and hint about some malign entity in the woods the man is forced
to march the last mile to the secluded place. He is attacked by an invisible creature that
sucks his blood without hurting him and which whispers in his ears. Frightened, he manages
to reach the farmhouse. The family is happy to sell the house and tell him they are
beleaguered by the entity who they believe is a ghost. They tell him they bought the place
only six years ago and that it was the property of a weird scientist who died mysteriously.
The house is huge with dozens of unused, deserted rooms. They tell him the creature only
attacks at night. At night the man finds out the windows are closed at the immense, scary
place.The eldest son of the family tells him it is to keep the creature outside as it often tries
to sneak in and attack. The suffocating room makes the man open his window just a little. At
midnight he is awakened to find himself filled with blood and to see the body of the son.
Somehow, he manages to survive. The family is a angry at him for leaving the window open
and to make things worse he crashes the only car the family have by accident (the son was
the only one who was able to drive the old car but the man tries to use it to call for help only
to mix the reverse gear and destroy the fuel tank). The man and the family are now besieged
by the creature with no ability to go outside (the walk to town is long and night will fall long
before reaching it). The man tries to hunt the creature for several days but fails to find its
layer by day and is too scared to ambush it by night. He finds a secret room in the attic that
tells about the scientist and how he found the creature in Africa. The creature is no ghost
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but some demon\monster\beast that likes human blood. They make a trap with some pigs
and poisonous gas and kill the creature.

Samuel M. Sargent

The Dane (1925.3) (A night of terror with a mad dog)–a mangled hermit tells his story to two
travelers in the frontier in a stormy night. Twenty years before he had a huge Dane dog that
even saved his life once. In a stormy night his dog becomes insane (it is hinted that the devil
got inside him) and after some mental struggle tears the man apart, scarring him for life,
before he manages to kill it. The man still thinks he hears the dog outside waiting to kill him.

The Deah Cell (1927.2) (verse) – a poem about a man that waits to be executed. He feels
lonely and that the external-world (the stars) is alienating him on purpose.

Obliteration (1927.10) (verse) – a poem about sleep and how the mind is free from the
horrors around it when asleep.

Seabury Quinn

Weird Crimes 7 (1924.11)(true story of a Parisian ghoul) – The story of the French Lieutenant
Bertrand who, in the mid-19th century, opened graves and if finding their inhabitants
women, mutilated the bodies. He was imprisoned for a year and dishonorably discharged.

Out of the Long Ago (1925.1) (Werewolves – a tale of heredity) –Three researchers come to
Wales to dig in an ancient site. The residents are afraid of a werewolf that was buried here
by their ancestors. After one of them is murdered by the werewolf they huddle in their
spooky cabin. The werewolf appears at the window and they hear a voice of a girl they
know. One of the two who has a great-great-grandmother of Indian descent loses his
genteel identity and screams like an Indian of the Bear-clan who hates wolves. He kills the
werewolf with a knife and sculps him.

Servants of Satan 1. The Salem Horror (1925.3) (true tale of witchcraft) – the story of the
Salem witchcraft trials blaming the Puritan reverend of the colony as a corrupt manipulator
and the town people as ignorant bastards.

Servants of Satan 2. Giles and Martha Corey (1925.4) (True Tale of Salem Witchcraft) – the
tale of another victim of the Salem trials – that of elderly Martha Corey and her husband.
They are both depicted as stern, rational, frontier people who are condemned by atavistic,
cruel, fanatic idiots.

Servants of Satan No. 3. Rebecca Nurse, Saint of Salem (1925.5) (true tale of Salem
witchcraft) –The tale of Goodwife Rebecca Nurse who was accused by the crazy children and
idiotic pastor of Salem even though the jury and governor tried to save her. She was hanged
due to the children's erratic behavior.

Servant of Satan No.4. George Burroughs, Martyr. (1925.6) (true tale of New England
Witchcraft) – The tale of George Burroughs, an ex-minister of Salem who was twice a
widower before when of the crazed girls in Salem told the crazed justice-system there that
they saw his dead wives taunting him and his spirit tortured them. Even though the people
tried to prevent his execution Cotton Matter insisted together with the corrupt and evil
pastor of the community to continue the verdict.
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Servants of Satan No. 5. The End of the Horror (1925.7) (true tale…) the tale of the crazy
children blaming the father of Cotton Mather and the wife of William Phipps – two very
important, and powerful, members of the colony. This accusation stops the trials as Phips
and the governor intervene. The story ends with the confession of Ann Putnam who was the
only one of the crazy, and evil, kids who confessed she lied. The reverend who acted as the
supreme judge in the case, and whom the author blames for perpetrating the whole thing,
got a fat pension and lived peacefully after the trials (to the dismay of the narrator).

Servants of Satan No.6. Maria Schweidler. (1925.8) True Tale of Witchcraft in Germany) – a
retelling of WilhelmMeinhold'sThe Amber Witch which was published in Germnay in the 19 th
century and was believed to be a true 17 th century chronicle (it was a hoax by Meinhold to
popularize his book which he later admitted. Quinn does not mention it as such and portrays
it as a true historical story). The saintly, intellectual, peasant-maid Maria Schweidler
encounters the local noble sheriff who tries to go to bed with her by coaxing her to marry his
woodland hunter (by the rule of "first night" he can go to bed with her and use her as his
concubine when she enters his castle as the hunter's "wife"). The girl refuses because she
fell in love with a greater noble's son who wants to marry her behind his father's back.The
sheriff accuses her of witchcraft. She is stripped naked, tortured and humiliated by the
sheriff and the church's inquisitors. She confesses as she can bear the torture no longer. She
sends letters to her lover but he curses her in a return letter calling her the mistress of Satan.
As she is about to get tortured with a burning rod and burnt to death the noble's son
approaches and forces the sheriff to confess his dastardly deeds. It is revealed that the letter
was faked by the sheriff and that the noble's son was unable to save her until now because
his father locked him in the castle. The father had died the day before and so he came to
save her. The sheriff goes unpunished due to his connections but is forced to leave.

Itself (1925.9) (The banshee moved the tortoise-shell comb as a sign death) (an eery little
story is this banshee tale) - a doctor visits one of his patients who is sure he is about to die.
The patient tells the doctor how, in a gathering of friends, they did an old-world séance.
During the séance an evil spirit promises the man that when one of his family dies he will see
the sign of the comb. His daughter dies several months later and n expensive comb she has
is found under her bed even though she never leaves it outside its velvet case. The patient
claims to see this comb under his bed this morning. The doctor convinces the patient to let
him take the comb and lock it in his safe at home. The patient dies this very evening and the
nurse tells the doctor about finding a comb under his bed. The doctor goes back home with
the comb and opens the safe only to find the comb inside but the other comb he carried
disappears.

The Horror on the Links (1925.10) (a tale that climbs steadily to a climax of stark terror) –
doctor Trowbridge tens to a wounded man who was attacked by some kind of a gorilla
wearing human clothes. At that same night a woman was brutally murdered at the same
place the man was attacked. Before collapsing he manages to shoot the gorilla only enraging
it more. The doctor is visited by a police officer and doctor who works for the French
government named Jules de Grandin who is like a Sherlock Holmes who likes to shoot his
way out of things and mumble annoying French exclamations like: "in the name of a little
blue man", " in the name of a ponderous cat", "in the name of a confused street-car" and
other stupid phrases. Trowbridge mends another man, the fiancée of a woman who is the
daughter of a snobbish, dominating woman, who has a bullet wound. De Grandin forces
himself upon Trowbridge hospitality and lives with him. De Grandin tells Trowbridge that he
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is after an evil scientist who kidnapped children and made them into monkeys. At night they
ambush the house of the snobbish woman and when they see a huge gorilla climbing down
the drainpipe with a girl on its shoulders De Grandin shoots the gorilla with his rifle, killing it.
It is revealed that the evil doctor has made man from gorillas and that the fiancée was one
of these creatures, reverting back to an ape.

The Tenants of Broussac (1925.11) (Complete novelette about and old curse and a gigantic
snake) – de Grandin is joined by Trowbridge in France to solve a series of horrible deaths in
an ancient castle. The current owner, an American, invites them in and asks the doctor to
help his daughter who is very weak and devoid of love for the man she, up until they arrived
at the castle, loved. De Grandin reads ancient tomes in the castle's library and hears the
cries of a servant about a huge snake prowling the premises. He also discovers a strange
tomb of one of the former owners of the castle with incriminating epitaphs. De Grandin puts
some flour on the floor of an ancient chapel and discovers that the girl is sleep walking and is
joined in the chapel by a huge snake. He puts a trap and the girl becomes better.
Nevertheless, the girl rips the trap while sleepwalking and de Grandin takes a holy sword
from a nearby convent. He and Trowbridge enter the chapel at night to see the naked,
drowsy, girl sexually enjoys a huge snake with blue eyes. De Grandin chops the snake. The
girl returns to bed and wakes up happy to join her beloved who came to marry her. De
Grandin explains that he deduced the snake was the devilish reincarnation of a medieval
owner of the castle who liked to rape and kill girls from the neighboring villages and
nunneries. The abbess of one of these establishments cursed him to become a snake and
after many years of sucking the life of men and harassing women he became a huge serpent.

The Isle of Missing Ships (1926.2) (complete novelette – pirates – cannibals – a giant
octopus) – de Grandin and his dimwitted doctor friend Trowbridge meet again on a ship. De
Grandin tries to find the reason for a large number of missing ship in thePacific for an
insurance company. The ship drowns and the two manage to escape to a nearby island due
to de Grandin prowess and smart decisions. On shore Trowbridge tries to call for help as he
sees two native Papuans but de Grandin manages to silence him. The two natives reach the
two and de Grandin manages to kill them. They witness the natives eating the surviving
members of the ship. They find out that the island is, in fact, a clever trap to lure European
ships by using ship-lights at night. As the ships approach the natives use rockets and some
underwater metal sheets to drown the ships. They plunder and eat the ship's contents. The
two are apprehended by a well-manicured man who seems of European descent. De
Grandin explains to Trowbridge that only a European could devise such a plan as the natives
are dumb. They are led to an underground lair that would not shame a James Bond villain.
The man let them eat men flesh and forces them to watch a beautiful girl dance to
exhaustion. He explains that he is the son of a European father who abandoned his mother –
the daughter of a leading Indonesian Pirate – and himself and always looked down on him as
inferior. He lived with the man's second wife after his father decided to somewhat accept
him but he was harassed by his half-brothers who viewed him as their servant. The man
manages to learn in an English private school and become an officer in WWI until his half-
brother treats him like an inferior in an officer's gathering. He decides to kill Europeans in
revenge for their lies and treacheries. He offers the two the opportunity to neuter each
other and become his eunuchs for a herm he creates. They refuse and he offers them a day
to think as the alternative is being fed to a huge octopus. The girl, who is a kidnapped
Algerian Jew, comes to the two to kill her but de Grandin convinces her to take some deadly
fruit from the island and feed the octopus. De Grandin and Trowbridge are forced to the
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octopus which is now dead (poisoned by the fruit) and he manages to throw the evil half-
European into the water. The two and the girl manage to escape and kill the evil man and
they also take his speed-boat and kill some cannibals with the machine gun on it.

The Vengance of India (1926.4) (Graveyard tale of hypnotism and corpses that rise in the
night) –Jules de Grandin comes one stormy evening to Trowbridge's house. The French
detective\professor\spy\fighter came back from Brazil. Trowbridge just came back from
visiting a Brzilian girl who died in a mysterious way. The two go to the house and see the girl,
which seems fine, only dead. De Gradnin looks at a painting and asks the girl's father about it
finding out it is a distant grandfather. The girl is buried but later that night her grave is
robbed and her body is gone. De Grandin tells Trowbridge to come at night ot the graveyard
and the two find the dead girl walking in a trance. De Grandin hypnotizes the girl to go to
sleep and Trowbridge takes her home and revives her. De Grandin tells the family of the girl
and Trowbridge that he heard about a family in Brazil that moved from India (what an
impossible coincidence – De Grandin says specifically that he did not intend to track the
family and that his coming to Trowbridge was incidental). He tells them that some angry
Indians whose grandparents were killed by British soldiers (like the one in the family
painting) and wanted revenge. They hypnotize people to think they are dead and make their
families crazy by letting the "deceased" walk out of the grave and haunt them. De Grandin
captures the two Indians, hiding in a hidden, underground grave and kills them, unarmed,
when they try to run (torturing one of them until he tells him his story). It is unclear who
gave de Grandin, the foreigner, permission to kill these unarmed people – de Grandin uses
the help of the police in killing them but why the police let him do whatever he wants
including killing people? Another idiotic story about this most annoying detective\spy\
physician\I don't know what

The Devil Hand 1926.5) (eery tale of Jules de Grandin – bodiless hand floats through the
window and seizes a millionaire by the throat) – de Grandin comes with Trowbridge to check
on an obnoxious millionaire whose wife died last night as a result of seeing something scary.
This something is a floating hand of a woman that stole a lot of money from them. They later
find another man who witnessed the same hand stealing a historical cup from his house. De
Grandin solves the mystery by finding out a well-known hypnotist who lives nearby. This
man and his rogue wife stole a lot of money until the wife dies. The hand is still having
muscle memory from the hypnotism and keeps on stealing for the man. The man hangs
himself but orders the hand to kill de Grandin. De Grandin takes all the lost possessions to
their rightful owners and allows the hand to choke the millionaire who treats him badly. The
level of stupidity reaches new heights as a dead hand is hypnotized not only to move and
keep on living without supply of oxygen but to defy the laws of gravity.

The House of Horror (1926.7) (de Grandin goes down into the gruesome cellars beneath the
abode of abominations, and shudders at what he finds there) Trowbridge and de Grandin
drive through the rain and lose their way. They find a mysterious house whose owner asks
them to treat his sick daughter. Watching the beautiful sleeping girl, they find out she is not
really sleeping from sickness but that she is chloroformed. They fool the owner of the house
that they will go to sleep after discovering nothing. Later that night, they go to the girl and
find out she remembers nothing and her eyes point to different direction like a frog. They
find the owner of the house outside collapsing their car into a ravine. When confronted a
huge branch, torn from the storm, impales the owner and he die mumbling something about
wanting to kill them and that they will see his "pets". Inside they enter the cellar and find
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some mutilated creatures with body parts that resemble beautiful girls and octopuses and
other horrible creatures. They deduce that the recent disappearance of beautiful girls from
the area is due to the owner of the house. They find out his diary where they discover the
whole thing was in revenge against an actress who jilted his son making the latter commit
suicide. All the missing girls look like the actress. They want to rescue the writhing creatures
that were once the girls, before the insane surgeon shaped them like this but they drown
from the flood. They decide to operate on the girl upstairs to return her eyes to normal.

Ancient Fires (1926.9) (haunted mansions, wandering gypsies, a Hindoo girl's love that was
stronger than death, - a tale of Jules de Grandin) – de Grandin and Trowbridge are offered
10,000 dollars to rid a house of its ghosts. The young man who inhabits the house is not
threatened by ghosts but when he tries to sell it people say it is haunted and leave it. The
two see a beautiful misty girl appear at night. In the morning they find a band of gypsies that
trespass on the forest and they threaten them at gun point to leave the premise. At night
one the gypsy leader tries to sneak into the house but a ghostly woman thwarts him and he
falls to his death. The two hear some bells at the library and find a tome written in Sanskrit
in which they read the story of the first owner of the house - the young man's great uncle.
He was in love with a Hindoo girl but his family and hers threatened them so he left to the
U.S. and she had to commit suicide to cleanse her soul. The two are met by a psychiatrist
who tells them about a crazy girl who lives in a sanitarium that has become extremely
agitated as of late. The girl was mostly docile and unresponsive for 14 years but began to get
agitated as of late. When the two and the young man arrive at the sanitarium they witness
the girl cursing everyone but getting docile when observing the young man. She escapes
confinement after the three leave. They find her at the mansion's premise and she speaks
like an Indian telling the man that she has found a way to reach him in another life. The
young man recognizes her and becomes his great uncle. De Grandin tells the guards who
come to bring her back to the asylum that he vouches for her sanity.

The Great God Pan (1926.10) (Jules de Grandin throws a wrench into the schemes of the
pagan high priest of a new kind of Pan-worship) – de Grandin and Trowbridge hike and reach
a secluded place. They find a panic-stricken girl who wears ancient Roman clothes and
claiming to see the great god Pan watching her while she bathed. The two reach a classic-
built home with Doric pillars. They find 11 girls who dance in a pagan way to the whims of a
fat man who identifies himself as the proprietor of this dance school and neo-pagan cult.
They reason with him using his vanity and greed and get something to eat and a place to
sleep for the night. At night de Grandin finds out that the man is a charlatan who wants to
steal the girls' money. They observe the fat man doing a nightly ceremony where they
sacrifice a goat and the girls rip their clothes and dance lasciviously. De Grandin cannot take
this blasphemy and unwholesomeness and threatens to kill the fat man and show him how
he fooled the girls with a mask of Pan. De Grandin preaches to the girls and he escorts the
girls to their homes.

The Grinning Mummy (1926.12) (Jules ded Grandin's keen brain finds the solution of the
weird death that struck down Professor Butterbaugh) – a friend of Trowbridge discovers that
someone ordered a tombstone with an epitaph on his name. The friend also collects
mummies and just received a new mummy after some Egyptians threatened him. The
following night he is killed. The niece of the murdered man calls (not the police… and is even
angry when the police arrives after someone calls them) Jules de Grandin and Trowbridge
and they discover that the man was hit by a very small object. They discover the mummy is
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half unwrapped with some blood on its mouth and a scepter on its hand. De Grandin
deduces that the scepter was the weapon of murder and that the murdered has some hair in
his hands. The police discover nothing and suspects the butler and servants. The following
day the mummy is stolen even though an officer was on site. De Grandin hears the grocery
delivery man talk about a vehicle that went out from the premise with two people and a
prone, covered figure lying in the back of their car. Miraculously he remembers its license
plate. De Grandin tells the police to find the car and arrest its passengers (the police even
dare ask on what charge but de Grandin laughs them off and they decide to do what he asks
because…?) . de Grandin finds the two are young Egyptians, a man and a woman, who
commit suicide by using 1500 years-old-snake. The man manages to tell de Grandin that he
and the woman are priests of Isis who avenge the desecrated kings whose tombs the
European and Americans rob because de Grandin threatens to throw their bodies to the
birds (how the police agrees to this is unknown – apparently de Grandin controls the police).
De Grandin, Trowbridge and the police officer who always comes to them sit and de Grandin
explains how he deduced the whole thing.

Sherlock Holmesy with some stupid plot.

The Man who Cast No Shadow (1927.2) (a grisly terror of ancient legend creeps into the life
of a New Jersey city – a tale of Jules de Grandin) The annoying detective and his stupid
doctor-friend meet a young East-European noble in a cocktail party. De Grandin seems very
interested to make the acquaintance even though the man seems agitated. Meanwhile
some people in the neighborhood seem seek from loss of blood. De Grandin finds that all
the garlic was bought from nearby grocers. He also finds out that a local woman was accused
of being a vampire many years ago and is buried in the local Swedish church. De Grandin
visits the place and after hearing, from a black servant, that a woman was seen drinking the
blood of a man at night he decides to intervene. He takes a huge wooden stake, goes to the
cemetery at night and plunges the stake at the ancient body inside. After a local girl is
kidnapped de Grandin tracks her, with the help of his stupid friend and the dumber head of
police into some basement. Inside the girl is naked, bound, unconscious, with some bowls
around her for taking her blood. They find a much older version of the Transylvanian noble
they met before. De Grandin kills him and he crumbles to dust. De Grandin explains that he
was in league with the local vampire and helped her return to life while being the man who
bought all the garlic. He tells them that he figured it out because he saw that the man had
no reflection in the mirror when they attended the cocktail party.

The Blood-Flower (1927.3) (Jules de Grandin runs into an exciting werewolf adventure, and
uncovers a spell for lycanthropy) – Trowbridge and Jules come to the aid of some maid
whose mistress awakes at night and act like a dog after hearing the barks of some other dog
at night. They give the girl some opium. As the girl's husband returns he confronts de
Grandin for drugging his wife and refuses to give his wife the drugs. She disappears the next
day. The husband begs de Grandin for help who agrees for 50,000 dollars. The girl is found
naked on some rug at the house the next morning. At night they see that a werewolf is
peering through the window and de Grandin kills it by smacking it with some ash wood and
firing his gun at it. The werewolf's body transforms into that of a man who is identified by
the husband as an old friend of the family. The lecherous old man disappeared some years
ago. Apparently, he became a werewolf and he tried to seduce the woman by turning her
into a companion werewolf. De Grandin finds out that she only ate other dogs in her
werewolf form so he does some ceremony with a chalk circle and some incantations from
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the Bible. The girl-werewolf struggles but eventually turns back into a regular woman, de
Grandin tells a grateful husband that he does not want money and only teased the man so
that he will respect him.

The Veiled Prophetess (1927.5) (The Intrepid ghost-breaker Jules de Grandin, is drawn into
an adventure of dark intrigue and occult danger) - A woman whose husband has become
unfaithful goes to Quinn because she believed all started after he mistakenly put his
wedding ring on a mummy when they visited a séance session. She also tells Quinn and
Trowbridge about an apparition of a beautiful, Oriental, woman who comes at night to the
couple's bed. Quinn goes to the séance with Trowbridge and the two witness a beautiful
woman who intoxicate them and leave them without their coats on a street bench. Quinn
vows vengeance and he uses some sort of wood in the woman's bedroom to trap the
Medium. She is helpless and it is discovered that the Medium is actually some spirit known
in the ancient world as Bast (the Egyptian goddess). She promises never to threaten the
couple again.

The Curse of Everhard Maundy (1927.7)(an eldritch tale of voodoo, reanimated corpses, and
the intrepid little French ghost-breaker, Jules de Grandin) After a wave of suicides wash over
town de Grandin traces the source to a local Evangelist preacher. Trowbridge almost
commits suicide himself after remembering a cat he killed as a little boy. Apparently, the
preacher was cursed by some old, black, medium woman after he ridiculed her séance. His
wife committed suicide as a result of the curse and all the people he preaches to become
obsessed with their own sins and eventually kill themselves. De Grandin traces some of the
victims and manages to throw some holy something at an apparition of the ghost of the wife
of an acquaintance. The spirit, probably, goes into the body of a recently deceased man who
is about to get buried. De Grandin chops the walking dead, cuts its head, drives a stake
through its heart and drops the body in a nearby swamp (apparently no one cares about the
missing body that will get no burial and will be eaten by crocodiles). De Grandin explains
that the black medium did not curse the reverend but instead summoned a spirit to torment
him. De Grandin killed the spirit with his sword. As stupid as it is it reminds some scenes
from Buffy.

Creeping Shadows (1927.8) (out of the darkness crept two shapes – and their coming was
followed by mysterious deaths – a tale of Jules de Grandin) The annoying detective-doctor-
spy-psychic-wizard investigates the decapitation of a local person whose body looks like it
has being dead for a lot of time even though two police officers saw the man just the
morning he died. After the death of another cop, after he touches some spiky thing at the
backyard of the deceased, de Grandin notices the body also shrivels. He manages to find the
reason for the murder in the actions of three antique-robbers who went to Meso-America
and found some lost relics in a lost city. They were followed by some angry, stupid, Indians
who have already killed two of the three. They manage to fool the Indians with some clay
statues (so stupid) at the house of the last robber and then de Grandin shoots them.

Not supernatural but it gets close to Sherlock Holmes and the deduction is almost plausible.

The Poltergeist (1927.10) (an occult adventure of Jules de Grandin – an old fashioned ghost
tale with an unusual twist) – the annoying Frenchman helps a young, engaged, woman to get
rid of her being possessed by many spirits that throw stuff around her, maim her, humiliate
her and wound all those around her. De Grandin finds out she promised to die if her cousin,
a dark, Russian girl, commits suicide. The Russian girl (that also looks like her) commits
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suicide when her cousin is engaged to a man she loved. As she refuses to do kill herself too
she is haunted by this evil spirit. De Grandin hypnotizes the girl after the spirit possessing her
tries to parade her naked, with pins all over her body, in the street and threatens to kill her.
Then de Grandin does some foolish ceremony with some mistletoe and the spirit escapes
never to return again.

The Gods of East and West (1928.1) (a tale of Jules de Grandin – the Gods of East and West
wage terrific battle over the soul of Idoline Chetwynde) – The annoying de Grandin comes
again in another stupid yarn. This time he uses an American Indian doctor to save a sick,
married girl who has one ancestor who was once an Amerindian. This girl gets sicker from
day to day because of some statue her husband sent her from India, where he currently
works. This statue of Kali gets bigger every night and hypnotizes the girl to promise it her
soul, sacrifice some incense to it and prostrate herself. The girl's servant hides this
"heathen" practice to guard the girl's reputation but the niece of the maid in Trowbridge's
home (in an amazing coincidence) works at that house and sees this practice which makes
her quit her job as this practice is against Christian mores. De Grandin convinces her to stay.
He and the stupid doctor Trowbridge break into the house at night and confirm the girl is
hypnotized by the statue. After using the Indian who dance a rain dance around the
hypnotized girl and convinces the "storm god" to fight Kali. What follows is a stupid
explanation of how some "gods" are God's personification in human imagination and how
other "gods" (especially Eastern ones) are devils in disguise who crop up from evil
imagination. The girl gets better and does not even ask how these three got into her house
and are alone with her in a closed bedroom.

Mephistopheles and company, Ltd. (1928.2) (Jules de Grandin rescues an Austrian girl from
the fiendish grasp of a heartless devil-syndicate) – After rescuing an Austrian girl from some
kidnappers the annoying detective and his stupid friend find that a criminal organization
manages to convince stupid women with money that they are possessed by the devil. When
they are convinced, after the organization uses many actors, paint and iron brands, they
force them to give them a lot of money to remove the curse or getting chained, naked, in
some basement while people dressed as devils torture, brand and, probably, rape them,
until they ascent to give them the money. De Grandin follows the cult through a woman
medium that serves as the first domino tile to these women madness. They sneak into the
big mansion of the organization's headquarters. Shoot everything that moves, rescue
another naked woman chained to a wall, hit the medium senseless, framing her and causing
some thugs to drown at some sinking mud (de Grandin removes his shoes and tell his
escaped friends if they can step on the sinking mud as it is colder than the rest of the mud).
To what levels of stupidity will these stories come to?

The Jewel of Seven Stones (1928.4) (a tale of revivified mummies and the ka of an Egyptian
priest – a startling adventure of the ghost-breaker, Jules de Grandin) – a friend of
Trowbridge shows the doctors some mummies he found in Egypt. The mummies seem
exactly like living people (oh… the stupidity) with them disintegrating after being exposed to
the air. De Grandin learns from the last sarcophagus that the girl in one of the coffins can be
revivified because she was "hypnotized" by magic to sleep for thousands of years. The finder
of the mummies mistakenly breaks the spell and makes the girl fall in love with him.
Apparently, she can speak English and understand the modern world after touching his hand
(why? Oh, why?). The girl is haunted by the spirit of the sorcerer who put the spell on her
and her pendant with its seven jewels is the only thing that keeps her alive. She marries the
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man but from time to time something happens due to the spirit's intervention (a cat, a
crocodile, a car crash, something else) and the stones crash one by one. De Grandin takes a
string of metal (because spirits can stand metal – didn't you know) waits for the sorcerer's
spirit to manifest and then he boxes it to death (second death that is). It takes some time but
in the end de Grandin manages to win and the couple keep on living their impossible
married life.

The Serpent Woman (1928.6) (Jules de Grandin solves a mystery involving a lost child and a
giant snake—and back of it all is the serpent woman) nothing supernatural this time for the
annoying detective. He saves a lady that is about to commit suicide because her baby was
kidnapped and the police blames her for the disappearance. The family gets an illiterate
ransom note but this, for some unclear and stupid reason, convinces the police that the
woman is the kidnapper of her own son. After de Grandin finds out some huge snake trails
on the sand outside the house and reading about a huge serpent that harasses the
neighborhood he buys a snake holder and a tear gas bomb he manages to fool the real
kidnapper to take the gas bomb instead of the money and then he attacks him and kills his
snake. When tortured by de Grandin (he takes him to be tortured by the police for some
reason and then they agree that he will torture him inside the station – why? Oh why? The
stupidity). De Grandin is sorry for torturing the guy because he finds out it is a woman (so
sexist and stupid). The woman confesses (she refused before the detective found out she is a
woman – why? This is stupid) that she is a widow whose baby son also died recently and
that, as a poor immigrant from Italy, had to do hard menial jobs at the middle-class family of
the kidnapped baby. She kidnapped the baby for herself. De Grandin convinces the couple
not to persecute the woman.

Body And Soul (1928.9) (Jules de Grandin, the little French ghost-breaker, runs into frightful
danger while unraveling a hideous mystery) – a young man bursts into Trowbridge's house at
night and claims that a monster is after him. They witness a hideous human who peeks at
them and de Grandin shoots it many times (he could have just killed an ugly passerby –
goddammit this killer detective can commit any crime and it will be treated as a good deed).
The creature disappears. The annoying French douc bag tries to solve a streak of murders.
They find out that a scientist and his occultist brother has taken a mummy and made the
spirit of a man about to be executed to get transferred into the body. The man's anger at his
soul being transferred into a mummy (why the hell did they do that – it is so stupid) is
unleashed at the scientist and he kills him. De Grandin tracks the mummy through the
scientist's brother. He buys some incinerating bomb and burns the mummy with the house
of the scientist (Another crime – arson, that is lauded by the head of police that witness the
horrible methods of the violent Frenchman).

Restless Souls (1928.10) (A tale of Jules de Grandin—a weirdly beautiful vampire- story,
through which runs a red thread of horror) a dying man falls in love with a girl-vampire. De
Grandin notices that the vampire is a saintly girl who was murdered by an evil and cruel
bastard who also killed her brother. She is controlled by him. The evil vampire maims and
breaks the back of the man and tortures him. The Dying man dies happy knowing the girl
loved him. De Grandin goes to the cemetary where the evil vampire lives and burns his body
(why didn't he do that earlier is another stupid discrepancy in Quinn's narrative). He also
have to kill the girl who is willing to die. De Grandin is heart-broken from that.
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[Quinn seems inconsistent when he explains the nature of supernatural phenomena–

sometimes it is part of nature that mankind has not discovered yet (or is unaware of) other
times it is the mental power of humans who believe in such creatures that make them
appear, other times it is Christian, Godly powers] 1928.10.503. "The Gods of East and West"
- these conflicting narratives often explain the exact same thing – demons and evil spirits –
they are both a manifestation of human imagination and actual, material creatures that
existed before mankind and non-material entities that oppose God – This makes Quinn's
stories very inconsistent and confusing. "Whenever civilization is decadent" – they
appear."abnormal people are dangerous and usually bear investigating"

The Chapel of Mystic Horror (1928.12) (the dread rites of the Knights of the Temple bring
horror on a peaceful countryside – a tale of Jules de Grandin) – a guy buys a house in the
U.S. that was once a huge Medieval mansion in Cyprus (how the hell did they take the huge
castle with all its hidden underground chambers deep into the Earth is not told –
furthermore, the buyer seems unaware of these tunnels – the levels of stupidity breaks new
ground here) – There the annoying detective and his stupid friend meet a girl that paints as
if hypnotized. She is supposed to paint Jesus' birth but instead paints evil monks who dance
on devils. She is possessed by the evil spirits of the Knight Templers who lived in Cyprus. She
also plays a Baroque-era eerie tune although she doesn't know how to play the piano (I
suppose the Templers jumped 500 years to the future to learn about Classical Music). After
some ridiculous séance it appears that the ghosts of the house are released. De Grandin
manages to get a holy bush from some church (as he always does). A 3-year-old child is
kidnapped and the detective explains that the Templers liked to sacrifice kids and
worshipped Cythera. They go underground and use the bush to destroy some ghosts. Then
they see the kid – naked and about to get sacrificed and a crucified bat. The hypnotized girl
is worshipped as Cythera. As de Grandin learns that the bush is useless he uses a radium rod
that for some unclear reason destroys all the ghosts. They calm the scared child (scared for
being in such a dumb story), clothe the naked girl and mercy-kill the bat.

The Black Master (1929.1) (a Turkish pirate, dead and buried in an underground vault, puts
the psychic powers of Jules de Grandin to test) – The two annoying characters confer with
the young son of a deceased friend. The man is poor and sad as he annulled his marriage to
his girlfriend as he was too poor. His father left him his diary in which there are hints of
buried treasure. The rob the tomb that his father mentioned – the tomb of some evil, dwarf
Turkish pirate. Inside they find a skeleton on the tomb and many jewels underneath it – they
take everything but fail to notice a mandrake root on the body which they mistakenly
misplace. The skeleton turns into a killer ghost that threatens local women and kills them.
De Grandin buys some silver bullets with cross signs on them and goes to the tomb, shoots
the ghost, saves a girl that he kidnapped and replaces the root. The girl is, miraculously, the
girl whom the young man didn't manage to marry. He tells her he is rich and she tells him
she loves him and wants to marry him.

The Devil-People (1929.2) (Ghostly and ghastly were the Malay foes against whom the little
French phantom-fighter went into action) – The bastard detective and his imbecile friend
meet a (guess…) beautiful woman on a night club. The woman is haunted by some Oriental
Muslims who look like cats but are unseen by anyone not relevant to the story. Going to
meet her the two discover three bodies (among them a body of a… beautiful woman) and an
assassin. Oriental cat-man. Saved by luck and some guy who takes the knife to the arm the
detective is saved. It appears that the man who saved them and whom they treat in their
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weird clinic is the beautiful girl's (the one they met at the club) husband. He was drugged
and dropped to a boat in Malay and then captured and taken to slavery with some ancient
tribal sultan. He starts as a guitar player but later becomes the captain of the guards and the
Sultan wants him to be his son. He gives him a woman to choose from and he chooses the
most beautiful girl although she is cursed and the descendant of Rakshasa demons. After
returning to the Philippines she runs away and he he has just tracked her now. The girl is in
jail and de Grandin uses lemon juice on her and her skin gets burned (because, apparently
rakshasas are allergic to lime) . He baptizes her and so her soul is saved and the lemon juice
has no effect on her. Her hair also turns white because she is now holy. The police and the
annoying detective let the girl and husband meet and they reconcile. They cover their
weapons in lemon juice and coax the annoying demons to attend at some performance at
the club. The club is filled with many evil Orientals who dress nice but are actually evil as all
Orientals are (according to Quinn's logic). They kill the Oriental people\demons when they
attack with the lemon juice. To what levels of racism, sexism and stupidity will Quinn's
stories reach? Stay tuned.

The Devil's Rosary (1929.4) (Tibetan devil-worshippers play a thrilling part in this eery tale of
the French occultist, Jules de Grandin) – This time the annoying detective and dumb friend
help a young child-like girl (like de Grandin likes) whose father stole some Tibetan
philosopher's stone from Tibet and made his whole family assassinated by sky-demons and
invisible killers. De Grandin stops the assassin by… ash from some tree and chicken blood.
He kicks the assassin and manages to convince the killer to get back the philosopher's stone
and leaves the family alone.

The cloth of Madness (1929.5) (That maddening design was copied on the walls of the room,
and a gruesome revenge was accomplished) – a reprint of Quinn's story published in January
1920 in Young's magazine. YOUNG'S MAGAZINE was a general-fiction pulp, with first issue in
1903, whose initial market was women. By the 1920's, however, its emphasis on "realistic
stories" seems to have begun to morph into the "snappy" genre. The ‘Girlie Pulp’ genre
("snappy") included stories of scandals and sex, and was meant to attract a mostly female
readership due to the racy and intriguing pin-up style art found on the cover.

The House of Golden Masks (1929.6) (Jules de Grandin runs afoul of an obscene conspiracy
involving ruthless murders and frightful ordeals) – this time the two (it is unclear why the
doctor tags alone) control the whole goddamn police – they can get into the coroner's office
and crime scenes as much as they like and even call in the army and police whenever they so
wish. They try to solve a series of recent kidnapping of some young girls (one of them killed
horribly). They track the girls (through some unclear series of events – they just happen to
sit on a pub and hear three men talk about a cabaret and the annoying detective deduces
that this cabaret must be where the girls are held for some reason) in a mansion where they
are tortured to become prostitutes in the East. They have a iron masks wired into their
pierced ears and are forced to dance naked in a humiliating way to a group of men.
Sometimes they are bound like cattle and whipped naked. When they refused they are
strapped naked to a cross and tortured. The detective disguises himself and his friend into
armor suits (for unclear reason) and smacks the Indian kidnappers. The army arrives to kill
the kidnappers when the detective is overwhelmed. Quinn's stories become closer to the
"shudder pulps" an are mostly a BDSM fantasy in the guise of "Weird" fiction.
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The Corpse-Master (1929.7) (An adventure of Jules de Grandin – a vivid tale of blood-
freezing murders and corpses that walk in the night) – after looking at some gruesome
suicide victims who were probably killed and after the gruesome murder of a little girl the
annoying duo and the dumb police captain track the horrors to some fat asshole who wants
to take vengeance on some people who kicked him out of a club because he dealt with black
magic. He learned some shit at Haiti and can now raise the dead. He raises the body of some
murderer and three beautiful girls connected to the men he tortured or killed. The animated
bodies dance some erotic dance for him and do sexual things with each other for his
pleasure. De Grandin uses meat in the soup the fat asshole gives to his bodies and thus
breaks the curse. He returns with the police commander to torture the fat man to death.
The law means shit to the police and De Grandin as in almost every story they (including
police members) drink and purchase alcohol together in large quantities.

Trespassing souls (1929.9) (a devil tale of Pontou, right-hand man of Gilles de Retz in his
diabolical villainies – a weird adventure of Jules de Grandin) – Guess what? Another stupid
story of the detective in which the he and the doctor fail to cure a girl from a sunstroke. The
stupid doctor ordered her husband to give her alcohol and he did, only a poisoned
bootleggers alcohol (it is the fucking prohibition, what did he think the alcohol in the man's
house will be? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid). After telling the man nonchalantly that his wife
is dead the two leave but a mysterious man in black clothes revives her. Then the plot goes
to some series of events in which the mysterious man tries to find women bodies. Finally,
the two find a beaten little boy who is revealed as the almost-dead-woman's son. He tells
how his mother whips him while the black man laughs. Going to his home they find the
woman plays Danse Macabre (ha! Ha!) while the mysterious man fondles her (a married
woman!!! Oh my!). Seeing the boy she wants to whack him but de Grandin kidnaps him and
spoils him. The boy's father goes to de Grandin (instead of calling the damn FBI) and the
doctor shows him the whip marks and tells him that his wife also cheats on him. The
detective takes some books, a syringe with drugs and materials and they drive to the man's
house to confront the cheating wife. Using some black magic and summoning the angel of
death (after forcefully drugging the two) the wife and her lover are revealed to be dead
spirits who lived in Medieval Europe and tortured and killed and robbed many men through
history until the wife died. They found a new body for her. The detective hypnotizes the man
after removing the two villains' souls from their body. Aside from being another dumb de
Grandin story Quinn shows time and again that the Prohibition is a failed enterprise that
only causes harm.

The Silver countess (1929.10) (An eery exploit of the French ghost-breaker, Jules de Gran-
din,in his warfare against occult evil—a gripping vampire tale) a rich friend of Trowbridge
asks the help of the asshole de Grandin. They see a girl at the premise and de Grandin (and
Quinn) shows his foot fetish while his stupid friend is shocked to the core of his moral fiber
by a girl who dares bare her feet (the story later tells that the girl had six fingers on each
foot). They find out that many religious pieces are stolen or destroyed in that house, a man
gets his blood sucked stealthily at night (considering that the cause of this is a girl who
wakes up at night and do this it is unclear why he doesn't notice it) and that a statue of a
beautiful woman is probably the cause of that. They wander and find some Rabbi who
doesn't like the statue and explains, together with his East-European immigrant Jewish
antique seller that it has a bad vibe and causes bad luck. De Grandin learns from an
academic friend that the statue was built by an evil Medieval French sculptor who was
enthralled to an evil countess who liked to cheat on husband with many demons and
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creatures in nightly orgies. She also liked to drink some blood. She has six fingers on each
foot. She is executed for fucking demons. Her soul got trapped in the statue and she
enthralls people to give the statue blood. De Grandin deduces that she controls a young
woman who stays at the mansion and has six fingers is her hypnotized servant (the two
assholes sneak into her room and remove her blanket to watch her nearly naked body –
good job de Grandin, very moral and wholesome). The fucking detective explains that
people with six fingers are more attuned to spirits (Aha!). de Grandin uses his brain to its full
capacity and decides to smash the statue (you are so smart de Grandin, I would have never
thought of that!). All returns to normal and de Grandin asks for a huge check in return for
smashing the man's furniture. The 1929.10 issue has at least three stories about Jews – this
stupid story, Eadie's dumb story and Harlow's misinformed story. The Jews are represented
as Oriental but not exactly (or barely enough).

The House Without a Mirror (1929.11) (Another strange adventure of Jules de Grandin – a
tale of weird surgery and a grisly revenge) – The two go to a swamp and are saved from a
snake by some extremely ugly creature. They are lost in the woods and find refuge in a
strange castle inhabited by blind servants and a suspicious and violent man whose ancestors
came to the place and erected the castle even before the English colonization of America.
There are also no mirrors in the house and the man locks the two for the nights and
constantly threatens them with his gun They also hear a beautiful girl's voice singing in the
morning and see from very far away a girlish figure. When the owner refuses to let them go
he go out of the swamp to verify their backgrounds. He returns and begs their forgiveness
but when de Grandin tells him he suspects there is someone hideous in the house that he
fails to tell them about the man tries to kill them. He cracks and tells them that a jealous
Spanish asshole decided to torture him for winning some girl – he rapes and tortures the girl
to death and then kidnaps their baby daughter and tortures the baby for many months until
returning her with a hideous face – he surgivcally made her face horrible. He then vows to
kill the man when the girl reaches 21 and make her a freak-show phenomenon. De Grandin
lays a trap to the asshole Spaniard and he manages to fool him by knocking out his two
henchman (whom the Spaniard decided to later kill so that they will tell no tales) and
wearing their clothes. The kill his close associate who comes with him and leave him to the
father to torture as he likes. De Grandin does plastic surgery on the girl and she is beautiful
again (why the rich father didn't do so 20 years ago is beyond me!).

Quinn's trashy stories reminds one of the body-horror, torture flicks. Sometimes these
stories are supernatural in a trashy way and sometimes they are Saw-like, shudder-pulp
replicas and at other times (though very less often) they are the usual mystery story.

Children of Ubasti (1929.12) (an uncanny adventure of Jules de Grandin – a tale of a ghoulish
pair who were neither brute or human) – this time Grandin goes to a party and meets a
Turkish youth who he likes. They see a couple whom the two discuss in horror. Meanwhile a
psychiatrist invites Grandin to watch a crazy girl they found in the woods who told them she
was abused by an evil couple. The good doctors decided that every woman who claims to be
abused is insane and must be incarcerated in a mad house in which the doctors could do
whatever they like to her and even invite civilians who have no connection to the hospital to
gloat and have fun with her (the America Quinn represents is a horrible place for anyone
who is not a middle-class , well-to-do, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant U.S.A citizen male, with
a respected family and connections – Quinn does not portray it as criticism but he takes it
for granted that this is as it should be. He tolerates others who mimic the American life-
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style, just visiting or those who know their inferior place). Grandin finds out she was
kidnapped and locked by the couple who later tried to eat her like leopards (some other girls
disappeared and were eaten by them). Grandin calls the Turk and the two explain the couple
are ghouls – children of Bast the Cat-goddess from Egypt. Important: Grandin has a diatribe
in which he decries all immigrants to the U.S. who are not white and states that he will kill all
of them. They go to the house, use the girl as bait and shoot the couple with the help of the
police detective (the law is represented as something akin to a lynching mob – they are not
bound by any rules or procedures and can use civilians to kill and lock culprits).

The Curse of the House of Phipps (1930.1) (a fascinating narrative of eery happenings and
blood-chilling excitement – a tale of Jules de Grandin) – the two try to help a young man
who is a descendant of an evil, Protestant, colonial leader in the 18 th century who kills and
tortures Catholics. This dude rapes a catholic girl and then buries her alive under his house
when he sees her holding a cross. The girl curses him that none of his family will live to see
their first-born children. The curse indeed works for almost 200 years. The two and the
descendant go to the family's mansion and are haunted by a ghost that caresses them but
chokes the descendant. Then, miraculously, a girl arrives at the mansion because she was
shot on the road. The girl is the descendant of the catholic woman who, by pure chance,
came to the house just at the same time even though no one inhabited the house for 25
years. The four are attacked by bootleggers who used the place as a hideot. One of them
dress like a ghost and tries to spook them but de Grandin murders him (the fucking detective
kills everything he wants and no one cares). In a shootout they kill one more bootlegger and
wound another who tells them the man de Grandin first murdered was another descendant
of the evil Protestant. De Grandin does some Christian ceremony on the girl's grave after the
house burns down. After praying the girl's ghost tries to kill the descendant but the ghost's
own descendant (the girl) begs her to stop because she loves him. The curse is uplifted. The
end. Getting dumber and dumber. At least there is some sympathy to Christians. It seems
like Christian and Jewish religion (and Native North-American Indian religion) is perceived as
O.K but any other religion is depraved and dangerous.

The Drums of Damballah (1930.3) (a powerful story of Haitian voodoo, uncanny murders and
blood-curdling dangers – a wild adventure of Jules de Grandin) again, the murderous
detective solves s eries of disconnected events that are somehow connected – a kidnapped
child, a murdered reverend, a murdered and tortured black man, a missing girl, a fainting girl
who is later killed after the detective strips her and sees she wears some Haitian garments.
All are connected to some Voodoo priestess and her ape-like black son. The detective tracks
the kidnapped girl in an abandoned cellar (again, as in all Quinn's stories, by a miraculous
chance – he just stumbles upon a hole in the ground next to a voodoo store). There the
detective, the stupid doctor and the dumb Irish policeman enjoy watching a naked girl and
many naked blacks kill some chickens and dance with snakes. Then the group is about to
sacrifice a little boy and de Grandin murders five of the unarmed civilians in front of the
police officer who also kills some unarmed men and women – great job police, very moral
and logical, but hey, blacks are not real people according to your worldview. There is also a a
passage in this story in which Grandin explains how American blacks are docile and relatively
tame compared to the savages of Haiti and Africa – slavery did them good I guess). The
missing girl is returned (she looked just liked the murdered girl who was once adopted by
the Haitian priestess) the ape-man is killed and as in all Grandin story the three drink
alcohol.
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The Dust of Egypt (1930.4) (an uncanny adventure of Jules de Grandin – weird was the attack
of the mummy on the despoiler of his tomb) – two siblings (an invalid brother and his
beautiful sister) tell the detective about their recently deceased uncle. The old man was a
famous grave robber in Egypt who turned into Egyptology (which is the same thing more or
less). He believed that he got cursed by Isis. He also has the mummy of some Egyptian priest.
The mansion's staff (an Irish couple) mistrusts the sister and believes she is an evil spirit. He
died mysteriously. De Grandin wakes up at night to eavesdrop on the beautiful sister. As in
all de Grandin stories the two witness the girl attacking her brother. Wearing revealing,
exotic clothes and doing some occult ceremony with the ghost of the mummy. De Grandin
uses a crucifix to banish the spirit and he hypnotizes the girl and erases her memory. It
appears the girl believed in the curse and that manifested the evil spirit of Isis to haunt her
body (the annoying detective explains again how there are no such thing as spirits, but then
he says there are but they are only the figments of our manifested imagination but then he
says they are evil powers from before mankind – as always consistency is beyond Quinn).
The detective hypnotizes the invalid so that he will forget what his possessed sister did to
him.

The Brain-Thief (1930.5) (an almost unthinkable weird situation tests Jules de Grandin's
powers) – another racist story in which an evil Indian hypnotist ruin the lives of some
American youths because colonial England has taken advantage of many Indian women (so
stupid!). He makes them forget their true selves and forces them to cheat on one another.
One of these people awakes to find himself with a baby with a woman whom he never had
any romantic relationship while divorcing his love interest and with his reputation ruined
(oh… genteel America). The woman, in turn, also gets free to find out she had a baby with a
man she didn't like and cheating on her husband and divorcing him. She kills herself and the
baby. Another man suspects that his wife drugs him to get away with another man. De
Grandin finds the culprit – the Indian. As in all Quinn's stories the group watches silently as
the cheating girl gets naked and do some bizarre ceremony with the Indian. De Grandin
chops the Indian's hand and tortures him to death. The Indian says something about race
wars and racial hatred that Quinn likes so much. They drink alcohol afterwards. Nazi
Germany is not alone in this zeitgeist of white people threatened by non-whites. The evil
dude says how The French and Americans are stupid to allow colored people and not having
some color line as in England. He tries to mock the stupid white governments for not being
aware of the danger posed by colored people.

The Priestess of the Ivory Feet (1930.6) (An utterly strange story about a sinister love-cult
and a kiss which meant death for him who gave it) – the annoying detective tries to help the
son of a friend (from Trowbridge's milieu of respectable, well-to-do, middle-class white
American Protestants) who joins a cult that worships a goddess. The goddess is represented
by a young girl with whom the man is in love. The detective finds out the cult is ruled by two
felons who make the cult's members will them everything and then kill them in some
ceremony. The ceremony involves kissing the feet (and Quinn describes these feet in his
usual fetishist way) of the girl which are covered in poison. The detective calls uses the
police (as the police appears to be his own property) and they kill the crooks and beat
senseless every member of this cult, even though they are harmless and haven't done
anything wrong because what the fuck. The girl lets the man kiss her mouth as this is the
proper way to kiss.
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The Bride of Dewer (1930.7) (This story of the goblin huntsman of the North is the weirdest
story yet written about Jules de Grandin) – Grandin tries to help a newly-wed couple beset
by some ugly green goblin who tries to violently rape the wife. It seems that the husband's
family is cursed because some ancestor used his Saxon heritage to summon a goblin to help
him kill some Muslims at a crusade. The goblin's payment was raping every newly wife of a
male descendant to this family. Using his antiquarian friend Grandin finds out the historical
story and finds out that the goblin can be shunned by the woman telling him calmly to go
away. Because women are so scared of it they fail to do so. De Grandin hypnotizes the girl
and makes her repeat the words. The girl does so and the goblin goes away. Some sentences
in the story saying that there is no such "supernatural" only pieces of nature still to be
understood or discovered.

Daughter of the Moonlight (1930.8) (a brilliant exploit of the little French scientist and
occultist, Jules de Grandin – a graveyard story of stark horror) – Another murderous action
of the detective. This time he kills a young girl possessed by demons. An evil girl with red
hair is adopted by her uncle after her father and gypsy mother die. She tortures her sister
and steal her boyfriend. When the boyfriend refuses to go with her her skin melts, her head
turns into a skeleton and she bites part of his lips. She then loses concoiusness and dies. She
comes back again to be a cruel party-girl and then dies again. She is buried in a fridge coffin.
The detective waits until some guy tries to rescue her from the grave and then shoots the
girl dead when she starts showing signs of life. The detective explains that she, as a gypsy's
daughter, was possessed by demons and when her body vacates them she is without a soul.
He killed her after her being "dead" meaning when she was free from demons and when she
is "alive" she is with demons – got it? Not really, I only understand that the bastard killed a
living girl for liking to party.

Sewell Peaslee Wright

The Thing in the Glass Box (1926.2) (Arvin separated soul from body, and could not unite
them again) – a scientist is imprisoned in a mad house for killing his research mate. He tells
another ex-student (whom he constantly slams as being an idiot in science) how he and his
protegee managed to separate spirits from hamsters and recreate their bodies from the
spirits. They manage to do the same to the protegee. A shade emerges from the man and
escapes his body but when the professor tries to create a new body from the soul he finds
out that the body created is evil and murderous. He understands that the soul, only existing
for man, has departed living only the spirit which is evil. He terminates the experiment and
turns himself in. He drinks poison but the man who does not fully believe him, spies a
shadow that haunts the place and is convinced.

The House in the Willows (1926.4) (a rational ghost story) – a house is abandoned for many
years after its last occupant was convicted in a murder and spends his time in prison. The
house becomes a testing ground for bravery among young people who send people to go
there at night and remove some plaster from the walls as proof. One young man goes there
to prove his bravery to a girl he likes. Once inside he convinces himself that all the sounds
and sights he sees are his imagination. Eventually a dark figure approaches him and knocks
him in the head. The girl and her friends come to look for him and he is alright. They don't
notice a stealthy figure who escapes the house but later slips on a stone in a swamp and
dies. The next morning some newspapers publish that the murderer escaped so that it was
probably the stealthy figure. ‫סתמי‬
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The Experiment of Erich Weigert (1926.5) (The Little Scientist Seemed mild and inoffensive,
but in his dark brain a fiendish plan was evolved) – a radio specialist is contacted by an ugly
but brilliant eccentric millionaire who offers him his hospitality. The eccentric wants to
broadcast thoughts like radio waves. The man soon becomes infatuated with the
millionaire's beautiful wife who loathes her husband and even kisses him when her husband
does not look. Nevertheless, her husband finds out. He convinces the man to get strapped to
a machine. Once strapped the man feels a wave of love and fear that suddenly stops. The
eccentric tells him that he heard a thought broadcast from the other room. There the man
finds the body of the wife with part of her skull removed. The eccentric tells the man that he
found out about their betrayal and he broadcasted the woman's last thoughts to him before
she died. The story also hints that he used telepathy to force the man to kill him with his gun
and then commit suicide. It seems that radio IS THE SHIZZLE in the interwar years as most
stories revolve around the possibilities inherent in it.

Guarded (1927.3) (a strange tale of double personality – the possession of one body by more
than one possibility) – a man meets his reclusive neighbor who lives alone in a huge,
decrepit mansion. After some time together the man decides to tell his story after the
neighbor says he does not believe in a soul. The man had a younger brother who was also a
criminally-evil person. Because he promised his dying mother to take care of the brother
(the father died soon after the mother died though the story inconsistently later tells that
the father lived many years afterwards). The older brother misses some step. Yet, his spirit
manifests and tries to guard the violent, drunkard, sinful brother. As he fails to do so he
manages to possess the body of his brother so that he will commit no more sins. After some
weeks his brother manages to take control. To prevent this, the man manages to control the
body and only gives the brother several hours after midnight to take possession of his own
body (apparently the brother is afraid of the dark and refuses to go out and do harm). The
narrator does not believe the old man but as the clock chimes midnight the old man's face
starts to convulse and his manner of speech and behavior changes so drastically and
threateningly that the narrator escapes in fear.

The Wolf (1927.11) (a weird tale of the Canadian Northwest - a cross the fire the man faced
the evil thing that sprang for his throat) – a professor is taken to custody after killing a man.
He tells the cop who takes him, and to the narrator, how he traveled with some local,
mysterious man. As night fell and wolves began to howl the professor observed the man's
agitation. The man leaves and then a wolf appears. The man manages to shoot the wolf's
leg. After the wolf disappears the man returns with a wound in his leg. The professor shoots
him to death.

Stephen Bagby

Whispering Tunnels (1925.2) (Novelette of Verdun the World war and Devil-Worship) – an
American soldier in the French army during WWI tries to find his old friend from the war. He
finds out that the man is considered a traitor by the French army as another "friend" of the
two (which the narrator dislikes immensely) discovered that he sold secrets to the German.
The "friend" blackmails the friend's beautiful sister for marriage on terms that he will help
the family whose life he ruined (the family's house is nationalized by France due to treason).
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Traveling to the last post his friend and "friend" served he finds the place haunted by ghosts
with garrisoned soldiers dying from terror. He sees many apparitions at night, including that
of his friend and some creatures. He manages to search the place with the help of a psychic
doctor. They exorcise the demon from the most haunted room in the place. AS they go
deeper into the haunted caverns they find out that the horrible sounds in the place are the
result of a geyser that was used as a death chamber in the past. They also find that one of
the victims of this room was a sorcerer who summoned a demon to haunt the place and
when many soldiers died in the war it was resurrected. They finally find the body of the
friend with other bodies and documents that prove his innocence and the guilt of the
"friend". The friend's family is exonerated the "friend" is captured (though he commits
suicide shortly after) and the narrator marries the beautiful sister.

The Witches' Sabbath (1928.7-8) (A startling two-part serial tale of devil-worship, witch¬
craft, and the Black Mass) – an Englishman meets an American ambassador, his friend, who
tells him how he sojourned in the Pyrenees only to find himself at some weird, secluded
village. He was treated as the king of the place and a woman there called him by another
name and told him she is his queen. Apparently, he had some history with the place in a
different incarnation. After some months of hypnotic enthrallment, he gets a year off but a
weird spirit that looks like a monk follows him to ensure he returns. Only 20 percent of the
people in the world can see the ghost. After the man tries the help of some French wizard he
dies but comes back to life a changed man. He becomes the close friend of the evil wizard.
His old friend. Together with the man's fiancée who broke her engagement to the American
after he tried to BDSM pimp her to his new wizard friend and together with an old eccentric
British professor of the occult they try to break the spell of the wizard. They fail and the two
escape. The three go to France and the two men leave the girl and try to reach Spain to find
the village. The village is apparently the annual meeting place of a huge secret society of
warlocks and wizards. They barely manage to enter with the pretense of arriving for the
annual Witches' Sabbath where all wizards from around the world gather at a black
cathedral to worship Satan. Although the locals treat them nice they actually spy on them
and know who they are. The girl sneaks into town, unbeknownst to the two, dressed as a
medieval knight (?) and hears (by miraculous chance) how the queen of the place is aware of
the two's identity and also about the fact that the evil French wizard and the possessed
American ambassador have arrived to town. The girl escapes when she is noticed but is
captured by the wizard and her ex who also try to pimp her to the wizard as soon as they get
her. The two good guys are cornered by some town guards and are sent to meet the evil
queen who also wants to remove the French wizard and claim her reincarnated husband.
They meet the queen and treated well until the evil wizard arrives and tells the party who
they really are. They are thrown into a deep dungeon. They escape by breaking a wall and
killing some guards. They manage to witness the ceremony where many witches and wizards
worship Satan. The professor manages, somehow, to Kung Fu everyone with his fists and
bows. He even shoots Satan. They rescue the girl that is about to get sacrificed and burn the
place down (only one mad, elderly, professor against hundreds!!!). He also takes the
unconscious queen. The girl is kidnapped again by the evil wizard and deranged husband.
The professor exorcises the queen and they find out it is a beautiful heiress who was
kidnapped 5 years before and hypnotized. They go to France and England where they find
the husband. The professor exorcises him and tells him one of his ancestors was an evil
wizard but that he was possessed by the wizard of Attila the Hun. They find the girl in
France. The beautiful heiress was also his ancestor's lover in the Middle Ages. The two fall in
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love and decide to marry and the fiancée is fine with that because she fell in love with the
ambassador's friend. The evil wizard is still on the loose but a maid drops an effigy of
him ,that the two heroes found at the city, into the fire. The wizard tries to run but is burned
to a crisp (why didn't they done it as soon as they got it?) Great ideas about a secret society
but done in a messy, stupid, puerile way. Shame.

The Rosicrucian Lamp (1929.6) (The flame lighted in Bavaria in medieval times still burnt – a
tale of fire-elementals) – A medieval occultist curses the general who was sent by a wicked
lordling to kidnap his daughter and kill him. The general's descendants are cursed by dying in
horrible fires. In contemporary times the protagonist ( a rich adventurer who travels the
world) wants to marry the current descendant (a beautiful girl). Her father tells him about
the curse and the girl tells him that she can't marry him because of that. Some fire-wizard
from Azerbaijan haunts the Bavarian mansion of the family and is knocked by the
protagonist after he sees him conjuring some fire spirits and unleashes them on the
mansion. The old father tells the protagonist that to lift the curse he needs to find the
hidden tomb of the medieval occultist and extinguish a magic lamp that is there. The
protagonist gets the help of some occultist who gives him a magic talisman and advice. The
old father is burned to a crisp by some fire salamanders. The protagonist runs to the tomb
after the fire-wizard tries to frame him for murder (unclear on what evidence). He gets into
the tomb after the fire-wizard suggests they work together. The fire-wizard tries to trick him
into sacrificing himself to the fire elementals but fails. Nevertheless, he knocks him down
when they manage to open the hidden door. A suit of armor brains the wizard and the
hellish fire lamp is extinguished. The protagonist leaves all the treasures inside the tomb
(including thumaturgical scrolls that the wizard wanted). He returns to the girl and they
marry. Again, the theme of modern-day occultists who wield tremendous power and travel
the world in search of more power.

Victor Rousseau

[The Surgeon of Souls] The Case of the Jailer's Daughter (1926.9) (the first story of a series,
each story complete in itself, dealing with Dr. Ivan Brodsky, the surgeon of souls) –a tale
about a Russian Jew who is a psychiatrist and mystic. The story tells of how the narrator met
him in a mental house next to a prison. The two meet a violent Russian ruffian that is
sentenced to death for killing his wife. The brute's spirit possess a girl and the Doctor saves
her by hypnotizing the girl and convincing the brute to leave the body (together with some
Kabbalistic spell). Interesting how Jews are represented in the magazine – they are racially
inferior with degenerate bodies or demurred femininity but are mentally and spiritually
superior.

[The Surgeon of Souls] The Woman with the Crooked Nose (1926.10) (The second of a series
of stories, each complete in itself, dealing with Dr. Ivan Brodsky, “The Surgeon of Souls”) –
The narrator and dr. Brodsky helps a woman to solve the apparition of her sister that haunts
her and her brother-in-law. The woman has a sister who married a young artist but the sister
soon begins to fell sick and is bed-ridden. The sister is very beautiful but has a slight
deformity of the nose. The sister suspects that the brother-in-law poisons her sister. At night
she saw a beautiful apparition that looks exactly like her sister only without the deformity.
Each night, after the apparition visits the sister her condition becomes worse. The Dr.
questions the brother-in-law and the woman (the sister is almost catatonic and bedridden)
and decides to buy an iron wire and do a night vigil next to her room. At night he struggles
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with the apparition and prevents her from returning. He explains in the morning that the
apparition was a phantom image of the brother-in-law's obsession with the deformity of his
wife. His fantasy image was evoked by his subconscious mind and became a vampiric spirit
that drinks the life-blood of his wife. The Dr. explained that he used iron as it rebukes spirits
and that the spirit will not return but that the husband must accept his wife's slight
deformity and love her.

Some interesting remarks about how physics can explain supernatural phenomenon. The
psyche becomes a site of supernatural powers.

[The Surgeon of Souls] The Tenth Commandment (1926.11) (the third in a series of stories) –
a man believes his wife cheats on him with his brother. The man lost his inheritance to his
brother and his wife really wanted the house. The man sneaks into the house and sees his
wife. The servants tell him that the woman disappears like a ghost. Brodsky sneaks with the
brother and the narrator into the mansion and sees his wife. He shoots but then Brodsky
tells him to run to his house and check if his wife is still there. The wife is in their home and
just awakened from sleep. Brodsky explains that the wife's yearning for the home has made
her apparition haunt the house. The brother tells them that his sister-in-law convinced him
to turn over the house to the couple in favorable terms.

The Legacy of Hate (1926.12) (the fourth in a series…) – a man comes to Brodsky about his
insane lover. This girl believes she is the man's brother and always tries to chop her own
hand. The man married this lover but she was engaged to his brother. A day before the
wedding they secretly married and as they went to tell so to the brother he noticed the girl
doesn't love him so he tries to kill his brother and failing, commits suicide. His spirit
possesses the girl. Brodsky manages to convince the man that he must forgive his brother
and then he manages to convince him he is dead. The brother's spirit leaves that of the girl
and the girl hand, the only part of her not controlled by the brother, is now joined by the
rest of her body as she becomes sane again.

The Major's Menagerie (1927.1) (the fifth…) – Brodsky and the narrator go to a haunted
mansion where two people were killed before. The house belonged to an army major who
liked traveling the world and killing and capturing exotic animals. He has some macaws, a
cheetah and an orange Utang He dies and his Cheetah and ape die soon after. All the
spiritualists who spend a night in the house are brutalized. Brodsky, his assistant and a
journalist who comes along convince the gardener and his idiotic young daughter who
happens to love the animals to leave the door open for them. They spend the night and
Brodsky takes the cheetah skin as he knows the ape was afraid of the creature. At night the
ghost of the ape starts hanging around and the idiotic girl hides in the place and mutters
some scary things. The journalist assaults her and the ghost of the ape attacks him. Brodsky
manages to save the day by throwing the cheetah skin on them. Her tells them that
everything is made of spirit and that apes are possessed by spirits close to humans. He also
says that inferior races are possessed by a slightly better reincarnation of the ape spirits. The
idiotic girl is institutionalized by Brodsky to become less stupid.

The Fetish of the Waxwork (1927.2) (the sixth in a series of stories…) – a French-born wax-
doll maker makes a statue of admiral Nelson but the statue wants to kill him. He tells
Brodsky and he tells him that making an idol invites spirits to dwell in the idol. They go the
museum and there the man's employer seems entranced by the statue. Brodsky tells the
man to destroy the statue and find a new job. He returns at night after the wax-artist tells
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him his boss tried to kill him. Brodski takes a union-jack from his closet (he tells that it is
from the flag of the ship that took him from Poland after the tsar tried to kill him).He tells
the man that Nelson is animated by some spirit force that once belonged to Nelson and that
his hatred for Frenchmen makes the statue violent. Nelson spirit enters the body of the
proprietor and he fences with Brodski. He is about to kill the Frenchman when Brodski drops
the flag on the Frenchman – the possessed man stops his attack. Brodski tells the man to
always have a union jack on him.

The Seventh Symphony (the seventh in a series of stories…) – This time the Doctor tries to
help the widower of some famous cello player who died in her prime. The two promised
each other that when one of them dies his spirit will play the seventh symphony of
Beethoven on the cello for the other. The man hears the voices of the symphony at night but
it is horrible with dissonance. Brodski goes to the man's home but the man begins to taunt
Brodski and threatens him not to touch his dead wife's cello. Brodski does not manage to
understand why the ghost plays the cello so badly or why a séance he did failed. The man
ridicules Brodski and kicks him out. On the way to some hotel Brodski and his helper think
about the failure. Brodski understands something and returns to the man's house. He tells
him to play the cello and they discover it is not tuned.

The Chairs of Stuyvesant (1927.4) (The eight in a series of stories…) Doctor Brodski goes to a
mansion which a rich, vulgar and cruel man bought from some old genteel family from the
South who became beggars wince the death of the father, after giving Brodski a check for
10,000 dollars. Apparently all the ancient furniture in the house were thrown out accept one
chair. Whenever the rich man tries to sit on his new, vulgar, furniture he gets stabbed by
some malevolent force. Brodski brings the evicted woman with some hypnotism and then he
does a séance in which the mischievous spirit who was once a friend of the house
inhabitants' ancestors becomes the old chair and kicks him. The man's ugly wife returns and
starts shouting at the man for bringing into her home these beggars. The vulgar man agrees
to sell the house back to the evicted family for 10,000 dollars.

The Man Who Lost his Luck (1927.5) (The ninth in a series of stories…) – the narrator
tellshow he actually met the Doctor. After losing his job as a surgeon, his wife due to poverty
and his dignity due to a failed investment he decides to kill himself. The doctor saves him
and as he tells him he wanted to kill himself over his bad luck the Doctor tells him that he
has a device that can cure bad luck but that it will ruin him later. The narrator insists and the
doctor reverses hisbody parts and makes him lucky. The narrator gets rich from successful
investments, his wife returns to him and he becomes the richest surgeon in the U.S. Then, a
doctor tells him he is about to die. The narrator is sorry for reversing his luck but then he
wakes up at the office of Dr. Brodski who tells him it all happened in a heartbeat and that he
hypnotized him. He hires him as an assistant.

The Dream that Came True (1927.6) (the tenth…) Someone comes to Brodsky and tells him
about the fact that his dying wife whispered the name of another man as she died. Brodski
tells him about a girl he met as a young immigrant to the U.S. and with whom he fell in love.
The girl loved him back but decided to marry another man due to respectability issues. The
girl dies after several years and says Brodski name as she dies. Brodski later treats a young
girl who is the daughter of the man his beloved marry (from a second wife) and he imagines
to see his beloved's eyes in her eyes. Years later he treats this same girl who happens to
have some fits of anger at her fiancée. The girl often runs away to his apartment without any
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recollection how she got there. Brodski uses a deep trance on her and finds out his beloved's
spirit is inside her. As the girl tells him she always loved him and that they should be
together the girl's fiancée arrives and Brodski promises him to cure his girl. He manages to
tell his beloved that they will meet in heaven and relases her spirit just after she tells him
she will prove her loyalty to him tomorrow at the garden. Tomorrow he sees the cured girl
and she gives him a flower. The girl dies many years later and says Brodski name before she
dies – it was the spirit of the girl and the man who visits Brodski was her husband who years
before went to him for helping his deranged fiancée.

The Ultimate Problem (1927.7) (The last of a series…) BRodski is sick of his body and wants
to die and that his soul will move on to another body (quite opposite from the conclusion of
his last story). He writes a letter to the narrator and tells him to open it after he dies. He has
a boy of seven at his institution who is without any motoric or mental ability. He uses a
machine to give back a soul to this kid whom he believed was born without one. He
electrifies himself and the boy and the narrator fail to save him. The boy becomes attentive
and motoric. The narrator finds out that Brodski left everything he had to him. He reads the
letter in which it is written that Brodski killed himself so that his soul will dwell in the boy. He
asks the narrator to be the father of the boy and to teach him all the things Brodski dealt
with as the boy will get some recollections of his past life. The narrator teaches the boy to be
a doctor but burns most of Brodski research and refuses to teach the boy these psychic
things as he believes them to be dangerous.

Very hard to pinpoint the Brodski stories as "supernatural" they remind the first incarnation
of WTand the focus it had on spiritualism and the like.

W. Elwyn Backus

The Waning of a World (1925.11-1926.2) (Four-part serial of a voyage to Mars) – a young

man whose father invented an anti-matter device without perfecting it before dying teams
up with an astronomer who sees him as a son and tries to prove his thesis that there is a vast
civilization on Mars. The two get together for many months and spend all their funding and
personal saving to build a spaceship. The public becomes aware of this and they get the
chance to become rich and famous by selling the spaceship (which is also equipped with a
killing device coveted by armies) to the government. They refuse and go on a dangerous
journey to Mars to prove the professor's thesis. After lift-off they discover a stowaway
journalist who they accept immediately (it is unclear why this pest who probably destroys all
their calculation of air, water and food in the cramped journey would be welcome). After the
two geniuses are almost killed by not calculating the tilt and zero-gravity status of the
spaceship they manage to reach Mars. In Mars one of the group dreams about a beautiful
woman in the desert. They are soon met by local scientists who seen them landing. They
witness huge pipes that cover the land with greenery and forests clinging to these pipes.
They witness a technological civilization with tractors and trains. They are greeted by the
emperor of Mars who assigns them teachers to teach them the language of Mars and to
learn about earth. One of the group feels there is something sinister about the emperor. At
night the dreaming man hears a womanly scream. After a little digging he finds out that the
woman of his dreams is trapped in the palace as she and her father are political prisoners
who were once the rightful rulers of Mars. The man decides to escape with the princess to
the planet's Northern pole, her once seat of power, with the spaceship. He manages to
escape with his friends, the former king and the girl after smashing some roofs in the palace
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and punching some royal guards. They travel to the North pole of the planet and restate the
king as the rightful ruler of the planet. The emperor marches his army to recapture the king.
The king gathers his followers and stops the water to the rest of the planet as an ultimatum.
For some odd reason the three companions decide to explore the north pole even though
war is at their doorsteps. They nearly get killed by a snow-storm. The princess and one of the
inventors of the sphere vow their love to each other. The emperor encircles the north-pole
capital and the inventor and his newspaper friend use the sphere's destructive ray to wreak
havoc in the emperor's army. The emperor's encirclement effort fails and many of his troop
die. The sphere collapses because of some engine failure and the inventor is captured by the
emperor. The newspaper friend manages to free him and they return to the capitol. The
princess is kidnapped by the emperor and the inventor becomes the supreme general of the
army (it is really unclear why the hell such a thing happens). The inventor fights with zeal
after his newspaper friend dies and he manages to route the army with his small battalion,
dueling the emperor and killing him. The scientist finds the princess harassed by two men
and he kills one of them (she says that she was raped by the emperor). The two come back
to the palace and the ex-king now rules the planet. Nevertheless, soon after some nobles
come and do another coup-detat for the reason that the king marries his daughter to the
scientist. They manage to escape to the spaceship and fly to Earth. The two marry on Earth
and the girl's father and the scientist's mentor become best friends. They also hauled the
ship, before leaving, with a huge amount of gold and diamonds and so become filthy rich.

The Youth-Maker (1927.4) (Perry trusted the mad chemist's treatments to make him grow
younger – and eery were the results of his faith) – a 40 something man comes to a deranged
chemist who invents bombs for the U.S. government. The man falls in love with a girl that is
much younger than him so he is afraid she will not find common ground with him due to
their age difference. The chemist, allegedly perfected an elixir of life. The man takes the
serum the chemist gave him and gets a treatment by him for several weeks. The chemist
tells him that he must undergo a reverse treatment soon because he will continue to
become younger until he returns to his primal state as a fetus. The man and the girl are
happy together as she comments seems younger to her for some reason. Nevertheless, they
argue over something and the girl gives the man the cold shoulder. The chemist dies in an
explosion and so he does not get the reverse treatment. As the man becomes younger he
goes to a doctor who chaperones him and goes with him to France where dozens of
specialists study his case. The man becomes a baby and as he reverts back into nothingness
he reads a letter the girl sends him where she tells him their age difference is nothing to her
and that she loves him.The man wakes up in the office of the doctor who tells him he is
alright and that the chemist was a charlatan. The man proposes to the girl who accepts.

Behind the Moon (1929.12-1930.2) (a three-part weird-scientific serial story of eery perils
and blood-freezing horrors encountered on the moon. Three young men and one young
woman fly to the moon on some craft one of them built (the narrative states that one of
them is a bad, emaciated person and he is in love with the girl but she loves the strong
muscular guy of the expedition). After some dangers in space they crash on the moon and
are soon kidnapped by a horde of small gray creatures. They are taken underground into a
mushroom la-la-land in which the creatures look at the tall, emaciated man as leader
because he is the tallest. They teach them their language in a month or so. Apparently they
are the only animal life on the planet as everything else is edible herbs and yams. They
sprout from the Earth to reproduce and want to breed the girl for some reason. The tall man
betrays them as he wants to have the girl who falls in love with the muscular, scientist guy.
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They learn that the aliens want the girl's blood to live in the cold outside (than why the hell
do they need a fucking girl for that the men also have blood – it is the epitome of stupidity) /
The two good guys threaten the traitor bad guy with a gun they manage to get and kidnap
the alien's leader. They manage to enter the spaceship and continue their tour of the moon.
The evil guy tries to stab the scientist while on flight because he is probably stupid (the plot
makes no bloody sense as usual). They decide to park their craft in a mysterious jungle next
to a peak on the moon's dark side. They find some diamonds that make the evil guy
avaricious and dangerous. They decide to explore the place even though they barely have
provisions or fuel because what the heck. In the forest the scientist and traitor are attacked
by huge cockroaches . After the traitor tries to kill the scientist to get the girl and also so that
the roaches will eat him instead he is knocked by the scientist and the bugs feast on his
screaming body. The roaches swarm the ship but the girl and the scientist are left outside.
The priest (their other friend) uses the ship's engines to fry the bugs and the two manage to
get inside. They are almost sucked into a fissure in the moon but manage to escape back to
Earth with several huge diamonds that makes them rich. They marry in space. Aside from
the bug scene – a stupid story.

The Phantom Bus (1930.9) (a weird dream that interwove itself with the reality of everyday
life – a tale of tragedy) – a confused and badly written story about a man who wakes up
every night with nightmares about a bus inhabited by dead people and his dead girlfriend.
The phantom bus eventually traps the man at his sleep and he dies from some crash (or not?
It is hard to tell).

Backus is mainly an SF author.

Wilford Allen

The Arctic Death (1927.6) (out of the north it came, that dread death that touched every
living thing with a killing cold) – describing this in a very messy and unclear way the narrator
is probably saying that his friend saw his acquaintance dying from some malign entity in the
form of a chilling fog only later to inhabit his dead body and killing others before living the
body. He and the narrator go to Alaska and try and save the population by coming with
special insulated suits that can only save themselves. They tell the population to run but it is
futile and they watch them all die (they are safe because they have the special suits – why
did they not bring special suits for the people there is a mystery) . They trace the source of
this malign, body-snatching-freezing-entities to come from underground. There they are
approached by a master-mind that looks like pure light. The light tells them his people are
about to rule the earth and the narrator tells him god did not permit it. The entity tries to
control his body (why? Oh why? It is not clear why the entity who claims to have so vast
intelligence humans are like animals to it will think the scientist's knowledge is meaningful at
all) and the scientist manages to free some of rebel-entities (? Unclear what happens there)
then they defeat the evil light and decide to leave the Earth but the scientist has already left
his body and he helps (or is he? It is unclear) the narrator becomes a leading scientist.

Such a messy and confused plot

The Swooping Wind (1927.12) (a strange little tale about a scientist who was the sport and
creature of the winds, and under their protection) – a meteorologist tells the narrator how
he was saved by winds since he was little. He understands that the winds want him to
discover something important about them. They are so jealous that they kill every one who
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may hamper his research, including his new born wife and all the people on the pleasure
cruise (taking them to the sky where they disappear). Although he was angry for many years
and refuses to continue his research he decides to return to it again and finish it. The
narrator does not believe him until he finds some proof in South America, a place where the
winds saved him from bandits. A local tells him about the man who winds saved at that
place.

The Bone-Grinder (1928.1) (a weird story of the frightful thing that crushed the life out of
those who came within its toils) – four Americans visit Mexico. Suddenly one of the man, a
younger brother of one of the four, becomes crazy and drives his horse at maddening speed
to the mountains. The rest chase him after one of the Mexicans says this is the annual
sacrifice for some creature in the mountains. When they catch with him the following day it
is in a deserted stone-carved city and his body is smashed. Soon a sinister force drives two of
the group to come back to this horrible place and stare while a huge boulder moves itself
and pounds them to goo. Only one of them manages to escape into some train and the
villagers are happy because they were prophesized that when one man would manage to
escape this power it will disappear and leave then forever.

The Hate (1928.6) (Born of a murderer’s lust for torture, the Hate grew through the ages,
and worked its retribution during the World War) – two kids are cruelly murdered by some
deranged nobleman who travels a Medieval road. One of the boys dies with extreme hatred
to this asshole. In WWI the incarnation of this boy (I think) is constantly pounded by bullets
of a German gunman (probably the incarnation of the bastard noble) although he dies his
hatred keeps his body going closer to the gunman. When he touches him the place explodes
(I think, it is quite unclear what happens).

On a Far World (1928.7) (An invasion by a race of giants from a far world rocked civilization
and, obliterated the works of man) a scientist shows the works of a long dead genius
mathematician who was his friend. He claimed to have some connection with a universal
library of knowledge and he wrote a history of a distant world. This almost-Earth-like planet
had a scientist who was ridiculed for inventing a machine that broadcasted from far away
planets. The machine is built after they find a 20,000-year-old spaceship buried at an
archeological site. He is warned by the machine that an attack is coming from a distant
planet known to the scientist. Indeed, they see with their telescopes that an invasion is
coming. The aliens are giant, cruel and intelligent (yet very slow) creatures that decimate
worlds. They also enslave some populations and have many pigmy slaves. Their air-force
obliterates most of the planet before they land. They are invincible and although the planet
defenses manage to destroy the pygmies the giants decimate all the population aside from
the 20 people, all man including the scientist besides the fiancée of the scientist. They watch
the world crumble with the giants killing, and treating them, like flies. The scientists discover
a new message from the mysterious source who tells them he was once from their planet.
He gives them a formula for a virus that would wipe the aliens but it will take many years as
the creatures' metabolism and huge size makes the thing work in 50 years of this planet. The
scientists sacrifice themselves to infect the giants more quickly and only the scientist and his
lover are left to repopulate the world as the giants start to slowly die. Many themes that will
be later used in SF.

Night-Thing (1929.7) (Eery was the being that yammered and yowled in the spaces between
the stars) – a soul sucking demon from space (perhaps Death itself – it is unclear) is
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devastated to learn that two huge alien fleets fight above Earth. If the evil fleet wins the
people of earth will die and so the demon will remain without souls. The evil fleet wins but
the other fleet manages to become immortal and invent a death manifestation on such a
scale that the whole evil fleet is exterminated. The demon is happy and it returns to a body
in the arctic to suck its soul.

Allen's stories become more outré' - Gothic SF is the closest thing to describe them.

The Planet of Horror (1930.6) (The weirdest interplanetary story ever written—a strange
horror lurked between the planets) – in the future interplanetary travel is possible. Some
spaceships go missing at a certain orbit around the sun. Some scientists try to investigate
only to become mad with horror and disfigurement. Everyone who hears part of their story
becomes mad. It is hinted that the planet is an amalgamation of psychic horror that changes
those who come in contact with it into the same amorphous horrors.

The closest to Gothic SF as one can get here.

Will Smith (and R.J Robbins)

Wanderlust by Proxy (1925.2) (Savn and the South Seas – Bizarre tale of Radio) – an invalid,
elderly man procures the help of a man that looks and thinks like him to serve as a proxy for
his whims. He invents a headgear that broadcasts the sight, sound and smell that his proxy
experiences. The proxy travels around the world as the invalid stays in bed. The invalid's
servants can tell when he is hungry (which is exactly at the same time his proxy eats) and the
man and his proxy are so connected that he begins to feel what the proxy feels. Eventually
the proxy (and his master – as the two become interchangeable) comes to an island and falls
in love with a barely adolescent girl. The girl shows him affection but as she is betrothed to a
local gang-leader the proxy is beaten and left for dead on a stranded ship which in turn is
captured by Chinese pirates. Five years later the proxy returns to the island only to find the
girl – a fat, disgusting and idiotic creature. Nevertheless, the gang-leader remembers the
man and kills him. The master dies at the same time with a smile on his face as he
experienced life as he never did before.

With R.J Robbins Under the N-ray (1925.5) (complete novelette of adventure, thrills and
reincarnation)– a doctor and his hydrophobic journalist lackey go the a séance. The séance is
conducted by a Russian psychic and her scientist friend who invented a machine that
produces N-rays – rays that highlight the inner thoughts of man and help him experience
previous life. The friend is selected by the medium and he is hypnotized as the machine
works its thing on him. The audience observe a screen that project his past lives. Through an
early English middle-ages' water-torture, a Roman escapade with Cleopatra in a deadly
water-filled pyramid, the sinking of Atlantis and being drowned by octopi-like creatures, a
prehistoric kidnapping of a girl and falling into a waterfall the medium refuses to let go of
the friend until she loses control and he reverts into an ape-like persona of pre-human life.
The place burns down with the mentally ape-man almost raping a girl on the scene. Later,
the deranged man falls into a river and dies. The psychic and her inventor friend are
nowhere to be found. The journalist's friend understands why his friend was hydrophobic as
he always dies from water in every incarnation.

Swamp Horror (1926.3)(story of giant leeches by the authors of under the N-Ray) – a city boy
comes home after finding out his father his missing. The family house is nest to a swamp and
the city boy hears a horrible wail one night. He travels to a nearby forest to find his dog,
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bleeding and misshapen. He loses consciousness and the next morning finds his dog in a bad
state. He manages to cure the dog and the two go further into the swamp (by the way the
first owner of the house also went missing many years ago). Eventually the city boy finds his
dad's body (with the bodies of many animals) when a horde of huge dog sized leeches start
to cover him as his dog runs away. He falls on one leech and his blood gushes out from it.
The lecches cover him and he almost dies when he manages to cut them with his father's
knife. He manages to run back to the house and leave the place and goes back to the blessed
city. The story reminds me of a scene in Peter Jackson's King Kong. Horror of insects and
disgusting creatures. Not necessarily supernatural. The rural areas of the U.S. become a
disgusting and dangerous place in these stories like many other in WT.

Other Earths (1927.11) (Professor Noone of Yaelton took his friend on a voyage through the
starry universe to seek the planet "ago") – a professor, considered a quack by the academy,
invites his old friend and student to see the universe through some apparatus he invented in
which a person can view every corner of the universe. After observing some high-tech
Martians the professor shows him an Earth that is exactly like ours only 30 years in the past.
The professor explains that this proves determinism. They later view another Earth only 10
years in the future (1937) where humans move by pneumatic tubes and create clouds. They
also find out the professor was taken to an insane asylum in 1929 and died soon after. The
narrator finds out he would become a successful writer.

William James Price

The Ghostly Lovers (1925.11) (Verse) – the speaker visits an old haunted mansion and sees
two high-society lovers climb the balustrade when a jealous lover kills them. The speaker's
vision ends and he observes two burial mounds outside the house.

Ballade of Phantom Ships (1927.1) (verse) – the speaker tells about adventurers looking to
get rich by going to sea. The crew is lost in a poisonous mist and find themselves in a place
filled with ghost ships. They also become ghosts. The speaker tries to convince the reader to
refuse going on a sea-adventure.

W.K Mashburn, Jr.

The Sword of Jean Lafitte (1927.12) (the shade of the old pirate returns to wreck vengeance
upon the last descendant of his enemy's family) – a man is interested in his grocer who is a
descendant of some 18th century French pirate. He then stops treating him nice because he
finds out he is only a descendant of the pirate's brother who married a mulatto. From then
on he treats the grocer like garbage because he is not fully white. He then goes to hunt
ducks at a place where the pirate once roamed. He meets the grocer but he acts strangely
and seems like a ghost. He tells him not to board some Mexican ship which belongs to a
descendant of the man who captured the pirate and executed him. The pirate cursed the
Mexican governor and his family. The governor dies soon after. The only thing that
prevented the curse of the pirate from killing the Mexican's family was the fact that the
pirate's sword was buried next to the Mexican governor. The angry narrator, he is angry that
a "not-quite-white" man speaks in such a domineering way, comes back home to find out
the grocer was bed-ridden the whole time due to some car-accident and that he probably
met someone else. He then decides to board the Mexican ship that belongs to the
governor's descendant who is also the narrator's friend. The friend validates the sword
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story. The two dream at night about a mob that digs the governor's grave and takes out the
sword. When they reach Mexico, the state is in turmoil due to some civil war and the friend
starts fighting an unseen fencer who eventually kills him. The rusty sword lies next to the
dead friend. The narrator tosses it from the ship.

The Garret of Madame Lemoyne (1928.1) (the black slave of Madame Lemoyne nursed a
hatred that not even death could kill – a ghost tale of New-Orleans) two couples visit a
haunted house turned local attraction. The shrewd wife of one couple insists on spending
the night in there. They are told the place was occupied by a popular, rich, French lady who
also hid some black slaves at her attic because she liked to torture them horrendously to
death. When she is discovered due to some fire the slaves manage to ignite she escapes the
U.S. One huge slave, whose tongue the lady removed, refuses to leave insinuating that he
will stay at this place for revenge. The legend tells that his spirit waits white women who
look like the lady. The wife dresses in a Mardi Gras party as a French lady and decides to
spend the night at the haunted house. Her husband wants to trick her and smear black paint
all-over himself to scare her. When the second couple arrive at the house to check on the
wife they find her body and her husband, with black paint all over him, above her. It is
unclear whether the black-man's spirit possessed the man or if his ghost killed the wife or if
the husband was too enthusiastic about the whole thing and choked his wife to death.

Tony the Faithful (1928.7) (An appealing little ghost-story of the South, in which a dog is the
hero) an old Southern planter is attacked by a black man who was once his servant and
whom he ordered to whip after he killed his dog. This servant was sent to jail for attacking
the man who whipped him (it is hard to understand if this story occurs before or after the
emancipation of slaves – was it legal to whip your servants at will after the civil war? Were
black slaves sent to prison for hitting their plantation owners?). As the black man escaped
from prison he goes to kill the plantation owner. The ghost of the owner attacks the assassin
and rips his throat. The Sheriff, deputy, old black servant, and plantation manager agree that
this is a god dog.

Sola (1930.4) (The story of a female Robot – a mechanical woman who was capable of fierce
jealousy) – a misogynistic man decides to build a female robot so that he can hit it whenever
he likes. He also makes it dumb. The robot is too beautiful and the man decides to make it
somewhat aware. He makes it sensitive to his thought so that it behaves exactly like him. He
invites his friend to see the robot and strips it naked. The shocked friends want to intervene
but are mesmerized by the robot's beauty. The man gets angry at the robot for being so
captivating and channeling all his hatred towards women he smashes the robot. The robot
manages to channel its own hatred back to the man and also kills him. One of the few stories
that are a bit more sophisticated than the general garbage of the magazine. Also note the
word "robot" – we are only 10 years after Karel Capek R.U.R and only 7 years after it got
translated.

Mammy, on Ghos'es (1930.8) (verse) – a black woman tells the son of her masters not to go
to a certain cemetery with evil spirits and ghosts. She tells him not to tell so to his mother
who probably doesn't believe in this superstition.

Willis Knapp Jones

Bright Eyes of Adventure (1925.3) (Hatred – quick poison – and New World Romance) –An
English geologist and his American friend who served together in WWI go to a desert in
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Saudi Arab in search of a legendary meteorite. The Bedouin who live in the desert see the
meteorite as holy and threaten to punish the explorers if they happen to dig it out. The
explorers use the help of the Sheikh's daughter and the Englishman entrusts the American
with going back to Aden and get the garrison noted if he never comes back. As he never
comes back the American goes back to Aden and returns with a regiment to avenge the
death of his friend by the Sheikh. As they reach the place they are haunted at night by a
white creature that maims and destroys their camp. The following night the half-crazed
American manages to kill the beast only finding out it is a white camel that has the
mummified bodies of his friend and the Sheikh's daughter strapped naked to its back with
wolves hunting the camel.

The Green Scarab (1925.8) (peculiar experience of a painter and an Egyptian mummy) –a
painter tells his Egyptologist friend about a painting he makes of an Egyptian princess. He
admits that the painting has no model and that dreams come to him as inspiration. The
painting is also self-completing as he does not remember adding things or even using certain
colors that miraculously appear on the painting while he is not there. One of the additions is
a green scarab necklace with Egyptian hieroglyphs which the painter did not remember to
put and was unable to put as he does not have these colors and know nothing about ancient
Egypt. The Egyptologist invites his friend to watch the uncovering of new mummies brought
to the museum. One of the mummies has striking resemblance to his princess. They find an
identical scarab on her neck. As the painter later stands next to the mummy he has a vision
in which the mummy comes to life, looking like a living queen with all her queenly regalia.
Another mummy comes from one of the coffins and one that looks exactly like the painter.
The queen signals the other living mummy, who is apparently also a painter, that she does
not like the painting. The non-mummy painter tries to stop him destroying the painting but
the queen magically stops his heart. He wakes up after 30 minutes to find, from his friend,
that the mummy was brought at the exact date he started his paintings and that the painting
is now completely blank aside from the green scarab.

The Fading Ghost (1925.10) (the suicide's specter explains his demise to the doctor) (a droll
little tale) – a man goes to the doctor and tells him he committed suicide over a lost love.
The reason he went to the doctor is because the latter wrote a hackneyed book about
ghosts. He tells how he heard the bang of the shot and saw his body lying on the floor. The
doctor asks him where he left the body. After returning the doctor asks him why his tie is red
while the body's tie is black. The man panics and tells him he lives with his twin brother and
they both wear the same clothes. He accidently killed his brother.

The Beast of the Yungas (1927.9) (a tale of fear, and a gigantic prehistoric beast that came
snuffing through the darkness) – a man goes to a cocktail party and tells about his
experience in South America where he was really afraid. He tells about an eccentric man
with a lot of wounds and platina in his skull who comes with him to explore the sightings of
some dinosaur like monster. As they reach the place all their local helpers abandon them.
One of the girls asks the man about the eccentric and it is revealed he was her long-thought-
dead lover who disappeared in the war as an aviator. The man tells them he died from fever
but later tells the true story to her father. The man died from fear as he witnessed
something at night which was probably a herbivore dinosaur.

The Man Who Remembered (1928.7) (A tale of the Incas, and the Peruvian jungles, and the
wrath of the Sun-god) – an archeologist is hit on the head in an expedition to uncover a
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hidden city in Peru. He becomes deranged and believe himself an Inca lord who lived 500
years ago. He speak the Inca language fluently. He claims that the city is found deeper in the
jungle and there he sadly goes to sleep when he sees the city is long-gone. When he awakes
he is the old archeologist again and his party believe him to experience some hereditary
memory his ancestor had (he is an American with Spanish origins who maybe had some
contact with the Incas). He tells the group about a dream he had in which he was an Inca
lord who escaped from Cusco with some rebels and his wife. He makes a gold ring with a star
for his wife before their son is born. They build a city but after some tensions he was
betrayed and left for dead when a volcano erupts. The group dig the site and find an Inca
city preserved due to the lava covering it. They find in the ruins a golden ring with a star on
it.

W.J. Stamper

(the guy has some issues with Haiti and other Caribbean islands)

Lips of the Dead (1925.6) (a gruesome tale from the history of Haiti) – A story about the end
of the reign of a cruel dictator of Haiti, and his general, who force their senate to tax the
impoverished population. They torture and behead a venerable, meek and patriotic member
of the senate and when his head touches the floor his lips say that tomorrow it will end. The
two order their militia to shoot at the throng outside as they throw the head of the senate
member unto them. They proceed killing the rest of the jailed members-of-senate with
bayonets. Nevertheless, the mob catches up with them the day after. They shoot the general
many times and then proceed to torture the dictator by tying him to a moving cartwheel,
crucifying his arms and legs with nails and chopping his. When his head touches the ground,
it says "tomorrow… tomorrow".

Fiddle Basin (1925.7) (a gruesome tale of the black republic) – An evil general tells a local
captain to force-march hundreds of civilians who are supportive of a rebel general. The
lieutenant of the captain is eager to get promoted and asks his captain when he decides to
follow the order. The captain goes to prison and sees (it is unclear why he only sees it now)
the horrible state of the starved and sick prisoners. One of the prisoners dies from a horrible
disease. The captain deserts to the rebel general telling the enthusiastic lieutenant he will
never be captain (again, it is unclear why he does not free the prisoners himself). The
lieutenant leads the prisoners to their death in a forced march without food for several days.
The remaining citizens rebel against the lieutenant and bind him to the dead body of the sick
man in the empty prison. They also leave the town to join the forces of the rebel general.
Some time later the captain and the rebel general pass through the deserted townand enter
the prison where they find both bodies decomposing into one another. The captain tells the
general he told the lieutenant he will never be a captain.

The Vulture of Pignon (1925.8) (tale of voodoo and the drunken fury of a caco chief) – Two
Haitian generals fight for supremacy. One of the generals is in a dire state – surrounded and
with the bulk of his forces having malaria. He sends an officer with two bodyguards to call
for help. The riders are black so they are lazy and stupid and so they are caught napping
while the soldiers of the rival general capture them and behead one of them. The cruel
general calls his voodoo priest to gather a party. As the night falls the captives are tortured
and the soldiers drink themselves to oblivion. One soldier, who knows the captive officer,
begs the general to kill him instead of torturing him to death. The general is so enraged he
chops the man in half. The voodoo priest takes a burning brand and burns the victims'
 173

intestines to a slow death as he gathers their blood for his voodoo ceremony. The general
sends a letter to the rival general with the head of the officer in his mouth telling him about
his coming demise.

Jean Beauce (1925.9) (Haitian dictator metes out a gruesome punishment) – an American
visits Haiti and talks with the proprietor of a bar called "The Same Thing" he asks him about
it and the man tells his beautiful black daughter to give them wine as he tells him the story.
The black proprietor tells him about his life as the bastard son of a French captain and a
black woman. His father disowns him in mockery and his mother dies soon after. After many
years of hard labor in rags the man becomes rich as a coffee magnate. Then, a rebel, white
general, takes control of the city after the coffee-man was forced to pay for the weapons of
the previous dictator. The general chops the hand of the man for helping the former dictator
and the hand is placed in a box on which the words "the same thing" is written. The next day
the soldiers are sent to kill him and his family and they burn all his fortunes. After six months
he returns to the city in the hopes the general's anger cooled. His daughter is born on the
day he returns. The proprietor calls his daughter and the American sees she is missing a
hand.

The Consul's Bones (1925.12) (Ghost story of the eruption of Mont Peleos) – a retired sea-
officer approaches the narrator, also a sea-officer who served in Haiti, and tells him about
his time in Martinique. When a volcano erupts in a big island nearby his captain tells him and
several men under his command to retrieve the bones of the American consul there. They go
to the ash-filled island and only see hundreds of charred bodies of black and white people.
They fail to find the consulate as everything is destroyed. The ash almost chokes them to
death and the officer decides to take random bones so that they will not die in this island
searching for an unidentifiable body. An earthquake shatters the island and they fail to find
their boat and their two crew mates who were waiting for them. The big ship has also
escaped from the earthquake and ash-clouds. As they are stranded they hear church-bells
and see a procession of ghostly white-gentlemen and women in a white carriage vanish into
sea. (aside from the ghosts at the end, an addition that seems ridiculous, it is a powerful
story)

Ti Michel (1926.6) (tragic tale of the dark days of the black republic, before the Americans
came to Haiti) – an American is always curious about the eccentric behavior of a black
bartender who sells him rum. The man always says he is a good man and refuses to give him
an apparently better quality rum from a certain barrel filled with cobwebs which he sells
only to the government's lieutenants. When the man gets sick and lying at his death-bed he
tells the man his story. The man was a fisherman who married and had a daughter but got
sick and had to sell his boat and open a liquor store. When his wife died his situation became
even worse and his daughter was the only thing in his life. One night he found an officer
almost raping his daughter and assaulting her. He kills the man with a hammer but fails to
save his daughter. He knows the government will hang him for this (before the Americans
came there was no justice) so he buries the daughter at the chicken coop. He tells the
government official that he does not find his daughter and the latter, believing him a rebel
sympathizer, tells him his daughter probably ran away with his traitor officer who is missing
for some days laughing at him and thrashing him. The black man dies and the narrator is
curious to find what is the deal with the other casket of rum. He opens the moss filled casket
to find the preserved body of the murdered officer.
174

H. Greatraikes & )1
A. Irvine )2
A. Irvine )3
L. Smith )4
Leslie )5
Leslie )6
Leslie )7
Leslie )8
Leslie )9
Leslie )10
Leslie )11
Leslie )12
Leslie )13
Leslie )14
Leslie )15
Leslie )16
Leslie )17
Leslie )18
Leslie )19
Leslie )20
Leslie )21
Leslie )22
Merrit )23
W. Wyville )24
A.W. Kapfer )25
Adam Hull Shirk )26
Adam Hull Shirk )27
Adolphe de Castro )28
Adolphe de Castro )29
Adrian Pordelorrar )30
Alanson Skinner )31
Alanson Skinner )32
Albert Seymour Graham )33
Alexander Pushkin (reprint) )34
Alexander Snyder )35
Alice I. Fuller )36
Alicia Ramsey )37
Alphonse Daudet )38
175

Alston Lovejoy )39

Alvin F. Harlow )40
Alvin F. Harlow )41
Alvin F. Harlow )42
Alvin F. Harlow )43
Alvin F. Harlow )44
Alvin F. Harlow )45
Alvin F. Harlow )46
Alvin F. Harlow )47
Alvin F. Harlow )48
Alvin F. Harlow )49
Alvin F. Harlow )50
Alvin F. Harlow )51
Alvin F. Harlow )52
Alvin F. Harlow )53
Alvin F. Harlow )54
Alvin F. Harlow )55
Alvin F. Harlow )56
Alvin F. Harlow )57
Alvin F. Harlow )58
Alvin F. Harlow )59
Alvin F. Harlow )60
Alvin F. Harlow )61
Alvin F. Harlow )62
Alvin F. Harlow )63
Alvin F. Harlow )64
Alvin F. Harlow )65
Amelia Reynolds Long )66
Amelia Reynolds Long )67
Amelia Reynolds Long )68
Anne M. Bilbro )69
Anthony D. Keogh )70
Archie Binns )71
Arlton Eadie )72
Arlton Eadie )73
Arlton Eadie )74
Arlton Eadie )75
Arlton Eadie )76
Arlton Eadie )77
Arlton Eadie )78
Arlton Eadie )79
Arlton Eadie )80
Arlton Eadie )81
Arlton Eadie )82
Arlton Eadie )83
Armstrong Livingston )84
Arthur Edwards Chapman )85
Arthur J. Burks )86
176

Arthur J. Burks )87

Arthur J. Burks )88
Arthur J. Burks )89
Arthur J. Burks )90
Arthur J. Burks )91
Arthur J. Burks )92
Arthur J. Burks )93
Arthur J. Burks )94
Arthur J. Burks )95
Arthur J. Burks )96
Arthur J. Burks )97
Arthur J. Burks )98
Arthur J. Burks )99
Arthur J. Burks )100
Arthur J. Burks )101
Arthur J. Burks )102
Arthur J. Burks )103
Arthur J. Burks )104
Arthur Leeds )105
Arthur Machen (reprint) )106
Arthur Macom )107
Arthur S. Garbett )108
Arthur Styron )109
Arthur Styron )110
Arthur Thatcher )111
Arthur Thatcher )112
Arthur Thatcher )113
Arthur Thatcher )114
Arthur Thatcher )115
Arthur Thatcher )116
Arthur Thatcher )117
Arthur Thatcher )118
Arthur W. Davenport )119
Arthur W. Davenport )120
August W. Derleth )121
August W. Derleth )122
August W. Derleth )123
August W. Derleth )124
August W. Derleth )125
August W. Derleth )126
August W. Derleth )127
August W. Derleth )128
August W. Derleth )129
August W. Derleth )130
August W. Derleth )131
August W. Derleth )132
August W. Derleth )133
August W. Derleth )134
177

August W. Derleth )135

August W. Derleth )136
August W. Derleth )137
August W. Derleth )138
August W. Derleth )139
August W. Derleth )140
August W. Derleth )141
August W. Derleth )142
August W. Derleth )143
August W. Derleth )144
August W. Derleth )145
August W. Derleth )146
August W. Derleth & Carl W. Ganzlin )147
August W. Derleth & Marc R. Schorer )148
Wallis )149
Wallis )150
Wallis )151
Wallis )152
B.W. Sliney )153
B.W. Sliney )154
B.Wallis )155
Barry Scobee )156
Bassett Morgan )157
Bassett Morgan )158
Bassett Morgan )159
Bassett Morgan )160
Bassett Morgan )161
Bassett Morgan )162
Bassett Morgan )163
Bassett Morgan )164
Bernard Austin Dwyer )165
Bertram Russell )166
Bertram Russell )167
Bertram Russell )168
Bertram Russell )169
Bertrande Harry Snell )170
Bertrande Harry Snell )171
Bertrande Harry Snell )172
Bill Crosby )173
Binny Koras )174
Bram Stoker (reprint) )175
Bram Stoker (reprint) )176
Bryan Irvine )177
Ed Rowley )178
Franklin Miller )179
Franklin Miller )180
Franklin Miller )181
Henry )182
178

I. Martin )183
Noir )184
T. Lanham )185
C.Franklin Miller )186
.C.M. Eddy Jr )187
.C.M. Eddy Jr )188
.C.M. Eddy, Jr )189
.C.M. Eddy, Jr )190
Capwell Wyckoff )191
Capwell Wyckoff )192
Cargray Cook )193
Carl F. Keppler )194
Carlos G. Stratton )195
Carlton Eadie )196
Carroll K. Michener )197
Charles Baudelaire (reprint) )198
Charles Christopher Jenkins )199
Charles Dickens (reprint) )200
Charles Dickens (reprint) )201
Charles Dickens (reprint) )202
Charles Ford )203
Charles Fredrick )204
Charles Fredrick Stansbury )205
Charles G. Booth )206
Charles Henry Mackintosh )207
Charles Henry Mackintosh )208
Charles Hilan Craig )209
Charles Hilan Craig )210
Charles Hilan Craig )211
Charles Hilan Craig )212
Charles Hilan Craig )213
Charles Hilan Craig )214
Charles Hilan Craig )215
Charles Kingsley )216
Charlton Lawrence Edholm )217
Charlton Lawrence Edholm )218
Chester L. Saxby )219
Clare Winger Harris )220
Clare Winger Harris )221
Clark Ashton Smith )222
Clark Ashton Smith )223
Clark Ashton Smith )224
Clark Ashton Smith )225
Clark Ashton Smith )226
Clark Ashton Smith )227
Clark Ashton Smith )228
Clark Ashton Smith )229
Clark Ashton Smith )230
179

Clark Ashton Smith )231

Clark Ashton Smith )232
Clark Ashton Smith )233
Clark Ashton Smith )234
Clark Ashton Smith )235
Clark Ashton Smith )236
Clyde Burt Clason )237
Clyde Criswell )238
Cristel Hastings )239
Cristel Hastings )240
Cristel Hastings )241
Cristel Hastings )242
Cristel Hastings )243
Cristel Hastings )244
Cristel Hastings )245
Cristel Hastings )246
Cristel Hastings )247
D. Sharp )248
Daniel Defoe (reprint) )249
David Baxter )250
David Baxter )251
David H. Keller )252
David H. Keller )253
David H. Keller )254
David H. Keller )255
David H. Keller )256
David H. Keller )257
David H. Keller )258
David H. Keller )259
Denis Francis Hannigan )260
Dick Heine )261
Dick Heine )262
Dick Heine )263
Dick Heine )264
Don Robert Catlin )265
Don Robert Catlin )266
Don Robert Catlin )267
Don Robert Catlin )268
Don Willis )269
Donald E. Keyhoe )270
Donald Edward Keyhoe )271
Donald Edward Keyhoe )272
Donald Edward Keyhoe )273
Donald Wandrei )274
Donald Wandrei )275
Donald Wandrei )276
Donald Wandrei )277
Donald Wandrei )278
180

Donald Wandrei )279

Donald Wandrei )280
Donald Wandrei )281
Donald Wandrei )282
Donald Wandrei )283
Donald Wandrei )284
Donald Wandrei )285
Donald Wandrei )286
Donald Wandrei )287
Donald Wandrei )288
Donald Wandrei )289
Donald Wandrei )290
Dorothy Marie Peterkin )291
Douglas Oliver )292
Drury D. Sharp )293
F. Benson )294
F. Benson )295
F. Benson )296
F. Benson )297
F. Benson )298
F. Benson )299
Hoffman Price )300
E. Hoffman Price )301
E. Hoffman Price )302
E. Hoffman Price )303
E. Hoffman Price )304
E. Hoffman Price )305
E. Hoffman Price )306
E. Hoffman Price )307
E. Hoffman Price )308
E. Hoffman Price )309
E. Hoffmann Price )310
E. Hoffmann Price )311
E. Hoffmann Price )312
E. Hoffmann Price )313
E. Hoffmann Price (reprint) )314
E. Irvine Haines )315
E. M. Hill )316
E. Phillips Oppenheim )317
E. R. Punshon )318
E. W. Mayo )319
E.E. Speight )320
Earl Leaston Bell )321
Earl W. & Marion Scott )322
Earl W. Scott )323
Edgar Allan Poe (reprint) )324
Edgar Allan Poe (reprint) )325
Edgar Allan Poe (reprint) )326
181

Edgar Allan Poe (reprint) )327

Edgar Allan Poe (reprint) )328
Edgar Gardiner )329
Edgar Gardiner )330
Edgar Gardiner )331
Edgar White )332
Edith Hurley )333
Edith Hurley )334
Edith Lyle Ragsdale )335
Edith Lyle Ragsdale )336
Edith M. Almedingen )337
Edmond Hamilton )338
Edmond Hamilton )339
Edmond Hamilton )340
Edmond Hamilton )341
Edmond Hamilton )342
Edmond Hamilton )343
Edmond Hamilton )344
Edmond Hamilton )345
Edmond Hamilton )346
Edmond Hamilton )347
Edmond Hamilton )348
Edmond Hamilton )349
Edmond Hamilton )350
Edmond Hamilton )351
Edmond Hamilton )352
Edmond Hamilton )353
Edmond Hamilton )354
Edmond Hamilton )355
Edmond Hamilton )356
Edmond Hamilton )357
Edmond Hamilton )358
Edmond Hamilton )359
Edmond Hamilton )360
Edmond Hamilton )361
Edmond Hamilton )362
Edmond Hamilton )363
Edmond Hamilton )364
Edmond Hamilton )365
Edmond Hamilton )366
Edmonmd Hamilton )367
Edmund Clarence Stedman )368
Edna Bell Seward )369
Edward E. Schiff )370
Edward Hades )371
Edward Lucas White )372
Edward Podolsky )373
Edward Podolsky )374
182

Edwin L. Sabin )375

Eldridge Morton )376
Eli Colter )377
Eli Colter )378
Eli Colter )379
Eli Colter )380
Eli Colter )381
Eli Colter )382
Eli Colter )383
Eli Colter )384
Eli Colter )385
Eli Colter )386
Eli Colter )387
Eli Colter )388
Eli Colter )389
Eli Colter )390
Eli Colter )391
Eli Colter )392
Eli Colter )393
Elizabeth AdtWenzler )394
Ellen M. Ramsay )395
Elliot O'Donnell )396
Elliot O'Donnell )397
Elsie Ellis )398
Elwin J. Owens )399
Elwin J. Owens )400
Elwin J. Owens )401
Elwin J. Owens )402
Elwood F. Pierce )403
Emma-Lindsay Squier )404
Ernest Dowson )405
Ernest Dowson )406
EsilCritchie )407
EstilCrtichie )408
Eudora Ramsay Richardson )409
Eugene C. Dolson )410
Eugene C. Dolson )411
Eugene Clement d'Art )412
Everett Boston )413
Everil Worrell )414
Everil Worrell )415
Everil Worrell )416
Everil Worrell )417
Everil Worrell )418
Everil Worrell )419
Everil Worrell )420
Everil Worrell )421
Everil Worrell )422
183

Everil Worrell )423

Everil Worrell )424
Douglas McHenry )425
Marion Crawford (reprint) )426
Williams Sarles )427
Williams Sarles )428
F. Williams Sarles )429
Feodor Sologub (Reprint) )430
Fiswoode Tarleton )431
Fits-James O'Brien (Reprint) )432
Fitz-James O'Brien (reprint) )433
Fitz-James O'Brien (reprint) )434
Fitz-James O'Brien (reprint) )435
Flavia Richardson )436
Flavia Richardson )437
Fletcher R. Milton )438
Frances Arthur )439
Francis Flagg )440
Francis Flagg )441
Francis Hard )442
Francis Hard )443
Francis Hard )444
Francis Hard )445
Francis Hard )446
Frank A. Mochant )447
Frank A. Mochant )448
Frank A. Mochant )449
Frank Belarusse Long, Jr )450
Frank Belknap Long )451
Frank Belknap Long )452
Frank Belknap Long )453
Frank Belknap Long )454
Frank Belknap Long )455
Frank Belknap Long )456
Frank Belknap Long )457
Frank Belknap Long )458
Frank Belknap Long )459
Frank Belknap Long )460
.Frank Belknap Long Jr )461
.Frank Belknap Long Jr )462
.Frank Belknap Long Jr )463
.Frank Belknap Long Jr )464
.Frank Belknap Long Jr )465
Frank Belknap Long, Jr )466
Frank Belknap Long, Jr )467
Frank Belknap Long, Jr )468
Frank Belknap Long, Jr )469
.Frank Belknap Long, Jr )470
184

.Frank Belknap Lonk Jr )471

Frank E. Walker )472
Frank K.Shaw )473
Frank Owen )474
Frank Owen )475
Frank Owen )476
Frank Owen )477
Frank Owen )478
Frank Owen )479
Frank Owen )480
Frank Owen )481
Frank Owen )482
Frank Owen )483
Frank Owen )484
Frank Owen )485
Frank Owen (reprint) )486
Frank R. Stockton )487
Fred R. Farrow, Jr )488
Fred R. Farrow, Jr )489
Appleby Terrill )490
Appleby Terrill )491
Frederick Montefiore )492
G. Pendarves )493
G. G. Pendarves )494
G. G. Pendarves )495
G. G. Pendarves )496
G. G. Pendarves )497
G. G. Pendarves )498
G. G. Pendarves )499
G.G. Pendarves )500
G.W.J Blume )501
Galen C. Colin )502
Galen G. Colin )503
Gaston Leroux )504
Gaston Leroux )505
Gaston Leroux )506
Gaston Leroux )507
Genevieve Larsson )508
George Allard Bowers )509
George B. Tuttle )510
George Ballard Bowers )511
George Ballard Bowers )512
George Ballard Bowers )513
George C. Wallis & B. Wallis )514
George C. Wallis & B. Wallis )515
George C. Wallis & B. Wallis )516
George C. Wallis & B. Wallis )517
George Fielding Eliot )518
185

George Fielding Eliot )519

George Malcolm-Smith )520
George Norsworthy )521
George Sterling )522
George T. Spillman )523
George W. Bayly (reprint) )524
Gerald Dean )525
Gertrude Macaulay Sutton )526
Gertrude Wright )527
Gertrude Wright )528
Gordon Philip England )529
Gordon Philip England )530
Gordon Philip England )531
Gordon Philip England )532
Gordon Phillip England )533
Gordon Philp England )534
Grace M. Campbell )535
Granville S. Hoss )536
Granville S. Hoss )537
Granville S. Hoss )538
Greye La Spina )539
Greye La Spina )540
Greye La Spina )541
Greye La Spina )542
Greye La Spina )543
Greye La Spina )544
Greye La Spina )545
Greye La Spina )546
Greye La Spina )547
Greye La Spina )548
Greye La Spina )549
Greye La Spina )550
Greye La Spina )551
Greye La Spina )552
Greye La Spina )553
Greye La Spina )554
Grover Brinkman )555
Gustave Flaubert (reprint) )556
Guy de Maupassant (reprint) )557
Guy de Maupassant (reprint) )558
Guy Pain )559
Guy Pain )560
de Vere Stacpoole )561
F. Arnold )562
F. Arnold )563
F. Jamison )564
H. F. Scotten )565
H. F. Scotten )566
186

H. P. Lovecraft )567
H. P. Lovecraft )568
H. P. Lovecraft )569
H. P. Lovecraft )570
H. P. Lovecraft )571
H. P. Lovecraft )572
H. P. Lovecraft )573
H. P. Lovecraft )574
H. P. Lovecraft )575
H. P. Lovecraft )576
H. P. Lovecraft )577
H. P. Lovecraft (reprint) )578
H. P. Lovecraft (reprint) )579
H. Thompson Rich )580
H. Thompson Rich )581
H. Thompson Rich )582
H. Thompson Rich )583
H. Thompson Rich )584
H. Thompson Rich )585
H. Thompson Rich )586
H. Warner Munn )587
H. Warner Munn )588
H. Warner Munn )589
H. Warner Munn )590
H. Warner Munn )591
H. Warner Munn )592
H. Warner Munn )593
H.B. Marryat )594
H.F. Arnold )595
H.G. Wells )596
H.G. Wells )597
H.G. Wells )598
H.L. Maxson )599
H.P. Lovecraft )600
H.P. Lovecraft )601
H.P. Lovecraft )602
H.P. Lovecraft )603
H.P. Lovecraft )604
H.P. Lovecraft )605
H.P. Lovecraft )606
H.P. Lovecraft )607
H.P. Lovecraft )608
H.P. Lovecraft )609
H.P. Lovecraft )610
H.P. Lovecraft )611
H.P. Lovecraft )612
H.Thompson Rich )613
Hal K. Wells )614
187

Hal K. Wells )615

Hamilton Craigie )616
Hanna Baird Campbell )617
Hanna Baird Campbell )618
Harold E. Somerville )619
Harold Markham )620
Harold Markham )621
Harold Simpson )622
Harry Bailey )623
Harry Harrison Kroll )624
Harry Harrison Kroll )625
Harry Harrison Kroll )626
Harry Noyes Pratt )627
Harvey W. Flink )628
Harvey W. Flink )629
Hasan Vokine )630
Hasan Volkine )631
Hassan Volkine& Henri De Crouet )632
Helen Liello )633
Henry S. Whitehead )634
Henry S. Whitehead )635
Henry S. Whitehead )636
Henry S. WhiteheaD )637
Henry S. Whitehead )638
Henry S. Whitehead )639
Henry S. Whitehead )640
Henry S. Whitehead )641
Henry S. Whitehead )642
Henry S. Whitehead )643
Henry S. Whitehead )644
Henry S. Whitehead )645
Henry S. Whitehead )646
Henry S. Whitehead )647
Henry S. Whitehead )648
Henry S. Whitehead )649
Henry S. Whitehead )650
Henry W. Whitehall )651
HeorgeWaight )652
Herman F. Wright )653
Howard Elsmere Fuller )654
Howard R. Marsh )655
Howard R. Marsh )656
Hugh Irish )657
Hurley Von Ruck )658
Irvin Mattick )659
Irvin Mattick )660
Ivan Turgenieff (REPRINT) )661
Joseph-Renaud )662
188

Paul Suter )663

Schlossel )664
Schlossel )665
Schlossel )666
Schlossel )667
J.B. Powell )668
J.M. Alvey )669
J.M. Hiatt )670
J.M. Hiatt &Moye W. Stephens )671
J.U. Giesy )672
J.U. Giesy )673
J.U. Giesy )674
J.W. Bennett & K.L. Soong )675
Jack Bradley )676
Jack Snow )677
Jack Snow )678
Jack Woodford )679
James B. M. Clark, Jr )680
James C. Bardin )681
James C. Bardin )682
James Cocks )683
James Cocks )684
Jan Dirk )685
Jan Dirk )686
Jean Lahors )687
Jean Lahors )688
Jeremy Ellis )689
Jewell Bothwell Tull )690
Joel Martin Nichols )691
.Joel Martin Nichols Jr )692
.Joel Martin Nichols Jr )693
.Joel Martin Nichols Jr )694
.Joel Martin Nichols Jr )695
Joel Martin Nichols, Jr )696
Joel Martin Nichols, Jr )697
.Joel Martin Nichols, Jr )698
.Joel Martin Nichols, Jr )699
John D. Swain )700
John Dwight )701
John Dwight )702
John H. Green )703
John Horne )704
John Impola )705
.John Lee Mahin Jr )706
John Martin Leahy )707
John Martin Leahy )708
John Martin Leahy )709
John Martin Leahy )710
189

John Martin Leahy )711

John Martin Leahy )712
John Martin Leahy )713
John Martin Leahy )714
John Martin Leahy )715
John Murray Reynolds )716
John Murray Reynolds )717
Joseph McCord )718
Joseph Upper )719
Josie McNamara Lydon )720
Junius B. Smith )721
Katherine Yates )722
Kelsey Percival Kitchel )723
Kirk Meadowcroft )724
L.A Borah )725
L.A Borah )726
Lady Anne Bonny )727
Lady Anne Bonny )728
Lady Anne Bonny )729
Laurence D'Orsay )730
Laurence R. D'Orsay )731
Leavenworth Macnab )732
Leavenworth Macnab )733
Leavenworth Macnab )734
Leavenworth Macnab )735
Leavenworth Macnab )736
Lenore E. Chaney )737
Leonid Andreyeff (REPRINT) )738
Leroy Ernest Fess )739
Leslie N. Johnson )740
Lida Wilson Turner )741
Lilla Poole Price )742
Lilla Price Savino )743
Lois Lane )744
Lon Dexter )745
Lon Dexter )746
Lon Dexter )747
Louis B. Capron )748
Louis Sarno )749
Louise Garwood )750
Louise Garwood )751
Louise Garwood )752
Louise Garwood )753
Louise Van De Verg )754
J. Cain )755
Malcolm Ford Henry )756
Manly Wade Wellman )757
Manly Wade Wellman )758
190

Marc R. Schorer& August Derleth )759

Marc R. Schorer& August W. Derlet )760
Marc R. Schorer& August W. Derleth )761
Marc R. Schorer& August W. Derleth )762
Marc R. Schorer& August W. Derleth )763
Margaret McBride Hoss )764
Maria Moravsky )765
Maria Moravsky )766
Marietta Hawley )767
Marion Heidt Mimms )768
Marvin Luter Hill )769
Mary McEnnery Erhard )770
Mary Sharon )771
Maud E. Uschold )772
Maurice Rothman )773
Mayo Reiss )774
Michael V. Simko )775
Miles J. Breuer, M.D )776
Minnie Faegre Knox )777
Monroe D. McGibeny )778
Mortimer Levitan )779
Mrs. Edgar Saltus )780
Mrs. Elizabeth C. Gaskell (reprint) )781
Murray Leinster )782
Murray Leinster )783
Murray Leinster )784
Murray Leinster )785
Murray Leinster )786
J. O'Neail )787
J. O'Neail )788
L. Brewer )789
N. R. McFarland )790
N.E. Hammerstrom& R.F. Searight )791
Nathaniel Hawthorne (reprint) )792
Nathaniel Hawthorne (REPRINT) )793
Nathaniel Hawthorne (reprint) )794
Nathaniel Hawthorne (reprint) )795
Nathaniel Hawthorne Reprint )796
Nellie CraveyGillmore )797
NictzinDyalhis )798
NictzinDyalhis )799
NictzinDyalhis )800
NictzinDyalhis )801
NictzinDyalhis (reprint) )802
Henry Reprint )803
Orlin Frederick )804
Oscar Cook )805
Oscar Cook )806
191

Oscar Cook )807

Oscar Cook )808
Oscar Schisgall )809
Oscar Wilde (Reprint) )810
Otis Adelbert Kline )811
Otis Adelbert Kline )812
Otis Adelbert Kline )813
Otis Adelbert Kline )814
Otis Adelbert Kline )815
Otis Adelbert Kline )816
Otis Adelbert Kline )817
Otis Adelbert Kline & E. Hoffmann Price )818
Otto E. A. Schmidt )819
Otto E.A. Schmidt )820
Paul Benton )821
Paul Ernst )822
Paul Ernst )823
Paul Ernst )824
Paul Ernst )825
Paul Ernst )826
Paul Ernst )827
Paul Ernst )828
Paul Ernst )829
Paul Ernst )830
Paul Francis Sutton )831
Paul S. Powers )832
Paul S. Powers )833
Paul S. Powers )834
Paul S. Powers )835
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (reprint) )836
Pedro Diaz )837
Percy B. Prior )838
Percy B. Prior )839
Percy B. Prior )840
Peterson Marzoni )841
PettersonMarzoni )842
Anthony )843
Anthony )844
Anthony )845
R. Anthony )846
R. C. Sandison )847
R. E. Dupuy )848
R. Jere Black, Jr )849
R. Jere Black, Jr )850
R. Jere Black, Jr )851
R.E Lewis & Martha M. Cockrill )852
R.G. Macready )853
Rachael Marshall & Maverick Terrell )854
192

Ralph Milne Farley )855

Ralph Parker Anderson )856
Ramon de las Cueavs )857
Raoul Lenoir )858
Ray Cummings )859
Ray Cummings )860
Ray Cummings )861
Ray Cummings )862
Ray Cummings )863
Richard Harris Barham (reprint) )864
Richard Marsh )865
Robert Allways )866
Robert Choate Albright )867
Robert E. Howard )868
Robert E. Howard )869
Robert E. Howard )870
Robert E. Howard )871
Robert E. Howard )872
Robert E. Howard )873
Robert E. Howard )874
Robert E. Howard )875
Robert E. Howard )876
Robert E. Howard )877
Robert E. Howard )878
Robert E. Howard )879
Robert E. Howard )880
Robert E. Howard )881
Robert E. Howard )882
Robert E. Howard )883
Robert E. Howard )884
Robert E. Howard )885
Robert E. Howard )886
Robert E. Howard )887
Robert E. Howard )888
Robert E. Howard )889
Robert E. Howard )890
Robert E. Howard )891
Robert E. Howard )892
Robert E. Howard )893
Robert E. Howard )894
Robert E. Howard )895
Robert E. Howard )896
Robert E. Howard )897
Robert E. Howard )898
Robert E. Howard )899
Robert E. Howard )900
Robert E. Howard )901
Robert Eugene Ulmer )902
193

Robert Eugene Ulmer )903

Robert G. Bowie & Robinson H. Harsh )904
Robert Lee Heiser )905
Robert Lee Heiser )906
Robert Lee Heiser )907
Robert Lee Heiser )908
Robert Lee Heiser )909
Robert Louis Stevenson (REPRINT) )910
Robert Peery )911
Robert Peery )912
Robert S. Carr )913
Robert S. Carr )914
Robert S. Carr )915
Robert S. Carr )916
Robert S. Carr )917
Robert S. Carr )918
Robert S. Carr )919
Robert S. Carr )920
Robert S. Carr )921
Robert S.Carr )922
Robert T. Griebling )923
Robert W. Chambers (reprint) )924
Robert Watson )925
Romeo Poole )926
Romeo Poole )927
Romeo Poole )928
Roscoe Gilmore Stott )929
Roy Wallace Davis )930
Royal W. Jimerson )931
Rufus W. Landon )932
Fowler Wright )933
S. Fowler Wright )934
Samuel M. Sargent )935
.Samuel M. Sargent Jr )936
.Samuel M. Sargent Jr )937
Samuel M. Sargent, Jr )938
Sarah Henderson Hay )939
Sarah Newmeyer )940
Sax Rohmer (reprint) )941
Seabury Quinn )942
Seabury Quinn )943
Seabury Quinn )944
Seabury Quinn )945
Seabury Quinn )946
Seabury Quinn )947
Seabury Quinn )948
Seabury Quinn )949
Seabury Quinn )950
194

Seabury Quinn )951

Seabury Quinn )952
Seabury Quinn )953
Seabury Quinn )954
Seabury Quinn )955
Seabury Quinn )956
Seabury Quinn )957
Seabury Quinn )958
Seabury Quinn )959
Seabury Quinn )960
Seabury Quinn )961
Seabury Quinn )962
Seabury Quinn )963
Seabury Quinn )964
Seabury Quinn )965
Seabury Quinn )966
Seabury Quinn )967
Seabury Quinn )968
Seabury Quinn )969
Seabury Quinn )970
Seabury Quinn )971
Seabury Quinn )972
Seabury Quinn )973
Seabury Quinn )974
Seabury Quinn )975
Seabury Quinn )976
Seabury Quinn )977
Seabury Quinn )978
Seabury Quinn )979
Seabury Quinn )980
Seabury Quinn )981
Seabury Quinn )982
Seabury Quinn )983
Seabury Quinn )984
Seabury Quinn )985
Seabury Quinn )986
Seabury Quinn )987
Seabury Quinn )988
Seabury Quinn )989
Seabury Quinn (reprint) )990
Seabury Quinn (reprint) )991
Sewell Peaslee Wright )992
Sewell Peaslee Wright )993
Sewell Peaslee Wright )994
Sewell Peaslee Wright )995
Sewell Peaslee Wright )996
Sidney Lanier )997
Sidney Lanier )998
195

Signe Toksvig )999

Sir Walter Scott (reprint) )1000
Sophie Wenzel Ellis )1001
Stanley S. Schnetzler )1002
Stella Wynne )1003
Stephen Bagby )1004
Stephen Bagby )1005
Stephen Bagby )1006
Stephen Bagby )1007
Stewart Van der Veer )1008
Strickland Gillilan )1009
Strickland Gillilan )1010
Strickland Gillilman )1011
Stuart Strauss )1012
Stuart Strauss )1013
Susan Andrew Rice )1014
Talbert Josselyn )1015
Terva Gaston Hubbard )1016
Tessida Swingers )1017
Theda Kenyon )1018
Thelma E. Johnson )1019
Theodore Roscoe )1020
Theodore Roscoe )1021
Theophile Gautier (reprint) )1022
Théophile Gautier (reprint) )1023
Thomas B. Sherman )1024
Thomas de V. Harper )1025
Thomas H. Griffiths )1026
Thomas Lanier Williams )1027
Thomas Lovell Beddoes )1028
Tom Freeman )1029
Val Lewton )1030
Victor Lauriston )1031
Victor Rousseau )1032
Victor Rousseau )1033
Victor Rousseau )1034
Victor Rousseau )1035
Victor Rousseau )1036
Victor Rousseau )1037
Victor Rousseau )1038
Victor Rousseau )1039
Victor Rousseau )1040
Victor Rousseau )1041
Victor Rousseau )1042
Victor Rowan )1043
Violet M. Methley )1044
Volney G. Mathison )1045
W,J, Stamper )1046
196

W. Benson Dooling )1047

W. Benson Dooling )1048
W. Benston Dooling )1049
W. C. Morrow )1050
W. C. Morrow (reprint) )1051
W. C. Morrow (reprint) )1052
W. Chinswell Collins )1053
W. E. Henley )1054
W. E. Underwood )1055
W. Elwyn Bacchus )1056
W. Elwyn Backus )1057
W. Elwyn Backus )1058
W. Elwyn Backus )1059
W. Elwyn Backus )1060
W. Elwyn Backus )1061
W. Elwyn Backus )1062
W. Elwyn Backus )1063
W. Elwyn Backus )1064
W. K. Mashburn, Jr )1065
W. K. Mashburn, Jr )1066
W. K. Mashburn, Jr )1067
W. K. Mashburn, Jr )1068
.W. K. Mashburn, Jr )1069
W. McKeown )1070
W.J. Stamper )1071
W.J. Stamper )1072
W.J. Stamper )1073
W.J. Stamper )1074
W.J. Stamper )1075
Wallace West )1076
Wallace West )1077
Wallace West )1078
Walter Burns )1079
Walter Carrington )1080
Walter G. Detrick )1081
Walter G. Detrick )1082
Walter G. Detrick )1083
Walter Scott (Reprint) )1084
Washington Irving(REPRINT) )1085
Washington Irving (reprint) )1086
Washington Irving (reprint) )1087
Washington Irving (reprint) )1088
Wilford Allen )1089
Wilford Allen )1090
Wilford Allen )1091
Wilford Allen )1092
Wilford Allen )1093
Wilford Allen )1094
197

Wilford Allen )1095

Wilfred Blanch Talman )1096
Wilfred Blanch Talman )1097
Wilfred Blanch Talman )1098
Wilhelm Hauff )1099
Wilkie Collins (reprint) )1100
Will MacMahon )1101
Will Smith )1102
Will Smith )1103
Will Smith & R.J. Robbins )1104
Will Smith & R.J. Robbins )1105
William A. P. White )1106
William Benton Frazer )1107
William E. Barrett )1108
William James Price )1109
William James Price )1110
William James Price )1111
William James Price )1112
William Morris (reprint) )1113
William R. Hickey )1114
William R. Hickey )1115
William Sanford )1116
William Sanford )1117
William Sanford )1118
Willis Knapp Jones )1119
Willis Knapp Jones )1120
Willis Knapp Jones )1121
Willis Knapp Jones )1122
Willis Knapp Jones )1123
Willis Knapp Jones )1124
Willis Overton )1125
Wright Field )1126
Wright Field )1127
Zealia Brown Reed (Lovecraft) )1128
Zeke Lake )1129

A. Leslie

Alvin F. Harlow

Arlton Eadie

Arthur J. Burks

Arthur Thatcher
198

August W. Derleth

B. Wallis

Bassett Morgan

Bertram Russell

.C.M. Eddy, Jr

Charles Hilan Craig

Clark Ashton Smith

Cristel Hastings

David H. Keller

Dick Heine

Don Robert Catlin

Donald Edward Keyhoe

Donald Wandrei

E. F. Benson

E. Hoffman Price

Edmond Hamilton

Eli Colter

Elwin J. Owens

Everil Worrell

Francis Hard

Frank Belknap Long, Jr

Frank Owen

G. G. Pendarves

Gaston Leroux

George allard Bowers

George C. Wallis & B. Wallis

Gordon Philip England

Greye La Spina

H. Thompson Rich

H. Warner Munn

H.P. Lovecraft
199

Henry S. Whitehead

J. Schlossel

Joel Martin Nichols, Jr

John Martin Leahy

Leavenworth Macnab

Louise Garwood

Marc R. Schorer& August W. Derleth

Murray Leinster

NictzinDyalhis

Oscar Cook

Otis Adelbert Kline

Paul Ernst

Paul S. Powers

R. Anthony

Ray Cummings

Robert E. Howard

Robert Lee Heiser

Robert S. Carr

.Samuel M. Sargent Jr

Seabury Quinn

Sewell Peaslee Wright

Stephen Bagby

Victor Rousseau

W. Elwyn Backus

W. K. Mashburn, Jr

W.J. Stamper

Wilford Allen

Will Smith

William James Price

Willis Knapp Jones

 200

It seems that the notion of the stories picked is to focus on somewhat unusual plots that
should cause the reader to shudder at some point. No clear focus on supernatural or science
fiction and the fantasy elements are very mild. The style is undoubtedly lowbrow pulp fiction
with some plots so ludicrous and implausible (concerning the sequence of events) that it
seems the authors did not spend much time thinking about form. The themes are heavily
influenced by contemporary detective and adventure magazines. Racism and colonial
tendencies are repeated sometimes in a mocking way. It seems that the purpose is to make
the reader feel "Goosebumps" rather than anything else.

Generically the magazine only has two stories have SF elements (Ooze and The Thing) with
more focus on "scare" than actual scientific extrapolation although both stories have some
generic manifestos hidden in them. Other stories are regular mystery stories (Black Jean,
Paul Slavsky) Detective (The Chain), Unsupernatural Horror (The closing Hand), Ghost stories
(The Ghost Guard) or Adventure (The Skull).

It seems that early on science and the occult (or supernatural) seem conflicted in the stories
like two sides of a struggle. There is some form of reconciliation or merging efforts but there
is also highlighted an impasse between the two. Horror floats around as incentive and
stories are often self-aware that they put morbid things for the delight of their readers.
Some pantheon is created of authors such as Machen. Blackwood, Poe, Hawthorne and
others.

The stories are often self-critical with the narrator or protagonist being an author of horror
stories or just a pulpsmith. One of the recurring hardships of the author or artist in these
stories is his fascination with gore, death and darkness and the public's aversion of these
things. This is a not-so-subtle tongue-in-cheek commentary about the milieu of WT.

Many stories mention other artists and authors in their stories to give a larger scope for the
style of the magazine and the long history of the type of fiction it publishes.

Some authors, like London, seem to cram everything they can in their stories – a mad
scientist, a gruesome murder over a girl, haunting spirits. Some seem to excel at more
specialized type like NyctinDyalhis or Backus who specialize in Scientific Romance or Greye
La Spina who specializes in supernatural stories. Some manage to merge the two in a more
professional way like Will Smith or Lovecraft who show how science and the supernatural
complete each-other as a mysterious force.

The outré themes of the stories often hark to American xenophobia or Europhilia. Blacks, or
places inhabited by blacks like Haiti (Stamper and Burks) become these exotic spaces
crawling with black magic and cruelty. Chinese become a mysterious race that is very smart
and devious. Chinese science is often portrayed as having something to do with the occult
and so Science and the supernatural are merged into a horrifying element in the hands of
Chinese sorcerers and scientists.
 201

The East is portrayed in the works of Frank Owen and Hoffman Price as a place teeming with
supernatural spirits, cruel, calculating despots or exotic fantasies as those portrayed in
Arabian Nights.

Europe is the favored site for ghost stories and exotic murders.

Some stories become interconnected by editorial choices or actual collaborations. Lovecraft,

Belknap Long, Howard and Derleth use recurring names and themes in their works
intentionally (the Cthulhu mythos) but other recurring themes ,wittingly or otherwise, create
a certain envelop of interconnectedness. Astral projection, other dimensions, mysterious
cults, spiritualists, scientists who penetrate the veil between life and death and voodoo are
so occurrent in the stories that it seems these phenomena are commonplace and share an
established range of possibilities inherent in the world. It is as if astral projection, for
example, is a regular phenomenon that is easily possible in a shared fantasy world all these
stories share.

Regarding SF – some of the stories are well-ahead of their time. Smith's "Wanderlust by
Proxy" is weirdly relevant for today (almost a hundred years later) in its portrayal of virtual
reality. Some are just colonial "lost race" adventure stories, like those of Haggard (which
were already outdated at the time) dressed in a space adventure. The premise is usually a
scientist who invents a space-ship and travels to a planet in the solar system (usually Venus
or Mars). The planet is surprisingly Earth-like with human-like creatures and the earthling
scientist usually finds an exotic, beautiful girl who falls in love with him. This storyline, made
popular by Edgar Rice Boroughs in his Barsoomstoriesis more scientific than those of this
pulpsmith by adding some scientific detail about the spaceship and the journey to the
planet. Some other SF stories which are more supernatural in scope (like traveling to other
planets by using the sheer power of will or magic) are wilder concerning the planets visited
with extremely alien fauna and flora and with the intelligent creatures approached being
lower on the evolutionary scale than mankind. It is also worth noting that in most of these
planetary adventures the humans who reach the planet are much like colonial agents
bringing their "boom-sticks" with them and being revered as gods by the inhabitants. There
are some stories in which Earth is a backward planet or that the human race is much beyond
the technical, political and spiritual level of other beings from the solar-system.

Which brings us to another theme that may seem odd to modern readers – most of the
stories mainly deal with our solar system which is, according to those stories, teeming with
intelligent life. Very few think about reaching further into the galaxy or that our solar-system
is detrimental to living creatures.

The past, rather than the future, is a recurring theme in these stories of fantasy and SF. The
pre-historic past become a site of wonders and horrors while the long-gone past is
equivalent to what golden-age SF stories do with the far-future – a wonderous age of
technological advancement for mankind or other intelligent creatures.

All-in-all, the layer of seriality seems to favor SF planet-stories and overtly supernatural
stories about fighting demonic monsters. Stories that mix the two do not usually get a cover-
story or serial continuation. We see here how supernatural horror and planetary adventures
become two, more refined, distinct types. The authors who dominate this layer can be
divided into four groups – Horror (unsupernatural), Fantasy\Supernatural, SF, Mix of one or
 202

more of these. While the serial stories of SF remain relatively devoid of overtly horrifying
elements those that mix the supernatural with horror are the more common.

I think that the magazine was first envisioned to be a magazine that causes its readers to
shudder in fear (Henneberger had a previous magazine that was meant to make people
laugh so it seems proper to invent a magazine that highlights another human feeling). Alas,
the interwar years were a time that people looked to the past in fear, as WWI was still fresh
in the memory of most of its readers, while also looking to the future with anxiety as new
technologies and undemocratic threatening regimes filled the world. Furthermore, the rise
in spiritualism and religious cults, at the time. added the supernatural as a threatening
element to this cauldron. Immigrants from all over the world and the collapse of the colonial
dominance of the white race also loomed in the corner. Therefore, the elements of fear
have easily overlapped what today may be called SF, Fantasy and Supernatural Horror. Yet,
in this primordial soup where one may be scared of aliens (whether from Mars or Haiti),
scientific monstrosities and supernatural creatures the different aspects of these fears
coalesced into distinct genres.

The Magazine treats the supernatural or fantastical elements as unbelievable stories. Unlike
modern Fantasy (like that of Tolkien) Many of the stories in the magazine have a narrator
who asks a reader (or readers) to believe his incredulous story. Not all stories posses this
trait but many do.

Ghosts

Mad Scientists

Insane or criminally- Jealous people (usually over a woman)

Sea Monsters or Werewolves or creatures from other planets or failed experiments or

ancient creatures living on Earth

Prehistoric People

Lost civilizations and races

Interplanetary or galactic travel or warfare

Microscopic travels (very rare)

Murderers, kidnappers, charlatans, necrophiles or cannibals

Supernatural phenomenon explained as the work of charlatans or villains or science

Divination (very rare)

Transmigration of souls

Egypt

Dreams and Nightmares

Voodoo
 203

Chinese

Human sacrifice

Unusual behavior or appearance of animals

Miscegenation or devolution of humans

White Occult – spiritualism, theosophy, magick

Frank Owen 1927.1 – "The Dream Peddler": "I yearn for something new, to get away
from the sordid realities of life", "a man should select a dream with as much care as
he selects a garment" (100).

International SF Guild 1935 - REASON FOR FANTASCIENCE:-This word was

coined by John Taine, and covers both the Weird and Science groups of the Fantastic
Literature field.

"' Formulae,' says the great astronomer, 'are the anesthetics of thought.' Icommand
that very thought," Milton added, "to our fiction editors and our writers of short
stories." (Leahy, "Drome", 196, 1927.2)

1930.10 – 1938.11

A. Leslie

A. Leslie

A. Leslie

A. Leslie

A. Leslie

A. Lloyd Bayne

A.J. Mordtmann

A.V. Milyer

A.W. Bernal

A.W. Bernal

A.W. Bernal

A.W. Calder

A.W. Calder
204

Aalla Zaata

Adolphe de Castro

Ainslee Jenkins

Alexander Faust

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I. Tooke

Alfred I.Tooke

Alfred Sprissler

Algernon Blackwood

Alice I'Anson

Alice I'Anson

Alice I'Anson

Alice I'Anson

Alice I'Anson

Alice Pickard

Alonzo Leonard

Amelia Reynolds Long

Amelia Reynolds Long

205

Amelia Reynolds Long

Andrew Daw

Anthony F. Klinkner

Anthony Rud

Anthony Rud

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arlton Eadie

Arold Ward

Arthur B. Reeve

Arthur B. Waltermire

Arthur Edwards Chapman

206

Arthur J. Burks

Arthur J. Burks

Arthur William Bernal

Arthur William Bernal

Arthur William Bernal

Arthur William Bernal

Arthur William Bernal

Arthur William Bernall

Arthur Woodward

Arthur William Bernal

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth
207

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August Derleth and Mark Schorer

August W. Derleth

August W. Derleth

B. Wallis

B. Wallis

B. Wallis

B. Wallis

B.C. Bridges

Bassett Morgan

Bassett Morgan

Bassett Morgan

Bassett Morgan

Bassett Morgan

Ben Belitt

Benjamin F. Ferrill

Bodo Wildberg

Brandon Fleming
208

Brooke Byrne

Brooke Byrne

Bruce Bryan

C. Edgar Bolen

C. L. Moore

C.A. Butz

C.A. Butz

C.A. Livingston

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore

C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner

Captain George H. Daugherty

Captain S.P. Meek

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi

Carl Jacobi
209

Chandler H. Whipple

Chandler H. Whipple

Charles Henry Mackintosh

Charles Henry Mackintosh

Charles Hilan Craig

Charles M. Morris

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Clarence Edwyn Flynn

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

210

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

211

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Claude Farrere

Claude Farrere

Claude Farrere

Clifford Ball

Clifford Ball

Clifford Ball

Clinton Dangerfield

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Cristel Hastings

Dale Clark

Dale Clark

Dana Carroll

David Bernard

David Bernard

David H. Keller

David H. Keller

David H. Keller
212

David H. Keller

David H. Keller

David H. Keller

David H. Keller

David H. Keller

David H. Keller

David H. Keller\Watson Rawkins

Derek Ironside

Don C. Wiley

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wandrei

Donald Wanrei

Donna Kelly

Doorothy Norwich

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Dorothy Quick

Duane W. Rimel
213

Durbin Lee Horner

E. Hoffman Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. Hoffmann Price

E. W. Mayo

E.F. Benson

Eando Binder

Eando Binder

Eando Binder

Eando Binder

Eando Binder

Earl Peirce

Earl Peirce

Earl Peirce

Earl Peirce

Earl Peirce and Bruce Bryan

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

214

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edith de Garis

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton
215

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton

Edna Goit Brintnall

Edward C. Jenkins

Eleanor Smith

Elizabeth Sheldon

Elizabeth Virgins Raplee

Elliott O'Donnell

Elma Dean

Emil Petaja

Eric A. Leyland

Ernst Wurm

Ethel Helene Coen

Ethel Morgan-Dunham

Everil Worrell

F.A.M. Webster

Fanny Kemble Johnson

Felix Kowalewski

Felix Kowalewski
216

Florence Crow

Forbes Parkhill

Frances Bragg Middleton

Frances Elliott

Frances Elliott

Frances Elliott

Francis Flagg

Francis Flagg

Francis Flagg

Francis Hard

Franics Flagg

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Owen

Frank Owen

Frank Owen

Frank Owen

Franz Habl

G. Garnet

G.G. Pendarves
217

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.G. Pendarves

G.R. Malloch

Gans T. Field

Gans T. Field

Gans T. Field

Gans T. Field

Gans T. Field

Gans T. Field

Gaston Leroux

Gaston Leroux

Gaston Leroux

Gaston Leroux

George Burrowes

George Fielding Eliot

Gordon Philip England

Grace Stillman

Granville S. Hoss

Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina

Greye La Spina

Gustav Meyrink
218

H. Bedford Jones

H. Sivia

H. Sivia

H. Thompson Rich

H. Warner Munn

H. Warner Munn

H. Warner Munn

H. Warner Munn

H. Warner Munn

H.P Lovecraft

H.P Lovecraft

H.P Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft
219

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft and E.H. Price

H.W. Guernsey

Hal K. Wells

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Harold Ward

Harold G. Shane

Harold Markham

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harold Ward

Harvey W. Flink

Hazel Burden

Hazel Heald

Hazel Heald

Hazel Heald

Hazel Heald

Helen M. Reid

Henry Hasse

Henry Kuttner
220

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner

Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead

Henry S. Whitehead

Herbert Kaufman

Howard Wandrei

Howard Wandrei

Howard Wandrei

Howard Wandrei

Howell Calhoun

Howell Calhoun
221

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Davidson

Hugh Jeffries

Hung Long Tom

Hung Long Tom

Hung Long Tom

Hung Long Tom

Hung Long Tom

Ida M. Kier

Idwal Jones

Irene Wilde

J. Paul Suter

J. Paul Suter

J. Paul Suter

J. Paul Suter

J. Paul Suter
222

J. Wesley Rosenquest

J. Wesley Rosenquest

J. Wilmer Benjamin

J.B.S. Fullilove

J.J. des Ormeaux

J.M. Fry

Jack Willaimson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson

James W. Bennett and Soong Kwen-Ling

Jane Scales

Jay Wilmer Benjamin

Jay Wilmer Benjamin

Jay Wilmer Benjamin

John D. Whiting

John Flanders

John Flanders
223

John Flanders

John Flanders

John Harrington

John Murray Reynolds

John R. Speer

John R. Speer

John R. Sperr and Carlisle Schnitzer

John Russell Fearn

John Scott Douglas

John Scott Douglas

John Scott Douglas

Joseph C. Kempe

Joseph O. Kesselring

Julia Boynton Green

Julia Boynton Green

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

Julius Long

June Power Reilly

Kadra Maysi

Kadra Maysi

Kadra Maysi

Katharine Metcalf Roof

Katherine Buoy

Katherine van der Veer

224

Katherine van der Veer

Katherine van der Veer

Kenneth P. Wood

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirk Mashburn

Kirke Meckem

Kuth Barle

L. Harper Allen

L.E. Frailey

L.M. Montgomery

Laurence J, Cahill

Laurence J. Cahill

Lea Bodine Drake

Lea Bodine Drake

Leah Bodine Drake

Leona Ames hill

Leona May Ames

Leslie F. Stone

Leslie F. Stone

Leslie Gordon Barnard

Lieutenant E.W. Chamerlain

Lieutenant Edgar Gardiner

Lieutenant Edgar Gardiner

225

Lireve Monet

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach

Loretta Burrogh

Richard F. Searight

Loretta Burrough

Loretta Burrough

Loretta Burrough

Loretta G. Burrough

Louis E. Thayer

Louise Garwood

M.C. Bodkin

M.G. Moretti

M.J. Bardine

Manley Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman and Gertrude Gordon

Marian Thornton

'Marie W. Linne

Marion Doyle

Marion Doyle

Marion Doyle

Marion Doyle

Marion Doyle
226

Marjorie Holmes

Marvin Luter Hill

Marvin Luter Hill

Mary C. Shaw

Mary C. Shaw

Mary Elizabet Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Mary Elizabeth Counsleman

Mary Elizabeth Couselman

Maurice Level

Maurice Level

Maurice Level

Mearle Prout

Mearle Prout

Mearle Prout

Mindret Lord

Minna Irving

Murray Leinster

N.J. O'Neail

Nard Jones

Nat Schachner and Arthur L. Zagat

Nathan Hindin

Nictzin Dyalhis

Nictzin Dyalhis
227

Nictzin Dyalhis

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price

Parker White

Paul Compton

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst
228

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Ernst

Paul Fredrick Stern

Paul Morand

Pearl Norton Swet

Pearl Norton Swet

Phyllius A. Whitney

R.H. Barlow

Ralph Allen Lang

Ralph Allen Lang

Ralph Allen Lang

Ralph Milne Farley

Ralph Milne Farley

229

Ralph Milne Farley

Ralph Milne Farley

Ralph Milne Farley

Ralph Milne Farley

Renier Wyers

Renier Wyers

Renier Wyers

Renier Wyers

Rex Ernest

Richard F. Searight

Richard F. Searight

Richard H. Hart

Richard H. Hart

Richard H. Hart

Robert Avrett

Robert Avrett

Robert B. Gray

Robert Barbour Johnson

Robert Barbour Johnson

Robert Barbour Johnson

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch
230

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch and Henry Kuttner

Robert C. Sandison

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard
231

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard
232

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard and Frank T. Torbett

Robert H. Leitfred

Robert Leonard Russell

Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson

Robert.C. Sandison

Roderic Papineau

Ronal Kayser

Ronal Kayser

Ronal Kayser

Ronal Keyser

Ronald Kayser

Roy Temple House

Roy Temple House

Roy Temple House

S. Gordon Gurwit

S. Gordon Gurwit
233

S. Gordon Gurwit

S.B.H. Hurst

S.B.H. Hurst

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn
234

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Seabury Quinn

Sophie Wenzel Ellis

Stella G.S. Perry

Stuart Strauss

Tarleton Collier

Theodore LeBerthon

Theodore Tinsley

Thomas H. Knight

Thomas P. Kelley

Thomas P. Kelley

Thomas P. Kelley

Thomas P. Kelley
235

Thorp McClusky

Thorp McClusky

Thorp McClusky

Thorp McClusky

Thorp McClusky

Thorp McClusky

V.K. Kaledin

Vannette Herron

Victor Rousseau

Victor Rousseau

Victor Rousseau

Victor Rousseau

Victor Rousseau

Victoria Beaudin Johnson

Vincent Starrett

Vincent Starrett

Violet A. Methley

W. Elwyn Backus

W.C. Morrow

W.L. Hasty

W.L. Hasty

Walker G. Everett

Wallace G. West

Wallace G. West

Wallace J. Knapp

Wallace J. Knapp

Wallace West

Wilfred Blanch Talman

Wilfred Blanch Talman

Wilfred Branch Talman

Will Charles Oursler

236

William H. Pope

William H. Pope

William J. Makin

William Lumley

Willis Knapp Jones

Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea

Winona Montgomery Gilliland

A. Leslie

Alfred I. Tooke

Alice I'Anson

Arlton Eadie

Arthur William Bernal

August W. Derleth

B. Wallis

Bassett Morgan

C.L. Moore

Carl Jacobi

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Clark Ashton Smith

Cristel Hastings

David H. Keller

Donald Wandrei

Dorothy Quick

E. Hoffmann Price

Eando Binder

Earl Peirce

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edmond Hamilton

Frank Belknap Long

Frank Owen
237

G.G. Pendarves

Gans T. Field

Gaston Leroux

Greye La Spina

H. Warner Munn

H.P. Lovecraft

Harold Ward

Hazel Heald

Henry Kuttner

Henry S. Whitehead

Howard Wandrei

Hugh B. Cave

Hugh Davidson

Hung Long Tom

J. Paul Suter

Jack Williamson

John Flanders

Julius Long

Kirk Mashburn

Loretta Burrough

Manly Wade Wellman

Marion Doyle

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Otis Adelbert Kline

Paul Ernst

Renier Wyers

Robert Bloch

Robert E. Howard

Robert Nelson

Ronal Kayser

Seabury Quinn
 238

Thorp McClusky

Victor Rousseau

A. Leslie

The Dream Makers (1931.10) (Verse; Decoration by Donald Gelb) – The speakers claim to
have seen the Earth forms, civilization created and Heaven's Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus'
crucifixion .

Atavism (1934.5) (verse) – the speaker sees some primeval thing in the eyes of someone – a
thing that erupts.

Children of the Moon (1934.10) (Verse) – The speaker is a moth who darkly muses about his
own burned body after touching a flame. He speaks to a human reader and tells him he was
once human.

Color (1935.1) (verse) – a poem that highlights the somber colors of a frosty, full-moon
night, a river and the breaking dawn.

Alfred I. Tooke

On Hallow's E'en (1931.11) (Verse; Decoration by C.C. Senf) – a poem about three dudes
going in Halloween to some mountain to hang one of the three.

The Thing I Wish (1932.6) (Verse) – The speaker wants to be buried under a big tree so that
he will be intermingled with the life around it.

Pirate's Horse (1932.8) (Verse) – a poem about some pirate treasure guarded by the bones
of long-dead pirates.

Thrice Haunted (1932.12) (Verse) – the speaker is a bastard who shoved a beggar who died
later, condemned his brother to prison where he died and refused to marry a girl he
impregnated who also died later. He always sees the three faces of those people in his mind.
 239

The Money-Lender (1933.5) (Verse) - moralistic poem about a money-lender who separated
his heart from the evil business he did expecting forgiveness in the afterlife which was not
granted.

Pirates' Cave (1933.7) (Verse) – a poem about a pirates' treasure guarded by living skeletons.
The speaker decides to leave it alone.

Too Late (1934.1) (Verse) – the speaker is haunted by some inner ghosts that stem from his
sorrow.

To a Bullet-Pierced Skull (1934.2) (Verse) – the speaker muses about how a skull once had a
trove of knowledge and only what she taught others remains while everything inside was
gone once a bullet pierced it.

Alice I'Anson

Teotihuacan (1930.11) (verse; decoration by C.C. Senf) – a poem about an Aztec (or is it
Mayas?) city where human sacrifice was once performed to the Serpent god. The speaker
thinks he had a previous incarnation connected to this place.

Phantoms (1931.6/7) (verse) – the speaker thinks about the cold rain that drops on his
window while thinking how his memories are akin to that painful rain.

Jungke Feud (1931.11) (Verse) – a poem about prehistoric men killing some saber tooth or
other savage beast and how manly and heroic it was.

Shadow of Chapultepec (1932.4) (Verse) – There is a scary dream-forest filled with ancient
Aztec or Mayan pyramids with sacrifices, serpents and ancient warriors that pass in it.

Kishi, My Cat (1932.10) (Verse) – a poem about a house cat that may have been the consort
of a priestess and the goddess Ishtar and was buried with her.

Arlton Eadie

The House of the Skull (1930.10) (Ghastly rites were performed in the green temple behind
the big house – a weird mystery story) – an estranged family member of an old British
general returns to his adoptive family and finds out it now lives in a huge Eastern mansion
with a mysterious, beautiful, Burmese princess and an underground temple for an eastern
Buddhist devil. The general helped some Burmese king to escape Burma and the man
entitled the general all of his huge riches. He only made him protect his daughter and
worship the devil statue. The general agreed and the king died soon after. After some
Buddhist monk is murdered at the house and all members claim to hear voices the
protagonist investigates only to be drugged by the butler. The general becomes insane and is
about to sacrifice the princess, his daughter and the protagonist who manages to break free
and knock the general out. They soon find out that the voices came from the monk who was
murdered by a cousin who masqueraded as the butler driving the general mad by
whispering voices to him in the temple thus making him kill his heirs and sentenced to
death. The protagonist marries the general's daughter (who is supposed to be like a sister to
him !)

The Avenging Shadow (1931.1) (Taso Vitelli sought to outwit the Prince of Darkness – a story
of forbidden arts in medieval Naples) a Latin pirate wants to be a wizard. He pays a huge
 240

amount of money to some sorcerer who performs a ceremony in which Satan makes a
bargain with the man. The bargain entails that once a year the students of the sorcerer must
make a running contest and the last one to enter some basement belongs to Satan. A year
later the man reaches last because he was drugged by a fellow student. He goes to a volcano
and meets Satan and convinces him to take his shadow instead as it was the last thing that
entered the basement. The man is captured by the guards because his "shadow" was seen
murdering some banker (the hell did they recognize a man's shadow? stupid magazine)

The Phantom Flight (1931.4/5) (A vivid and pathetic tale about a fatal airplane flight and a
disastrous surgical operation) – an English tramp finds an intelligent and genteel tramp who
offers him to sleep in an abandoned airport. They visit some rural bastard's pub in which
they are ridiculed but the narrator hears that the airport is haunted. When asked the genteel
tramp confesses that he knows the airport and it was abandoned after a row of accidents
that cost the lives of many. He tells the narrator that he was once one of the most famous
and successful surgeons but after his marriage his wife and he wanted to fly to Switzerland.
Just before boarding the plane he got a message about an important figure that needed an
urgent operation. He tells his wife to fly without him and that he will join her on the next
flight. Just before the operation starts he hears that his wife died in an airplane crash. He
decides to continue with the operation and manages to do it perfectly but at the last second
of the operation he does something horrible (the description is not exactly clear as to what
exactly) and the patient dies. He is not called again and after some months is forced to
become a tramp. When they reach the airport they sleep and in the middle of the night the
place becomes alive again with lights and passengers and staff. The ex-surgeon's wife is
there and she beckons him to board the plane with her. The narrator tries to pull the man
away as this is a ghost plane to the underworld but the ex-surgeon pushes him and boards
the plane that crashes again and disappears beneath the waves of the channel.

The Nameless Mummy (1932.5) (An amazing tale of an Egyptian mummy and the weird
events that followed the opening of the mummy-case) – an archeologist gets a mummy for
his museum. He opens it to reveal a Roman emperor inside. A mysterious woman who
knows many languages and dead languages too, appears and the man falls in love with her.
She reveals to him that she is Cleopatra who got life eternal inside some pyramid. She
wanted Mark Anthony to be her husband and live with him forever. She faked her death but
Anthony committed suicide so she searched for his coffin for many years because she gave
him a ring that will end her immortality (why didn't she commit suicide all those 2000
years?). She takes his ring and kills herself with the special powder inside. The archeologist is
sad with his two mummies.

The Siren of the Snakes (1932.6) (A multitude of creeping things came out of the dark forest
in a wave of hideous gliding death – a thrill-tale of India) – an English colonial commander
helps some mountain tribes against a huge python. He, his young second in command and a
company of Gurkas track the huge creature that disappears into a hidden temple. Inside he
kills the humongous reptile but also finds a beautiful girl. The temple's inscription says it is
the temple of the queen of snakes. The girl speaks in an unknown dialect, is wrapped in
snake skin and all the villagers they pass refuse to let her in calling her the queen of snakes.
The second in command falls in love with her. At night a horde of snakes attacks the
encampment. The girl motions the second in command to come and hugs him. A second
later the commander sees him crushed by a python. They kill the snake but the man is dead.
The snakes depart.
 241

The Planet of Peace (1932.7) (The amazing story of a man from Earth on a planet that was
inhabited solely by beautiful women) – a guy sojourns in the wilds and has a weird, fat,
balding neighbor. One day, spying on the neighbor, he sees him next to him on the room
even though he watched him a second before 5 miles away. The man disappears.
Confronting the neighbor he tells him he is a scientist who devised a way to launch people to
other places in an instant. He drugs the protagonist and launches him to Mars. There, the
man finds a technological planet in serenity without disease, hunger or war inhabited only
by beautiful women who procreate alone. The queen falls in love with him and tells him
their society had no need of man so they got extinct (them being an evolutionary thing
required for war and when that was gone they had no more need to be). Just as he is willing
to stay in that male Fantasy planet he is sent back by the scientist. He tells him what
happened and the dude launches himself to Mars to become its king leaving the protagonist
alone and angry. He tries to manipulate the machine but it breaks.

The Eye of Truth (1932.9) (A fascinating novelette about a Greek who found strange powers
in the ruins of an old temple) – a strange man with extraordinary luck helps a young artist
who is an unaware heir to millions to ditch a lying gold digger who is about to marry in favor
of a gentle, painter girl. He has a special binoculars which he got in a dig in Greece – he shot
the man who told him about the place as he saw his sinister intentions after he procured the
ancient thing. The gold digger is killed in a car accident and the man barely survives and
nursed by the nice, artist, girl. Happy ending.

The Devil's Tower (1933.3) (A startling tale of the Tower of London, haunted by ghosts of
dead conspirators) – A regiment of scholars and officers-to-be is stationed in WWI in the
Tower of London. One in the regiment is a decorated simpleton from Ireland. He becomes a
drunkard because he believes the tower to be haunted. Chastised by his commander who
threatens to lock him in an imaginary haunted torture chamber the dude become orderly
again. The narrator thinks he has some kind of spiritualistic connection to ghosts. Yet, after
some time the dude becomes drunk again and exhibits disorderly behavior. He is locked in
the chamber that he thinks is a torture chamber. Two hours later the commander is called to
the cell because they hear the dude screaming and some other guys threatening him with
torture if he doesn't tell about something. The soldiers try to unlock the door but the key,
suddenly, doesn't fit. They bomb the door and see the dude's body. His joints were ripped
and his hands show signs of being tied but there is no one in this room.

The Vampire Airplane (1933.8) (A Magyar war ace, shot down from the sky, returns to
shatter the peace of an English country home) – An American ace pilot is now a secretary in
the house of some rich English dude. An airplane emergency-lands on their yard. The pilot is
an Hungarian ace pilot count who served in WWI and was apparently killed by the American
who witnessed his death. The Hungarian says it was his brother who died but his behavior is
weird as he doesn't eat, looks hungry, has enough gas (though he claimed to have none) and
has sharp teeth and dead-cold hands. The American searches the library and with a priest
who lives in the house they find a story about a Hungarian evil-lord (the ancestor of the
pilot) who was cursed after doing some villainy that when he or his descendants will commit
crimes against innocents they will become vampires after death. The Hungarian pilot just
returned from bombing London when he was shot down. They run to the room of the
protagonist's love interest (the daughter of the rich Englishman) who starts to scream and
they find her fainted with the apparition of the Hungarian upon her. Using his bullets on the
dude proves useless but the priest recites some Biblical verses and the count happily departs
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as he understands he is mortal again and so he flies his plane into the sea and kills himself
for the final time.

The Trail of the Cloven Hoof (1934.7) (An astounding weird mystery novel by an English
master of eery stories) – A doctor travels the English wilds and hears a call for help. He finds
a badly wounded man who claims to have been assaulted by the cloven hoofed horror of the
moors. The doctor encounters a weird creature in the dark that threatens him and he tries
to shoot it. The doctor tries to find a phone in a nearby mental asylum and barely manages
to call the cops before the crazy proprietor – some evil scientist – and his lackeys do some
horrible experiment on him. At the house he meets a fellow doctor and they think the
assaulted man is near death. A strange, beautiful woman appears at the house and claims to
have escaped the horrible scientist. They tell her to hide upstairs. The evil scientist's lackey
comes with the police and claims a dangerous woman escaped from his asylum. They search
upstairs and see the dying man with a slit throat assuming that the escaped woman did it.
Later the body disappears. Trying to track the woman or the murderer with dogs they are
led to the asylum but at the last second the dogs start acting crazy because someone put
some dognip nearby. The doctor gets a letter from the woman but when he arrives at the
place he is attacked by a mysterious creature. He wakes up to find his friend who tells him
the police officer and he saved him without seeing the attacker. The letter was bogus.The
man discovers that he inherited the house from the stranger and after looking into his stuff
he learns that the dude was a chemist who invented some solution to make people explode
like bombs. Some Scotland Yard detectives think he is a burglar and threaten him but then
befriend him. He was hired by the British government (secretly) to develop this thing so that
they will use it against the German in WWI. He had a stupid helper who was used by a local,
amoral, psychiatrist (the owner of the mental asylum) to memorize the formula for the
bomb gas. Discovering that the scientist had no other choice but to kill the servant – he gave
him something to drink with the solution inside, and told him to go back to the man who
told him to memorize the thing. The man explodes after a while but the scientist is shocked
to find out, after some days, that the dude is still alive and that his lower parts are now
replaced with that of an animal. The creature threatens to haunt him forever. Even though
the creature was once a dumb servant he now speaks in a grandiose manner and in an
almost biblical language. The creature kills the dude's wife (though unwittingly as she dies
from fear). The dude vows to kill the creature and that is why he left everything to the
protagonist of the story – so that he will use the dude's assets to kill the monster. The
formula for the bob-people is hidden in a safe that has some gas chamber attaches to it so
that it will kill everyone who tries to break it (they can just use gas-masks – duh!) At night
the evil surgeon sneaks into the house (the protagonist never saw his face because the dude
had a mask in the first time they met and now it is dark). After chloroforming the
protagonist's friend (almost to death) he threatens the guy with a gun to deliver him the
letter with the formula. The guy manages to jump out the window just before the evil guy
shoots him. Suddenly the mysterious girl appears in the bushes and after entering the house
– the evil dude disappeared somehow – he revives his friend only to find out that the girl
also disappeared. In the morning the guy finds a secret path in the nearby mountains that
reaches under moor in an underground mine. He meets the Scotland Yard detective that
watches his house from the secret place. The two cordially talk. Reading in a newspaper that
some farmers were attacked by the beast the protagonist comes to the farm only to learn
that the dude who saw the beast is now drugged by the evil scientist. The evil scientist
himself arrives and sprays the dude with sleeping gas after he tells him he knows what kind
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of drug he uses because he has some book on special plants and possess the only copy of a
description of the plant. The girl arrives and saves the dude. Arriving home, they find out the
book with the plant description stolen. They deduce there is a secret entrance to the house.
The protagonist's friend concocts a plan to dress as the evil scientist and infiltrate into his
lab. The protagonist is approached by the evil doctor's henchman who tells him he will
divulge the doctor's secret for 500 dollars. The protagonist refuses. The hero goes to an
apartment where his doctor friend is attacked by the henchman and some other guy. The
henchman is killed and the mysterious girl is found in the bushes when the cops arrive. The
Scotland Yard detective arrives and takes the girl only for the rest to find out he is not a real
detective (they call the Yard's center to find out about him when he doesn't return). The
protagonist and his friend sneak into the evil doctor's house but the friend betrays the hero
and chains him and reveals that he is the real evil doctor and that he was disguised all along.
The evil doctor chains the dude to the stables of where the monstrous beast man lives. The
doctor takes some explosive gas thingy and throws it in a fountain next to the protagonist so
that he will blow up whenever the ball explodes (it is unclear why he doesn't kill him
immediately). The girl and the detective arrive but decide to hide from the lone, barely
armed doctor, and instead give the protagonist a file to saw his chains (why? Oh Why?). The
doctor captures the armed girl and the gas formula and is about to fly to Germany with it
while the other detective (who also supposed to have an army of officers at his back) do
nothing. The beast-man arrives and the protagonist convinces him that to save the pretty
lady (the mysterious girl who is revealed to be a Scotland Yard detective), with whom the
beast became infatuated, he must stop the doctor. The protagonist rides on the beast's back
and they manage to take the girl from the plane while the beast man jumps on the flying
plane after the protagonist dropped some explosive gas bombs inside. Both doctor and
beast explode in the sea. The girl and the protagonist kiss. S T U P I D.

Arthur William Bernal

Vampires of the Moon (1934.5-7) (A sensational weird-scientific story of a terrific threat

against mankind) – Some mining expedition on the moon, in the future, starts losing some
ships. The last missing ship, containing the brother of the expedition's captain, found an
underground city but was lost before further transitions. The last transmission helps the
captain and his lieutenant to locate the place of their disappearance and to understand that
one of the crew had some special helmet that barred the denizens of this city to control his
mind. This dude, meanwhile, finds himself surrounded by metallic and mummified beings
who can control minds. They talk to him. The two guys crash their spaceship on their way to
the city and one of them is badly wounded. The other , the captain and the brother of the
lieutenant who led the previous expedition, keeps on going and is discovered by a spaceship.
The story returns to the captured dude to whom the mummies tell their story – they are
mind-controlling geniuses who controlled most of their population by making them mindless
slaves millennia ago. They want to control Earth as the moon is a shitty place. They offer the
dude to rule the Earth with them if he helps them to drive a spaceship. They cannot control
him with the helmet (it is so stupid that they don't simply remove his helmet). The dude
fights them and is thrown with his other friends who tell his a similar story. The dude fakes
his consent to rule with the masterminds and he is shows a gas that can turn people to
puddles. They threaten him that the Earth will be subjugated to this gas if he does not help
them. The dude starts hitting everything in front of him and he hijacks a spaceships but it is
without controls. After some jumping and fighting the dude manages to use his brain power
to control the mummy-slaves and then to hijack another ship. He escapes and meets the
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captain who was searching for his brother. The captain tells the dude to bring backup as he
goes to save his brother alone. Blasting his way to the city he manages to free his brother
and the remaining spaceman but is captured by the evil minds. They are about to take his
brain out and control his body. As they start cutting his scalp the backup arrives and the
dude with the helmet invents some psychic device that makes the mummy slaves kill each
other and the masters and saving the captain. He then makes them blow the special gas
canisters and all living matter within the city is dissolved. The guys gets some medals.

August W. Derleth

Mrs. Bentley's Daughter (1930.10) (A brief, tender little story about a child who was
precariously on the curb of the well) – a typical ghost story. a new member of a
neighborhood goes to visit her closest neighbor. She sees her daughter on the edge of the
well and asks her to come back home to which the child refuses and tells her she can't.
Inside the woman asks her neighbor about her daughter but the neighbor seems vague and
confused telling her that her daughter always do tricks. When she leaves she finds out from
another neighbor that the girl has been dead for a year.

Prince Borgia's Mass (1931.8) (A brief tale of Cesare Borgia, and the terrible punishment
meted out to the devil-worshippers) – Another Borgia story by Derleth. This time, the dude
is angry about some bodies stolen from his camp by devil-worshippers during Walpurgis
night. He tracks them, crucifies them and then does some black magic ritual that causes the
devil to arrive and burn those worshippers to dust.

The Bridge of Sighs (1931.9) (A brief tale of medieval Venice, two conspirators, and the dark
arts of Messer Sorrati, the magician) – two Venetian lords conspire to kill the Doge. They
enlist an assassin and the help of a magician who hates one of them. When the moment of
assassination arrives the magician does his magic and the two lords fall from a bridge and
drown (They cannot swim? Not clear).

The Captain Is Afraid (1931.10) (The captain did not lack courage, but the howling of a dog
brought stark terror to his soul) – a guy visits his friend at the Caribbean. The White captain
is afraid because a local witch doctor cursed him that a white dog will kill him. He sees
apparitions of white dogs. He laso has a gun with silver bullets to shoot the dog that always
escapes from his shots. The friend remains at night but unlocks the captian's door so that he
will see that there is no dog. The captain starts screaming that he sees a dog but the friend
sees nothing. A white thing dashes in the room and kills the captain the man shoots the dog
with the silver bullets. He finds a native guy's body filled with bullets.

Those Who Seek (1932.1) (The Tale of a ghastly encounter with the elementals that haunted
a ruined British abbey) – a painter and his aristocratic friend come to the aristocrat's land
where an abandoned abbey stands. The place is rumored to be built on the ruins of a druidic
temple. The place also has a history of strange deaths. They find a stone with Latin on it
saying "if you look for it you will find it". At night the painter dreams about a horrible
procession at the abbey venerating a flying octopus that likes blood that lurks under the slab
with Latin by pushing some button. He wakes up only to find his friend gone and the slab
open. He sees something and becomes insane. When he wakes up he is in a hospital. The
police investigate and finds his friend's body horribly mutilated in a secret chamber under
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the slab. He talks with a local priest who knows about the ruins and they surmise the
existence of the evil flying octopus. There are many octopus stories in this issue.

Laughter in Night (1932.3) (with Mark Schorer) (A hideous burst of laughter from the moor
where the gallows-tree once stood portended tragedy) – some counterfeiter who killed his
cousin, a landlord of some place, goes to a local inn at a rainy night after his car broke down.
He gets a room after some struggle with the owners who tell him the room is a place where
two people became insane and died from laughter. These two were descendants of the
landlord who cursed his family, after the latter made him hang, that they will become
criminals and will die when looking at the gallows tree. He also prophesized that he will kill
the last descendant with his bare hands. They beg the dude not to open his curtain at his
room so that he will not see the gallows tree. He opens the curtain, looks at the gallows tree,
and the ghoul of his ancestor comes to him. He chokes him to death and he laughs
maniacally after he dies.

The Bishop Sees Through (1932.5) (A peculiar little ghost story is this – about a ride through
stormy night, and a house that was not there) – A rich dude goes in a storm the fellow rich
dude. He gets lost and find a mysterious house. The butler inside tells him that the road is
closed due to some landslide and that he needs to take a detour. The dude gives him a coin
and goes to his friend's house through the detour. The friend tells him there was not a
landslide but soon afterwards the police calls to report there is a landslide – the butler saved
the dude. The dude goes back to thank the butler but finds that the house is abandoned and
in ruins for many years – he finds his con though.

In the Left Wing (With Mark Schorer) (1932.6) (A tale of dark powers unloosed by one who
could not bear to see his sweetheart consigned to the grave) – A friend visits his aristocratic
friend after this dude's wife died and her grave robbed. The aristocratic friend starts
dabbling in black magic. The friend notices that the aristocrat looks horrible, is demented
and refuses to let people inside the left wing of the mansion. At the library the aristocrat lets
his friend read about black magic and how the dead can be revived without their souls –
their souls being replaced with evil entities. The friend sneaks into the left wing and sees his
friend's dead wife controlled by an evil spirit while the friend bows to her. A lightning
smashes the house and the house burns – the aristocrat and the dead\alive wife are burned.

The Lair of the Star-Spawn (With Mark Schorer) (1932.8) (The story of a dread menace to
mankind, and a hideous city on the long-lost Plateau of Sung) – an explorer's group in Burma
is ambushed by tiny men who kill all of them accept one dude. The dude tries to escape the
jungle and finds himself next to a lost, evil, city. He is captured by the little men. He meets a
Chinese mystic and scientist who recognizes him. The dude was captured by the tiny men
three years ago and helped them awaken a sleeping evil creature from space. (connection to
the Cthulhu mythos). The Chinaman devises a plan in which he contacts cosmic beings who
battled these creatures (and Cthulhu) on Earth eons ago. He manages to telepathically
communicate with the entities. He manages to convince the evil ruler of the little men to go
outside the city for some errand. The two manage to kill the four guards just as the entities
arrive and decimate the city – killing the sleeping aliens. Sometime later a pilot reaches the
desolation and sees the huge carcass of the aliens which also smells.

The Sheraton Mirror (1932.9) (The story of a strange unearthly revenge accomplished from
beyond the grave) – three siblings inherit a house from their aunt who hates them because
the elder brother called her an old witch when he was a boy. The place has a mirror and the
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aunt's ghost, who committed suicide, appears to the siblings through the mirror to scare
them to death. The elder brother smashes the mirror but dies for some reason and his two
sisters become insane.

Red Hands (1932.10) (A brief story of two ruffians and the hideous fate that awaited them
on their quest for treasure in the jungle) – Two dudes killed a drug dealer in East Asia and
return to the scene some months later to take the drugs (unclear as to why they left the
drugs in the wild for so long – they should have been destroyed by then). Before dying he
tells the killer (the second only masterminded the thing) that red hands will get him. One of
them kills the other and tries to take the buried drugs. He finds out the place is filled with
semi-sentient poisonous plants that leave red marks. They kill him.

The Vanishing of Simmons (1933.2) (A strange tale of voodoo and the malevolent power of a
jealous mulatto woman) – a dude disappears. The narrator, his friend, tells how the dude's
father angered his Black servant and her mother who were also voodoo priestesses. The
father dies soon from a heart attack. A mysterious black woman gives the dude a picture of a
black woman with her back to viewer doing something. The dude starts getting obsessed
about black magic and he tries to find the black girl. The girl in the picture turns around and
looks like a monster. The man starts having pains in his chest and a cut starts to appear in his
chest. The narrator goes down and when he returns the friend is gone. He sees that the
picture also changed to include the friend's body and some Black cultists. He burns the
picture. The police reports that it found two charred bodies of black women in a swamp.

The White Moth (1933.4) (A brief story of a little white insect that became an instrument of
retribution) – a dude poisons his wife to marry another girl. The ghost of his wife confronts
him and threatens him that if he continues to go with the girl she will haunt him as a moth.
He starts seeing invisible moths and makes everyone think he is insane. When a real moth
appears he becomes mad and chases it to his death – he falls into the water at the edge of
the pier and drowns.

The Carven Image (1933.5) (with Mark Schorer) (The story of a wooden image endued with
hideous life – a tragic tale of three bloody murders) – a boy lives a across a Norwegian house
with a wooden statue of a woman. He believes the statue is alive. He becomes a philosophy
doctor. He marries a girl but the statue haunts him and warns him that he belongs to it. The
statue murders the woman when the man and his wife when they sail by boat. The man
consults his professor about the statue and they deduce the man's childlike imagination has
endued the thing with life. He tells him to burn the thing. The owner of the statue refuses to
sell it. The professor is murdered by the statue. The man tries to burn the statue but it kills
him. The thing tries to desecrate the man's grave but is broken (perhaps because it was
damaged by the fire before) before managing to do it.

Nellie Foster (1933.6) (A ten-minute tale about a woman who would not stay quiet in her
grave) – a recently dead woman starts vampiring the local kids. A local woman decides to
guard her grave with a crucifix but is too scared. She stakes the body of the woman the next
day. Her neighbor covers for her when another neighbor suspects her for desecrating the
grave.

An Elegy for Mr. Danielson (1933.8) (What strange power did the thing that called itself
Mortimer Flacet have over the corpse that lay in the front room?) – two sisters has a brother
who recently died. Just an hour after his death a stranger appears who gives the two a
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manuscript containing an elegy he wrote for the deceased and claims the dude asked him to
play it after his death. Although the thing is not meant for piano the sisters play it and the
body disappears. They go to the family lawyer who sees the manuscript and tells them it is a
spell to raise the dead and that their brother stole precious stones from a modern Druid who
died 50 years ago. The Druid looked just like the stranger. They learn that their dead brother
visited the bank and took the stones out of it and gave it to a stranger. The body of the
brother returns to its coffin.

The Return of Andrew Bentley (With Mark Schorer) (1933.9) (A goose-flesh story of the
frightful shape that strove to drag a corpse from its vault) – an estranged uncle asks his
nephew to visit him. He gives him all he has and tells him he only wants him to guard the
vault to his tomb. He commits suicide the next day. The nephew sees some shadows
creeping next to the vault and manages to glimpse an old man. He takes his hand and finds it
is skeletal – he rips two of his finger bones when another shadow knocks him unconscious.
Dreaming about his uncle telling him to consult the local priest and look at some books in
the library the dude finds out that the shadow belongs to a local sorcerer who disappeared a
year before and who had an evil demon as companion. The uncle was his friend until he
found out he is an evil dude. Reading a letter left by the uncle the dude finds out that he
killed the sorcerer but his demon took the bones from where he hid them and the two
haunted him until he committed suicide. He must find the bones and burn them. Watching
at night the dude finds out that the skeleton-man appears from the tree and so his bones
must be hidden there. Using the help of the priest who has a crucifix they unearth the bones
and burn them. The demon still lingers but then the protagonist remembers he has the
finger bones and drops them into the fire thus banishing the demon.

Incubus (1934.5) (Verse) – some girl begs people to help her at night as she feels some
monster on her body. They laugh at her but the following night she dies and they see proof
of the monster's existence.

Colonel Markesan (1934.6) (A grim tale of corpses that walked and talked, and a man who
was dead, yet lived) – some evil scientist is expelled from the university after claiming he can
raise the dead. He dies soon after. He is then alive again and hires the narrator to be his
butler. He locks the dude at night in his room. The dude decides to break free at night and
eavesdrop and he sees the evil guy is having a humiliation party with some people whom the
narrator recognizes as being long dead. Telling this to his scientist friend, who knew the evil
scientist in life, they follow the evil guy who turns out to be, indeed, a ghost, who raises the
dead and torturing them. They confront him, kill him (again) but his head jumps and bites
the scientist thus killing him. The narrator burns everything.

Wild Grapes (1934.7) (A strange story about the white cloud that hung over the unmarked
grave of a murdered man) – Some nephew kills his uncle to get his estate. Before dying the
uncle tells him he will get at him. He buries him under some grapes. At night he sees a white
cloud descends on the grapes. Coming closer the grape vine starts moving and it strangles
the murderer to death. Later the neighbors find the body and while digging they find the
uncle's body entwined in the roots of the grape vine.

A Cloak from Messer Lando (1934.9) (A short story about Cesare Borgia and the magic of a
medieval sorcerer) – Some old dude gets hitches a ride with the Borgia and for this help, and
the grievance he had for some local noble who plots to kill the Borgia, he gives the noble a
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cursed, golden, cloak that burns into his flesh and kills him. He also sends a cloak to the
Borgia where he explains what he did so that the Borgia could confiscate the noble's estates.

Feigman's Beard (1934.11) (An uncanny tale of hexerei) – Some white trash half brother and
sister quarrel over some hogs being sold. The half-brother chokes his sister who goes to a
local witch that asks her to give her some strands of her brother's beard and his mirror. She t
After a ceremony in which the devil sits on the mirror the sister puts the mirror in the
brother's room. The witch also told her not to look in the mirror in the next day. The brother
looks in the mirror and dies horribly. The sister takes his money and inherits his estate but
she is too curious. She looks in the mirror and sees her brother's dead body in it with a
horrible creature behind him. The money bag she took becomes animate and chokes her to
death.

A Matter of Faith (1934.12) (An African story of native magic and the ghastly Blue Death) –
Some English colonel inspects a captain's outpost and the captain tells him he has some
troubles with the natives and that the colonel should beware not to upset some witch
doctor. The colonel confronts the witch doctor and insults him. The witch doctor, at night,
hypnotizes the colonel so that he could sacrifice him. The captain and the colonel's deputy
manage to shoot the witch doctor to death but the evil dude manages to shoot from his
blowgun and to turn the colonel into blue goo.

The Metronome (1935.2) (A grim little tale about a drowned child who would not stay dead)
– Some woman kills her step son by ignoring his pleas to help after he falls to the frozen
river. She hated the boy because he was obsessed with a metronome. At night the child
haunts her and chokes her i=until she falls on an object that kills her – the metronome.

B. Wallis

The Primeval Pit (1930.12) (Huge prehistoric monsters in a lost valley of South America pack
this story with eery thrills) – two manly and academic Americans travel South America to
find some diamonds. They find a valley with dinosaurs and huge rubies. They kill some dinos
and become rich. Action\Adventure with Dinosaurs.

Bassett Morgan

Island of Doom (1932.3) (A thrill-tale of brain transplantation, a surgical horror that was
consummated on a little island in the South Pacific) – as in all Morgan stories – in some
weird island in the Pacific there is a surgeon who likes to transplant brains into orangutans
and plant blood-sucking orchids. The dude has a wife who eloped with him instead of her
fiancée who also likes to transplant brains. The dude returns to the island while the woman
leaves. He kills the couple's pet orangutang, kills his rival, transplants his brain into the ape
and vice versa. When the sailor who ships the wife returns to the island with her shew is
attacked by the ape who caresses her. Soon she returns to the ship while the sailor easily
deduces the surgery when he sees the surgeon acting like an ape. The place is also in chaos
with the killer-orchids all wild. The evil rival captures him and wants to transplant his brain
into some other ape when the husband in the ape body returns. He kills the dude while the
sailor escapes to tell the wife how everyone died from disease without telling her the truth.

Tiger Dust (1933.4) (A thrilling tale of brain-transplantation) – a dude arrives at Malasyia

with an Irish man. The Irish marries a local girl and steals a special powder from some
corrupt animal dealer. The dealer kidnaps the Irishman. He meets two orangutans that
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speak to him, claiming to be his missing acquaintance and his trapper. The dude is taken by
the evil animal dealer who is also a crazy surgeon who transplants brains from different
creatures. He is drugged and is his brain is about to be transplanted into an orangutan. The
human apes arrive and kill everyone (as in all Morgan's stories). The apes commit suicide.
The girl learns about the ordeal and turns into a tiger using her sorcery to kill the animal
handler. The narrator frees her from a cage after the evil dude locks her up. She kills him in
her tiger form but the narrator shoots her and she turns into a human body.

The Vengance of Ti Fong (1934.12) (A tale of weird genius of a Chinese scientist who had
mastered too many of Natur's laws) The same Morgan's plot about some American who
reaches Indochina and meets some lovely girl in an island haunted by talking apes that are
actually humans whose brains were transplanted into the animals by some evil Chinese
scientist. This time the American runs away with the evil Chinese scientist's daughter and
wife. The evil scientist captures him and implants his brain in that of an Orangutan. His
friend and the girl live on an island for many months until the ape-man manages to reach
them. The girl seems fine with him being an ape and the monkey guards the forest while the
girl raises their daughter. They plan to avenge themselves on the Chinese mastermind.

Black Bagheela (1935.1) (A story of brain-transplantation, and huge apes that spoke with the
voices of men) – Again, Morgan tells about to exploits of the evil Chinese scientist who now
tries to torture one of the guys from the previous story who helped steal his daughter and
his exotic birds. The protagonist, the poor guy's brother, is kidnapped by the scientist's
helper and he serves as a diversion while they kidnap the poor guy who is now an
orangutan. The other guy who turned into an ape, in the previous story, and the Chinese
mastermind's daughter who can turn into a panther, help the protagonist to retrieve his
now-ape sibling. They find out that the ape was purchased by some maharaja. They give him
two priceless birds but the evil Chinese is there which makes his daughter turn into a
panther to assault him. He shoots the panther and escapes and the maharaja, finding out
that the ape was once human and very impressed from the panther-woman offers his help
to the group in defeating the evil Chinese mastermind.

C.L. Moore

Shambleau (1933.11) (An utterly strange story about an alluring female creature that was
neither beast nor human, neither ghost nor vampire) – A Han-Solo-like smuggler waits for
his Venusian friend in a backwater frontier-town in Mars. He sees a girl chased by some
rabble who wants to lynch her. He saves the girl but finds out the horde is scared of her. The
girl is not human but is a strange type of alien with green eyes and sharp teeth who always
cover her hair with a turban. He takes care of her but is discussed with her when he wants to
have sex with her. She doesn't eat anything. Finally he succumbs to his infatuation with her
and is covered by her red tentacles that sprout from her head. In ecstasy for three days he
almost dies when his friend enters the room and kills the creature. The smuggler hears from
his friend that this creature is an ancient predator from an ancient race. The smuggler still
wants to feel that ecstasy even though he knows it will kill him.

Black Thirst (1934.4) (An astounding story of ultimate horror, by the author of "Shambleau")
– Northwest smith, from the previous story, goes to some brothel on Venus where only the
most expensive and beautiful girls are bred. He is recruited by some beautiful girl who wants
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to break free from the tyranny of the god-like pimp who controls her. The place is very
dangerous and there are rumors that it is filled with traps and monstrous creatures. The two
reach the master of the place who reveals to them he is an ancient being who feeds of
beauty. He breeds women that become so beautiful they can crush a man's soul in seconds.
Nevertheless, the process makes them soulless and so he wants to experiment on other
forms of beauty with the beautiful girl that hired Smith and smith himself whose toughness
he finds appealing. He reaches the two's souls and they find themselves trapped in an
eternity of muck. The girl manages to free herself for some seconds and Smith manages to
shoot the man who becomes a primordial goo. The girl, though it was only minutes, has a
mortally wounded soul after the ordeal and she is dying. They manage to escape the place
while the monsters inside wreak havoc on the place. The girl collapses and Smith shoots her
so that her soul will be free.

Scarlet Dream (1934.5) (a tale of uncanny adventures in another dimension of space – y the
author of "Shambleau") – Smith buys a weird scarf at a market in Mars. The scarf was found
in an ancient space derelict. At night he covers himself with the scarf and finds himself
trapped within a dream. The place is a secluded mansion surrounded by weird plants and
bucolic scenery. There is a red mist that kills people. He meets a girl who has sex with him
and helps him to drink blood, with some other people, from a fountain room in the mansion.
Tired and annoyed, Smith decides to kill the red mist creature. He shoots it and the girl
disappears when they read a word that is supposed to destroy them. He wakes up by his
Venusian friend who tells him he was asleep for a whole week. The scarf is destroyed.

Dust of Gods (1934.8) (The story of the funeral pyre of one of the elder gods – by the author
of "Shambleau" – Smith and his Venusian friend are hired by an old weirdo to enter a
mysterious cave in Mars and retrieve the ashes of some primal god who dies eons ago. The
previous dudes sent there are now insane. They manage to enter the horrible cave and are
engulfed in darkness that makes their flashlights useless. They understand that a creature
made of light is coming for them and that the darkness is meant to make it stay. They
manage to move on before going mad. They manage to enter the throne room of the god
and they see that the light in it is like a liquid and it slowly dissipates from above. Touching
the ashes Smith has some visions about the god's life and its alien and awesome mind. Smith
and his friend decide to burn the ashes so that the old loon will not be able to revive the
horrible and alien entity that was this god.

The Black God's Kiss (1934.10) (A striking story by the author of "Shambleau" and "Black
Thirst") – a girl-knight called Jirel of Tory is almost raped by an evil lord who conquers her
land. She escapes from the dungeon he has thrown are in. She reaches her priest-friend in
the castle and she decides to go down to hell (in fact a dark dimension) whose entrance is at
the lower dungeons of the castle. She crawls into a corkscrew tunnel at the lower dungeons
and reaches a dark place with sad, horrible and slithering things. She meets a flesh-
doppelganger of herself who tells her she can get a weapon at some temple near the lake.
She reaches the dark temple and inside is space-like nothingness with a one eyed statue that
looks like it is waiting to be kissed. The girl cannot control herself and she kisses the statue.
She fills she is impregnated with some evil entity. She runs back to her world and confronts
the warlord. She kisses him and the entity enters him. He dies horribly but Jirel feels that the
light in the world died after that kiss.
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Black God's Kiss (1934.12) (Another fascinating story about Jirel of Joiry, who went down
into darkness to release the soul from torment) –Jitel descends into the hell-world again
after her former rapist's soul begs for her to release him from the hell-world. She encounters
many strange creatures who try torturing her until she finds a statue in which the rapist's
soul is trapped. She discovers she loved her rapist and with her love and hatred she manages
to quell an evil shadow that tries to freeze her. The dude's soul runs away and the girl saves
it twice from some strange things and from the shadow. In the end she manages to fight the
evil demon shade for the last time and the rapist's soul is now free.

Carl Jacobi

Mive (1932.1) (A tale of gigantic insects and a peculiar adventure out on the moor where
they were encountered) – a traveler goes to some swamp at night and sees a huge, black
butterfly. He touches it and the insect secretes some white powder with an intoxicating
smell. The dude licks the powder and starts seeing clouds that become a city. He sees a huge
cocoon and huge butterflies that devour the meat of the people in the flying city. He is
chased by one and runs until he falls. He finds out that he experienced hallucinations incited
by the butterfly's powder.

Revelations in Black (1933.4) (An utterly strange story of the woman who sat by a fountain in
the house of the bluejays) – a dude finds a book written by a madman at some antique shop
that is run by the dead crazy-dude's brother. The book makes him visit some abandoned
garden at night where he meets a mysterious girl and is infatuated with her. She tells him
she is an Austrian whose brother disappeared in the war and that she tracked him to the
U.S. where she found him dead. He is obsessed with her and takes the second book from the
antique dealer. He finds himself again at the garden and decides to take a picture of the girl.
She is angry and runs away. She unleashes a huge dog against him. He manages to get home
but the girl comes to him at night and sucks his blood. He awakes very weak and takes the
third book where he finds out the girl to be a vampire (surprise! Surprise!) He takes a
wooden leg of a chair and enters the mausoleum where he suspects the girl and her brother
lie and stake both of their bodies.

The Last Drive (1933.6) (A brief story of a grisly ride through a blizzard with a corpse) – a
truck driver, delivering the corpse of a dead car racer has his truck break down in the middle
of a blizzard. He puts the coffin in the driver's seat and sleeps in the back. The ghost of the
car racer starts the car and drives the truck into a tree in full speed. The driver is killed.

A Pair of Swords (1933.8) (A brief tale, about a strange adventure in broad daylight in the
sword room of the museum) – a dude goes to a guided tour in the museum. He sees two
French swordsmen who fence to the death for some girl and ask him to be their second. One
of them shows a locket of the girl he loves which the second claims as his own. The second
kills him by piercing the other through the locket. The dude awakens and asks the proprietor
about the swords. The guide is angry top see a pierced locket on one of the swords.

The cane (1934.4) (A mad obsession caused the respectable Mr. Grenning suddenly to
become a murderous fiend) – a punctual dude buys some cane that belonged to some rich
guy poisoned by his unfaithful wife. Seeing the funeral procession he becomes mental and
whacks one of the coffin bearers. He talks to his friend who suspects the ghost of the dead
man wants revenge. The following night the man takes the cane and goes to the dead man's
house to whack the dead man's wife. The friend tells him that the dead man got the wood
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for the cane from some Witch doctor whom he saved. The man then dreams that a naked
Native and some Englishman take the cane from him. He wakes up to find the cane gone and
the police next to the dead man's house - the woman and her lover were smashed.

The Satanic Piano (1934.5) (A gripping tale of occult evil and a marvelous musical invention)
– Some musician is coaxed by a mad scientist and occultist to try his new invention – a piano
that can play tune from a dude's mind. The man really likes to invention but is distraught
when the inventor takes it back. His fiancée and her Obeah girl-pet from the islands
disappear. He is convinced to try an upgrade of the invention but is shocked to hear horrible
music coming from it. He finds out that his fiancée was kidnapped by the crazy inventor and
he killed her servant and used her heart and brain to fuel his machine. He intends to do the
same to the dude's fiancée and he ties the dude to an operating table. His hatred makes the
piano explode on the mad inventor before he is able to carve the girl who unties the
unconscious protagonist.

Clarence Edwin Flynn

A Dead House (1933.12) (Verse) – a poem about a deserted house that is now dead.

Clark Ashton Smith

The Uncharted Isle (1930.11) (utterly strange adventure in an utterly strange land – an
extraordinary tale by the author of "The End of the Story") – a lost sailor whose ship burned
down and all crew have died is drifting, delirious for many days without food or drink. He
reaches an island that has ancient flora. In the island are extremely ancient people and the
sky is ancient too. The people are waiting for something and ignore the man completely. The
protagonist surmises that they are trapped in this island for eons. After some days among
these strange people he finds out there are no kids in this place except one. One day this kid
is sacrificed to some ape-like god. The protagonist takes some ancient oars and stuff and
manages to fit his boat and he is drifting to sea again. He is found by a ship that doesn't
believe his story even though they are baffled by the ancient oars and ancient jars of food.
The protagonist believes he wandered into a place where time and space cease to exist and
that some ancient people are trapped inside.

Fellowship (1930.10) (verse) – the speaker talks to those who walk at night and those who
walk at day looking for the light. He tells them that both will die and decompose.

The Necromantic Tale (1931.1) (An Occult story of much power, in which a man's life is tied
to the personality of a long-dead ancestor) – an Australian inherits a mansion in England and
falls in love with the dilapidated place. He finds out that one of his ancestors has no
information on. He reveals a secret passage that has his picture with his wife. The two were
burned for witchcraft. As he starts reading his mind gets entangled with that of his
forefather and he witnesses the love he had for the witch and how she made him an
unwilling warlock. The woman tries to force the present-day man to the body of the
medieval ancestor and as the fires reach him he manages to get back to this mansion's
library at the present. His legs are a bit burned though.

A Rendezvous in Averoigne (1931.4/5) (A fascinating vampire tale, as tender and beautiful as

"La More Amoureuse" of Gautier) a Medieval troubadour reaches Smith's Averoigne and
woos a local petty noble. He schedules to meet with her with two companions in the
haunted forest of Averoigne. He hears some screams and sees a beautiful, weird lady
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attacked by three shde-people with red eyes. Attacking them with his special wooden stick
they disappear. He loses his way and finds himself trapped inside a weird castle ruled by a
mysterious couple – one of them the mysterious lady. His girl and her servant-companions
are also trapped with him. They are given two separate rooms where the male servant
sleeps with him and the female servant with the girl. At night they fall asleep and wake up to
find the servants weal from blood loss. They understand the couple to be two evil wizards
who once ruled this place and are buried and are vampires now. They manage to find the
inner chamber (the tomb) and the protagonist stakes both the vampires with his sharpened
stick. The castle disappears and only the tomb remains. The two lovers reunite.

The Venus of Azombeii (1931.5/6) (An eery story of Africa, and an agonizing poison that
shrivels its victims – by the author of "A rendezvous in Averoigne") The narrator meets his
friend whom he didn't see for some years. The friend looks shriveled. After some months he
dies horribly but leaves a weird, Black, statue of Venus and his notes. The narrator finds out
that his friend really liked Africa and reached deep into the continent to find a mysterious
land ruled by a beautiful Black queen. He finds out that the people there are anti-Muslim as
they are pagan who worship Waneos (Venus). It appears that some ancient Romans were
there and mixed their blood and culture with these people. After participating in some
orgiastic rituals the man and the queen fall in love but a local wizard is jealous and tries to
kill him. The queen saves him from some crocodiles. The man is later poisoned by a servant
of this wizard and the queen drinks the poison too to identify with her lover. The wizard and
his servant are forced to drink it too but a mob kills them. The queen and man decide to part
so that they won't see the horrible changes the poison makes in the horrible months of its
effect. The man returns to California only to die slowly with the Black statue to remind him
of his love who suffers with him. Some changes from the typical plot elements – a black,
virtuous and beautiful woman (blacks in general are portrayed almost positively though
there is one instance when the narrator says they are violent in nature), a love story
between black and white, a woman who saves a man with her knife.

A Voyage to Sfanomoe (1931.8) (The brothers Hotar and Evidon left doomed Atlantis and
journeyed to the planet Venus – a fanciful tale) In the distant past a decadent Atlantis
culture awaits its slow doom. Two decadent scientists fool everyone that they are going to
save their island and instead build a decadent spaceship. They travel to space and live there
for many years as philosophers. They arrive on Venus as old men and see the planet filled
with flowers that are in a constant, and fast, cycle of rotting and regeneration. They see
animals with the flowers on their body. Soon their own bodies start to sprout the flowers
and they cease to exist as they become one with the flowers and immerse themselves in this
cycle of life and death.

The Immeasurable Horror (1931.9) (An incredible monster, like a horror out of some terrible
nightmare, attacked the explorers on the planet Venus) – a bit like his previous story, Some
human explorers reach Venus in the (not so) distant future. The planet has many killer
plants, toxic air and boiling-hot temperatures but is filled with many weird creatures. An
engineer goes scouting with some scientists but soon finds out an immense creature (many
miles long) that tries to devour them. One member dies from the creature's digestion fluids
and the narrator loses one of his hands but they manage to return to camp. Two later
expeditions are gone and when the narrator goes searching for them he finds out that the
other side of the planet is even worse with things he cannot describe and that scar him for
life. He wishes to never return to this hellish planet.
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The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake (1931.10) (The quiet study became the scene of panic
terror when the presence of a dread reptile was discovered) – Some guys have a friend that
reminds Lovecraft in his snobbism, disbelief in the Supernatural and being a Horror fiction
writer. They decide to prank him. As he is about to write a story about a stuffed snake
resurrected they want to replace the writer's stuffed snake with a real one. As they try to do
so, some days later, they find out that the snake is already alive and he bites one of them to
death. They later find out that the real snakes escaped from their cage and that the man
died of fear.

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (1931.11) (Concerning the weird and most unpleasant fate that
befell two marauders who dared disturb ancient gods) – the narrator is a robber and
wanderer narrating in a casual Sword and Sorcery style. The dude lives in a fantasy setting
called Hyperborea. The guy and his rouge friend decide to steal from the ancient ruins of
some place. They reach the place and enter a temple only to be cahsed all night be a toad-
like creature that is very flexible. They return to the temple and the narrator hides while his
friend is devoured by the monster-god. When the friend escapes the monster rips his hand
and eats it.

The Monster of the Prophecy (1932.1) (A story of cosmic scope, about a three-mooned
world of the giant sun Antares, and a poet from our own earth) – a suicidal poet meets a
strange gentleman that convinces him to move with him to his home planet on which the
poet has unwittingly wrote a poem. The gentleman is a huge alien with three legs, five arms,
three eyes and colorful skin. The poet agrees. They come to Antares where the alien reveals
to the poet that he wants to use him for a prophecy about a great scientist who comes with
a two handed, two legged, two eyed monster and rules the planet. The planet is ruled by
artists, scientists and philosophers who are much taller and beautiful than most of the aliens
but are also sterile. The workers and breeders are less beautiful and a bit dumb. After a
while the poet feels lonely and hates it when everyone looks at him like a monster. After a
short coup the alien-gentleman escapes and leaves the poet to horrible torture by the cruel
religious order that rules the nation. A comet crashes the place of his torment and he is able
to escape. He runs to a land ruled by an eccentric poet-queen. Although the two are very
different in kind the poet queen falls in love with him and tells him she wrote poems about
Earth and how she longs for its exotic scenery. The two become a couple.

The Planet of the Dead (1932.3) (A unique story of star-gazing – a bizarre tale of life in two
planets and the splendors of a far world) – An eccentric dude stargazes to his favorite star.
He then experiences that he is a person in another world who dreamt being a person on
Earth. This dude's world is about to die and its decadent inhabitants have parties till the end.
He and a beautiful princess travel the graves of this dying world. Go to some dying, decadent
palace and have sex till the end comes. When the planet dies the man awakens on Earth and
he does not know if this is the dream or vice versa.

The Gorgon (1932.4) (A thrill-tale about Medusa of the snaky locks and a fantastic adventure
in modern London – a bizarre tale) – a guy whose girl died sojourns in London. He meets an
old guy who takes him to his mysterious house with ancient Greek things and life-like
statues. He shows him Medusa's head through a mirror but then decides he wants to kill him
and tries to force him to look into the head. As they struggle the old man looks at the head
and is turned to stone. The guy escapes. He says that the head was the most beautiful and
horrible thing he ever saw.
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The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (1932.5) (A powerful story of a crawling horror, a weird vampirism
that ate the brains of the explorers) – an expedition on Mars digs in an old burial site of an
ancient civilization long gone from the face of the planet. Their two Martian helpers refuse
to enter. Inside they discover many urns with ashes and a mummy case. The mummy
crumbles and from it jumps a huge blob on one of the explorers. It controls him and he
breaks a wall with a pick before they kill the blob revealing the man's brain has been eaten.
From the cavity emerge thousands of blobs that kill all the expedition but the narrator who
barely manages to escape (a blob starts eating his brain but he stabs it before it is done – he
is badly wounded in the process). The man goes to an insane asylum but people believe his
story. He feels an urge to go back to the place and meet some strange brain sucking
creatures whose blobs are but servants and manages to escape his confinement and
disappear in the desert.

The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan (1932.6) (A fantastic tale of two magnificent emeralds and
how they returned to the vampiric entity that owned them) – another of Smith's Fantasy
tales in the imagined land of Hyperborea (I don't think it’s a secondary world but this Earth
in prehistoric times). A rich, greedy and evil merchant is told by an angry beggar that he will
die of his own avarice and will be swallowed by the earth. Sometime later a man pawns two,
huge, emeralds with him for a fraction of their worth. The emeralds then start moving and
the fat merchant chases them to a cave in the jungle. There are many gems there and he
jumps on the pile only to find it crumbling inside. A monstrous, toad-like creature emerges
and tells him he lured him into the cave to eat him. He starts eating him.

The Maker of Gargoyles (1932.8) (The story of a nightmare horror loosed upon a medieval
French village by Blaise Reynard the stone-cutter) – another Averoigne story. In a Medieval
town in the province of Averoigne a horny, ugly and frustrated stone-cutter made two stone
gargoyles for the local Cathedral. He shaped all his frustration and hatred for the town
people and some girl who refuses his wooing into the statues. Some years later he returns to
brood in this town – ogling the girl that does not want him and drinking his life away.
Meanwhile the gargoyles come back to life to decimate the city. One night when he is about
to kill a suitor of the girl the monsters arrive and kill everyone while another gargoyle rapes
the girl. The man is the only one left alive and he knows the monsters are his gargoyles. He
takes a hammer and tries to break the statues but they kill him. He manages to break some
of their legs so that the local priest identifies the monsters as the statues.

The Empire of the Necromancers (1932.9) (An endless army of plague-eaten bodies, of
tattered skeletons, poured in ghastly torrents through the city streets) –in Zothique – a
decadent world on the brink of destruction- two necromancers decide to go to some dead
civilization and revive all the dead so that they could live in luxury with the dead their
servants. One of the dead – an ex emperor – regains consciousness and with the help of a
dead wizard who also regains consciousness they manage to kill the two necromancers,
chop them to pieces, revive their chopped bodies, lock them in a maze and commit mass
second-suicide with all the revived corpses (they drop to a lava pit).

The Testament of Athammaus (1932.10) (A horrific story of an incredible monster that struck
a city with panic terror – as told by the state executioner) – An Hyperborean tale. An old
executioner remembers how an evil, and monstrous, man who has some alien ancestry,
cannibalizes the countryside with his tribe of evil, primeval men. He surrenders himself. The
executioner notices that he looks like a jelly human skin – without bones and with strange
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dots. He chops his head and black ichor pours out. They bury the body but the day after the
man is eating people again. They execute him again and put his body in a metal coffin. The
day after he still eats people. They chop his head again and this time they put his head in a
separate bronze case in another place from his body. At night the head bursts from the case
and turns into a vile black wave. They chase it until they see it eating two people. It becomes
a huge tentacle monster and it stands on the stone where it was decapitated many times.
The narrator decides to run away after the whole town evacuates and leaves the place to
the monster.

The supernumerary Corpse (1932.11) (Jasper Trilit was dead, but what was the thing in his
likeness that lay supine on the floor of the laboratory) – a rich dude hires a guy to invent
stuff while he steals his ideas and his girlfriend. The dude decides to kill him with a special
poison that makes a person stay awake but immobile while he slowly dies. After deceiving
the dude to drink the poison the man is immobile and dies an hour later. He calls the dude's
wife to tell her that her husband got a heart-stroke but she tells him her husband's body is
next to her. Apparently the dude multiplied and died at the exact same time his other replica
died. The body at the poisoner's laboratory refuses to decompose after a lot of time or to be
damaged by fire or acid. The poisoner thinks his poison duplicated the dude's soul and body.

The Mandrakes (1933.2) (A tale of sorcery, and weird homunculi that grew in the grave of a
murdered man) – An Averoigne tale in which a local wizard and his witch wife brew love
potions for the population from mysterious mandrake roots they grow. The man gets angry
at his wife after she tries to kill him and he kills her in self-defense. He throws her body into
the mandrake grove. When he tills the land he finds out the mandrakes are at his wife's
shape and they bleed and scream like her. He makes love potions from these mandrakes.
Whoever drinks from these potions becomes murderous and kills the person who gave it to
him. The man is arrested for being a wizard and the guards who come hear a voice telling
them to dig in the mandrake grove. They find the woman's body and the man is hanged as a
wizard and murderer – he is hanged and later burned.

The Isle of Torturers (1933.3) (A powerful story of terrific torments, and the onslaught of the
Silver Death) – A plague spreads in Zothique and kills many nations instantly. One king has a
special ring that saves him but the plague haunts him still. Finding himself alone with three
slaves who somehow didn't catch the disease he sails to find a hidden island protected from
the plague. Evil torturers from some nearby island causes a storm to lure the king's ship and
another ship to its island. The whole bunch are tortured horribly and the king is saved for a
special torture that includes giving him hope in the guise of a cruel woman who feints her
ability to save him and that she cares for him and will rescue him. When the final torture
starts she confesses to him, delightedly, that she was faking all along and that she enjoys
watching him suffer. With a ruse he manages to convince the evil ruler of this island to
remove his ring and put it on himself. The plague reappears and kills everyone on the island.
The ruler removes the ring, thinking it is the source of the plague, throws it into the sea and
thus he is also killed.

The Ice-Demon (1933.4) (The wild adventure of a hunter who sought to dig royal rubies from
a glacial tomb) – an Hperborean tale. A hunter's brother finds the lost, frozen bodies of a
kingly expedition with their sorcerer that tried to melt a huge glacier hundreds years ago.
The dude enlists the help of two greedy merchants. When they reach the cave and take the
rubies out of the frozen tomb the merchants are killed after the cave starts changing and
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crushing them. The hunter runs away but the whole glacier chase after him and tries to
freeze and kill him. He barely manages to escape the place but the glacier keeps chasing him
until he succumbs to the cold and the glacier takes possession again of the rubies.

The Beast of Averoigne (1933.5) (The story of a weird monstrosity that spread death and
horror through a peaceful countryside) – Another Averoigne story. A horrible creature stalks
the land and mangles people by ripping their spine and drinking its fluids. A red comet is
seen in the sky for many nights. The narrator – a sorcerer – tells how the local mayor told
him to help the people. He deduces that the monster mainly stalks the monastery grounds.
He uses his ring (a magic ring made by a sorcerer from Smith's Hyperborean tales) and the
demon inside it to kill the beast. The monster is killed but is revealed to be the abbot of the
monastery – it parasitically embedded itself in the abbot's body and emerged every night.
The sorcerer believes the monster to have arrived on the comet reaching Averoigne not long
ago.

Genius Loci (1933.6) (The story of a deathly horror that lurked in the scummy pool where old
Chapman was found dead) – a painter visits his rich friend on some bog. The painter is
mesmerized by some local swamp. He paints it and the friend sees some evil faces within.
The painter believes that the place itself is personified and has a malignant evil existence. He
becomes entranced and goes there day after day. When he goes there by night he returns
shocked from fear. The previous owner of the place was found dead and his face appears in
the pictures. Nevertheless, the friend invites the painter's fiancée and the painter forces her
to come with him to the evil swamp. The two are found dead when they spend the night
there. The friend sees how their faces become one with the previous dead owner to
personify the death of the place.

Ubbo-Sathla (1933.7) (A bizarre fantasy – a crystal-gazer goes back through time to attain
the beginning of all things) – an antiquarian\occultist buys a rare crystal from some Jewish
merchant-occultist. He becomes an ancient sorcerer who lived in Hyperborea who also tried
to do the same thing and disappeared. The two wish to read the ancient tablets that some
prior beings left on Earth in the keeping of a primal beast. After some failures he goes back
in time to become previous living organisms until he becomes the primal living beast.
Nevertheless, he cannot read the discarded tablets as he is a mindless beast that slithers
along the primal Earth.

A Vintage From Atlantis (1933.9) (A fantastic story about a jar of wine that was washed
ashore on a pirate-infested island) – Some pirates reach an island and discover an old casket
of wine, presumed to be from Atlantis. They drink the wine and see an apparition of the
ancient city that beckons them to enter it. The crew walks under the waves to reach the
ghost city. The narrator barely drank the wine so he regains control and escapes.

The Seed of the Sepulcher (1933.10) (A horror-tale of the Venezuelan jungles, and a
diabolical plant that lived on human flesh) – two flower collectors travel the jungle and when
one of them hears about a local lost-city he goes there when his friend is ill. The two
Venezuelan natives that accompany them are scared of the place. The dude reaches the
Lovecraftian city and finds a pit. He decides to descend into it as he believes it contains a
treasure. He finds interlinked skeletons in the pit with dead, white vines, holding them
together. He climbs up but hits some dead bud of the flower that releases spores which he
breathes. After joining his friend he starts feeling immense pain as the milky vines of the
plant emerge from his brain and from his eye sockets. He dies gruesomely after a day and
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the natives escape. The other dude is hypnotized by the monstrous plant that emerges from
his dead friend. Sometime later the plant embeds itself within the hypnotized guy.

The Weaver in the Vault (1933.12) (A story of the weird doom that came upon the searchers
in the tombs of Chaon Gacce) (Zothique? Hyperborea?) – Three companions are about to
ransack some tomb for the magical crown of some king. The kingdom was ruined by some
mysterious shadows. The three reach the ruined kingdom and the tombs and find the place
without bodies. An earthquake kills two of the companions and the third is trapped in the
tomb after a pillar falls on him. The third witness, in his last days of life, how a strange being
emerges from some chasm, dissolves the bodies and weaves a glowing web.

The Witchcraft of Ulua (1934.2) (A bizarre tale of the weird sendings of a wicked woman,
and the luckless youth whom she entangled in her toils) – In the far future of Zothique there
is an old hermit who lives in the desert. His nephew comes to him before taking a job at the
decadent court of a local Sultan. The hermit gives him some amulet that is supposed to
defend him from the debaucheries of the place. The dude becomes a cup bearer for the king
but the king's depraved daughter wants him so she seduces him for many days to no avail.
Angry she casts horrible spells on him and he is haunted by dead, lascivious, beings. He goes
back to his uncle who removes the curse from him and shows him how the Sultan's kingdom
is suddenly reduced to dust because of their sins and the unholy magic they use. The dude
decides to stay with his uncle and become a holy hermit.

The Charnel God (1934.3) (A vivid tale of a ghoulish cult in the temple of the black god)
(Zothique) – a dude who has a wife who faints and seems dead while unconscious come to a
city where all the dead dudes are dumped into a temple to get their bodies eaten by some
god. The costumed, silent, priests of the temple take his wife when she faints. He sneaks into
the temple only to see three evil necromancers who plan to revive some dead girl as an
ambulatory sex-toy (the animated dead cannot speak or think but only move like puppets).
They see the wife and decide to make her a sex toy also. The dude confronts them and the
girl awakens. They almost kill him when the god appears as a huge shadow and he eats the
walking-dead girl. The priests arrive and they reveal themselves to be some jackal-like
monsters. They let the couple leave but eat the three necromancers.

The Death of Malygris (1934.4) (A tale of weird sorcery – even in death the mighty wizard
proved himself greater that his peers) – One of Smith's stories about the last island of the
Atlantis empire. A powerful necromancer sits on his tower next to the balcony and does not
move for more than a year. His minions still bring him tribute from numerous vassals and
scared people. The mages of the nearby city decide to check if the dude is alive. Two thieves
enter his tower to find him immobile and rigid like a dead man. They are about to salvage
the place when the dude's dead lips emanate a sound that tells them about their deaths. A
serpent emerges from the dais and becomes larger until it kills them. The other mages use
some rotting spell to make the body rot (they incubate a replica of the necromancer and
curse it). They enter the place and see the necromancer rotting form. The necromancer
curses them to rot like him. All die within the hour. The snake leaves the place.

The Tomb-Spawn (1934.5) (The tale of a star-spawned monstrosity, and the eldritch magic of
a powerful king and wizard) (Zothique) Some ancient wizard ruled the continent and had
some alien friend. Both are buried together in some unknown tomb and it is rumored that
the place they are buried in is cursed and can drive a person mad and that any flesh
disintegrates when one touches something in there. Two brothers are lost in the desert after
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some ghouls attack their caravan. They are thirsty and descend into a cavern inside a lost,
deserted, city. They find a monstrous creatures that is huge and infused with a huge
withered man. The creature chases them and all are disintegrated after touching something.
The ghouls come to the place but leave it when they smell no food.

The Colossus of Ylourgne (1934.6) (A powerful novelette of animated corpses and a

homicidal robot) – in Averoigne a dwarf, crippled, dying wizard does some spell that
animates the dead to come to him. He chops their bodies and throws them into a vat that
makes their bones uniform and another that makes their organs and muscles uniform. He
builds a huge giant from these things , with the help of his pupils, so that he could have
sadistic fun when his spirit will be transformed into it. One of his ex-pupils tries to stop him
but is thrown to some oubliette from which he easily gets out. He follows the giant who also
takes his pupils in a backpack and rampages through the countryside saying that God is a lie
and ripping people and torturing others in cruel, sick ways. The ex-pupil reaches the city and
manages to create some counter-spell. He lures the giant and throws some powder at it. The
giant digs a huge grave (the spell is supposed to make the bodies return to their graves) and
crashes into it, squashing the pupils on its back.

The Disinterment of Venus (1934.7) (Strange Yearnings beset a brotherhood of monks when
the statue of a pagan goddess was dug up in the abbey garden) – an Averogine story - Some
monks find a statue of Venus in the garden while gardening. Soon the monks in the abbey
began to lust for woman and the statue. One pious, and handsome monk, decides to smash
the statue and is missing. They find his crushed body in the embrace of the statue that
miraculously changed position and moved its arms to wrap the monk. They bury the statue
again and leave the place untenanted.

In Slumber (1934.8) (Verse) – a hard-to-understand poem. The speaker awakens to find

himself at some swamp and dark rivers with dead things and snaky succubae and harpies
inside that kill and feed him to their young.

The Seven Geases (1934.10) (A saga as unusual as it is interest-gripping. By a master of weird

fiction) – a Hyperborean tale. A noble huntsman wants to kill some semi-human apes in an
evil mountain. He loses his way and bothers a powerful wizard during his rendezvous with
powerful entities. As punishment the wizard curses the dude to wander in the dark
mountain and become the sacrifice of some dark, fat, god. The dude gets the pet flying
dinosaur of the wizard as a guide. The two enter the dark caves of the ape men (they lash
and wound the poor noble). They reach the dark god's temple but the fat god is too tired
and gives the man as a present to some huge spider creature who in turn doesn't want it
and gives it to another creature and so on (dark sorcerer, lizard-man, abstract shades, pool
of goo, creatures beyond this world) The noble is degraded beyond belief by the words of
the beings he meet (they tell him time and time again that he is refuse and garbage) and
harassed by the slimey and shadowy creatures he encounters until he falls into endless
abysses when a bridge he treads on collapses.

Xeethra (1934.12) (An exquisite tale of a goatherd who gained and lost a kingdom) - Some
young goatherd in Zothique stumbles into a demon's garden inside a cavern and eats some
forbidden fruit. A huge demon guardian tells him he will pay. The young dude forgets he is a
poor man and belives himself to be a prince of some far away land. He leaves his life behind
and travels the world as a beggar for many years until he reaches a horrid desert and the
leper-filled ruin of his former kingdom. This kingdom was destroyed many years ago. The
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demon guardian returns and offers the dude to bring it all back until he doesn't want it
anymore if he will sell his soul. He agrees. The dude returns to his former life and he forgets
his life as a goatherd as he enjoys the palace life. Meanwhile the kingdom is beset by
plagues, war and corruption and the dude traps himself in the palace to debauch. He wants
to become a goatherd as the kingdom's needs stress him. A strange guy offers to make him a
goatherd. The prince follows him and the guy becomes the demon guardian. The dude now
remembers his life and is willing to sell his soul but the guardian tells him that his
punishment is worse – he must live with his memory as a goatherd who hates being a
goatherd and as a prince who hates being a prince.

The Dark Eidolon (1935.1) (An eery tale of the tremendous doom that was loosed by a
vengeful sorcerer) – In Zothique some young beggar is trampled by some unwitting decadent
prince. The maimed boy wanders the desert and finds an evil sorcerer who teaches him to
be the best wizard in the world. Asking some powerful devil who refuses to help him the
sorcerer decides to punish the prince. He erects a huge palace next to the prince and
mentally tortures him with awful sounds at night and some revelry. The prince is finally
broken and he is invited to the sorcerer's palace in which the sorcerer tortures him some
more and kills all of his servants with special tortures to his favorite concubine. He then calls
some colossal creatures that trample the city. Calling the demon who helps the sorcerer the
prince manages to convince the demon to crush the sorcerer who becomes a living-dead
madman who thinks himself both the prince and the sorcerer thus hating itself. The prince
dies and his spirit is released. The huge creatures return and trample the sorcerer's castle as
well and all the remaining living creatures in the vicinity die.

Cristel Hastings

The Empty House (1931.11) (Verse) – a poem about abandoned houses and how they are
sad and dark.

Fog (1932.4) (Verse) – a poem about wind and fog and how it moves around lonely shores,
empty wharfs, sleepy sailors and ships in the clouds.

Mystery (1932.5) (Verse) – strange shadows creep the forest and some houses and echo into
the night.

The Haunted Room (1932.8) (Verse) – a poem about a ghost that haunts an abandoned
house and tries to clean the blood on its floors.

Penalty (1932.11) (Verse) – a poem about the place where people are hanged and how
dismal it is.

Ghost Town (1933.11) (Verse) – a description of a dusty, abandoned miner's town.

Listening (1935.2) (Verse) – The night is listening to dead people and long lost loves and
forgotten things and the dew in the morning is its tears.

David H. Keller

The Bride Well (1930.10) (Another whimsical story about Cecil, the Overlord of Cornwell,
and how he won his beauteous bride) – Cecil needs to sneak his lover, the girl he got in the
last story, into the castle so that he knights won't be angry. He dresses her as a boy. He tries
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to teach her to read but she wants to remain ignorant and only look at the pictures, which
makes her an even better woman according to the story. His knights force him to marry and
he decides to banish his girl and do some old ceremony where he goes to a magic well in the
woods and sees the face of his future wife. The girl hides in the well, dressed like a queen,
and the people believe her to be a magical queen. His priest, one of the magical frog-men
mentioned in the first story, makes the Welsh come with lords and marry all the free girls of
his knights while doing some magic that they will fall in love.

The Seeds of Death (1931. 5/6) (A powerful story of a castle in Spain, and gorgeous orchids
with their roots planted in warm human blood) – a Spanish duke loses all his money to some
woman and is contacted by a man whose brother went missing in a mysterious castle in
Spain ruled by a beautiful American lady. The duke learns some magic tricks with a cup and a
bead. The man reaches the castle first. The duke comes several days later only to find his
friend missing and the lady seducing him with her beauty and strange orchids which she puts
on her body. He manages to threaten the lady to reveal the secret of the missing man and
she tells him that she found some mysterious Pomegranate seeds that embed themselves in
the human body, killing the host and sprouting from the dead-person's orifices. These
become beautiful, moving orchids which she likes to put on her body. She shows him all the
missing men in changing states of dying and death and the strange plants sprouting from
them. She threatens the man with some hired guns to gamble his life with the seeds – if she
manages to find the seed in his game of cups she eats the seed and he eats a pomegranate
seed. If otherwise he eats the deadly seed. He plays and winds telling her his hand is faster
than the eye. Some hours later the woman is okay but the man starts to lose consciousness.
The woman mocks him telling that she replaced the deadly seeds even before the game
began and that her hands were faster than his eyes. She lies on her bed and puts some new
blossomed orchids on her face and body. She likes how they move and caress her. Femme
Fatal and Cool ending.

The Thing in the Cellar (1932.3) (A strange and blood-freezing evil awaited the boy as he
went to his doom in that dark room) – a boy is scared of some kitchen cellar ever since he
was a baby. His parents go to a doctor who tells them to lock the boy in the kitchen with the
cellar open for an hour. A fellow doctor tells the doctor his method was stupid. The doctor
goes to the parents' house to find the boy half eaten by some creature, invisible to older
people.

The Last Magician (1932.5) (A thrilling fantasy about a monster so vast that forests grew on
its back and people dwelt unsuspecting in towns on its hide) – a magician sees his whole
family and close friends killed by some evil priesthood. The dude is a magician from a secret
society that lives on some magical land in Spain. His master tells him he is the last magician
in Europe and must help him revenge all the suffering they suffered from the priests. The old
guy tells him how wizards started from a primitive age as helpers of mankind but the priests
abused their knowledge and persecuted them. They discover that they live on a huge dragon
and that they can kill it and destroy this land. The wizard manages to send the young
magician away with some Arab wizards and he kills the beast with magic and thus destroy
the land and its people.

The Solitary Hunters (1934.1) (A powerful story of the blood-freezing horror awaiting the
men who were sent to a living death in the crater of an extinct volcano) – a hard-boiled
serial about an entomologist recruited by the head of the Mafia. Crime is on decline after
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the U.S. government authorized the existence of a new prison where prisoners are taken
without the government knowledge about what happens there (it is unclear why the
government does not suspect they are simply executed on arrival). No one knows what
happens there and no one comes out. The prison is governed by a mysterious dude about
whom nothing is known except that he is extremely rich. The entomologist fails to find a job
but after getting the job all the universities is the u.S. offer him a job. He is threatened by
people to accept the job and he is framed for a crime and offered to be released if he takes
the university job. The Mafia boss explains that his daughter was taken to this prison and
disappeared. He tells him he needs an entomologist and that all the entomologists in
America were contacted to refuse this job for some reason. He shows him some photos that
prove he needs an entomologist but the dude does not believe the pictures are real. He
tries to contact the best entomologist in the U.S. who shows extreme interest about the
pictures but is later killed (the reader never gets a glimpse, at this point, about the photos'
character or why they are important to the story). After being chased by the mysterious
organization the dude fakes his death. The Mafia boss arranges, with the dude, that he will
be framed for heinous murder of some judge who sent the Mafia boss's daughter to this
prison even though women are never sent there. The boss's cronies kill the judge and the
dude just shoots him post mortem in front of witnesses while he has many dollars and
cocaine in his pocket. He is sent to this horrible prison. He meets some University dude and
the two enter a tunnel in the prison that forces that walker to go forward. The dude finds
many glass buildings and not even one prisoner from previous shipments. The protagonist
and his new friend mind their own business in the pit. Some criminals want to break into the
proprietor's house but their bodies are found in the morning and it is revealed that his house
is protected by electricity. After seeing some hooligans killing other inmates and playing
soccer with their heads the good-looking friend of the protagonist whacks some criminals
and kills their boss. He becomes the new prison boss. The protagonist finally says what he
found in the pictures – huge wasps chasing a smaller man. Finding a huge wasp's carcass the
dude tells his friend about his life and the friend tells him he is the estranged son of the
Mafia's boss looking for his missing sister. The wasps arrive – first harmless males that eat
from huge sugar barrels. Later, the females arrive and they tunnel into the ground. The food
is now put next to the wasps so the inmates must battle them to get the food. The wasps
win and take five of the prisoners to their den as food for their offspring. The friend decides
to sneak into the food trolley when it comes up. The friend disappears after that. The
narrator manages to fool a wasp that takes him beyond the electric line and tries to feed him
into her larvae. The dude got some anti-venom shots before so that he manages to eat the
larva instead though he is wounded by the creature. He manages to sneak into the mansion
and whack the evil dude who always wears a disguise. He prowls long enough to fool his
workers to leave and for his secretary, whom he suspects is the gangster's daughter, to be
alone with him. He is whacked on the head by his friend who does not recognize him under
the costume – he was a prisoner until now and saved for some experiments. The evil dude's
plan was to breed the wasps to eat human flesh so that they will kill mankind (why? Oh
why?) They find out that the real evil dude is a woman and that she masquerades as the rich
guy who is her prisoner. She was his wife and got angry about him bossing her around so she
decided to kill all man and to kidnap and imprison him (the levels of stupidity reach new
heights here). The remaining heroes leave the place and the gangster lets the dude marry his
daughter.

Donald Wandrei
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The Cypress-Bog (1930.11) (verse) – a poem about an abandoned lagoon with disgusting
swamps where some man-bats and goatman are (they probably fight as there is a body
there of one of them).

Something From Above (1930.12) (Another powerful story of outer space by the author of
"The Red Brain – a doom from outside menaces the earth) – Some astronomers see
something invisible approaching Earth. A farmer witnesses his wife hurled to the sky with
the mailman only to later crash down frozen from space with the body of a crushed,
monstrous alien, next to her. He burns them both and the invisible spaceship part he ran
into earlier. He then commits suicide. A pilot dies from gangrene after being found many
miles from his crashed plane. He has a strange disk. In his diary he says that he was
kidnapped by a gaseous alien from Saturn who told him his race warred against monstrous
aliens who have invisible material. The Saturnians had only enough of this material to build
one ship but the aliens wanted their stuff and decided to conquer Earth first with three ships
built from this very rare material. His ship managed to destroy them but heir rays have
mistakenly taken two Earthlings to space and one of their ships crashed. He returns the man
to explain the peril to Earth (with the magical disk that is supposed to do something yet it
doesn't) and then defeats the remaining alien ship. After he dies the doctor who took care of
him and the nurse witness the disk flying into space. Wandrei's Sci-Fi is very different from
Hamilton yet shows many similarities. Both accept the non-human as a friend but also as a
horrible enemy. Wandrei's stories are less adventure-type and are a bit more dark and
ponderous.

The Tree-Men of M'Bwa (1932.2) (A startling story of Africa, strange monstrosities, and the
weird power of the Whirling Flux) – A dude travels Africa and finds a man without legs who
is a famed explorer who also warns him not to go to some mountains. He tells him how he
traveled there with his companion and when separated he discovered a red, metallic
structure surrounded by human trees. He is attacked by a black, shriveled man who rips his
legs and forces him to drink something. He wakes up with his legs having vines and around
him some moaning trees. The tree guy next to him tells him about a space-entity that lives in
the red structure and that controls the shriveled man. The man's friend arrives and chops
him down. He manages to stop the black man but the space entity comes out and revives
him. The two barely manage to escape. The friend later dies from malaria. The legless dude
proves his story by showing him vines protruding from his stumps which he has to chop
every couple of days.

A Queen in Other Skies (1932.1) (Verse) – a poem about a beautiful woman who lives under
the sea in some ruins or perhaps in space. The poem is filled with imagery from other
planets, underwater and from ancient tombs.

The Little Gods Wait (1932.7) (Verse) – a poem about little gods who wait in a mountain for
the end of the world so that they could crawl out.

The Lives of Alfred Kramer (1932.12) (An astonishing story of atavism, by the author of "The
Red Brain") – a dude meets a repulsive dude at night on an empty train. The repulsive dude
tells him that he invented a machine that helps him remember past lives. He tells him how
he dreamt every night about the previous life he had with each night going further back in
time. He describes many experiences in history. When he reaches 100,000 B.C his
appearance begins to change and he starts to look like an ape. He stops the machine but it
doesn't help and he goes further back in time until he experiences life as a dinosaur, an
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ancient fish and an aquatic jellyfish from the dawn of life on Earth. He refuses to sleep as he
thinks he will die after dreaming about existence before life. He falls asleep and the narrator
sees that the man wore a mask and that he is actually a protozoan mass. The mass oozes
from the costume and turns into a puddle that dies.

The Fire Vampires (1932.2) (A scourge struck from the sky, killing countless thousands) – A
professor and his helper are convinced a meteor that hurtles into hurt is with intelligent lives
on it. When the meteor arrives thousands of people are burned. The meteor continues on its
way. Several years later the meteor returns and burns some more people but this time it
also writes in the sky about how it is ruled by a superior race of light beings who want
annual tribute – the professor is one of them. The professor deduces they can read the
minds of the people they burn – assimilating their energy. The professor fakes his death but
one of the tributes sees him and so the aliens are angry and burn 100,000 people. Six years
later they are about to do the same but the doctor observes the meteor and thinks it has a
single structure and that the light aliens are made of blue light with only one of them being
made of a red light. The professor builds a huge contraption and when the aliens arrive he
traps their king and destroys it. The other aliens disappear and the professor tells the helper
there was only one alien who fooled them all. The meteor stays around Earth in orbit.

Spawn of the Sea (1933.5) (Thrills and shudders make this story of a fearsome sea voyage) –
a dude is left alone on a broken ship with a cowardly man after a storm. The ship hauled
some chemicals that after the storm created a horrid living form at the lower decks. The two
manage to live for some weeks with the provisions and stale water without provoking the
monster that lives at the belly of the ship. Nevertheless, the cowardly dude almost escapes
with the boat they try to build when the protagonist is asleep. The dude now must live with
a monster on the ship and a traitor. The monster breaks loose and catches the cowardly
dude – melting him slowly. The protagonist mercy kills him. The monster is driven back by
the rays of the sun. The man tries his luck on sea. He writes the whole thing on paper and
puts it in a bottle. The story is discovered 150 years later by the antiquarian narrator.

The Lady In Gray (1933.12) (The story of a strange woman and a loathsome gray slug that
came to a sleeper in his dreams) – a Lovecratian story in which a dude has some strange
Lovecraftian dreams for all his life (with Cthulhu and stuff). He also buries his fiancée who
dies in an airplane crash (though her body seems fine for some reason). He dreams he meets
the girl in some strange otherworldly places of his nightmare and finds some weird
mementos from these encounters. He finally dreams to take his fiancée back home. He
wakes up to find her rotting body next to him but she still moves as if alive.

Vine Terror (1934.9) (A weird-scientific tale, about vegetable vampires that lusted for animal
and human food) – Some dude explodes during an experiment he conducted and his two
friends are shocked to find out that his life-essence starts to give horrible life to a local
vegetation. The vines become flesh-like and they kill many animals and suck their blood. The
two scientists barely escape the place and they pour gasoline all over it and burn it to a crisp.

Dorothy Quick

Candles (1934.1) (Verse) – A bizarre poem about a godly king and queen to whom the
speaker burns colored candles. The queen is represented as a land and the king tries to kill
her.
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Anne Boleyn (1934.11) (Verse) – A poetic description of Anne Boleyn walking from the tower
of London to become queen and then jumps to her walking from the same tower to be
beheaded.

E. Hoffmann Price

The Bride of the Peacock (1932.8) (A tale of devil-worship and the ghastly rhythms
wherewith Abdul Malaak sought to accomplish his evil will) - the dudes from "The Peacock's
shadow" and "The word of Santiago" (and probably the Landon from Price's other stories)
save a girl in a Quinnesque sort of story. There is a girl who inherited a house from a
deceased French duke who lived in Morocco who was her lover. The girl is having dreams
where she opens a tomb and wakes up with her clothes soiled. Landon sleeps at her house
but fails to follow her night-walk as he is attacked by two ruffians bearing peacock-crested
swords. He manages to shoot one but the other smashes his head. A Yazid comes to them
and tells the French fencer and Landon that he is the Moroccan duke's friend who is the
head priest of Malik Taus (this time Price correctly depicts it as an angel and not the devil).
He was violently replaced by an evil man who, in truth, worships Satan. The man is killed by
a dagger hurled from the window. They do the same vigil the next day and are attacked by
hypnotized warriors with scimitars – they kill all of them. Landon chases the sleep-walking
girl who climbs into a secret compartment at her window (how the hell?) and he finds out
she has a whole underground complex of pyramids and huge rooms under her house –
almost an underground city. The girl is taken by the evil dude who drops Landon into a
hidden cell. There he finds the, apparently dead, French Moroccan dude. Together they
escape and kill many people until they reach the ceremony where the girl is about to get
married to some devil or something and be baptized in the fires of hell. They kill all the
dudes after the French fencer arrives, dressed like the Yazid man, and makes the cultists
believe he has returned from the dead – starting a civil war among the cultists. The French
duke decides he wants to die, for some bizarre reason, and leaves the party – dueling the
remaining cultists until he dies while they escape. The French fencer admits he knew the
house inheritance was fake and that the cultists only wanted the girl to come to them so
that they could hypnotize her. This nonsensical story ends when the girl wants to marry
Landon.(why did they hypnotize the girl – they could have just kidnapped her? The fencer
says they did it so that they could corrupt her so that she could marry the devil!!! Why the
hell did they want her to get married in the first place? They could find million more women
from where they came from? Why this underground city? It makes no sense! Why did they
want to hypnotize the population of France? For what means? This convoluted and illogical
plot is so stupid).

The Return of Balkis (1933.4) (A thrill-tale of modern sorcery and the ancient Queen of
Sheba) – The French dude and his servant from previous stories save a girl who is besieged
by Arab dudes who try to kidnap her for some bizarre ceremony. They enlist the help of the
Dervish from Price's other stories. The girl is captured by a huge many-handed creature so
that the soul of the Queen of Sheba will inhabit her body and marry the head cultist. The
narrator is kidnapped with it. The narrator wakes up tied up (for some odd reason they did
not kill him) and witnesses the cultists doing a weird ceremony to the girl. The French guy
and the Dervish's men arrive and are almost killed by the hand abomination when the
narrator prevents the ceremony to continue by pushing himself on the sorcerers. The heroes
arrive and kill everyone. The girl is still lost in a trance and the Dervish sacrifices his soul to
save her. She marries the protagonist.
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The Word of Bentley (1933.5) (The story of a haunted stock-ticker – death itself could not
prevent Bentley from keeping his word) – A stock broker who is very loyal to his investors
and speculators dies. He tells his daughter, just before death, that a fellow investor's money
must be protected as he promised to return him, at least, the exact amount of money he
invested. The girl invests in iron and sees, by the telegraph line which is misty for some
reason, that the stock price has dropped to almost nothing after reaching a boom. She sells
all her stocks. She finds out that the stock price has not dropped but that it still at its top
price. The market crashes the following week and the price of iron reaches bottom. The girl
is asked how she knew the stock will crash and she tells what she witnessed – her father
tried to keep his promise to his friend.

Lord of the Fourth Axis (1933.11) (A thrill-tale about a malefic conqueror from the Fourth
Dimension, whose plans for world conquest make Genghis Khan and his Mongrel horde look
like amateurs) – another clunky story of the annoying French occultist Pierre d’Artois and his
sidekick. This time they defend a carpet that can open reality to the fourth dimension and
help some crazy Asian sorcerer to become the next Genghis Khan. They enlist the help of
some priest mathematician but fail to decipher the last mathematical equation to solve the
carpet's secret before taken captive by the lackeys of the Khan who use their magic in New
Orleans (apparently its location is crucial for unleashing the evil). The French dude fools the
Khan and his coterie that he is loyal to them and the three behold the opening of the portal
from which horrors emerge. The Asian dudes are appalled but when the heroes close the
portal they attack them. They manage to kill many of them before the priest is killed and the
Frenchman's police helpers come to kill the rest. They burn the carpets. Some Lovecraftian
themes added to this Seabury Quinn's-like sort of narrative.

Tarbis of the Lake (1934.2) (She was a living, breathing woman with living woman's passion –
but what was the thing that lay in the mummy-case like a corpse within its coffin) – A dude is
enamored by some exotic girl who lives in France. He has sex with her and meets and talks
to her many times becoming a close friend. The girl never leaves her house and is
mysterious. He escapes to the East to find out about this woman whom he thinks is not
human. He talks with a local French priest who tells him the girl is actually an immortal spirit.
He talks to the girl and she finally confides in him that her other form is in a back room. He
finds out she is the life-force of a dead mummy of the Queen of Ethiopia who lived in the
times of Moses and tried to get the prophet to marry her. He burns the mummy and the girl
dies horribly. The dude escapes and is now mentally scarred for life.

Satan's Garden (1934.4-) (The story of a terrific adventure, two beautiful girls, occult evil
and sudden death) - The annoying French old-guy-fencer-occultist from Price's other stories
and his gunman sidekick who gets married in every story but appears single in the next are
trying to help some girl. The girl is whipped every night by invisible whips while she dreams
about being in an Arabian Nights garden. They find out that there is a local rich guy who has
a beautiful concubine. The concubine is murdered by three Middle Eastern man whom the
protagonist kills. The two are invited to some occultist gathering in which the dead girl is
revived to promise everlasting sexual pleasures on the next world. The thing is orchestrated
by an evil Arab who may have kidnapped the rich guy and uses his home as headquarters.
They hurry home to find the whipped girl has been kidnapped. The protagonist masquerades
as an Afghan barbarian for some weeks before being recruited to the evil dude's gang of
assassins. He awakens in front of the ruling, elderly assassin who tests him by battling two
assassins – he kills them both. He is then drugged and taken to some garden filled with girls.
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He finds his love interest who does not recognize him. He kills one of the bosses in the place
and another recruit to frame them for killing one another. He taken back by the evil lord
who tells him he is fit to be one of the place's leaders after thwarting his mind control. He
reveals to him that he knows he is an imposter and drops him – free – into some basement
The protagonist kills the three guards there and frees a captured French count. Together
they enter a temple where a ceremony is about to take place in which the girl is drugged and
her soul is sent to hell to find the soul of the boss the man killed in the garden by
summoning a genie. Slaughtering many the count falls. The French old-guy arrives with some
scuba-diving men and kill the rest. The dying count banishes the genie. The dude tells the
man that the count was responsible for the whipping of the girl as he was jealous and that
he redeemed himself.

Queen of the Lilin (1934.11) (The story of a scientist who fought the world single-handed) –
The annoying French occultist helps a young French woman assaulted by inanimate objects
given to her by some rich count. After hypnotizing the girl the occultist and the narrator
finds out she is haunted by a demon woman. Facing the count, they find out that he
manifested Lilith by hypnotizing five of his friends. Lilith tries to kill the girl because the
count fell in love with her. The occultist convinces the count to kill the hypnotized friend as
the only means of saving the girl from Lilith. He kills them but Lilith becomes even stronger,
reanimating the dead bodies and using them to rip the count apart. Using some old statue of
Lilith the occultist smashes it and vanishes the demon.

Eando Binder

Earl Peirce

Edgar Daniel Kramer

Edmond Hamilton

The Cosmic Cloud (1930.11) (A cloud of blackness beat against the edges of our universe,
threatening its crowded suns and worlds with annihilation) – another dumb story of the
federation of suns. This time the hero from the previous stupid story (the one with the
reptile galaxy) investigates a black shroud that steals ships. He enters the shroud and is
completely blinded and is magnated to it by some force. As in all of Hamilton's stories – all of
his crew are butchered except two of his friends by alien creatures that built an entire
civilization with technology, spaceships and the like while being blind (they hear things!!!).
He manages to escape in darkness and be very quiet so they fail to capture him (dumb as a
door nail). A scientist who managed to build a stupid pair of goggles that can penetrate this
darkness (just as in another stupid story of Hamilton) and he explains the protagonist how
the aliens try to make the whole galaxy dark but they only need ships so they invented a
stupid magnate to capture all of these ships. They plan to destroy the whole galaxy and
make it their own because their planet is a bit crowded (again, Hamilton shows he knows
shit about the size of a galaxy – why would these people need a whole freaking galaxy if
their stupid planet is a little bit crowded???). They manage to save his two captured friend
(the rest of the crew, as in all Hamilton's stories, is forfeit to be killed completely). They find
out that the whole planet has left to conquer the galaxy (so – everyone is a soldier? There
are no women, kids, innocent civilians? Why did they leave? Ah because the planet was to
crowded for them – so they left it completely – brilliant!) they use the magic magnate to
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crash all the ships down to the planet – all the aliens are dead. The levels of stupidity reach
new boundaries in Hamilton's stories.

The Horror City (1931.2/3) (Two aviators are drawn by the suction of the winds into a black-
domed city of horror in the heart of the Arabian desert) – Three aviators are sucked by some
wind in the desert after they decide to fly over a section of the desert that no pilot has ever
returned from. They manage to escape death and save their plane. They see the wreck of a
fellow pilot's plane and vast ruins of huge, black cities. The see that the wind comes from a
huge city that seems inhabited. They creep into the city and see it is inhabited by octopus-
like creatures. They manage to shoot some of them and after a chase they are saved by two
octopus-creatures who tell them they are the lost pilots. The city is the home of some
ancient humans who managed to live forever by building artificial, octopus bodies and
transplant their brains when the body ceases to work. The power to do so stems from an
energy source harvested by sun pumps that also suck air. As in all Hamilton stories the guys
escape and the octopus pilots manage to pull a magic lever that makes the whole city
collapse.

Ten Million Years Ahead (1931.4/5) (A startling story of what this world will be like ten
million years from now, when plants rule instead of men) – a scientist and his two friends
use a time machine to travel ten million years to the future. They soon find a mushroom
covered landscape and huge machines operated by plants that kidnap one of them. The
other two manage to escape but are taken captive by white haired and white skinned
dwarves who live underground using simple tools. They discover this is humanity in the
future. They use the help of one of the dwarves who wants to save his kidnapped brother.
They enter the plant city, thronged with machines and dumb human slaves. They kill some
plants and rescue the brother and friend. They hijack a striding machine and escape the city.
They throw the two dwarves into their cavern when they try to sacrifice themselves so that
the protagonists will escape. The latter manage to reach the time machine at the last second
and return to the present vowing never to use the time machine again.

The Earth-Owners (1931.8) (A weird-scientific story of beings from outside, who fought for
the ownership of our world) – three guys are convinced the world is owned by galactic
creatures who raise humans like cattle. Some clouds descend on Earth and kill half the
people in the U.S. The guys believe these are the world owners and tell so to some scientists
who try to save the world. They fail but some bright globes arrive and destroy the clouds.
The three guys now believe these are the true owners of Earth as they are more often seen
and that the clouds were invaders. The shiny things seem to like humans.

The Shot from Saturn (1931.10) (A tale replete with thrills and surprises, about an attempted
invasion of the earth by the planet Saturn) – Some professors observe something launched
from Saturn and a meteor that crashes on Earth. Believing it to be aliens they go there. After
some weeks of silence they request some materials and manpower. Some fellow scientists
arrive only to find the guys a bit confused to their identities and speaking a bit weird with
one of them missing and allegedly going mad trying to kill them. They also find some alien
crustacean bodies with crashed skulls. Afer some attempts on their lives and the scientists
insistence on building a launch pad for the spaceship as soon as possible, the missing mad
scientist confronts one of the later scientists and tells him the aliens were alive when they
got there and they sucked their knowledge somehow and then took their brains and put
them into the scientists' bodies so that they could build a launch pad to go back to Saturn.
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The reason for that is that Saturn has gone "too cold" and they sent a surveying party to
Earth so that if they return with good news the Saturnians will invade Earth. They manage to
kill the evil aliens and prove to everyone that their brains are not human. (Yet another stupid
story of alien invasion in which Hamilton shows he doesn't even have an elementary-school
understanding of Physics and Biology)

Creatures of the Comet (1931.12) (An utterly strange and blood-curdling tale about a weird
world in the heart of a comet, and fearful adventures thereon) – Two guys ride a rocket (that
have "rocket guns" and "rocket bullets" – so stupid) and reach a comet. The comet has a
world inside it. The is inhabited by some hundred thousand humans who live in tribes. They
are hunted by "metal men" that crunch them to pieces to create blob-like monsters that
serve as their slaves. They control the blobs with weird devices. They raid the humans to
create more blobs. The two arrive to save such group of captured humans. They use their
"rocket guns" to kill the raiding party headed by the "metal men". They learn the natives
language in five minutes (how they hell they do it? The story just says they easily understood
it! Hamilton and his extremely dumb stories). They reach the village of the captives and are
hailed as heroes by the chieftain whose girlfriend they have just saved. The blobs and their
masters attack soon after and though repelled they capture the chieftain and one of the two
adventurers. The other friend arranges an army of all the human tribes (how the hell he do
it so quickly?) to storm the "metal men" city but his friend and the chieftain wish the army
will not arrive as it is a massacre. The captured hero remembers that when he killed the
metal men he took their devices and put them in his pants (this happened four days before
which means he did not change his pants or even went to sleep, or sat down, during those
days). He uses the devices to make the blobs retreat and then he and the prisoners fight
against the blobs and the metal men. They reach some place and get a load full of devices
and thus kill all the blobs and the metal men in this world. The party then arrives and the
two guys decide this is the time to leave. They take the rocket and get out of the comet.
They are harassed by space-police for hampering the space traffic.

The Three from the Tomb (1932.2) (A dramatic thrill-tale about three millionaires, dead and
buried for months, who reappeared among the living) – a dead guy returns home after
months being buried with a doctor claiming to have brought him back to life. A detective and
a reporter check the case. They find out that three dead millionaire's bodies were robbed
from the cemetery some months back. The doctor claims that he can revive the other two.
After reviving another one the detective suspects foul play as they all have white faces and
fail to remember crucial things about their lives. The third is revived with a huge press
coverage but then the detective tells the crowd that he fooled the three imposters when he
asked them about some threat letters they got which were never sent. He shoots the doctor
when he tries to kill him. He tells the party that the three are imposters that the doctor did
plastic surgery on so that they will get their money.

The Earth-Brain (1932.4) (A weird-scientific story by a master of this type of fiction, about
the vast creature on whose body we live) The narrator find an old friend during an
earthquake. The friend tells him that he was in an expedition to the North Pole where him,
two scientists and two Eskimos found the "head" of the Earth. The Eskimos refused to enter
a mountain cave as they said the earth is living and this is its brain. The earth shakes several
times as a warning but they enter and find a beautiful oval thing that glows. It captures them
and dissects them and the remaining ones feel the earth's brain as it travels through space.
The friend shoots the Earth's brain and the Earth is angry. It chases him around the globe
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and kills many people around him with natural disasters. The narrator keeps hearing about
his friend's whereabouts and the earthquakes that follow him. The friend decides to commit
suicide in one earthquake thus stopping earth vindictiveness. (the story says that Earth
treats as vermin on its huge body and cares about us as much as a man cares about
microscopic lice on his body. Yet, Earth seems very interested on his two years chase after
the friend)

The Terror Planet (1932.5) (The brain-men of Uranus – the thought-tubes of the Brants – a
thrilling interplanetary tale by the author of "Crashing Suns") – a guy goes with his girlfriend
and scientist friend to Uranus as an evil, rival, scientist forces them to enter the space ship (it
is more like a bell that moves in the speed of light by some pseudo-scientific method). They
find themselves surrounded by angry gorillas who try to kill them. They are rescued by flying
men who squirts killer liquids from some tubes but the scientists are kidnapped. The man
and the girl are in the dudes' city and find out the planet is divided to three ruling races
developed from one race – one side decided that the body is more important than the mind
and became beasts (how, the fuck, is this thing evolutionary possible) the others balanced
between mind and body and became humans and the third became huge brains without
strong bodies or emotions. Yet, all communicate through telepathy. They manage to rescue
the good scientist after two weeks and he tells them the evil scientist raised the gorilla-army
and wants to rule the planet and take the girl. They manage to stop the invaders but they
are going to return (the evil scientist taught them the use of… shields). The narrator goes to
the far north to contact the brain people for help. They reach the place and logically deduce
that the gorillas will kill them later so they go to wipe the gorillas with mind controlling
devices. They reach in the nick of time and force the gorillas to commit suicide. The evil
scientist is about to kidnap the girl into the bell but is killed by the narrator. The three return
to earth.

The Dogs of Doctor Dwann (1932.10) (A blood-thrilling story of weird surgery and the things
that ran in the night and howled through the Adirondack woods) – A dude moves to a
secluded place and finds out his neighbors do some experiments with dogs. He is shicked to
hear strange dogs at night and as he foolishly goes to check out the countryside and go to his
neighbors' house he finds out dogs with human bodies chasing him. He escapes to his
neighbors' house and they tell him they were expelled from the university by four professors
because they really wanted to transplant heads of animals on other animals. At night a dog
with a human head tells him he is one of the professors and that the rest are held in a same
way with him. He begs the protagonist to help him with the key (he uses his mouth to
manipulate it). The protagonist screams and the two villains arrive, shoot the dog-man and
decide to transplant the protagonist's head on some dog (why didn't they just killed him – it
is so stupid). The wounded dog-man manages to manipulate the key after all and free his
friends. They attack and kill the two and then they press a magic lever that makes the castle
and its horrors explode with the protagonist just outside the place.

The Man Who Conquered Age (1932.12) (A weird-scientific tale of a scientist who ran amuck
in New York's streets) – an old dude is expelled from the university for being old. He invents
an age defying ray. He shows it to his friend but the dude steals it when he hears the dude
wants to sell it to the highest bidder. The guy who stole the invention goes to the police who
agrees to stop the man who invented the thing because it can cause chaos (I am not sure
this is, in any way, lawful – the guy stole a thing the other guy worked for several years and
then goes to the police to arrest the guy he attacked? It makes no bloody sense). The other
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guy uses the ray on himself and becomes young. He uses the ray to age people or making
them young. The elderly, becoming young, surprisingly want to go back being 80 – it makes
no bloody sense. Fixing things with his own ray the dude returns to the police. The scientist
goes to the media and advertises his invention forcing the mayor to stop the police chasing
him. He then disguises himself and goes to the police claiming he saw the evil scientist at
some place and he made him young. The police go out and leave the friend in the room,
thinking he will presently come, as the disguised dude tells them he wants to go back to his
old age. Then, the disguised dude tries to use his ray to age the other dude until he will die
from old age. The lights go out (this whole ordeal takes a lot of time and the police dudes,
who went outside, and hear the commotion decide to remain outside and scratch their balls
– the levels of stupidity in this stories are tremendous even to a Hamilton story) and the two
shoot each other with the ray until the evil scientist dies. The police decide to enter and they
help the good dude return to be 60. They smash the rays.

The Star-Roamers (1933.4) (An interplanetary story that will make your pulse beat faster, by
the author of "Crashing Suns") – Three adventurers from Earth arrive at Alpha-Centauri and
are attacked by spaceships. They are saved by other spaceships. They find out that the star
system is inhabited by liquid creatures who begot semi-liquid people who begot solid
humans. The humans fight the semi-liquids and the liquids are content with minding their
own business. The semi-liquids kidnap the leader of the solid humans and one of the three
adventurers. Some of the semi-liquids don't like the war. The kidnapped dudes find a
captured liquid man. They escape and call the liquids for help and thus destroy the semi-
liquids. They continue in their travels.

The Fire Creatures (1933.7) (A breath-taking story of a thrilling adventure in the heart of an
active volcano) – a scientist invents heat-proof suits. His daughter and her pilot friend go to
search for him inside a volcano when he disappears. They are attacked by fire beasts inside
the volcano and the girl is taken captive by fire-men. The scientist arrives and with the other
dude they discover a whole world in the fire with fire fish, fire people and fire sea (so dumb).
They dress as the fire people as they try to rescue the girl. The man is taken and he and the
girl are "executed" with cold air that has no effect on them but they fake it so they would be
thrown outside the city. They are about to be hurled into hot lave when the scientist arrives
and saves them. They are chased by the fire men but when they arrive to the opening of the
volcano the fire-men die from cold. They get outside the volcano and the man tells the
scientist he will never go back there even though the scientist wants to conquer the place.
He also tells him he is about to marry his daughter.

The Horror on the Asteroid (1933.9) (An amazing weird-scientific story of a space-ship that
was wrecked by meteors) – a spaceship liner is forced to crash-land on an asteroid with an
atmosphere after a meteor shower bombarded it and killed two thirds of its passengers and
crew. The tiny asteroid is filled with primal trees, apes, reptiles and amphibious creatures
from Earth's past. They also find numerous wrecks of spaceships. The survivors start acting
irrationally and fight one another while losing their capacity to think clearly. One of the
passengers and a nice girl rummage through the wreckage and find a space log that details
how those who arrived here before had started a process of reverse evolution and lost all
manner of rational thought as they became apes. They hint that previous wrecks also
contained survivors who became dinosaurs and even lesser creatures in time. The process is
very fast and took the crew only a week or so. The two try to warn the others but they are
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too far gone in their inability to think. A ship arrives and saves everyone. The survivors
become normal again in space.

The War of the Sexes (1933.11) (A tale of 20,000 years in the future – a loveless world in
which the males and females engaged in a war of extermination against each other) – a
stupid plot about a dude who goes to a scientist who offers him a job. The scientist straps
him to into a chair and tells him he is about to remove his brain. He wakes up 20,000 years
after that in the body of the leader of the males. The world is divided between males and
females who can reproduce without the other. They try to kill each other. They used his
brain as it was the only quick-available brain to use when their leader's brain was smashed.
They still let him rule. In his first battle (just minutes after awakening) he captures the
female queen and falls in love with her. He teaches her what kissing is and releases her from
prison. She kidnaps him to be executed by the females. Upon execution she also falls in love
with him and defends him. The males arrive and the two try to escape. The man awakes to
find out it was all a dream and that the scientist just wanted to see if he has the nerve to
work with him on a dangerous expedition as he still tried to fight him and not screamed in
horror (what the fuck???). The scientist's daughter looks exactly like the queen he imagined
and he is thrilled to find out she comes with them.

The Man who Returned (1934.2) (The story of a man who was laid away in the tomb and
returned to his friends) – a dude wakes up buried in the family's mausoleum. He manages to
break free and finds out a week has passed since his premature burial. He is happy to return
to his wife and son but finds the former to be in love with his friend and relieved that he
died and his son happy to get the father's insurance money to fulfill his dreams. He decides
not to tell them he is back. He tries to call his friends and co-workers but finds out they
hated him all the same and were glad that he died. He is kicked out from every place in town
as no one believes him he was buried prematurely. He decides to go back to his coffin as it is
warm inside. He is smothered to death after he puts the lid back.

Thundering worlds (1934.3) (An Odyssey of interplanetary space) – Our solar system is dying
because the sun is almost gone many thousands of years from now. The planets are all
inhabited by humans (the stupid Hamilton does not seem to understand what a gas-giant
actually is). Humanity decides to stuff some rockets at each planet (because why not) and
they travel to other suns. They find the first sun too radioactive for their taste (though some
disgusting creatures live there). The second sun is inhabited by some jelly creatures and, as
in all Hamilton stories, the jelly-creatures attack humanity with globular ships. The humans
win but they question a captive (by… telepathy of course) who tells them the local sun is
about to explode. The aliens build huge engines to make their planets move too after seeing
the humans and it only takes them some minutes. They chase the humans who fail to find
refuge in another sun. finally humanity manages to find a sun but the aliens' planets chase
them, so they crash Mercury on the aliens' planets and kill them all. (Hamilton has done it
again – he exceeded the level of stupidity that his last SF story has managed to make a
record).

Corsairs of the Cosmos (1934.4) (A stupendous story of interstellar space – an amazing

weird-scientific tale) – Hamilton reaches new pinnacles of stupidity . This time the annoying
"space-patrol" saves the day from robots that come from a robot galaxy. The robots
propelled some dead suns to steal suns from our galaxy as it is too cold there even for
robots (apparently Hamilton did not go to elementary school to understand the concepts of
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gravity and life). They fail to stop the robots and Hamilton describes the deaths of most of
the fleet in a nonchalant way. The galaxy propels some other planets too in a few hours
(apparently Hamilton has no idea about the time engineering efforts are made or the size of
a galaxy or anything else). They use these dead suns to steal the suns back and to destroy
the robot galaxy by crashing suns into one another. They also suicide-kill most of the robots
by crashing their own suns into the robots propelled suns. Again the death of most of the
fleet seems to be so banal and boring to the narrator that he just mentions it like describing
the growth of grass.

Murder in the Grave (1935.2) (A grim story of a night of terror, ten feet underground) –
Some circus dude has an affair with some married circus girl. His stunt is being buried alive
for a week. At night the angry husband kills his wife and then throws a snake to the grave
before shooting himself. Before committing suicide, the dude tells the buried man about his
plan to kill him slowly and that the cut the cord of communication in the grave. The
frightened dude tries not to move but eventually the snake bites him. In the morning they
find his body but the snake charmer tells them that his missing snake was not poisonous as
he took his poison sack out and that the dude died from fear.

Frank Belknap Long

Great Ashtoreth (1930.11) (verse) – a poem about a sorceress called Ashtoreth that is
banished to some mountain to starve to death. The young men come to her and are never
seen again and the priests shrivel and die (from starvation?).

The Horror from the Hills (1931.1-2/3) (A powerful story of shuddery horror – a goose-flesh
tale about a stone idol brought from China) – an archeologist gets a monstrous statue from
Tibet. This statue is brought to him after some prophecy that this statue is actually a
creature that needs to suck on his blood until his body will rot so that he could reach
America and rule the world. The previous archeologist that was sent to get the statue was
tortured to death by the worshippers of this statue for some reason but they are okay with
this archeologist. After the archeologist sleeps the night in the chamber of the statue and
the statue comes to life to maul, harass, torture and drink his blood he get it to the museum
but after several weeks with the creature he has a huge trunk and his body shrivels and he
dies horridly. The curator of the museum soon finds out that the statue starts killing guards
at night and drinks their blood. The cops blame (in a racist diatribe) some poor Chinaman.
There are some people in the Pyreneans who die mysteriously. Then the plot moves on to
some occultist who tells the curator about the Roman period and how their legions tried to
fight the monster in Iberia. Everyone died. He tells them that the monsters that did it are still
in the Pyreneans and are the monstrous statue servants or extensions. The occultist has
some machine he invented that hauls creatures back to the fourth dimension or to the past
(or something like that, it is unclear). The monstrous elephant-creature escapes the museum
and kills many people in the U.S. The occultist, the curator and another guy from the
museum take their machine and track the monster. They use it against it and it disappears
together with the Pyreneans monsters because everything is attached in the fourth
dimension or some other bullshit like that.

The Abominable snow Man (1931.5/6) (Verse) – a poem about a man lost in the snow on
some mountain while the inn-keeper that sees him leave later hears his screams as a horde
of little creatures tear him piece by piece.
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The Malignant Invader (1932.1) (A powerful story of a horror from the bowels of the earth,
by the author of "The Space-Eaters") – A strange octopus-monster emerges from the sand at
a beach and eats a professor that tries to prove its existence. A student watches this and
with the help of his friend seduces the monster to come up when they explode its layer.
They succeed and find the professor's watch. They want to keep the monster's existence
secret.

The Horror in the Hold (1932.2) (A tale of the old adventurous days when Spain and England
fought for the supremacy of the seas) a Spanish assassin in the 16 th century sneaks into an
English ship to kill a captain of the fleet by blowing the ship with its own gunpowder. He kills
four sailors who sing about the dragon that will save England. Just before blowing the ship
he is attacked by a scaly creature that eats him completely. It is revealed that the captain got
a huge crocodile to show the queen (and apparently set it loose on the hold with all the
English sailors around?).

The Brain-Eaters (1932.6) (A spine-chilling story of a weird horror from four-dimensional

space, and the dead men who sat in the boat) – a ship, commanded by a deranged captain,
finds a boat drifting at sea with mangled bodies. There is also a diary there that explains how
this boat drifted into another dimension and that sub nautical "brain eaters" contacted him
to create a horrible scene of mangled bodies so that when a bigger ship arrives, with an
intelligent poet on board, they will scare him so that his brain will be better to eat. At night
the brain eaters attack but the mad captain manages to navigate the ship outside this
dimension. The narrator is grateful for having an insane captain as mad people "see" things.

When Chugnar Wakes (1932.9) (Verse) – a poem about a creature Long wrote about ("The
Horror from the Hills") who dwells in another planet and sends his horrible dreams to the
universe contemplating what planet to destroy.

The Black, Dead Thing (1933.10) (A weird sea-tale, about the utterly horrible thing that came
aboard a ship on the second night out) – a dude lies on a discarded chair at night on a ship.
He is sunk into grey goo and sees a horrible, dead face. He calls the attendant who tells him
that this creature comes to the ship on their second night of sailing in the area. The creature
brutally kills some passengers and then wears their clothes and sits on the chairs before
dissolving. The shocked dude returns to his cabin to find a man sleeping there with
something on his head. Trying to wake this thing up he sees it is the monster that wears the
clothes of his previous victim. For some reason the creature dissolves before killing the
dude. The dude is shocked for the rest of his life.

In Mayan Splendor (1934.4) (verse) – the speaker dreams about alien scenery as he drinks
and walks like a king. Some Mayan ruins and dead warriors surround him.

The Beast-Helper (1934.8) (The story of a dictator who sought power by a psychic alliance
with a powerful beast) - a first story that criticizes totalitarian regimes. An American
journalist who criticizes an East-European Totalitarian regime is invited by the dictator for an
interview. The dictator bluntly states that he is going to do violent things in the diplomatic
level but becomes frightened when something tries to enter the room. The journalist goes to
a nearby café where an old scientist tells him he was once the minister of education and that
he was forced to infuse some gorilla into the dictator's mind so that the gorilla will incite fear
in his lackeys and critics – killing those who don't behave. The gorilla tries to attack the
journalist after he walk to his room but the dude manages to kill the gorilla by shooting it
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(why the others didn't do it is beyond me). The scientist tells him that the dictator is dead
because the two's brains were connected – he also hints that the dictator has become even
more violent and aggressive due to the gorilla's mind creeping on his own.

The Body-Masters (1935.2) (A strange story of the distant future – mechanical robots and
synthetic love) – Some dude with a serial number for a name lives in the far future. Society is
engineered like a biomechanical dictatorship with humans getting drugs and glandular
surgery to make them happy and docile. The whole concept of jealousy is about to get
removed by the invention of female sex-robots and male emotional-robots used as lovers for
couples. The dude is in love with his dumb, sex-robot and even removes the glands of some
guy who killed his wife over his jealousy. The angry dude refuses to do the surgery and tells
the protagonist that it will make him less human but the dude ignores his pleas and thinks
how stupid is jealousy. He returns home to find his wife with her male-robot companion and
smashes it in a rage. The girl then asks the dude to do the same to his robot and he accepts
but the girl understands he will forever think about his sex robot.

Frank Owen

The Ox-Cart (1933.12) (A bizarre fantasy about an aged Chinaman – a fascinating weird love-
tale) – a White guy hops on an old Chinese guy's cart. The dude becomes younger and
explains how he travels back in time to take his old loved woman who refused to go with
him as he became older and immortal after some star-dust fell on him. The White guy is to
kidnap the girl. Despite wanting to fuck the girl himself after seeing her he takes her to the
Chinese dude. She becomes old and angry and starts choking the White dude. The dude falls
from the cart and wakes up to think it is a dream. He finds part of the girl's sleeve at his
hands and he sees blood on his throat.

Pale Pink Porcelain (1934.12) (reprint that never appeared in WT) (An eery Chinese tale by a
favorite Weird Tales master of fantastic fiction) – Two Chinese porcelain makers compete to
get some girl. The girl, a porcelain painter herself, tells them that if one manages to give her
some pink, rare, pigment to color her vases she will marry him. One of the guys is very
handsome and good with girls and the other is ugly. The ugly dude is insulted by the
handsome one and pushes him into his pottery oven. The dead body has some pink
pigmentation that the dude gives to the girl. The girl says that she knew the pretty guy had
some jewel on him with that color and that they should wait for him to come so that he will
concede to the ugly dude who gave her the color.

G.G. Pendarves

The Grave at Goonhilly (1930.10) (a tale of Valsume the Black Magician and the wresting of a
man's soul from his body by evil occult powers) – a man meets an old acquaintance at a ship.
The friend tells him that he hunts an evil wizard who lived hundreds of years ago and now
possess the body of his close protégée and friend. This friend was afraid from some patch at
a golf course but was forced to play over it time and time again (why the wizard didn't do it
to other people is a mystery to me). This patch was the burial ground of an evil Spanish
wizard. The wizard's ghost kills the man and when the friend brings him back to life (how the
hell did he do that) the friend's soul is transported to some dog and the evil wizard controls
the friend's body. He runs away. For several years he hunted him. The protagonist decides to
join the acquaintance. A year later they manage to infiltrate his coven at the U.S. In a mind
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battle the acquaintance manages to exorcise the evil wizard's spirit into a bird which he later
burns. The protagonist poisons the dog and the friend's spirit returns to its body.

From the Dark Halls of Hell (1932.1) (A tale of the beautiful violinist, Erzebet, and the
invocation of evil powers to work revenge for her) – A Jewish violinist diva wants to marry a
friend of her Jewish friend – the two saved each other in WWI. The Jewish friend tells her
that she is a diva and will only hurt his friend and so she must marry him. The woman
refuses and uses some spell learned from her devil-worshipping father to get an evil spirit to
kill the dude as he refuses to marry her and wants to marry a pure, angelic girl. She haunts
him for days and as he almost dies his friend tells him to marry the angelic girl ASAP. The
Jewish girl finds out and the evil spirit almost kills the due. The Jewish friend manages to
exorcize the spirit but it inhabits the girl's body – he kills the girl and commits suicide. The
dude and the angelic girl marry.

The Altar of Melek Taus (1932.9) (A vivid narrative of the devil-worshipping Yezidees, and a
beautiful English-woman stolen to be the bride of fire) – Another story about a girl getting
kidnapped by a Yezeed wizard who wants her to marry the Peacock devil. The girl is married
to a nice man who has an Arab secretary who suspects the Yezeed wizard. The wizard does a
trick and imprints the peacock symbol on the the girl's hand. She is hypnotized and abducted
to the Yezeed evil castle. The man and his servant manage to infiltrate the castle and the evil
dude falls in love with the woman and ponders a second before raping and sacrificing her.
The Arab servant grabs him into a pool of lava and kills him with his sacrifice. The couple
escapes and goes back to America.

Abd Dhulma, Lord of fire (1933.12) (A shivery story of an evil Arab who contrived to
postpone death for many centuries) – an archeologist who almost deciphered an evil
manuscript becomes blind. An evil sorcerer convinces him to trade his soul and body after
one year in return for his sight. The dude consents. A fellow Arab tells him the wizard is an
ancient evil that sucks souls and thus leaves forever. He also sucked his father's soul. The
two manage to find out there is a knife that can kill the sorcerer. The white guy fails to leave
the city and is burned every time he tries that. The Arab friend tries to get the knife that is
hidden in the desert. The dude deciphers all of the manuscript which is about the evil
sorcerer. The dude burns his life's work. Many months pass and the time comes when the
wizard arrives to take the man's soul. The Arab arrives and gives the knife to the white due.
After a lengthy battle in which the evil sorcerer tries to remove the knife from the dude the
knife falls. But the evil dude is already too old and brittle and dies.

Gans T. Field

Gaston Leroux

Greye La Spina

The Portal to Power (1930.10) (a four-part serial about a cult of devil worshippers in a
hidden valley of the Rocky Mountains) – an old witch who decided to become good gives an
old doctor the philosophers stone inside a cat. His helper comes later and as the doctor
hides he finds out the man is part of a cult that worships the devil. The old witch gives him a
fake philosopher's stone inside a dog. The witch tells the old doctor that he must bring the
stone to some place and that if the devil worshippers will get hold of the stone the world is
doomed. The doctor goes home and sees his helper cutting open the dog. He fires the helper
and then opens his cat. Meanwhile many characters appear in an almost Jane Austen style
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with their etiquette and boring love life. Their connection to the story is that one of them is a
friend of the doctor. The devil-worshipper man manages to become part of this group's
milieu (as an airship mechanic) as they are going in an airship to a place where the doctor
could give the stone to the good-guys' cult. The ship is captured by the evil assistant who
drops them at gun-point on an abandoned plateau. The group is separated by a mysterious
glass wall that is in a hall they explore. When they sleep part of the group is captured by
cultists. The other part reaches a glass city inhabited by the cultists who worship Pan. The
assistant is revealed to be one of their high priests. One of the girls from the group is taken
to be a high priestess (why? Oh why? The whole story started as the cult tried to get the
stone from the witch and they know it is in possession of the old doctor – they seem to
forget that as they don't care anymore for the doctor and the stone and they are suddenly
interested in a girl that has no connection to the story whatsoever). She is taken to a temple
where she meets a goat-man, apparently Pan, and it is hinted she is going to get fucked as a
virgin. The girl returns to her friends and she and her female secretary faint constantly as
women usually do in these misogynistic magazine. The professor is psychologically tortured
and he hides the stone in the bosom of the girl (why? She is the would-be-high priestess – it
makes no bloody sense). The goat creature easily finds the stone in her clothes but tells her
that she must give it to him herself and put it into an armor or something for some odd
reason. The party plans an escape. The girl is promised by the high priest that the ceremony
is only for the betterment of the world with the evil helper (his grandson) only making it
wrong and that he tries to stop him. The girl consent but during the ceremony it is revealed
she was secretly married to the secretary who revealed to be the real lord and the lord being
his servant. Pan, seeing that the girl is "married" (the marriage was a play made by kids and
never fulfilled but…) tries to rape her (why oh why?). A struggle ensues in which the party
manages to get the stone and some magic wands. They escape to the airship but the pilot
must sacrifice himself to save the others by jumping on the evil helper from a cliff. The party
enters the zeppelin and this messy story ends.

The Devil's Pool (1932.6) (A tremendous werewolf story, full of eery thrills and shudders – by
the author of "Invaders from the Dark") – A guy comes to help a friend whose fiancée
mysteriously locked herself in a strange farm. A local boy is missing. The guy learns from a
local priest that something bad has started to happen on the farm when an evil dark man
arrived there. He sneaks into the premise and sees a pool. As he is about to enter it a

Jewish man stops him. Nevertheless, he dips his toe in it. The evil, dark man, arrives and
forces him to go with him as a trespasser into the custody of the owner of the place. It
appears that there is lame girl in the house whose old grandfather wants to educate but
since he has no money he kidnaps people with the help of the evil dude who drops them
into the evil thus making them werewolves. As long as they don't eat human flesh their souls
remain intact. He got the Jewish young man and the fiancée to stay by pushing the girl into
the pool and the Jewish guy trying to save her. They go at night and hunt for food. The 14
years old girl is in love with the Jewish youth. The evil man believes the dude to immerse
completely into water but it is only his toe that transforms into a wolf's paw at midnight. The
dude discovers all of that and manages to stop the bad guy, in his wolf form, attacking the
girls. The dude realizes that the curse can be lifted if the girl will jump on her free will into
the pool. A priest arrives and sprinkles the wafer on the pool. The dude and the evil man
fight and the girl jumps into the water – the Jewish dude saves her. The evil man gloats but
then is frightened when he discovers the water are now o.k. He is pushed into the water and
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dissolves. Interesting how Jews are represented as Oriental and mysterious (sometimes
avaricious) but also decent and Godly.

The Sinister Painting (1934.9) (An eery story of a fiendish murder and a midget psychic
investigator) – Some dude is shocked to find his artist friend killed violently in a mysterious
way. He finds out that some evil wizard-artist had used his magic to inhabit a painting which
he planted in the studio and that the painting killed him. The dude enlists the help of some
mysterious and weird midget-woman occultist who goes at night while the wizard inhabits
the painting and pierces it with a knife after using some magic. The evil wizard dies.

H. Warner Munn

Tales of the Werewolf Clan: 1. The Master Strikes (the first of a series of unusual stories
narrating the adventures of the progeny of the Werewolf of Ponkert) – The son of the girl
from the last Werewolf story of Munn has some kids and when she dies two of them kill one
another and the master appears and tells them that he will haunt them (he is in the form of
a cat). One of the sons tortures cats by making them scream inside an organ that he plays.
He tells his son and fellow dwarf the story. The cats are released and kill the man but his son
reveals that they were freed by the dwarf who is revealed to be the Master. The boy wounds
him but he only disappears temporarily. Twenty years later the boy is a Huguenot rebel in
France and he tries to kill an evil Catholic general who persecutes them. The master
intervenes and he is found by the Catholics but the master also shows him how he tempted
his wife to come into this place and be slaughtered with all the Huguenots. The man
commits suicide by jumping from a tower but manages to crawl to the pile of bodies where
his wife's body is and the two are impaled by a cruel Catholic. It is revealed that the man also
has a son.

Tales of the werewolf Clan: 2. The Master Fights (1930.12) (Occult forces were behind the
disaster that overtook the Invincible Armada sent by the Spanish king against the power of
England) – the son of the protagonist from the last story is now on a Spanish ship on route to
Scotland. The ship is part of the Armada and is beaten badly by British forces. The
protagonist sees most of the crew dead. The Master appears and offers to give him
vengeance if he gives him his body after 30 years. The Master helps the son and a bunch of
ragtag Spaniards to haul themselves into a castle, kill some barbaric Irish and some English
soldiers. The son and the Master turn into werewolves and kill many of the enemy camp.
The son goes to Scotland and when he dies the Master leaves his body as he is now old and
frail (what the hell did he think will happen to a 70-year-old body – stupid as usual). He
wants to take his son's body as the son is young and he learns sorcery.

Tales…3. The Master Has a Narrow Escape (1931.1) (A tale of the Thirty Years War and the
first case of witchcraft in New England) – The grandson of the guy from the last chapter is
now a fugitive in Germany during the Thirty Year War. He has a little daughter. They are
attacked by brigands but a couple of armed refugees help them. The man decides to blow
himself up because he knows it will slow the brigands and also remove the Master who
threatened the man before (and apparently started the Thirty Years War). The couple take
the girl and the man blows himself when surrounded by the evil brigands. Some years later
the couple and the daughter reach America. The girl is accused of witchcraft due to the
Master's presence. She is hanged but manages to give birth just before her execution.
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The Wheel (1933.5) (A powerful tale of torture, by the author of "The Chain") – another
torture tale by Munn. An heir of some Jewish victims of the Inquisition tracks the last
descendant of the torturers and is about to torture him to death as is the custom in his
family. The victim is an oil speculator. He tells him his story and how his ancestors were
tortured before spraying him with some sleeping gas. The victim awakes on ahuge wheel
upon a burning pit of searing tar. The dude must keep on walking at different speeds so that
he won't fall into the tar. All the while the word "justice" is repeated on record. He manages
to trick the torturer and make the wheel break. He kills the torturer by hurling a sword at
him but when he jumps to safety the body of the torturer falls upon him and he also plunges
to a horrid death.

A Sprig of Rosemary (1933.6) (A tender story about a skinflint whose stony heart was
softened after death) – an old misery money-lender is dead. A little girl takes pity on his
grave, which is unadorned, and puts flowers on it. She starts to talk with his ghost and the
family also becomes softer to the dead man. The girl dies from fever and the ghost of the
miser helps her into the next world.

H.P. Lovecraft

Fungi From Yuggoth: 3. Hesperia (1930.10) (verse) – a poem about a beautiful city that
opens up to many dimensions with some Egyptian style meets spires. The speaker says the
city was never trodden by human feet.

Fungi From Yuggoth: 4. Antarktos (1930.11) (verse) – in Antarctica there is some black cone
of evil. Beneath it there are some evil "dead eyes" buried under the ice. Lovecraft mentions
the "old ones" here (they are the only ones who vaguely guess what the aurora is!!!! Oh!!!!
So stupid!!!!) in relation to Antarctica.

Fungi…: 5. The Bells (930.12) (verse) – the speaker hears some hidden bells every midnight.
The speaker searches his dreams for their source but fails. The speaker manages to locate
the bells at the bottom of the sea. Lovecraft mentions Innsmouth's here as a quiet place with
ancient spires!

Fungi… 6. Nyarlathotep; 7. Azathoth (1931.1) (verse) two poems about two Cosmic entities
the first has an Egyptian vibe and the other is at the center of the Cosmos with "idiots"
playing around him while he himself is an "idiot". (The poem about Azathoth includes a
messenger but in the Cthulhu Mythos Nyarlathotep is the messenger – in here it seems as if
Azathoth is the messenger)

Fungi… 8. Mirage; 9. The Elder Pharos (1931.2/3) – two poems about Lovecraft's oeuvre (the
second is clearly from The Quest for Unknown Kadath which was never published in WT) In
the first one the speaker sees some strange outer-dimensional city which is beautiful and
strange. In the second poem the speaker talks about a mountainous place called Leng and
he muses about an Elder creature that wears a yellow mask whose face is horrible to behold
and who is talking with Chaos.

Fungi… 10. Alienation (1931.4/5) (Verse) The speaker dreams of many Fantastic things but
when he dreams about a non-Euclidean dimension filled with chaos he cannot fully function
as a normal human being and barely fakes it.

The Whisperer in Darkness (1931.8) (a stupendous novelette in which the horror rises and
accumulates to a superb climax) – an epistolary correspondence between an Arkham (the
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imaginary Lovecraftian town) professor who researches rumors about some strange dead
creatures and a hermit who lives in the woods of Vermont who believes those creatures and
their human accomplices try to get him out of the farm. It appears these creatures are aliens
from Pluto who have a mining expedition next to this hermit. After harassing the farmer
night and day and cutting him from the world he begs the professor to come and stay with
him. When the professor arrives he finds a man cover in shawls who tells him how these
aliens are wonderful and how they devised a plan to take him on a trip to their planet. The
professor later finds out it is by means of extracting the human brain and putting it in a
cylinder of some kind. At night the professor hears the creatures congregate with their
human accomplices. When the professor confronts the hermit about it he finds out he was
deceived as the person who talked to him was not the hermit. He knows it because he finds
a human mask, some mechanical hands and the discarded shawl. The man was probably
abducted (or at least his brain was).Filled with references to the Mythos with names of gods
and the like.

The Strange High House in the Mist (1931.10) (A hermit dwelt in a sky-perched cottage,
where he communed with forgotten gods) –There is a house in Kingsport, one of Lovecraft
New-England invented places, on a hard to reach cliff that is very ancient. Some white dude
decides to climb it. The door of the house is on the abyss so that he cannot enter the house,
aside from the windows. He meets a strange guy with a beard in the house who tells him
many tales and who is visited by spirits and mythological creatures during that night. At
morning the dude comes back only to be a perfectly normal, and boring man, with another
mythical figure in Lovecraft's stories – The Terrible Old Man (a character he created in 1920
and was published in the amateur magazine Tryout) – understanding that part of his soul is
left on the mountain. Some other young guys climb the mountain and their fate is similar.

In the Vault (1932.4) (A shuddery graveyard tale written by the author of "The Rats in the
Walls" and "The Call of Cthulhu") A graveyard proprietor is lazy and a drunk. He decides to
chop the legs of some dead guy he hated as he does not fit the coffin. The guy gets locked in
the vault where they keep the dead before putting them underground. He manages to use
the filled coffins as leverage so that he could poke a hole through the vault and escape. He
mistakenly puts the coffin of the guy he hated on top of the coffins. As he is about to escape
the coffin breaks and he fills something wounding him. As he manages to escape and get the
doctor's help the doctor sees he has wounds in the shape of human teeth. He checks the
vault and sees that indeed the evil guy's coffin was on top and that he had a vindictive look
on its rotten face. He tells the dude to never tell anyone how he got his wounds.

The Dreams in the Witch House (1933.7) (A story of Walpurgis Night, in which the horror
creeps and grows) – A young math student combines local Folklore (of Arkham) with his
math studies. A local witch who disappeared 300 years before with her rat-like familiar lived
in the same room he rents. The room has strange curves and it also hides a sealed inner
room. The student dreams at night that he travels strange dimensions and meets an old hag
and her monstrous rat-like creature. As times goes by he sinks deeper into his dreams and
believes the witch knew non-Euclidean math to a level that enabled her to leave dimensions.
He finds strange statuettes near his bed that probably got there from his nightly travels.
Eventually, the witch tries to take him to some horrid plane to meet Azathoth and his dark
emissary and to sign his name in his book. He finds out that a local toddler is missing. The
witch takes him, at night, to some evil ceremony but he manages to kill her with his crucifix
(the only time Lovecraft uses a Christian-like theme as a tool against evil in all of Lovecraft's
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tales). The rat-like thing kills the little toddler. The dude wakes up safe and sound but next
night the rat creature crawls into his body and eats its way to his heart. The place is
condemned and after some years it is demolished and many bones of little kids and other
creatures are found behind the sealed room. The 1933.7 issue has three interlinked stories –
Lovecraft, Smith, Heald that use the same names of the evil entities and evil books –
Necronomicon, Cthulhu, Eibon, Hyperborea, etc. There are also two stories about Walpurgis
Night – Quinn and Lovecraft's.

Through the Gates of the silver Key (with, allegedly, E.H. Price) (1934.7) (A brilliant story,
cosmic in its scope, by two acknowledged masters of weird fiction) – A dude that appears in
several of Lovecraft's story , Randolph Carter, is missing. At a gathering to decide the fate of
Randolph Carter's estate (which has been held in trust since his disappearance) the
mysterious Swami Chandraputra, who wears curious mittens and enveloping robes, tells
Carter's acquaintances of his ultimate fate. He explains that the key took Carter to a type of
higher dimension. There, Carter, on an ill-defined mission (or out of sheer curiosity),
travelled strange sections of the cosmos by first meeting with 'Umr at-Tawil, a dangerous
being warned of in the Necronomicon, saying those who deal with it never return. 'Umr at-
Tawil offers Carter a chance to plunge deeper into the cosmos; Carter thus perceives the
true nature of the universe before passing through the "Ultimate Gate."

After passing through the Ultimate Gate, Carter (now reduced to a disembodied facet of
himself) encounters an Entity, implied to be Yog-Sothoth itself. This being explains that all
conscious beings are facets of much greater beings, which exist outside the traditional
model of three dimensions. Carter himself, and indeed all of the infinite Space-Time
continuums, is a facet of this particular being, the Supreme Archetype, made up of the
greatest thinkers of the universe. The Entity, appearing to be proud of Carter's
accomplishments, offers to grant him a wish relating to the many facets of which it is a part.
Carter explains that he would love to know more about the facets of a particular long-extinct
race on a distant planet, Yaddith, which is constantly threatened by the monstrous Dholes.
He has been having persistent dreams about Yaddith in the last few months. The Supreme
Archetype accomplishes this by transferring Carter's consciousness into the body of one of
his facets among that race, that of Zkauba the wizard, though not before warning Carter to
have memorized all his symbols and rites. Carter arrogantly believes that the Silver Key alone
will accomplish this claim, but it soon transpires Carter's wish was a mistake; he cannot
escape, and is trapped in Zkauba's body. The two beings find each other repugnant, but are
now trapped in the same body, periodically changing dominance. After a vast amount of
time trapped on Yaddith, Carter finds a means of suppressing the alien mind with drugs, and
then uses their technology, along with the Silver Key to return both to the present and to
Earth, where Carter can retrieve his manuscript with the symbols he needs to work on
regaining his original body. Once there, the Swami reports, Carter did find the manuscript
and promptly contacted Swami Chandraputra, instructing him to go to the meeting to say he
would soon be along to reclaim his estate and to continue to hold it in trust. After the Swami
finishes the tale, one in the party, the lawyer Aspinwall (who is Carter's cousin), accuses
Swami Chandraputra of telling a false tale in an attempt to steal the estate, claiming that he
is some kind of conman in a disguise. As Aspinwall tears at the Swami's masklike face and
beard, it is revealed that the Swami is not human at all, but Carter, still trapped in Zkauba's
hideous body. The other witnesses don't see Carter/Zkauba's true face, but Aspinwall suffers
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a fatal heart attack. The crisis causes Zkauba's mind to reassert itself, and the alien wizard
enters a curious, coffin-shaped clock (implied to be Carter/Zkauba's means of transport to
Earth) and disappears. The tale ends with a vague postscript, speculating that the Swami was
merely a common criminal who hypnotized the others to escape. However, the postscript
notes, some of the story's details seem eerily accurate.

Harold Ward

The House of the Living Dead (1932.3) (A shuddery tale – a story of revived corpses taken
from the grave to live and love again) – a messy story about a detective who tracks another
detective who tracks another guy. The first detective gets a diary from some client about a
missing person. This person was kidnapped by a crazy doctor who is probably inhabited by
the spirit of some ancient pharaoh. The dude hypnotizes him and whips a girl who really
likes it and then forces her to have sex with the hypnotized dude. The girl becomes in love
with the dude. There is another dumb brute in the imprisoned dude's room. The doctor
forces the dude to be his slave and to take some bodies from some graves. The detective
discovers that the doctor can lift a person's spirit from one body and inhabit a dead body.
They rob some grave, have some sex with the reincarnated bodies, whipped to ecstasy, talk
about their former lives before they were killed by the doctor who plays with them. The
other detective goes to the house where all this shit happens and finds out that the dude
who hired him was inhabited by the evil doctor who wants more subjects to toy with. He
manages to burn the whole house before completely hypnotized and the place burns –
everyone dies including the mummies.

House of the Lizard (1932.7) (The story of a newspaper reporter's ghastly experience in that
strange house built on the quicksands of a swamp) – a reporter reaches a mysterious home
and becomes a guest of an ugly old man who feeds him and shows him his tamed pet lizard
that has a ring on its neck. He tells him the sucking swamp will soon reach him. He also tells
him how the last owner of the place killed his wife and her lover and committed suicide by
cutting his throat. He dropped the bodies of the two, before committing suicide, into the
quicksand but the wife was still alive and cursed him before dying that the swamp will get
him. Then, the reporter sees the scar on the man's throat and the swamp reaches the house
and it collapses. A couple save the dude but the reporter sees the ring on the girl's finger and
he understands it is the ghost of the girl and her lover. He awakens later. His boss refuses to
believe his story but he shows him the corroded ring (great! That's a perfect proof of your
story! You couldn't have just found the rotten thing in the swamp).

The Ravening Monster (1932.9) (A shuddery story about an electrocuted murderer who was
raised from the dead and revivified) – another stupid story about a scientist who convinces a
condemned murderer to donate his body so that he will be experimented upon and
revivified. The scientist scrambles the man's nervous system with that of a dog (why? Oh
why?) and the dude becomes deranged and murderous. He kills some people and then tries
to kill the scientist and his daughter. A lawyer is invited to help the scientist and the
murderer comes inside and kills the scientist and his daughter. The lawyer manages to kill
the dude. He then escapes and miraculously a lightening hits the place and burns it to the
ground.

Germs of Death (1933.3) (A sensational story about an aged Chinaman who kidnapped a
human soul) – A Chinese evil guy abducts the soul of an American and sends his mesmerized
body to commit suicide. He places his soul inside a reluctant Chinese guy. The man awakens
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in Tibet as a prisoner of the evil old Chinese. The dude tells him that because he is a
bacteriologist he wants him to find a cure to old age as old age is caused from germs (good
to know! So dumb). After many horrors he witnesses and after being, literally, a slave to the
evil old guy, the man becomes insane – finds a cure to old age, injects it himself (trying to kill
himself but instead gaining immortality) and breaks the rest of the materials thus causing
the old Chinese to die from shock. He returns to America and taken into an insane asylum.
The spirit of the man he possessed coaxes him to remove himself from the body. He
commits suicide.

The Thing from the Grave (1933.7) (A goose-flesh story of the hideous fate that befell a
judge who sentenced a murderer to death) – a judge invites a psychologist and tells him how
the murderer he sentenced to death possessed him after a failed séance. The dude now
feels he must kill and believes he killed a girl while sleeping. The psychologist does not
believe him but after the lights go out he sees the apparition of a monstrous creature
emerging from the judge. The lights go back and the judge is dead.

Dead Man Walk (1933.8) (A gripping, spine-freezing story of evil powers and fearsome
happenings at Sinister Lake) – A secret service man is enlisted to avenge his friend's death.
The friend investigated a global network of money forgers who centers in the U.S and are led
by some mysterious figures – the one is a Chinese sorcerer and the other is a devil-possessed
dude. The pious second-in-command asks him to leave the case as it is too dangerous. Some
dead people arise from the grave to forge the money (???). The group witnesses an
apathetic villain who was dead for a month moving silently. They witness how he becomes
dead again and a red spirit leaves him. The center of these evil things is Sinister Lake. The
dude reaches the place and manages to sneak into the inner monastery after killing some
guards and evading some snakes. He sees how a dark ceremony is enacted with blood and
dead bodies and red spirits. The Chinese sorcerer is the one doing the things but the
possessed man is the second-in-command of the secret services. When the thing is over and
everyone leaves only the second-in-command remains and the dude shoots him. The
wounded man tells him that he is possessed but that he managed to regain self-control for
long enough so as to kill the Chinese sorcerer. He is possessed by one of the three great
evils. The Chinese sorcerer comes inside and the wounded man kills him with a metal cross.
He begs the protagonist to kill him too as he turns into a demon but the protagonist is
frozen. Nevertheless, he falls on him and manages to kill him. The occultists escape and what
remains of the sorcerer and possessed man are piles of ashes.

The Closed Door (1933.12) (A brief story of terrible retribution and the malignant hate of a
dying man) – A woman kills her husband after years of maltreatment. The dude promises to
kill her. She locks the room and raises her family without opening the door for dozens of
years. When the larger family gets into trouble and moves into the old house the woman is
forced to sleep in the old room. She opens it and feels hatred trying to kill her. She is
smothered by some thing. The story is ambiguous if she died from fright after a curtain fell
on her or if she was truly smothered by a ghostly thing.

The Master of souls (1934.7) (A gripping tale of a Satanist, to whom murder was a
commonplace and who wallowed in human misery) – much like Ward "The Body Master" of
the Baird years the plot is about a powerful hypnotist who can possess souls as easily as one
put clothes on. The evil dude possesses the body of some doctor and shoos away its soul. He
puts his lover's soul in the body of a beautiful woman (after putting it in a dead, old lady) and
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forcefully recruits the doctor's assistant (the narrator) after possessing his body. The evil
dude hypnotizes and possesses the body of a rich man and then kills him to take all of his
money. He then fools around by telling this lover and the narrator to fondle one another,
take bodies out of the cemetery and possess them while dancing, killing innocents and
possessing their bodies. He then decides to free a cruel, psychotic murderer by switching his
soul with that of the assistant. The assistant is about to get hanged after the switching of
bodies so he decides to write a diary framing the evil dude. The evil dude revives the
murderer's body and puts the soul of the assistant in it. The press believes the diary to be
the ramblings of a death-sentenced lunatic.

Hazel Heald (Lovecraft ghost-written some of her stories and placed some Lovecraftian
signatures there)

The Horror in the Museum (1933.7) (A shuddery tale of the blasphemous monstrosity that
slithered through the corridors of the wax-works museum) – a crazy dude who has a wax
museum invites his acquaintance to seal himself in the museum for the night. The place
holds an apparent hibernating Lovecraftian monstrosity procured by the owner. It is hinted
that many of his exhibits are Cthulhu-Mythos related entities found in Wandrei, Smith,
Howard, Lovecraft and Derleth's stories. The owner scares the dude in the middle of the
night and takes him to be sacrificed to the monstrosity. The dude manages to escape and
bind the evil guy just when the true monstrosity emerges. The following day the dude finds
out that the servant of the crazy dude has killed the monster after it fed on his boss. He
portrays the two as new exhibits in the museum.

Winged Death (1934.3) (An eery story of poisonous African insects) – a dude is angry at a
fellow scientist who shamed him. He goes to the jungle (and glimpses a Lovecraftian ruin – a
Lovecraft signature without any connection to the story) to find some horribly poisonous
flies that are rumored to kill a man and transfer his soul into the fly after death. He
experiments on his poor Native servants. He mails the flies to his enemy and fools him to
think these are not poisonous flies. The friend is bitten and slowly dies. Many months later a
fly bothers the dude and manages to make him believe he is the dead enemy in the fly's
body (he can write). The dude leaves a journal where he described everything. The story
ends when he is dead by the fly's bite (it only takes seconds until he dies – though the friend
took a year and a half to do so for some reason) and he writes on the ceiling as a fly that he
is going to kill himself. He flies into a formalin bottle and drowns.

Henry Kuttner

Henry S. Whitehead (his stories are copyrighted on his name in WT during that period –
interesting)

Passing of God (1931.1) (A Weird story of surgery and the dark rites of the Black people in
the island of Haiti) – Some guy tells a story to some other guy about a guy who told him a
story (many WT stories are like this which makes them even worse) An American sojourner
in Haiti has a cancerous tumor but lives 6 years more than what the doctors gave him. He
becomes an expert on Haitian lore and Voodoo. He loses consciousness but then
worshipped by the blacks in the island. His stomach begins to hurt and he goes to a doctor
who operates him and finds a pyramidal creature with ancient eyes at his stomach. Once
removed the man gets better and the black people stop worshipping him. It is hinted that
voodoo deities are like these creatures.
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The Tree-Man (1931.2/3) (A remarkable story of the Virgin Islands, and the eery
superstitions which the Blacks brought with them from Dahomey) a guy whose grandfather
was a benevolent lordling in the West Indies and respected the inhabitants strange beliefs
goes to his grandfather's island and find some strange black man who listens to a certain
tree. The local population worships the narrator due to his grandfather and acceptance of
their culture. The local owner of his grandfather's land is not so happy with the tree guy
whom the population believes can listen to the earth and know when to plant. He decides to
chop the tree when the tree man is not there but the man sees him from afar and does
something with his hands and then a coconut falls on the chopper's head and he dies (the
narrative explains that his disrespect to black culture is because he is not a benevolent
"true" Caucasian with pure blood and that he is with mixed blood which makes him evil or
dumb). The tree man tells the narrator that the tree respects him because of his
grandfather.The tree man dies some years later when the tree is uprooted in a storm and
squashes him.

Whitehead's stories are never "scary" but the occult in them is not exactly "magical" either.
The narrative is more like a 19th century moral-fable with supernatural elements creeping in
a not-so-threatening way. His obsession with race is also of note – the pure, benevolent,
genteel, well-to-do, religious, traveling white man who never forces his beliefs on the locals.

Hill Drums (1931.5/6) (The Blacks of the Danish west Indies harried a British consul-general
by the weird power of song) A British consul in the Danish West-Indies hates his stay there
and writes a treatise to some famous magazine about how he misses his station in Armenia.
Soon, the whole Island knows about the treatise. The local Blacks invent a catchy song that
everyone hums on the island. This song tells that the Consul is a "half-Jew" and should not
be on the Island and should return to Armenia. Soon the song drives him mad and he even
sees visions of him trapped in a cell as an Armenian prophet. He soon has strange episodes
when he can't remember whether he done something or not and feels like he wrote a letter
and sent it without his full awareness. He grows to like the island better but soon gets a
letter from Britain telling him that his letter for re-stationiong in Armenia was received and
that he can leave. His Black servant tells him goodbye even though he never mentioned that
he is leaving. He deduces that the island itself is responsible for this and decides to leave.

Black Terror (1931.10) (A story of vodu on the West Indian island of Santa Cruz, where
strange beliefs can cause death by sheer terror) – Some local Black dude tries to court a
higher-caste Black girl and her father goes to some voodoo priest to curse the dude. The
dude believes he is about to die soon as he wore a cursed shirt. The narrator goes to a Black
priest who does some Christian ceremony in which he convinces the dude's mother and her
son that God defeated the curse. Even though the narrator believes the whole thing is
psychological he witnesses some white thing jolting out of the man's clothes. The man is
now cured of the curse. (Again, this story contains some racist fixation on how purely white
a man is)

Mrs. Lorriquer (1932.4) (a strange story of a powerful phantom, of possession by an entity

that has long been dead) – a priest who lives in the West Indies befriends an elderly couple.
The genteel woman likes to play cards and behaves erratically when she does so – talking in
French, being vulgar and vindictive. She did not like cards before and even hated them. The
narrator finds out that the house the couple live in was a gambling den of some French dude
who was killed violently and apparently haunts the place. When night, when a fire breaks,
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the narrator rushes to this house only to find the woman asleep with a ghost attached to her
– the ghost of the French dude whom he saw a picture of before. After the woman's
husband sees that the narrator and he go at night with a Katana sprinkled with holy water
and they sever the ghost from the woman's body and then burn the parts. The woman does
not like to play cards anymore.

No Eye-Witnesses (1932.8) (Everhard Simon had a weird experience in Flatbush when his
shoes were caked with blood and forest mold) – a man goes to his father's home when he
finds himself at a forest. He sees a 17th century hunter encountering a wolf who turns to be
human after the hunter shoots it. He runs away and finds himself again at a modern street
only with his shows having mold and blood. He finds out that a local gangster called "the
wolf" was killed and that his cronies believed him to be a werewolf. The bullet that killed
him is ancient.

The Chadbourne Episode (1933.2) (A shuddery graveyard tale – ghastly happenings – half-
gnawed bones) – The narrator from most of Whitehead's Voodu stories returns to the states
and into a ghastly wave of missing animals and a little boy. He comes after some Persian who
had mysterious servants and hidden family left the states. The narrator knows an American
consul in Persian who thinks the family did not leave as they are Persian ghouls. Armed with
silver bullets the narrator goes to the graveyard with some simpletons and there he sees one
of the Persian servants. He shoots the guy enters the mausoleum the dude guarded and sees
a lot of bodies (including that of the young boy) being eaten by monstrous half-human
creatures. He shoots them all. The simpletons arrive and he explains what happened. The
consul thanks him an explains how he knew they are still around (something to do with the
Persian's car). The Persian himself is gone and there is no clue as to what was his purpose in
brining those ghouls to the U.S.

Howard Wandrei

Over Time's Threshold (1932.9) (A weird story of the fourth dimension – a tale of speeding
years and an eery experiment in Professor Capal's laboratory) – a messy story about a boy
and a girl who enter an abandoned house with some weird contraption with a glass vat with
green liquid and a clock. The two get separated and the house begins to haul the two in
time. They lose the conception of time and space as the house gets destroyed and built
again and the man even sees a destroyed Earth with the missing professor roaming around
with a leashed monstrous dog-like creature. Eventually the man manages to grab the girl in
one of the jumps and he smashes the machine and escapes the house.

Hugh B. Cave

The Brotherhood of Blood (1932.5) (A sensational story of the Undead – a beautiful vampie
doomed to prey upon the living) – an occultist falls in love with a mysterious girl. His evil
friend tells him that the girl's family all died at their 28 birthday as they are cursed by their
warlock ancestor to become vampires (a previous member of the family who died being 28
comes to sucj their blood and make them vampires). The man and the girl are very close and
when her 28 birthday comes she becomes ill after nightly visits from her vampire mother –
before death she begs the dude to put a crucifix on his neck so that she could not make him
a vampire on his 28th birthday. The dude is 28 after being lonely for two years. The vampire
girl comes to him but he put the crucifix. After some time he is too lonely and removes it so
that the two could be together as vampires. The two have sex, talk and the girl sucks his
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blood. Just before turning into a vampire his evil friend tells him he dated the girl but she
shunned him and now he is angry. He kills the girl with some burning crucifix. The dude is
now a vampire and seeks revenge.

The Ghoul Gallery (1932.6) (The story of an eldritch horror that leaped out of the black night
– a vivid tale you will not soon forget) – A doctor helps a rich, aristocratic couple. The two
are the last descendants of two feuding families who made peace many years ago. Since the
truce the family members (ancestors) of the man died mysteriously by choking and were
haunted before by a ghost. The doctor discovers a horrible painting at the top floor. He is
told that every night there is a scary sound coming from that floor. At night he sees that the
couple is transfixed by some fog that forces them to go upstairs. There he finds the picture
coming to life and a ghost choking the man. The girl lashes at the painting with a knife and
the doctor help her and removes the ghost's hands from the man. They discover a hidden
chamber behind the picture with the body of the girl's ancestor who vows an eternity of
revenge on this family by putting his tomb there (his son did it – how the hell did he manage
to build a whole chamber on his rival's house is beyond understanding). The doctor burns
the coffin and the picture and everything is o.k. (why didn’t they destroy the picture long ago
– the story explicitly says they knew the evil to come from it – stupid)

The City of Crawling Death (1932.7) (Ants – droves of them – as big as panthers – ants that
made slaves of men and threatened civilization with destruction) – a party searches for a
missing scientist in the Amazon. They find a mangled member of the scientist's party who
tells them they got ambushed by huge ants who killed the party and the scientist. They sail
to where the man told them the battle occurred with some new invention. They find the
place thronged with horse sized intelligent ants that kidnap one of them and they see the
place is barricaded and with huts inhabited by the ants. They also find the missing scientist
who is a prisoner of the ants. They manage to sneak into the prison huts and free the two
prisoners but the ants attack them. They crawl through a tunnel dug by the scientist and
reach the ship. They kill all the ants with a special ray. The narrator says he saw a dozen ants
escape and he thinks they will multiply and get advanced in their culture until they will
destroy the human race.

Spawn of Inferno (1932.10) (An unusual story, about the darkness that settled like a black
cloud, and the horror that came with it) – The narrator finds a diary that is a hundred years
old about something that happened in Massachusetts. A doctor visits his crazy patient who
claims to have found a gate from which Death and demons emanate. He invents a portal to
this gate. His servant is angry because his girlfriend was deemed insane by three doctors
including the diary writer. The three doctors get threats on their lives in the form of letters.
Two days later the whole town is shrouded in impenetrable darkness. People scream and
die. The doctor reaches his friends houses and finds them horribly killed. He goes to the
insane inventors house and kills the servant who attacks him. The inventor is almost dead
and tells him how to destroy the portal that his evil servant opened. The man dies but the
doctor pushes a lever and destroys the portal. Everything is ok after that.

The Cult of the White Ape (1933.2) (A horror-story of the Dark Continent, where evil magic is
still worked) a white dude who governs a village in Congo is friends with the local population
and its witch doctor. A new white bastard arrives and kicks the witch doctor and treats
everyone like garbage – especially his wife and Black servants. After hitting the witch doctor
the protagonist sees a huge white ape disappears among the bushes. The witch doctor is a
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member of a cannibal cult that worships a nearby ancient Phoenician temple. The White
bastard is also drunk all the time. The evil White dude starts to see visions and gets even
more violent and drunk. He beats his wife constantly and she runs to the protagonist which
only makes the drunkard more violent. He decides to start a plantation in the sacred ground
of the temple to spite the villagers. After hitting his wife badly and killing two Black villagers
the protagonist had enough and he confronts the bastard who hits him and runs away to the
forest. He hits both his wife and the protagonist when they chase him and he puts them next
to the temple to sacrifice them. Many cannibals arrive and they turn into animals and kill the
bastard while a white ape saves the couple. They lose consciousness. In the morning they
wake up in their beds and find out that the bastard is gone. They decide to leave the place
and get married after the witch doctor tells the man he was the white ape.

Dead Man's Belt (1933.5) (A grim story of murder and the sordid lives of those who dwell on
a city dump) – Three blacks who live in a dump site have a tough life. The three consist of
two brothers – one gentle and thin the other violent and big. The thin one is married to a girl
who lives with them but is raped by the other brother when the thin brother is away. The
thin brother finds a nice belt in the dumpster and they do a weird game of vermin
movement to decide who gets the belt. The violent, big, brother fights the other one when a
black trader reaches the house. The big violent brother kills him by mistake when he actually
intended to kill his brother instead. He runs away but comes back and kills his brother to
remove witnesses. He plans masquerading as his brother and continue to live with his sister
in law as wife. He buries his brother but the woman prays that the brother will return. The
ghost of the brother appears and tortures the brother. The girl also dies during that episode.
The evil brother buries her too. The belt starts thinning on the evil brother until he chokes to
death.

The Crawling curse (1933.6) (A tale of the East Indies, and the ghastly retribution that drove
a murderer to his doom) – a guy and his lover kill the girl's husband. The dude chops his
body to pieces and throws them to the sea. The dude's mother is a local sorcerer. The guy is
haunted by the dismembered pieces of his victim and the apparition of his mother. The guy's
lover is killed by the disembodied hand of the victim. The guy buries her, hidden, at the attic.
The dude learns that the locals have magic that can make his body rot if his clothes are put
on a body. He understands that the hand tries to steal his clothes and put them on the body
of his dead lover. He takes her body out but then the hand jumps on him and kills him.

The Watcher in the Green Room (1933.9) (A gripping story of the doom that befell a man
who had murdered his wife) –A drunkard dude killed his wife, sawed her body and put the
parts in a drawer. He starts, whimsically, to imagine strange shapes through the neon light at
night, next to the drawer. A neighbor warns him not to imagine the shapes too hard as they
will become real. He watches a horror movie where a gooey monster kills people. He
imagines the shapes as this monster and they become real. The monster kills him violently.
The police arrives and finds the half devoured body swimming in goo. Another neighbor
claims to see a huge slug exiting the window. They find the body-parts of the wife.

The Black Gargoyle (1934.3) (A tale of goose-flesh horror in the jungles of Borneo) – two
friends go to Borneo to find a gentle child-man and his beautiful wife who live next to an evil
South American who tortures the Natives and kills them on whim. The dude tortured to
death a local shaman for some trifle. The evil dude's servant is killed by the evil man for
drinking a sip from his whiskey. The servant's brother in law vows revenge but the evil dude
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lies to him and tells him it was the gentle man. At night the narrator hears some voices and
his friend is not there (the friend put on some mask to scare the gentle man so that he will
man up). He sees a shadow and the gentle man runs to him because he is scared. The man's
wife screams and though scared he runs to her to see her fainting and claiming she saw a
monster. After telling the dude that it is probably the evil man who made the sounds to take
his beautiful wife from him the gentle man takes a gun to kill the evil dude. Reaching the evil
dude's home they see he is mangled and dead and the head of the shaman he killed is the
reason for that – the head is ambulatory with some tentacles sprouting from its neck. The
gentle man kills the thing. They find the friend with a knife in his body though he lives. The
brother-in-law thought he was the gentle man and tried to kill him. The man and his wife
leave Borneo.

The Isle of Dark Magic (1934.8) (The tale of a corpse-woman, and a man who hid himself
away from the world) – some evangelist priest on some god-forsaken island in the East is
scared from some new guy who arrived on the island. This young guy sticks to himself. After
hearing some rumors about the dude from the locals he sneaks into his house and is
shocked to see many books on dark witchcraft. He sees a beautiful statue of some woman
before the young man returns drunk to the house and almost kills him. After some time the
dude is confronted by the young guy who takes him to the house and explains how his
fiancée died and how, with the help of his sculptor friend, built a beautiful statue in her
image so that he could use black magic to personify it with his dead-girl's spirit. After his
friend decided it was too horrible the young man came to this island to this deed alone. The
priest witnesses the man's magic and the statue shows signs of suffering while the young
man says it will be only two more times of this agony before the statue will come back to
life. A veiled girl arrives on the island and asks to see the young man. The priest takes her
and they go to the house only to find the young man succeeding in reviving the statue that is
now a living beautiful and naked, girl. The veiled girl reveals herself to be the dead fiancée
who came back to life after the young man's magic worked. She is in a state of
decomposition but the young man doesn't notice it and hugs her and tells her how much he
loves her. The statue is jealous and kills the two before going outside to the jungle. The
priest takes his flock to a nearby island and leaves the horrible place to the statue.

Hugh Davidson

Vampire Village (1932.11) (A blood-chilling story of the ghoul-haunted village of Wieslant

and the eery adventure of two Americans) – two Americans go at night in Romania into a
village that refuses to open his doors to them claiming that many vampires are about at that
night. Apparently, people who did bad in life become vampires and when a priest does
something above their grave they are trapped aside from one night in the year – this night.
The villagers tell them to go to the next village. They go to the next village where there is a
huge party. The villagers fawn on the narrator's friend because he doesn't have a cross on
his neck. The friend goes to sleep and removes the cross. He reads in the manual about the
village and finds out is is deserted and believed to be a village of vampires. The village
master and the innkeeper try to suck his blood but he takes the cross and goes outside to
save his friend from a horde of vampires. The dawn comes and the two are saved. (Very nice
village people – telling two travelers to go to the next village filled with vampires)

Snake-men (1933.1) (A fearful mystery – a gigantic snake that crawled out of the swamp at
night) – A snake professor gets comfortable in a dirty swamp. The locals are afraid from a
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huge snake that has just arrived. The professor tries to help them but they can't find the
snake. The local blacks believe it is a snake-man. Three locals decide to hunt the snake as
they see his trail next to the professor's hut. When the snake arrives they shoot it and it
turns into the professor. They decide to keep what they saw secret as people will think them
insane.

The Vampire Master (1933.10) (A novel of corpses that would not stay dead, and a
gruesome horror in the New York hills) – a doctor is helping some rich family whose mother
died from vampires and one of whose daughters is the next victim of these vampires. The
dude enlists the help of some occultist. The occultist confirms it is a vampire attack and
narrows the attacker to some local rich dude who was a vampire 150 years before and then
escaped when the population wanted to lynch him. He returns to the old place,
masquerading as the descendant of this vampire. During their night vigil the men of the
family and the occultist and doctor see that the dead mother is the new attacker and they
chase her with a crucifix. The master vampire arrives and they also chase him outside using
the crucifix after a short battle. They try to find the place the vampires hide and see that
they come from some cellar at an old mansion. They eavesdrop to see that there is another
vampire – a man who almost got married and then died mysteriously. They try to unearth
the vampires' coffins but fail. They also see how the master vampire drinks the blood of his
lackeys after they drank blood from their victims in turn. They go to the house of the new
vampire ex-fiancée who is very weak. She is angry with them for asking questions. They hide
in her closet to find her dead fiancée coming to her and she offering him her blood willingly.
They chase him off to the protests of the girl. Meanwhile they manage to open the vault
where the coffins are but they are already gone. Meanwhile both girls are attacked by the
mother and the fiancée and die. They learn the vampires can hypnotize their victims.
Another man who protected the girls dies from the master who breaks his back. They search
the neighboring deserted houses to no avail. The father, whose wife was a vampire, is killed
from a heart attack after he sees the vampires assaulting his last surviving daughter. The
dudes make some cross shaped bullets. They try to guard the girl but the last surviving sister
is hypnotized to go to the vampires. They tie the girl and when one of the vampires arrives
they shoot and kill it. They untie the hypnotized girl who runs to the vampires. They follow
her into one of the abandoned mansions at the hills. The kill all the vampires and rescue the
girl.

Hung Long Tom

The Green Sean (1933.8) (Verse) – a poem about a green sea which is filled with fantastic,
colorful things throughout the seasons.

Rain (1933.9) (Verse) – a poem about the rain on Chinese cities that makes things more
colorful.

The Lantern (1934.2) (Verse) – The speaker has a magic silk lantern shaped like a pagoda
with a little woman inside whose eyes light the lantern (probably metaphor).

J. Paul Suter

The Answer of the Dead (1932.3) (The protecting arms of a dead man reached back from the
grave to shield the woman he loved) – a little boy sees his doctor father die. The people
believe it is his mother who killed him as she, a ,nurse, administered poison to his veins. It is
hinted that his evil uncle hypnotizes the woman so that he will inherit her husband's money.
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The uncle then lives with them after the woman is exonerated. He tries to hypnotize her into
telling everyone she killed her husband and when he fails he hypnotizes her to climb the
roof and fall to her death. As he watches his brother's spirit arrives, saves his wife and forces
the evil uncle to commit suicide.

A Midnight Confession (1932.8) (An utterly different ghost story – a weird summons that
came from the death cell in the big prison) – a man is sentenced to death for poisoning his
wide so that he could have a tryst. He also marries his lover when his wife dies. The girl who
snitched on him is the real killer who wanted him to herself and poisoned the wife. He asks
his doctor to help him convince the girl that his ghost haunts her so that she will write a
confession. He plans to escape the prison after the doctor would lie to the girl telling her the
man committed suicide. The plan works but when the doctor comes back with the signed
confession he finds out the girl was not approached by the escaped man but by his ghost as
he really committed suicide before coming to her.

The Superior Judge (1933.8) (A compelling story of the days when little children could be
hanged by English law) – A 19th century heartless, fat and old judge treats his servants
miserably and sentences an eight-year-old to death for throwing a stone on some official. He
also has some sickness after eating some lobsters. The executioner fails to convince him to
prevent the execution. The kid's defendant angrily begs the fat bastard to reconsider but the
dude refuses. In anger the lawyer throws a rock that hits the judge's nose. He sentences the
lawyer to death. At night the judge's nose becomes bloated and he thinks he is going to die.
The lobster he eats makes his stomach ache and he hits his toe on the bed. Believing all
these trifles are proof that he is on his death-bed he tells his servant to pardon the two.
Nevertheless, the hour is already late and the execution time arrives but the executioner
refuses to kill the kid and thus he is saved.

Jack Williamson

The Wand of Doom (1932.10) (A weird-scientific tale of a ghastly horror – of spiders huge as
horses and venomous as cobras) – A dude tries to track two of his missing friends – two
brothers. One of the brothers is an inventor who tripped over a cage filled with tarantulas
(the brothers' father was a biologist) and they crawl all over him. His girlfriend was also
killed. He has nightmares about spiders. The narrator tracks a hermit who, after days of
coaxing with moonshine, gives him the diary of one of the brothers. He tells him that this
brother came to him all purple and mangled and died from poison two days later. The
narrator finds the other brother's skeleton with huge fang marks on his skull. The hermit
Cajun hermit tells him he is afraid of the place where the brothers experimented as it was
filled with glass gardens and a multicolored castle (very scary indeed – If there were unicorns
and rainbows I guess he would have shit his pants from horror). The diary describes how the
brother invented a machine that can create matter from nothing (and thus refute the whole
laws of physics). He creates a castle but it is half transparent as it requires a lot of effort from
the machine. He makes the machine better and creates life – he revives his dead girlfriend
and everything is peachy until he walks in his sleep and puts on the machine. The girlfriend
turns into a huge spider which kills the brother and maims the other one. They both die.

Golden Blood (1933.4-) (A powerful novel of weird adventures in the hidden land of Arabia)
– an expedition of white men and some Arabs get the help of a rich guy (the protagonist)
who buys them many guns and a tank. They want to follow the tracks of some Spaniard who
witnessed a city of gold in the desert guarded by some god-like beings. They reach the place
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without water and kill some operator of an high-tech weapon that can freeze to death. They
find a lost girl on a white camel and capture her to be raped. The protagonist saves her and
runs from the rest of the expedition that wants to kill both. The girl tells him about a
prophecy in which the old king of her people will save them from the evil god-like golden
beings that enslave them. The protagonist looks just like this ancient king. They reach an
abandoned city in the desert and an oasis in it. A servant of the evil god-like being finds
them and goes to his master. The two run into a crypt and find the lost tomb of the lost king.
The protagonist takes the axe and armor of the dude. The girl teaches him the song of the
axe. The evil guy arrives and knocks the protagonist unconscious and kidnaps the girl. The
protagonist manages to recuperate, escape the tomb and cross the desert to the village
where the girl came from. He is welcomed as the reincarnation of their folklore hero as he
looks like his legendary description and carries his armor and weapon and sings his axe song.
After reconciling with his former expedition he temporarily allies himself with them to
destroy the evil golden beings. They attack their castle but they use special mirrors that
decimate their efforts and use some images in the sky to frighten and hypnotize them. The
brute on the tiger reappears and kills many of the protagonist's guards. The protagonist
manages to wound the brute but he hurls a lava rock at him and he loses consciousness. He
awakes to find all his expedition dead or gone and a single enemy warrior that is about to kill
him. He captures the warrior and with the help of some old veteran left from his own
expedition he gets some food and goes with his prisoner to free the girl. The prisoner always
tries to fool him and kill him but the dude manages to get inside the brute's fortress. The
prisoner escapes and the dude witnesses some bad blood between the golden pretty evil
lady and the golden brute over the girl he captured. The protagonist finds out the golden
gods became so with the help of some golden vapor that is now fuming on his unconscious
girl as she is about to turn into gold. He manages to get to the girl but falls asleep from the
fumes. He awakes in a horrible cell and is taken to the brute who shows him how much he
knows about the world and how he refuses to believe he is the hero reincarnated. The evil
girl arrives after the brute flogs the protagonist and he begs her to take him under her
custody. Seeing that this will hurt the brute she takes him. She tells him how much she loves
him as he is the reincarnation of her former lover – the hero. She also tells him the girl is the
reincarnation of the woman who betrayed him for the brute and poisoned him. She asks him
to turn into gold and become her king. He refuses. One of the expedition is also a prisoner of
the queen and he is about to escape with the help of a local serving girl. The protagonist
does not believe him but decides to escape with him after the queen shows her wrath. As
they go into the desert the queen emerges with the hue tiger as she is about to hunt them
for her sport. The two run across the desert and the woman is stopped by the old party of
the dude who shoot her. Thinking he is a spy they imprison the protagonist. The golden
woman comes and makes a bargain with the fat bastard – the same one she tried to make
with the protagonist. The fat dude accepts and forces the protagonist to run away into the
desert. The dude decides to sneak into the palace while the fat bastard's company and the
army of the golden woman attack the huge brute's castle. The dude manages to reach the
sleeping girl but the golden woman appears and he manages to drop her into the abyss after
she bleeds a lot. The huge snake and tiger duke it out and die together with the tank – all fall
into the abyss. The fat bastard and company start killing one another when they see the
golden chamber where the girl is sleeping and then fall asleep. The huge brute appears and
kills the sleeping man. The protagonist manages to stay awake by putting a cloth with water
on his nose. The brute tries to kill him but after a lengthy battle where he has the obvious
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upper-end he slips on the golden woman's blood and drops into the abyss. The dude wakes
the girl and the two return to the oasis to fuck.

The Plutonian Terror (1933.10) (A grim story of the planet Pluto – a tale of interplanetary
adventures and horrible death) – a scientist and a dude who was hurt by x-rays and is
completely bandaged and with a whispering voice to the damage he got from the rays spend
a whole year on the moon without any contact with Earth. The dude is sorry for leaving a girl
that asked to join him for the trip as it was too dangerous for her. They see a flying ten-mile
cube just before reaching Earth. They arrive on Earth and find the whole planet deserted.
They find evidence that the nations of the world have built a ten-mile cube and flew it to
Pluto for some unknown reason (how the hell did all the people of the Earth fill a ten-mile
cube?). They fly to Pluto and are attacked by frozen, glowing, zombies. They find the source
for humanity's arrival in a sound emitted by a huge brain inside a cave. This brain hypnotized
humanity to reach the place in order to suck their blood. The two kill the brain and its
zombie minions. The dude finds that all the humans in the cube are dead. He laments the
end of humanity but then his burned friend removes the bandages and reveals himself to be
the girl who fooled him for a whole year (?). They return to repopulate the Earth.

Invaders of the Ice World (1934.1)(weird-scientific tale of the far-distant future, when the
sun dims, and creatures spawned by the frost make war upon the survivors of the human
race) – In the far future the Sun died and the Earth is in darkness. Some humans survived
thanks to some Radium cells they use to maintain a warm zone where they live. A family of
scientists lives in a tower outside the zone where they try to break the atom to make the sun
hot again. Some monstrous plant-like form from the moon arrives on Earth and kills all life in
it. The last member of the family takes the girl he likes and salvages a radium cell. Using his
father's formula and his own ingenuity he cracks the atom and launches a ray that rekindles
the sun. The Earth is okay, the plant-like monsters are dead and the two lovers repopulate
the Earth (yet again in Williamson stories).

Wizard's Isle (1934.6) (A swift-moving, vivid tale of a dreadful menace to the world) – A guy
and his fiancée are kidnapped by some evil Chinese mastermind. The girl is kidnapped for
some experiments and the guy is kidnapped for trying to locate her. Why the Chinese chose
the American woman is a little vague. On the island the evil dude explains that he wants to
create a new monstrous form of human life that will conquer the world. He is doing it by
making people breath some gas and turn into scorpion men or something like that. The
woman is supposed to be the new mother of this new world. How exactly this will happen
seems to be too much for the smart Chainman to ponder. They throw the guy from a glass
dome in a private island of The Chinaman but he manages to crawl his way into the dome
and into a horrible, private, jungle where huge insects prowl. The guy manages to kill the
Chinaman bodyguard and attack the evil bastard but is knocked by another bodyguard. For
some odd reason the evil dude decides to show the guy a previous experiment of his – the
guy's missing friend who happens to got kidnapped by the evil dude before and turned into
a scorpionman while his wife witnesses it. The guy is told he is also about to become a
scorpion man. The guy manages to break free and free his scorpion friend who kills all the
guards. They attack the evil Chinaman but the scorpion man is killed and the evil dude
pressed some self-destruct button. The guy finds his fiancée and a handy plane and the two
escape to freedom and get married.

John Flanders
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Nude with a Dagger (1934.11) (The old money-lender bumped into a weird problem that all
his hardness could not penetrate) – Some evil money lender decides to give a young artist
some relief from his debt for his unfinished painted masterpiece –a nude man in a storm.
After the artist fails to return the debt he and his mother commit suicide and on the note is
written a threat that the money lender will see the masterpiece finished. The figure in the
painting starts moving and after the money lender refuses to take a knife and destroy the
picture the figure in the painting takes the dagger. When the narrator, a guy who hates the
money lender but who thinks the narrator is his friend, goes to the money-lender's house he
sees his throat slashed and the painting has the nude figure with a bloody knife 0 the same
knife that the money-lender refused to use against the painting.

The Graveyard Duchess (1934.12) (The story of a ghastly horror that stalked through a
cemetery at night) – Some dude tells the judge why he killed two men and was with the 5-
year-old-buried body of an old Russian lady. The dude explains that he got a job as a
graveyard keeper after the previous one died. The two guardians with his give him some
drug in his food and he sleeps. He awakes every morning with an ache in his neck and blood
on it. The graveyard is abandoned after an old Russian lady erected a mausoleum inside it
and paid a lot to ban people from burying their dead there. The dude finds some fresh
graves with one of them having an inscription that warns him that he is about to die. He
manages to drug the guardians and to shoot them. The old lady appears as an evil vampire
and he kills her too.

Julius Long

The Dead Man's Story (1933.9) (The unique experience of a man who lived through future
events years before they happened) – an old rich and crippled fart has an unfaithful wife
who married him for his money. Nevertheless, he loves her. His valet kills him, to steal his
money, and frames the woman. The dude's ghost sees the whole thing and feels sorry for his
wife who also feels something for her husband. He awakes some time before these events
and understands he witnessed the future. He writes a letter that frames the valet and
decides to relive the thing as he wants to feel his wife's love for one last time. The lawyers
who get the letter debate about its plausibility after the man is murdered and the valet is
found guilty.

Possession (1934.1) (a short but intensely interesting tale) – A dude is hypnotized by his evil
dying friend so that his soul will transfer into his body before he dies. The man succeeds and
the protagonist awakens in the dying man's body. When he finally dies his souol returns to
his real body and the evil dude is dead.

The Late Mourner (1934.3) (An odd little story – John Sloan received a shock when he looked
upon the face in the coffin) – a rich dude wakes up to go to a funeral of someone very close
though he does not remember who exactly. His servants are gone and everyone ignores him.
He goes to the funeral to find out he is the dead guy. He feels free as a spirit.

He Walked by Day (1934.6) (A strange tale about a man who declared he was a ghost – a
story that is off the beaten path) – A dude meets a fellow worker who claims to be a ghost
and that he died some years ago by crashing his head at a local, hidden cave. The worker
does not eat and seems undisturbed with lifting very heavy objects without sweating. The
worker's mother dies and he disappears into the Earth some days later. The locals check the
place of his disappearance and find a cave system with a skeleton that had died several
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years ago. The worker's initials are written on a moldy hat next to the skeleton. The skeleton
has a fractured skull.

The Pale Man (1934.9) (A queer little tale, about the eccentric behavior of a strange guest in
a country hotel) – Some dude is mystified by the erratic behavior of a neighbor resident in
the hotel he occupies. The dude moves from room to room, never eats and even moves into
a room where its previous inhabitant died the previous day. He is getting closer to the man's
room when he finds out it is Death and that he is the only one who sees it. He is about to
enter the man's rooms when the story ends.

Super for Thirteen (1934.10) (A brief tale of a ghastly jest) – An eccentric rich guy invites 13
men to dine with him. He gives them great food but he also puts them all in electric chairs
and his servants are dressed as cops. The dining room looks like a prison. The dude is bored
from their horror tales and tells them true horror entails art and that a murderer is an artist
who kills for art's sake. He then executes everyone in the room by pulling a lever that
electrocutes them all. The place burns.

Kirk Mashburn

Placide's Wife (1931.11) (A shuddery tale of the Louisiana Cajuns, of corpses that screamed
in their graves, and a woman who would not stay dead) – The narrator hears a story, after
hearing some strange wailings at night, about a violent and dim-witted redneck who got rich
after finding some oil at his property. He marries a beautiful gold-digger. The husband is
violent towards her and humiliates her all the time while forcing her to live in poverty while
he buries all of his money. The woman tries to get the help of some local witch and a
traveling gypsy with who she probably has romantic relationship. She also has a weird cat
that cannot be killed. She tries to put some amulet under his bed but he finds it and kills her
by shoving a silver cross to her neck. The cat jumps over her body and licks her blood. The
woman returns to life as a vampire and kills her husaband. The only witness is the local idiot
and no one believes him. The fool also finds the new dug grave of her gypsy lover and after
uncovering it mistakenly shoves a wooden stake to the body's heart. The body decomposes
rapidly after that. The people begin to believe the fool and as they know the woman lives
between some rivers she is trapped with them. At the present a beautiful woman knocks on
the door and asks to get carried over the water. The narrator is very willing to do so but
another guy tries to kill her and she becomes a monster and escapes.

The Vengance of Ixmal (1932.3) (An eery story of a vampire-haunted village, and quivering
human sacrifices on an Aztec altar) – three explorers want to excavate a Mexican pyraid. The
natives are afraid of some vampire that haunts the place but he explorers decide to sleep in
the haunted place's premise. At night a beautiful vampire Aztec-princess wants to suck one
of the explorers but discovers he is the reincarnation of her long lost love and the dude who
cursed her. She shows him, by taking him into a vision, that he was a Mexican prince whose
beloved, hypnotized by an evil sorcerer, betrayed him to be sacrificed to some blood-thirsty
god by some evil sorcerer. The dude does not know she is hypnotized and converses with his
god to curse her into being a vampire. She becomes a vampire after the dude is sacrificed.
The contemporary dude forgives her but the evil sorcerer returns only for the girl to get over
her blood lus. She kisses the dude and the sorcerer and her turn into dust. The dude slips on
some rock and dies. He returns to his lover.
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The Broken Thread (1932.5) (A grim story of an unspeakable horror, a tale of crystal-gazing
and an eery murder, by the author of "Placid's Wife") – A man killed his friend because some
medium, whom the friend loved, wanted to prove her powers to the skeptical man. She
made the friend go into a trance and there he met some evil entity that controlled his body,
killed the medium and was about to kill the man. He shot the dude and now he is about to
be hanged. He is happy as he knows the friend and medium need him to fight the evil entity.

The Archfiend's Fingers (1932.8) (John Powers blundered into a weird adventure during the
Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans) – a drunken man meets a familiar guy at a bar. The
dude offers him some green drinks which make him sober. He offers him some marijuana
and then he identifies the familiar guy as Satan. The guy chases him to a cathedral and even
manages to touch his arm. He wakes up in a hospital where he is told he was hospitalized
after becoming deranged from alcohol and drugs. Yet, he sees his arm has five burning
marks of fingers.

The Last of Placide's Wife (1932.9) (A thrill-tale of a fierce fight in a Louisiana swamp
between a maddened group of Cajuns and a horde of vampires) – the dudes from the
previous Placid story chase the vampires who nest in the swamps. The vampires beat them
and take them to their nests to feed on them and make them vampires. The vampire queen
decides to suck the blood of one of them but keep the other two for sex. When she has sex
with one of the dudes the other escapes and when the other vampires chase him the Cajuns
of the neighborhood arrive with silver bullets and blessed pitch forks or whatever and hunt
them down. They are about to kill the girl but the man she had sex with – the sheriff –
refuses to let her get killed and runs with her. She falls into the water and the two disappear.
The dude who tells the story finds Placide's treasure and becomes rich.

Last Jest (1932.11) (Verse) – The speaker wants to die while having fun.

De Brignac's Lady (1933.2) (A sensational goose-flesh story of baby vampires) – a dude goes
to some mansion he inherited from a friend. The friend tells him to come quickly. Upon
arrival he finds out the friend is gone and his wife dead for some months. Some toddlers are
missing. Using the help of a local girl secretary, her brother and a friendly doctor they search
the mansion and find out the place deserted with only one servant in it – the old Black
caretaker who is found murdered in bed. At night a woman vampire attacks the secretary
and is thwarted by the protagonist and she runs away. The doctor tells him that the wife was
a vampire and that she killed her husband and turned him and the toddlers into vampires.
The following night the friend returns and claims to be abroad. He then attacks the brother
and reveals himself to be a vampire too. They manage to scare him into running away. The
following night the woman vampire attacks again with two baby vampires and all are killed
by the party. The girl is kidnapped by the vampire friend and the narrator manages to track
him into his layer in the cellar. They kill him and he thanks them. The girl is saved and she
and the protagonist get married.

Ashes of Eden (1933.8) (Verse) – The speaker drinks to the ghosts of his loved ones who
know no pain anymore.

Voodoo Vengance (1934.11) (A thrill-tale of ancient magic from the black island of Haiti) – a
White couple goes to a psychic doctor and tells him how the woman believes her Haitian
step-brother convinced her that her soul is trapped in a box because he wants to inherit her
fortune. The doctor hypnotizes the girl and breaks the box but the girl is about to die from it
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as she is too convinced about the reality of the curse. The doctor injects her with some
sleeping drug and then contact her brother lying to him that they will give him money if he
arrives. When the step-brother arrives with his huge dog the doctor, his Haitian servant and
the husband capture the dog and drug the evil dude. The do some weird Voodoo ceremony
to convince him that the dog's soul and his soul switched places. The step-brother believes
he is a dog and they kill the dog. For some reason the girl becomes better after that and the
curse is broken. The step-brother is taken to an insane asylum

Loretta Burrough

Creeping Fingers (1931.8) (A gruesome mystery-tale of the thing that slithered through the
bathroom door and flopped into the tub) –a tired guy reaches an hotel but fails to find a
room. After making a scene he gets a room that is mostly abandoned due to always being
cold and with a haunted bath. He reaches the room complains about the cold enter the bath
and then sees some misty fingers trying to drown him. After almost dying he is saved by the
hotel's manager who tells him the room was murder scene where a nephew drowned his
uncle. The room remained vacant until some other guy got it and he was also drowned. The
manager decides to dismantle the room.

Manly Wade Wellman

At the Bend of the Trail (1934.10) (A story of Africa and a vegetable monstrosity that fought
the explorers in the jungle) – Two White guys see some strange root that the natives shun
away from. They are shocked to see it writhing under their hands. At night, one of the dudes
try to chop the thing but it is gone. It attacks them when they sleep and the other white guy
chops it to pieces. He treats his wounded friend.

Marion Doyle

Deserted Manor (1932.9) (Verse) – another of the endless poems about creepy, deserted,
houses – usually these poems are written by women.

The Ultimate Word (1933.10) (Verse) – The speaker once almost knew a secret word not
quite said. When the world was young the speaker almost managed to say it but now it is
too late.

Mist on the Meadows (1934.11) (Verse) – The speaker describes mists that cast shadows on
the meadows. The mist is understood as the spirits of dead people who were betrayed in
life.

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Madman's Song (1932.4) (Verse) – a poem about someone in a grave who parties with dead
things.

Echidna (1932.7) (Verse) – a poem about what happens to those who watch the reptilian
monster Echidna.

The House of Shadows (1933.4) (A strange little story, about a family whose images would
not reflect in the mirror) – A girl misses her train and goes to her friend from college. The girl
goes to her house and meets the friend's strange families who are kind to her but always
disappear and move when she tries to touch them. In the morning on the train back home
she finds out the friend's family have perished in the pox plague a year before.
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The Girl With the Green Eyes (1933.5) (An utterly strange story about witchcraft and occult
evil – a story of eery thrills) – an elderly spinster lives with her two young nephews – a boy
and a girl. A new neighbor arrives – a German lady with odd manners and a huge cat. Her
house is filled with goat statues and upside down crosses. The woman seduces the boy to
come to her house and he becomes evil and erratic afterwards. Using the help of her
reverend acquaintance (whom she is also in love) they deduce the woman is a witch. She
kidnapps a baby and is about to do a gruesome ceremony with the hypnotized boy when
they stop her. She turns into a rabbit but their family dog kills it.

Voodo song (1933.7) (verse) – a poem about voodoo drums that summon all the dark beasts
of the jungle but the dude who plays it is a pathetic old black man.

Nostalgia (1933.9) (verse) – the speaker is Anglo-Saxon who has nostalgia for Oriental, Exotic
things.

The Cat-Woman (1933.10 ) (A brief and unusual tale of anthropomorphism) – a dude has a
new neighbor – a beautiful, feline-like girl. She purrs and speaks in a weird accent.
Sometimes, when he doesn't look he sees a cat where she once stood that cuddles around
him and sleeps with him. The landlady hates cats and kicks the cat out when she finds out a
bout it. She is attacked by the cat the following night. The dude suspects the girl is the cat as
she also tries to rub herself against him. He takes the cat one night but when the landlady
knoks the cat jumps outside and is mauled by dogs to death. The girl disappears.

The Accursed Isle (1933.11) (A hideous fear clutched the castaways as they were slain, one
by one, until at lat – but read the story yourself) Some castaway men manage to reach an
island with some oysters but barely enough water to support them all. They put a guard
when one of them is slain at night. One by one they are butchered as they surmise that one
of them is insane and has lapses of madness in which he kills from hunger and then forgets
all about it. In the end only two remain and one of them commits suicide as he doesn't want
to find out he is the killer. A rescue team arrives but the last survivor also intends to kill
himself so that he won't find out he killed all these men after he will kill another man in the
rescue ship.

The Three Marked Pennies (1934.8) (A strange destiny awaited the holders of the pennies,
with doom for one and weal for the others) – A notice at some town states that three
marked pennies wil be distributed into this town where one would either get death, money
or a vacation according to the shape on the coin without saying which shape fits what (the
shapes are a square, a cross, a circle. The pennies move hands as no one wants to gamble his
life until it stays in the hands of three – a homeless, poor woman, a man dying from cancer
and a shop owner. The shop owner dies after he gets a silver box with a poisoned needle
inside (the circle representing death as there is no end to it) , the homeless woman gets the
vacation (the square – four corners of the earth) but rips it to pieces as she has nothing to do
with it – being so poor she cannot travel the world and enjoy it. The dying man gets 100,000
dollars (the cross – cross everything you want) but can barely enjoy them as he is dying. No
one finds out who was the person that started the thing.

Otis Adelbert Kline

Tam Son of the Tiger (1931.5/12) (An exciting weird novel of wild adventures in a
subterranean world under Tibet, and the ancient gods of Asia) – A Tarzan-like white toddler
is kidnapped by a white Tiger that raises him as her cub, together with her other Tiger cub.
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The boy becomes a string kid that thinks and acts like a Tiger and who knows how to talk
with animals and hunt with his bare hands. A mystical Lama, who was also a soldier and an
adventurer, had once saved the white tiger when she was a cub and so lets him approach
her. He sees the boy and slowly he becomes his teacher. He teaches the boy how to fight
and use deadly weapons, four languages, Literature, Asian mythology and other stuff. When
the boy is on his 20s he also becomes friends with an elephant that he tames. One day the
Tarzan-like man finds a strange woman in the woods named after an Asian goddess. She
wears armor and is attacked by a tiger. Tam kills the tiger but soon afterwards the woman is
taken captive again by some monstrous humanoids who use ape-like servants and are
themselves many armed giants with golden armor who ride huge beasts. Tam manages to
kill his assailant but is knocked unconscious. He wakes up to find his elephant protected him.
He tracks the monsters on their prehistoric huge steeds into a cavern, opened by a statue of
an oriental goddess. He finds that the cavern opens into a lit subterranean world with forest,
valleys and other prehistoric creatures. Meanwhile Tam's father and an archeologist trying
to find the source of the Aryan race see some battle in the woods between the monsters and
some other, white, majestic people on mammoths. They reach to find one survivor of the
white people. He tells them that the evil Siva, the god of destruction has told the evil
monsters to conquer the Earth. They follow him to the underground world and are joined by
the Lama and the two tigers after he tells Tam's father about his son. They are captured by
some huge blue guys upon arrival but not before they save Tam with a distant bullet from a
rifle aimed at a prehistoric creature that almost killed him although Tam is not aware of this.
Tam tracks the princess in a huge city of the monsters but is soon captured, confronted by
the main evil guy who mocks at him and the princess' myths about a man raised by tigers
that will save everyone. He throws him into a pit with a monstrous creature. Tam easily kills
the monster (using its ripped eyes as flashlight) climbs the impossibly hard to climb pit, kills a
guard and sneaks into a wagon that takes the queen to some evil dude. The party kills some
of its assailants but is taken into custody by another political entity – the Vishnus that
controls huge, blue men and hates any type of political upheaval or war. Tam kills some evil
dudes and rescues the fainting princess. The party is forced to a lifetime of breaking blue
limestone as punishment for them daring to rescue the princess through Vishnu's lands.
Tam, the Lama, the two tigers and the princess meet and go through the lands of the
monkey king. They kill some dinosaurs and other monstrosities before the princess is
kidnapped, for the fourth time, by some monkey people. Tam infiltrates their base, kills their
chieftain and rescues the princess. They go to some other monstrous land inhabited by other
monstrous horned bullfrogs and the princess is… yep – you guessed it – kidnapped by
werewolf-creatures. The escape attempt succeeds and the party manages to get some
warriors and flee to the lands of the princess. There, they are captured by the evil uncle of
the princess who wants her dead and to put his daughter in her place. Tam manages to free
the princess. Kill the Dinosaur and get the help of some red, huge warriors who escort him to
the princess lands and palace. There, the two are captured by the evil uncle. Tam is put in a
cell with the party and reunites with his father. The princess is forced to marry the idiotic,
hunchbacked, ugly and evil, drooling cousin of her but manages to kill the uncle who tells
her she will be taken into a cell with a werewolf-creature. The idiot cousin pulls a lever that
unleashes the werewolf creature. Tam manages to get himself free, capture the jailer and
free his father and his friends. They go to Tam saves her from the werewolf. The princess
pronounces them heroes and after some ceremonies and parties the party goes to the land
of the gods to stop the evil Siva from destroying the world. They kill some soldiers of Siva
and enter the land of the gods. They meet strange creatures, a huge seven headed water
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serpent, and a mysterious city of pilgrims and finally reach the mountain. As only two can
enter according to law Tam and the princess climb the perilous mountain and reach the
temple. The princess, according to law, must go alone. Tam sees the statue of the goddess
pointing forwards and he decides to break the law and help the princess when he hears her
scream. He enters to see Siva trying to kill her. He kills Siva after a lengthy battle and then
dies. The gods revive him and he returns to life to become the new king of the Aryans. [The
final chapter has something about Semitic codes against nudity and how it is ridiculous for
the Aryan race]

The Gallows Tree (1932.2) (Verse) – a poem that portrays a gallows pole as a tree baring
dead fruit.

Midnight Madness (1932.4) (A blow in the night, a man thrown overboard – by these means
Carl Van Doorn mistakenly thought to secure happiness for himself) – A rich guy invites his
poor friend and his fiancée whom he was in love with but who chose his poor friend to his
yacht. At night he whacks the friend on the head and throws him overboard. A year later the
rich dude marries the girl but she doesn't like him. At their wedding night she meets a blind
beggar whose story makes her sad. When the rich guy enters her room he sees she
committed suicide. He kills himself too. It is revealed the blind guy was the friend who got
blind from the hit on his head and tanned from many days on shore.

Buccaneers of Venus (1932.11-1933.4) (A stupendous weird-scientific story – a swift-moving

tale of piracy, weird monsters and eery adventures on another planet) – An Earthling rules
over the most-powerful nation of Venus. He is about to get married to its princess when
some yellow skinned, snake-like pirates kill the guards and abduct the princess while the
man goes fishing a huge monstrous Venusian fish. He follows the elusive pirates into their
flagship but they capture him after he and his friend kill many pirates. The captain tells him
they were hired by some influential, political figure to give the princess to him as a sex-slave.
They escape at night by fooling their guard. They witness the first mate with a bundle and
understand he kidnapped the princess from the pirates. They follow him but crash on a
nearby island. The first mate takes the princess to some hidden cabin in that island and is
about to rape her. She runs away but she and the pirate are taken by poisonous monstrous
toad-fish men. Their king wants the princess to breed with the yellow snaky creatures which
he uses as slaves so that he will have many of these. He chooses the first mate as the
breeder. Using the help of an escaped "Yellow" slave the Earthling king and his body guard
rush to the fish-people village. He arrives just in time to witness a huge snake eating
sacrifices and the girl being sacrificed to it. Angring the snake the three manage to take the
princess and escape. Some other slaves, including the dude who almost raped the girl and
asks her forgiveness, run from the place and all are being chased by the fish-men. They
almost escape when the Yellow fleet arrives and recaptures them. They are locked in the
ships and arrive in the pirates' hidden city. The Earthling manages to escape with the former-
almost-rapist and his bodyguard. The princess is taken to the fat Yellow king who wants to
rape her before giving her to the other guy who bought her (for raping her). The Earthling
manages to escape the pursuers with the help of the guy who kidnapped the queen from the
kidnappers and his friend. They reach a secret society that intends to thwart the fat bastard
who rules the pirate nation. Meanwhile, the girl enters the harem and meets another
kidnapped princess – the sister in law of the other Earthling who rules part of Venus. She is
to be sold to a furry beast. The king enters and chats with the girls and the furry beast that
suddenly arrives. The hero enters the scene after being smuggled inside by the usurpers. He
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tells his friend that he has one job – save the girls while he fights the king, the furry beast
and two guards. He kills three but the furry beast escapes with the queen (he had ONE JOB
and he failed to do it) because he wants to rape her. The friend manages to save the
princess and escape from the pirates but they send their ships after them and a fight ensues.
The hero manages to get out of the city and fool the furries into thinking him one of their
own. A snow dinosaur attacks the marauders and the hero kills their leader and escapes with
the queen. They sleep in a cave while a maelstrom is brewing. They decide to separate to
find their lost riding animals and the princess is taken by a huge scorpion spider that wants
to use her as food for his new hatchlings. The hero kills the scorpion creatures and burns
their nest but the two are captured by the Yellow- man-like persons and taken to the new
emperor – an even bigger bastard who decides, smartly, to kill the hero immediately and
rape the girl. The gunner rescues the other princess with the yellow helper but their ship is
drowned and they are taken by the yellow bastards. Some airships under the command of
the other Earthling king come to their rescue. After telling the fleet what happened they
coordinate an attack with the Yellow rebels that shatters the Yellow kingdom and they
thrash their army. The gunner comes a little earlier, by flying ship, to save the hero who he
feels is going to be executed. The protagonist frees himself and with the help of the gunner
kills everyone around him. The attack succeeds and the place is conquered by the good guys.
The gunner marries the princess and the protagonist continues his honeymoon. The pirates
become goodly merchants.

Paul Ernst

The Golden Elixir (1931.9) (A whimsical, eery story of a man whose personality was divided
into two parts, with awkward results) – a recluse confides in his friend that he actually
invented an elixir that can separate his true self from a dull, automaton version of his
personality. He does that to get away from boring social gathering he must attend. The
friend plays along but refuses to believe him. In one such occasion the friend's automaton,
dull, version proposes to some girl and the two marry to the dismay of the "real" part of the
man who returns after the deed is done. The woman hates the "real" person and adores the
"smart" dull automaton. They divorce and the friend suspects that the friend';s story is true
after making a call to several restaurants in which his friend's automaton version visited
while meeting him at his room.

The Boiling Photograph (1931.11) (A stange story of Northern Africa and the astral double of
an American – a tale of King Tut's tomb) – a Western married woman sojourns in Tunis. She
is infatuated by a local Arab merchant. The dude tries to woo her by trying to sell her a ring
from king Tut's palace telling her this ring can kill a person from afar by using his belongings.
The girl laughs at the prospect. The Arab convinces her to try and test the thing on her
husband's photo. They boil the top of the picture (the husband's head touches the burning
water) but the woman dissents and the test stops. The woman hints to the Arab that she
doesn't want to see him anymore. There is a buzz at the door and the woman sees her
husband's friend helping him inside as his head was burned from acid. The woman faints.

Black Invocation (1932.6) (A strange tale of a fearful elemental that was evoked by the
chanting of a formula from an old Latin parchment) – two friends try to find proof that
supernatural things exist. They find a formula in Latin to summon some creature but fail to
pronounce it like the ancient Romans did. They find a weird Italian dude who tells them how
to pronounce it correctly but refuses to stay in the room while they do so. They skeptically
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pronounce the words and a huge, semi-invisible, fire-gorilla attacks them. Somehow they
survive the encounter and find proof that it actually happened.

Akkar's Moth (1933.3) (An eery tale of the horrible thing that happened to Blaine
Richardson) – a dude tells another dude about anther dude. This final dude was a leading
attorney in some backwater town and becomes the head lawyer of some coal firm. The coal
firm is attacked by striking workers and some arson incidents because some old Persian who
lives by their hangars stole some coal and they were angry about it so he retaliates. This
Persian is an evil bastard and also a wizard. The lawyer and his friend come to warn him that
he will be persecuted in court but the dude tells them that he will cease his violence if only
the lawyer will witness his powers. The wizard transfers the dude's soul to a moth and vice
versa. The body of the man starts hopping like a moth but the moth writes something on a
piece of paper and disappears. He writes "God Help". The court cannot find proof against
the Persian and he leaves and the body of the lawyer is in an insane asylum.

The Iron Man (1933.6) (A powerful weird-scientific story of a robot that ran amuck in the city
streets) – a guy meets his friend who invented a huge killer robot. He also got the brain and
eyes of a serial killer and makes them live with an artificial heart. The robot is controlled by
mind control. The killer's brain possesses the brain of the inventor and he installs the brain
inside the killer robot. The robot kills the friend and starts a journey of destruction in the city
– killing for fun. Some cop manages to climb the killer robot and shoot it.

Gray World (1934.3) (Gregor awoke to a terrifying gray dawn, and life was terribly changed)
– a dude goes to a party in the house of some scientist who tells him he thinks about
developing a formula that can make men enter another dimension where everything is gray
and they can move through walls. The man slips and falls and awakes at his bed. Everything
is gray and he can move through walls. He tries to find the scientist whom, he believes, is
responsible. He finds out that no one can see him. He goes to the scientist's home (and even
sees the scientist's daughter in her undies) only to find out he is actually dead and not in
another dimension – he fell on his head and died the previous night.

The Illusion of Flame (1934.7) (A withered stranger from far-off Tibet made the blood run
cold in the Great Caprini's veins) – A magician and his assistant are about to try new tricks
when a mysterious figure arrives and offers to teach the magician a new trick. The figure
hypnotizes the assistant and then tells a story, allegedly a hook for the audience, in which
the assistant stole the figure's wife and then left her after stealing from the figure and
kidnapping him to the Far east to die. The figure claims to have learned some real magic in
Tibet. He then burns the hypnotized assistant to a crisp. He then disappears and the
magician is left with ashes although he still believes it was a trick though he is not quite sure
– his assistant is gone.

The Marvelous Knife (1934.8) (An odd tale, about a murder and a curious delusion) – Some
dude sees a neighbor bully killing some other man. The bully threatens the witness but
whaks his head too hard so that the man believes the knife used to kill the man is a magical
device that does not do anything and leaves the man sleeping. He is framed by the bully who
gives him the magic knife as a gift but the police fails to find the knife. The dude takes the
knife and tries it on the bully as he sleeps to show him his gratitude for giving him such a
magical device. The police arrive and see the bloody knife and the insane dude who doesn't
understand why his knife is dripping blood as it is a magical knife.
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Old Sledge (1934.10) (A strange and eery piece of science-fiction) – a dude is the neighbor of
some elderly scientist who builds a machine that lets him glimpse the future. The man is
skeptic about the invention but the old dude predicts the weather accurately and also the
stock market in a precise way. The old guy asks the dude to help him write a history of the
future (according to this future the Japanese attack Russia in 1935 and the world erupts in a
new world war as Germany helps the Japanese and the French help the Russian). The man
doesn't believe him but when he sleeps he glimpses his own death by fire a year hence. He
wakes up to find firemen who tell him the apartment burned down killing the scientist and
destroying his equipment. Though skeptic at first the man finds enough evidence that the
dude was telling the truth and that the machine probably malfunctioned and let him see his
own future.

Concert to Death (1934.11) (A novel ghost story about a great musical genius) – Some
concert is played in honor of some great musician who died a year ago. His widow is without
money and there is a rumor he hid a great masterpiece that is worth some thousands of
dollars. As the concert goes on the dead man's piano starts to play during the silent parts in
honor of the dead dude. The sound is not harmonious. The wife begs her husband's spirit to
tell her where the piece is until a reporter tells her that the husband told her the answer by
playing the disharmonious note – it is within the piano under the keys which is the reason
the notes were not good. They open the thing and find the piece inside.

Rulers of the Future (1935.1 - ) (A weird-scientific story of the monsters that rule the human
race in the distant future) – A future journalist who lives in the 1990s joins a scientist and
some broad-shouldered adventurer on some trip to Alpha-Centauri. Their forced trip (they
were almost stopped by some jealous scientist and cops) is a failure as their ship makes a
round-universe flight. They wake up from the flight only to see they are back to Earth only
billions of years in the future. They land on the mostly-frozen planet to discover man-eating
plants, primitive humans and some lizard-like creatures who rule the human race as slave-
labor and food. They are captured by the lizards who also destroy their spaceship and time
machine. The lizards decide to sacrifice them to their god. The dudes tell the girl that she
must return to her village and tell them the god is dead and that they can kill the lizards. The
dudes count on their one-bullet nuclear gun. The lizard leader agrees to free them if they kill
their god but they are stripped naked and their weapons are taken. The professor manages
to take the bullet. They are thrown to some huge pit with some huge octopus. The professor
throws the bullet to the mouth of the octopus and it explodes. The lizards are about to kill
them as their leader does not want to fulfil his end of the bargain. They escape through
some underwater tunnel that leads to some dark place filled with huge reptiles and insects.
They manage to get out but the professor suddenly disappears. They are surrounded by
lizard men but the girl returned with some warriors and they kill the lizards even though the
thirty lizards killed a hundred of the men. They are about to wage total war on the lizards.

Renier Wyers

This Side of the Curtain (1932.11) (Stepping into traffic-crowded Fifth Avenue, Tom Atwell
suddenly found himself swept into a weird adventure) – a dude finds himself inside a strange
hotel with many strange people and impossible architecture. He suspects he is dead and
many of the people inside suspect they are dead too. He finds a newspaper that tells how he
was hit by a truck and is now dying at the hospital just after proposing to his girlfriend. He
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runs from the hotel but there is endless mist there and the hotel chases him. He manages to
hear his girlfriend's voice and wakes up in the hospital all bandaged.

Robert Bloch

The Feast in the Abbey (1935.1) (The story of a grisly horror encountered in weird monastery
in the forest) – some noble is on his way to his brother when a storm breaks. He finds a
monastery and the weird monks invite him inside. He sees lavish rooms and gets fabulous
clothes and he fails to see any crosses. The monks apparently live a hedonistic life. When he
arrives to dinner the meal is a decadent feast with the monks acting like lascivious creatures.
They are drunk and bawdy. They start telling horror stories and the head monk tells about a
hellish monastery in the woods inhabited by demons disguised as humans who trap
unwitting travelers. The noble gets to eat some weird meat. Then the head monk tells the
servants to bring the rest of the meat and the noble sees that under the platter there is the
head of his brother. He wakes up, drenched, in the forest, and arrives delirious to his
brother's city. They tell him that the brother went looking for him in the woods and never
returned. The noble becomes insane.

Robert E. Howard

Kings of the Night (1930.11) (Kull, king of Valusia, came out of the mists of his Shadow
Kingdom to lead the fight against the Roman legionaries) a Pict king named Bran manages to
form a tenuous alliance with the Celts and some Northman against a Roman force in 3d
century England. The Northman's king dies in a Roman ambush and they refuse to fight. A
local Pict wizard reveals that he and Bran are descendants of characters that appeared in
Howard's Kull stories. He summons Kull from the ancient past and the king believes it all a
dream, kills the Northman general in a duel and thus leads them. They plan an ambush for
the romans while the Northman and Kull serve as decoy – they stop a bottle0neck through
which all the romans come and the other forces attack from both sides. The ambush barely
succeeds with most of the Roman and non-Roman forces dead. Kull slaughters dozens of
Roman soldiers and all his troops are dead. He vanishes to his own time through a weird
portal. Bran muses about the past and the future.

The Song of the Mad Minstrel (1931.2/3) (verse) – a poem about a minstrel whose poems
ruin everything to everyone for all eternity and who got the material for his ruinous poems
from some dead places in weird tombs.

The Children of the Night (1931. 4/5) (A unique story of atavism and a slithering race of sub-
men who lived in England before the coming of the Picts) – a group of rich, white bachelors
gather at the house of some rich bastard like them who collects strange books. He also has a
strange mallet found in an excavation in England that hints about a sub-human race that
dwelt there. The whole bunch is Anglo-Saxon but one of them looks different. He mistakenly
bashes the head of the narrator. The narrator finds himself at ancient times and his group of
Aryan hunters were just ambushed by sub-human dwarves. He kills them, chases them,
chops their heads, follows them to their village and massacres everything he sees until he
dies. He wakes up again to see the face of his friend which looks like one of the dwarves. He
tries to choke him. Then follows a long monologue in which the narrator says he found the
truth about the human race and how Picts and Aryans are part of a bloodthirsty battle of
manly conquest where every non-barbaric action results in decadence and more fitting
barbarians who destroy this civilization and so on. He calls for the extermination of the
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unmanly vermin who are this race he witnessed that befouls the human race. He vows to kill
his once friend for having some blood from that race. One of the most racist stories I have
ever read. Howard also links Lovecraft's mythology to this story with Lovecraft himself
making an appearance and his weird gods. He also connects this story to Bran the Pict and
other works from Howard's oeuvre.

The Footfalls Within (1931.9) (A tale of Solomon Kane, and the age-old horror that was
released from its tomb in the African wilderness) Kane tracks some Arab and African slavers
in Africa. He kills many of the slavers but is captured. The sheikh who took him has a Muslim
imam who tells Kane his staff (the one he got in the previous stories) belonged to Moses and
before that to Atlantis. The party reaches a tomb in the jungle and once opened the demon
inside, which Solomon the King captured, kills the Sheikh while everyone escapes but the
manacled slaves. Kane uses the staff and easily kills the demon. He frees the slaves.

The Gods of Bal-Sagoth (1931.10) (A powerful, heroic novelette of the epic days when the
Norsemen waged red battle among the Northern isles) - In the early Middle Ages, a Celt
warrior is taken prisoner by some Vikings but he is saved by an old enemy-friend Saxon. The
two are outcasts who hates everyone and like to kill for plunder or glory and so they often
try to kill each other amiably. The ship is thrown by a whirlwind to some mysterious isle, the
two warriors being the sole survivors, and after almost killing one another they find a half
naked princess running from some killer ostrich-like bird. They kill the bird and find out that
the princess is a Viking girl taken into captivity by some marauders and later stranded on the
island. The islanders, who are later revealed to be the last Atlantians, are a decadent, tribal
society that lives on the remnants of their once glorious city and Empire. The girl, because
she is white, of course and Whites are meant to rule (the story says so explicitly) learns the
tribals language and becomes their goddess. She takes the throne by conspiring with her
lover but the people's magician, who apparently lives forever, pulls the strings and after the
girl murders her unfaithful lover she is hunted by the magician's people who sacrifice her to
the ostrich-like bird whom the native were unable to kill and venerated as a god. They reach
the city and the princess convinces her people that if the Saxon beat the chief in single
combat she will remain queen. The Saxon easily kills the dude. The girl becomes queen
again. At night the magician sends some monstrous assassins and uses some sleeping spells
but the Celt and Saxon kill them all easily. They easily kill the wizard but a statue tramples
the queen. Then a horde attacks the two warriors and a horde of Indian marauders appears
from nowhere and the two kill "brown and red man alike" as they go to shore. After killing
hundreds of people they manage to hail a Spanish ship that enlists them as sailors.

The Black Stone (1931.11) (What happened when a man discovered a horrible creature from
the Elder World that made its home in Hungary) a guy tracks a strange black monolith to
Hungary. It is hinted in fragments of history and poetry that this structure is very ancient and
evil and can drive a person mad (Lovecraftian style). The dude spends the night at the ruins
and witnesses a horrible ceremony in which a toddler is killed violently, a naked woman is
whipped bloody, a crowd tries to kill one another and a toad-like monster probably rapes
the mangled girl. He wakes up and later learns that this ceremony was real in the past as he
reads some fragments of some Turkish army history that killed those people and killed the
monster. The man starts having dreams about a huge, colossal structure under the black
stone that has its origins in another dimension or very ancient times.
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The Dark Man (1931.12) (A red-blooded story of the old, heroic days when Norsemen were
pillaging the coasts of Ireland) – The dude form "The Gods of Bal-Saggoth" appears in a
prequel where he traces an Irish kidnapped princess. He gets into an island and sees many
bodies of strange, small, man armed with stone-age weaponry (Picts). He also finds a statue
of Bran Mak Mor from another Howard story. He takes the statue for some reason. He gets
into the island where the princess is and finds the evil Norseman cheiftain trying to marry
the girl with a Catholic priest. The girl commits suicide and the dude kills everyone, aside
from the other dude from "The Gods of bal-Saggoth". He is helped by the worshippers of the
statue – killer Picts that decimate the Vikings. After all the Vikings die horribly, with their
women and children and the whole place is filled with blood the dude talks with the Picts
who tell him about the ancient Howardian past. The other dude awakes but the priest stops
the dudes from killing each other. The dude takes the body and muses about barbarians and
history.

The Thing on the rood (1932.2) (A shuddery tale of an old, legend-haunted tomb in
Honduras, and the doom that pursued the man who opened it) – Using information from the
book mentioned in "The Black Stone" some researcher uncovers a tomb and takes an
amulet-key from it using to open some door. The narrator is invited to this guy's house and
the man tells him how he suspects the key unleashed a monster from the tomb. The
narrator reads some parts of the book in which it is hinted that there is a monster with
hooves that can fly and looks like a squid and a toad. At night there are some screams and
when the door of the man is opened they find his mangled body with hoof prints, disgusting
jelly all around the room, and they hear the sound of wings.

The Last Day (1932.3) (Verse) – a poem about the end of the world with some black oceans
and demons flying over a dead landscape.

The Horror from the Mound (1932.5) (A grisly tale of a screaming fear let loose from
bondage after having been buried for more than three hundred years) – a farmer is about to
finish his failing lease on some dirt land. His Mexican neighbor tells him about a mound at
his yard which he fears but cannot tell about. He is convinced to write about the mound. The
farmer decides to dig the mound as he believes there is treasure there. When he uncovers
the tomb he goes to take a pickaxe. When he returns the place is empty and crashed open.
He believes the Mexican robbed him. He goes to his house only to find his body and his
writings – he wrote how the Spanish came to this place and were haunted by a vampire who
turned out to be one of their Spanish passengers. They lock him in the mound as they have
no priest to kill it. The vampire attacks the dude but he manages to burn it to death.

Wings in the Night (1932.7) (A story of Darkest Africa and nightmare realities with slavering
fangs and talons steeped in shuddersome evil) – Solomon Kane reaches a dark part of Africa
where he witnesses a man flayed and tortured who is about to die. He escapes some
cannibals when two winged creatures attack him – he kills the creatures but is badly
wounded. He is saved by some kindly Africans. Revived he finds out the village of his
rescuers is doomed as they are trapped between the cannibals and the flying beasts that
decided to torture them for fun after years of battle in which the tribe lost the war to them.
They give them human sacrifice so that they could leave them. They like to torture the
humans not only eat them. The tribe believes Kane is a god and that the creatures will stop
harassing them. Kane kills another of the creatures and they retaliate by killing the whole
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village. Kane avenges the tribe by luring hundreds of the beasts into a closed cabin (how
they entered it is beyond me) and burning it down.

An Open Window (1932.9) (Verse) – a poem about a window that distorts space and time
and has a huge face behind.

Arkham (1932.8) (Verse) – a poem about the evil entities that inhabit the strange
Lovecraftian town of Arkham.

Worms of the Earth (1932.11) (A grim, shuddery tale of the days when Roman legions ruled
in Britain – a powerful story of a gruesome horror from the bowels of the earth) – Bran Mak
Morn masquerades as an emissary to the Romans in Britain. He witnesses a clansman
crucified and decides to punish the Romans. He stirs rebellion and goes to some witch in the
woods who is also a half-breed of some monstrous creatures who were driven by Bran's
ancestors. She helps him after having sex with him. He reaches an underground tunnel and
steals a dark stone from it. He throws the stone inside some lake with a monster. He deals
with the monstrous underground creatures that were once almost human but life
underground has turned them to abominations. They agree to give him the Roman consul of
Britain if he returns the stone. He brings them the stone and they destroy the Roman castle
and give him the Roman Consul who is half dead from madness. Bran kills him and rides on.
The story describes the creatures as always outside the light and only with red eyes showing.
The violence of Bran towards the witch of the woods is also if interest – he hits her all the
time.

The Phoenix on the Sword (1932.12) (A tale of the incredible thing that happened in King
Conan's bedchamber) – the first Conan story – A barbarian who killed the previous king of a
pre-historic land called Aquilonia (which is part of a mystical "Hyborian Age") is attacked by
20 plotters. One of the plotters has a slave from an Egyptian-like kingdom of dark magic
called Stygia. The dude was a powerful wizard but he lost his ring of power. Going to the
countryside to guard one of plotters he finds his ring, kills the plotter and summons a
shadowy monster to kill his former master. Meanwhile, Conan dreams he meets an ancient
sorcerer who gives him a sword with a symbol of a phoenix that can kill demons. He wakes
up and gets armed and sees his sword has a phoenix symbol on it. The plotters enter and
Conan kills most of them but is badly wounded and is sword broken and he uses an old axe
instead. The shadowy monster arrives, kills the master plotter, and the plotters escape.
Conan tries to kill the monster but his axe passes through it. He takes the fragments of the
sword and kills the shadowy monster with it. As his retinue arrives he tells his story and the
head priest of Mitra confirms his story.

The Scarlet Citadel (1933.1) (A shuddery tale of the underground crypts of Tsotha-lanti the
sorcerer) – Conan falls into a trap and betrayed by a neighbor king. His army is massacred
and he is thrown into the dungeon of an evil mage. There, a stupid black slave wants to take
revenge on him as Conan killed his brother and sacked his village when Conan was a pirate
king. A huge snake kills the black man and Conan escapes. He runs in the dark and escapes
some horros until he finds a huge plant that sucks the life of a man. He kills the plant and the
man reveals himself as one of the most powerful wizards in the world – taken captive by the
evil mage. He frees Conan and summons a huge bat-bird to send him into his kingdom that is
now in turmoil after rumors of his death spread. He crushes the usurpers, returns the order
and gathers an army to stop the armies of the kings who betrayed him. He manages to save
the besieged people of one of his border cities and crushes the far-superior armies of his
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enemies. The wizard escapes but Conan manages to catch him and decapitates him. The
wizard's body keeps on riding, headless, but the head is taken by an eagle with the voice of
the wizard he saved.

The Tower of the Elephant (1933.3) (A strange, blood-freezing story of an idol that wept on
its throne) – Conan reaches a wicked city ruled by a wizard whose power emanates from
some stone. He infiltrates the tower where the stone is located to become rich. He meets a
master thief who helps him pass the dangerous gardens that surround the place but the
thief is killed by a huge spider once they enter the tower. Conan kills the spider and meets
the true "stone" – an alien green man with the head of an elephant. The creature is dying
after centuries of torture by the evil wizard. Conan, on the elephant's behalf, rips his heart
and drops blood from it on a huge ruby. He then confronts the wizard with the stone and the
sorcerer becomes tiny and is trapped inside the stone to be tortured by the spirit of the
elephant man. The tower shatters to the ground.

Autumn (1933.4) (Verse) – Autumn is depicted as the dying poems of Homer in a pastoral
scenery.

Moonlight on a Skull (1933.5) (Verse) – a poem about some mythological\ Dark Fantasy
phantasms and strange imagery (like the covers of later Metal albums) and a hint about the
speaker's life that finished before its prime.

Black Colossus (1933.6) (A mighty story of a barbarian mercenary who saved a nation from
shuddery evil) – a Conan story. A princesses' kingdom is threatened by an awakened horror.
Some evil sorcerer who is entombed in the desert returns to life after a thief accidently
opens his long-lost grave. The creature summons an army and wrecks ruin to the Hyborian
Southlands. His spirit haunts the girl nightly and promises to rape her. The girl uses the
oracle of the god Mitra and he tells her that she must give her army to the first man she
meets outside the palace. She meets Conan who controls her army. The army, led by Conan
fights the army of the evil lich and manages to crush it in a heroic battle. The licj kidnapps
the girl but Conan slices it to pieces and the girl and he have sex on the tomb where the lich
has taken her.

The Man on the Ground (1933.7) (an eery story of a feud to the death between two
cowpunchers) – a feud between two crazy Texans who try to kill each other for decades, and
for no reason, ends when one of them shoots the other in an ambush. The wounded man
shoots the other in the head. The ghost of the dead man is so enraged and filled with hate it
refuses to accept it is dead and takes the gun and shoots the grinning shooter to death. Only
afterwards does the shooter understand his own body is lying next to him.

The Slithering Shadow (1933.9) (An eery thrill-tale of the weird city of Xuthal and the black
monstrosity that slithered through its streets in search of human prey) – Conan and a half-
naked girl that Conan uses as his toy escape into the desert after being pursued by a Stygian
army. Half-dying from thirst (Conan thinks to kill the girl as a mercy) they reach a city
inhabited by drug-addicts whose scientific prowess has made decadent. After chopping
some of the dream-infused inhabitants the two observe a shadow that eats one of the
inhabitants. They meet an extremely beautiful, naked and debauched Stygian woman who
tells them about the city and its decadent pleasures and how a huge monstrous shadow
dwells at its bowls and eats the inhabitants from time to time. The girl wants to have sex
with Conan so she kidnaps the girl and decides to torture her until the monster will hear her
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and eat her. Conan pursues the kidnapper but wakes the drug-addict guards. He dices
through many of them and leaves many chopped bodies (one of them is probably the king's).
He reaches a drugged naked lady who pulls a cord that sends him into the pit of the
monster. The kidnapper is taken by the monster that devours her. The monster sees the girl
and decides to rape her. Conan reaches the monster and mauls it so bad it escapes into its
pit to lick its wounds. Nevertheless, Conan is badly wounded from the fight and is about to
die. The girl washes his wounds and gives him a golden elixir she suspects as being a magical
cure and which the Stygian woman talked about as a marvelous invention of the drugged
people. Conan recuperates after drinking it and the two return to the desert and move
South.

The Pool of the Black One (1933.10) (A tale of naked black giants and the blood-freezing
horror that befell a pirate crew) – Conan swims into a ship after being chased by savage
pirates. He makes the men respect him as he wants to kill the captain and get his girl – a rich
merchant's daughter kidnapped by the captain to be his sex toy though she seems fine with
it). They reach an island where the captain knows a treasure is hidden. Conan follows and
kills him in a duel. The girl strips naked and follws Conan but is captured by huge black man-
like creatures. The crew is drugged from local fruit and also captured by the giants who
torture them with some flute and throw them to some green pool that makes them
miniature statues. Conan butchers the giants as the girl awakens the crew. After a lengthy
battle Conan and the crew butcher the giants but most of the crew is dead. The giant leader
jumps into the pool and it starts to rise and to cover the island in a huge torrent. They
escape the place in the nick of time and reach the ship with Conan as captain and the girl his
new sex toy.

Old Ggarfield's Heart (1933.12) (A strange story of a heart that would not stop beating, even
in death) – a dude hears a story about an old man who was old when his old friend was
young and who refuses to die even after horrible wounds. He believes that some Indian
Shaman made a strange surgery on him. The old dude tells them that an ancient Indian Chief
put a god's heart in his chest and he asks that they will remove the heart if his brain dies and
bring it back to the Indian. After the narrator gets in trouble with a local bully the bully
comes to the old man's farm and tries to kill the narrator but misses and blasts the old man's
head. The narrator and the old friend remove the dude's heart only to find it is metallic and
strange and pulsing with immense power. An Indian arrives and they give him the heart
before he disappears.

Rogues in the House (1934.1) (A swift-moving tale of the squatting monstrosity that sat in
the death-chambers of Nabonidus) – Conan is enlisted by a crooked young noble who is
threatened by an evil priest. Conan is about to be hanged for killing and stealing but the
young noble releases him if he helps him to kill the priest. The plot is revealed and the man
who was about to open Conan's cell is captured. The noble tries to kill the priest himself and
finds the place ransacked and filled with bodies. The priest is a horrible monster. He wakes
up to find Conan who managed to free himself and went to kill the priest but was trapped.
They find the priest and learn he has a pet ape-man from someplace who mimics him and
decided to kill him. They manage to kill the ape and the lying priest is about to kill them with
some trap when Conan brains him.

The Valley of the Worm (1934.2) (A hair-raising and fascinating weird story of the childhood
of our race) – A pre-Conan story in which some Aryan dude from the barbaric Aryan race
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fights some Picts who are white but not Aryan. One of the dudes he whacks on the head
becomes his friend. The Aryan dude's tribe settles at some valley that the Picts shun and are
scared of. It is filled with titanic ruins and a monster is rumored to be there. Those who
settled the area die horribly by some huge monster that came out of the ruins. The Pict tells
his friend how his ancestors saw the monster – it is heralded by some apish monster and
then the monster itself is a colossal worm-like entity from the dawn of time worshipped by
the monstrous creatures that once lived in the abandoned city. The dude kills some colossal
serpent that the Picts consider a legendary monster. He takes his venom, lures the monster
and kills the herald and the monster with the poisoned arrows. He dies in the process and
his death is passed on in next generations as different legends of dragons and monsters. The
narrator is an incarnation of this dude – lamenting his own degenerated state as an Aryan
compared to the race's immense powers at its dawn. An almost Nazi story in which the true
Aryan is a killing machine that is bound to subjugate the world.

Shadow in the Moonlight (1934.4) (A thrilling weird tale of colossal iron statues that stood in
a ghastly row) – Conan kills a local Emir who tries to rape a girl (not because he tries to save
her but because the Emir has killed his friends). He takes the girl and escapes the servants of
the Emir. They reach an island and sleep in some ruins because Conan has seen a huge ape-
man in the woods. The girl dreams that the statues in the ruins were once huge black man
(though not really African) who were cursed by some god for killing his family member. The
curse makes them statues by day. She awakes to see the things move and escapes with
Conan. Some pirates reach the island and Conan kills their captain to become the new
captain. The pirates quarrel about the validity of Conan's claims and smack him to
unconsciousness. The girl frees Conan just as night falls while the pirates are drunk and sleep
in the ruins. They reach the woods and the ape-man tries to rape the girl but Conan kills him
in a most bloody way. The pirates are slaughtered and tortured by the statues. Conan takes
control of the pirate ship and when the pirates run towards it he forces them to
acknowledge him as captain. He fucks the girl at his new cabin.

Queen of the Black Coast (1934.5) (An eery story of a savage white woman who captained a
pirate ship) – Conan kills some judge and must escape to sea. The ship he forced his way into
runs into a pirate's raid. Conan kills so many Black assailants that the white, nude pirate
captain-girl who rules them wants to have him as her lover. They kill many people, steal a lot
and have a lot of sex in front of the crew. They arrive at some swamp land and find an
ancient city. The crew is butchered by some ancient monster and its hyena monsters who
were once men. Conan dreams about the whole thing. Conan laments his dying lover whose
ghost saves him from the monster. Conan kills all the hyenas and the monster.

The Haunter of the Ring (1934.6) (A strange story of dark powers and occult evil, by the
author of "The Slithering Shadow") – some guy tells his friends that his wife have tried to kill
him because he believes his previous incarnation killed her. The wife, dazed, tried this three
times but seems unaware of her actions. They invite some other guys who, when hearing
that, almost kill the dude (the manly violence and stupidity of each other threatening one
another over accusing the girl is ridiculous). They find out some evil neighbor gave the girl
some ring which an exotic friend recognizes. The girl shoots the dude in a fit and the friends
rush to the neighbor's house. The exotic friend confesses that his fiancée was killed and
abused by this neighbor. He confronts the evil guy who breaks and confesses. The friend kills
the dude. It is revealed that the man who got shot by his wife was only grazed and the two
live happily ever after.
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The Devil in Iron (193. 8) (A tale of a weird and terrible adventure and an amazing island city
of green stone) – Some ancient being, in the form a muscular, huge man, returns to life on
some island filled with ruins after a lightning storm. A powerful king tries to stop Conan and
his band of "Kozaks" from destroying his countryside. He uses a beautiful slave-woman to
seduce him. The plot jumps to the island where Conan tries to capture the girl who was put
there to ambush Conan. He finds the ruins whole with some sleepy people inside – including
a naked woman who wants to have sex with him. He goes to some basement and finds a
huge chamber with a huge snake. He goes behind the apathetic snake and finds the iron god
inside who explains to someone how he once crawled from the bowels of the Earth to
become a god of the people of the island and enslaved some invaders until some slave-priest
found a meteor and fashioned a knife from it that was able to kill the god. He captured the
god and put the knife upon his breast to trap him for good. Some invaders killed everyone
on the island and the trapped god remained until some lightening storm liberated him.
Conan finds the girl and the Iron god wants to rape her or something. Conan tries to smash
the god like he is used to do but his weapons break. The god chases Conan and the girl and
smashes things until Conan bars himself on the other side of an iron door. The god tries to
break in but decides to kill some other invaders – the ambushers. Conan kills the huge snake,
finds the knife, goes outside, kills the remaining ambusher, kills the iron god and forces
himself upon the girl who eventually yields to him as his sex slave.

The People of the Black Circle (1934.9-) (A weird novel featuring Conan the Barbarian) – A
princess in an Arabian setting is kidnapped by Conan after her advisor tries to blackmail the
barbarian into helping him destroy some incursion with some of Conan's leaders imprisoned.
A wizard is seduced by some girl to kill the captives and enforce Conan to invade the land.
They find out that the princess is kidnapped by him and try to capture her themselves. The
wizard's connection in the city learns of his treachery to the brotherhood of wizards and
reports to his superiors. Conan and the princess captive arrive to some Afghan-like place
ruled by a chieftain who likes Conan. The wizard kills the chieftain with his dark magic and
the locals try to kill Conan. Conan escapes with the princess and dresses her like a local girl
while she starts to like the barbarian and his sexual harassment. The two run down a cliff
with a horde of tribal hunters after them. They are met by the evil sorcerer and his lover.
The sorcerer nearly kills Conan but then a coterie of dark wizards arrives and kills the man's
lover and throws the sorcerer from a cliff. They also kidnap the princess. Conan meets the
dying sorcerer who tells him where to find the master wizard. Conan meets his band but
they are crazed from the death of their chieftains and think he is to blame they chase him up
the hill. The girl is met by the master wizard who tortures her by letting her relive an eternity
of her previous reincarnations in which she was always a beautiful slave girl raped by evil
men. He wants her to be his sex slave. He reveals himself to be a withered body with an
immense magical power and one who lived for centuries. Together with the princess' men
who traced him Conan and what is left of their band assault the wizards' castle. Nearly all die
in the magical battle but five manage to enter the inner sanctum of their fortress. There they
face the four most powerful wizards who kill all of the group aside from Conan and the
governor from whom Conan stole the princess. Conan uses the magical sash he took from
the dying wizard and smashes some magical orb that kills the four wizards. The arch-wizard
arrives and easily kills the governor. Using the sash Conan wounds the sorcerer who turns
into a huge snake and tries to kill the princess. Conan wounds the creature even more and
escapes with the princess. Conan refuses to let the princess go as he wants her to see him as
her equal and run with him or to make him a king. Seeing that the tribes who once followed
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Conan are now threatened by some warriors from a nearby land Conan and the princess
decide to combine forces when they see that a huge army of princess is nearby. Fighting
with his men who once again recognize him as their leader the Afghuils manage to hold back
until the princess' army arrives and they kill the foreign army. Conan and the princess part
ways but they prmse each other to become mighty rulers and meet on the battlefield.

A Witch Shall be born (1934.12) (A tale of eld – a vivid weird novelette of uncanny power) –
Some queen of a desert city is kidnapped by her evil twin sister who was born a witch and
sent to die in the evil East of the Hyborian world. She becomes a powerful sorcerer and uses
the aid of a crooked Shemite mercenary to rule instead of the queen. Because the two are
identical twins the people do not notice the difference between the two but they realize that
the queen has become evil as she debauches all day and squeeze the people of their money.
Conan, the queen's guard, is suspicious and the mercenary crucify the barbarian. Eating
some vultures the crucified Conan manages to convince a raider chieftain that he is of use to
him. Some months later Conan raises an army and with the rebels who escaped the city he
attacks the city. The rebels inside the city rescue the princess after they learn the current
queen is an imposter. Using some monster the false queen kills some of them but Conan
arrives and with his soldiers he easily kills the monster and the imposter. He crucifies the
captured Shemite mercenary and he himself becomes a powerful chieftain of the desert.

The Grisly Horror (1935.2) (A thrilling tale of a ghastly horror that stalked the swamps of the
Mississippi River) – Some dude returns home after his fiancée died. He finds out that his
rival, with whom he was a childhood friend, kidnapped her. Nevertheless, this evil dude got
some Black guy to help him do something for some reason and the dude rebelled all the evil
guy's black slaves to worship some African deity. The Blacks tortured the guy to death and
did the same to his Arab servant. The good dude learns this from the dying lips of his rival.
The good dude is also stupid and trusts an Arab guy who just happened to be in the house
claiming to be the long lost brother of the dead Arab just arrived. The good dude learned
from the dying man that his fiancée is hidden in a place where him and his rival used to
roam. He goes there with the Arab who gives him some potent poison. The girl and the dude
hug but then the dude drops to the floor while the Arab is revealed to be an Octoroon who
kidnaps the girl. The dude has a supernatural stamina and manages to fight off the poison.
He goes to kill some Black guards and finds the Octoroon also kidnapped as he wants to rape
the girl but the Blacks want to sacrifice her to their god. The stupid good dude goes with the
Octoroon who then knocks him out cold. The man's supernatural stamina helps him again to
survive the blow. He goes to save the girl and sees that there is a huge gorilla-monster to
whom the girl is about to be sacrificed. The dude shoots the gorilla that becomes enraged
and kills the Octoroon priest and his Black minions. The dude rescues the girl and kills the
gorilla.

Robert Nelson

Sable Revery (1934.9) (Verse) – Some piano music is heard and many Gothic tropes(ghosts,
dead people, demons, black flowers, gargoyles, ravens) and clichés sway to its music. The
pianist dies at the end.

Ronal Kayser

Seabury Quinn
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The Druid's Shadow (1930.10) (A thrill-tale of Druid sacrifice under the weird oak trees of
Wales – a smashing story about Jules de Grandin) – this time the doctor helps a young
couple. The father-in-law of the bride had a druid ancestor and he is infatuated with oaks
and Druidic paraphernalia even though he knows nothing about druids. The girl is a
descendant of a Vestal virgin of the druids who decided not to be a virgin and then was
sacrificed by the druids. The oaks and ancient stones around the father makes him insane
and his ancestor spirit possess him as he tries to kill her. De Grandin hypnotizes the man
when he attacks the girl, burns some of his trees and stones and hypnotically suggests the
whole family to love one another.

Stealthy Death (1930.11) (Jules de Grandin pits himself against the murderous guile of East
Indian dakaits – a tale of grisly assassinations) – an Indian whose family's honor has been
ruined by an evil American reverenced who sold the Indian's sister to prostitution and stole
most of the family's money is assassinated by him using a special thrown weapon. De
Grandin catches the Indian after he kills the man's son, wife and his friend who split the
money with him before he kills the friend's wife. He also used a stupid girl and "erased" her
brain with hypnotism to use her as an automaton to lure those "innocent" people to their
deaths. The man commits suicide after being captured in a police ambush orchestrated by
de Grandin.

The Wolf of St. Bonnot (1930.12) (Jules de Grandin is the central figure in an adventure of
extraordinary fascination and blood-chilling action) – Grandin goes to a house party where
the fat woman who owns the house does a séance. During the séance the spirit of an evil
16th century werewolf enters a young bride. She starts escaping at night and howling like a
wolf. De Grandin does another séance with the attendants (weird brcause in a similar
Werewolf story de Grandin used some stick and candles) and a pentagram. He makes the
werewolf go away.

The Lost Lady (1931.1) (A beautiful white dancer in the temple of Angor is persecuted by a
fiendish Chinese doctor – a tale of Jules de Grandin) – a French spy\detective\whatever is a
friend of de Grandin and he chases an evil Vietnamese who got mauled by an elephant and
became evil (WTF?). After doing the heinous crime of starting a rebellion against the
colonizing French (Oh my! Such an evil act!!!) he chases a white-girl who grew up as a
temple dancer at Angor Vat in Cambodia. The girl ran with a white man because white men
are so beautiful unlike the ugly natives!!! The evil man kidnaps a girl who looks just like this
girl and he whips her while naked so that the real girl will feel the pain (WTF???) de Grandin
manages to find the man with the other Frenchman (there is an occurring joke at this story
in which the French detective fails to understand the stupid 1930s American jargon which
doesn't even make sense today) and they kill his lackeys (not before seeing a de Grandin
scene of a naked white girl harassed by some evil powers) and capture the evil dude.

The Ghost-Helper (1931.2/3) (Jules de Grandin, the little French occultist, long known as a
ghost-breaker, essays a new role, that of "ghost-helper") Some rich guy whose beloved wife
died recently marries an evil gold-digger. The couple is haunted by the ghost of his
benevolent old wife. The man's son is maltreated by the evil new mom but the ghost of his
mother comes to him every night and sooths him. De Grandin notices that the woman also
goes to other man for money and recently attaches herself to some local kingpin who gives
her poison to kill her husband. The ghost tries to warn de Grandin by some dream but he
fails to save to guy. The ghost strangles the woman to death. The now-dead parents come to
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their kid every night. De Grandin manages to arrest the kingpin with the help of some cop
mentioned in previous stories. He also manages to remove the wedding ring from the evil
wife and put it back on her dead husband.

Satan's Stepson (1931.9) (The eeriest and most thrilling of all Jules de Grandin – a tale of the
Black Mass) – The detective, his French friend and the stupid doctor saves a girl who was
kidnapped by a speeding car that crashed. The girl calls her husband and the two tells them
how the girl was married off the a cruel Russian guy who coerced her father to spy on France
during WWI and then raped and hit his wife to almost-death. The man is executed but the
girl is buried alive. Her American lover whom she met as an ambulance driver during the war
opens her grave for some reason and saves her. The evil Russian returns to life and together
with an escaped Burmese mastermind (the dude from the previous story who escapes
incarceration) kidnaps the girl. The Russian forces her to do some stupid ceremony with the
tools of a Greek Christian church which he robs. The Burmese comes to the party half-dead
and begs everyones forgiveness. He tells them the evil Russian is a demon and tells them
where to find him before he expires. The party, with the stupid Irish police officer, go to the
house and witness the usual Quinesse ceremony in which there is a naked girl and some evil
incantations to Satan. They shoot all the evil guys and then de Grandin explains how the
Russian survived his execution – he is a Russian demon that must be only shot once to die.
(It is unclear why the Russian begged for a bullet to the head after the execution – he was
shot eight times by the firing squad).

The Devil's bride (1932.2-7) (A tale of devil-worship, that contains horror, thrills, shudders,
breath-taking interest, suspense, and vivid actions) – a girl gets messages on a Ouija board
telling her to "come home". She is about to get married with Trowbridge as the guy who
carries the married woman to her husband. The detective and his friend try to solve the case
but it gets worse when the girl is kidnapped (some Indian drug is thrown to church and the
participants lose awareness to time). A mysterious woman tells the two that they will never
manage to get the girl. The girl's mother hides something. De Grandin finds a hidden journal
at a bible at the missing girl's house which tells how her ancestor was sold to Yazeeds as a
slave. He sees them worshipping Satan and killing and doing orgies. The Yazeed high-priest's
daughter falls in love with him and they escape with some rubies. The girl tells him that she
must succeed her father as high priestess and that Satan must marry her. She takes a silver
corselet used by Yazeed girls before sex parties as a garment used for her girl descendants at
their marriage. The girl's mother is murdered and hanged so that it would look like suicide.
The two are assisted by the other annoying French deuce from previous stories as he hunts
down some Russian Communists who try to discredit religion around the world and make
everyone atheist. There are many sex cults created by these Russians to ridicule Christianity.
The mysterious woman reappears wounded on the doctor's house and they lock her in an
insane asylum so that she won't be killed (apparently witness protection system was not
invented yet). The girl is later kidnapped and crucified inside a convent. A mark mentioned
by the French dude and the mother is on her body. The killers also leave, by chance, a bag
full of severed hands. By deduction de Grandin tracks the hand owner to some mutilated girl
whose tongue, eyes, hands and feet were chopped. By tapping her feet the detective
manages to get a lengthy description of the culprits who crucified the girl and chopped this
one (there is an interesting effort in this story to say Jews are an ancient and benign race –
the mutilated girl thinks Jews did this but de Grandin angrily says she is mistaken and Kurds
were the ones, later on he captures an atheist Jew and angrily says that he betrayed his
ancient and benevolent people). The girl dies. The post the picture of the crucified girl and
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her brother answers the call telling them how their cruel, Puritanical father moved the sister
to be a devil-worshipper. They also find out that she had a son, killed by her father, which
looked just like the boy sacrificed by the cult when the girl was in attendance which was
probably the cause for her desertion. They track the cult with some chalk mark signs of
devils in the city (Harrisonville – the place where most de Grandin stories take place) capture
two lookouts and storm the place. The detective, stupidly, tells the other cops to wait
outside while he and his stupid friend silently watch the cultists murder a baby and drink his
blood while watching, as they so like, the kidnapped girl half naked doing some stupid
ceremony. They are captured and when the cops arrive it is too late as the place is on fire
and all the cultists escape. Nevertheless, one of the lookouts turns out to be some hidden
detective from South Africa who manages to capture the high priest and rescue the girl (he
later tells his stupid colonial story of how white people try to save the earth from the evil
black assholes that dare to rebel against the white men who enslaved them). Nevertheless,
when they reach the house the girl, as usual, faints and when they discuss stuff she is about
to get kidnapped, again, upstairs. They manage to save her but see that the kidnapper is the
high priest. They call the cops who tell them the high priest is in their custody. This Russian
high priest is executed. The girl is kidnapped again by the, apparently, dead guy – he takes
some wolves from the zoo and attacks the girl and her fiancée. She writes to him that she
wants him to move on and the party deduces the evil Russian priest threatened to kill her
fiancée if she doesn't comply. They exhume the high priest's body to find it is really there
and dead. They discover that the note, the girl sent, has mores code. They fight the wolves
that guard the place but fail to find people there and only find a message written in lipstick
which they barely manage to decipher before the place is bombed by a stolen warplane the
evil dudes stole. Their South African friend tells them he recognized the message as telling
them to go to Sierra Leone into a no-man's land deep in the bush. The party splits with HIJI,
the girl's husband and Trowbridge going to the place and De Grandin and his French friend
to someplace else. They arrive at the place after killing some scouts and are about to storm
the place when they witness a naked girl and a satanic ceremony – two of the things which
Trowbridge likes to watch every chapter. They witness the girl committing gruesome suicide
but do nothing (they like to watch, probably). Then, they see the girl they came to rescue
with horns on her forehead. De Grandin enters the fray and kills the high priest the party
begins to shoot with some French and English soldiers. They kill hundreds of non-whites and
then rescue the fainting girl. They operate on her horns which were grafted to her head. De
Grandin explains how the dead dude came back to life – he had a twin brother (wow! What
a surprise!). The dudes were apparently good guys until the Russian government tortured
them. The party returns home and the couple name their twin son after the four heroes –
Grandin, Renault, HIJI and Trowbridge.

The Dark Angel (1932.8) (A powerful story of mysterious deaths, and the marks of a gigantic
goat's hoof found on the brows of the victims) – another stupid de Grandin story. This time
the detective and dumb friend, investigate a series of murders in which immoral people
(fornicators, bootleggers, money lenders) are killed by a huge beast with hooves made of
fire (possibly the devil). For some bizarre reason de Grandin insists the supernatural does
not exist and that it cannot be the forces of evil that did this (did he forget 70% of his dumb
stories – him fighting supernatural beings – from ghosts to evil spirits to vampires? What the
hell???). He tracks the culprit – a minister who tells everyone the devil is loose as a carving
he has on his church, depicting St. Michael subjugating the devil, got chipped away thus
corroding the "links" that bind the devil. The dude also has a ward whom he forces to
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become a nun but she is in love with the son of the local mayor. De Grandin tracks the
lovers' car and shoots the "devil" who suddenly arrives revealing it to be the evil minister in
a costume and a hammer with goat marks on it.

The Heart of Siva (1932.10) (A startling weird mystery tale of Hindoo fanaticism and eery
murders – an amazing exploit of Jules de Grandin) – Another non-supernatural de Grandin
story. This time some girl's from Ballet Rus are brutally murdered because they perform a
reenactment of some Hindu fable. Some are missing and their bodies are mashed into a
metal statue that the entire Ballet crowd passes by unawares. De Grandin tracks the four
Indians who done these horrible things just before they kill the last girl performer. He
brutally kills three and forces an confession by torture (with the help of his friendly cop
friend) from the last so that he could be executed (why didn't he kill him like he has done to
his friends?). Another xenophobic tale. Like most of Quinn's tale there is an acute lack of
respect to American law.

The Bleeding Mummy (1932.11) (A tale of strange deaths and the ghastly thing that
happened when an Egyptian mummy was unwrapped – a story of Jules de Grandin) –
Someone calls Trowbridge to check on a professor because he heard some sounds (it is so
stupid – people call this doctor to solve all their problems – I don't think they understand
what a doctor's purpose is). They find out that this professor was an Egyptologist who got
some ancient mummy. They enter his house to see him dead and a burglar also dead. De
Grandin tells the party to move back but the guy who called them is already dead. De
Grandin calls a fumigator and tells them the corpse has many, tiny, deadly spiders that kill
instantly (by the way- the spiders name that the "brilliant" doctor uses are poisonous spiders
from Australia but they are rarely deadly). De Grandin takes the mummy's bones to a
medium where she reveals to them the mummy is of a young priestess who lived 1000 years
before the Biblical story of Joseph and who was executed for having sex. She tells her
assailants that the Hebrews will crush them (The Hebrews were not yet invented so it is like
telling a 9th century Viking an "American" will kill him). De Grandin asks the museum's
curator to put the name of the mummy, revealed by the séance, on a plaque at the museum
but the man refuses to de Grandin's dismay. It is also interesting that de Grandin always
treats séances as hoaxes and rubbish but when it fits him he uses them credulously.

The Door to Yesterday (1932.12) (Weird deaths and strange racial memories – a tale of Jules
de Grandin) – The detective helps a young man whose brother and sister-in-law were
crushed mysteriously. His niece was in a semi-coma whenever the deaths occurred and the
power went out. De Grandin binds the niece and the uncle is hypnotized. Using information
from the niece's West Indies black servant de Grandin watches a huge, ghostly, white snake
outside tempting the uncle to come to him. Using some chicken blood and a stupid
ceremony, and burning half the mansion down, de Grandin manages to exorcize the snake.
Hypnotizing the girl again some material pours out of the girl and a movie is screened by
ectoplasm. They track the genealogical history of the niece, in that "movie", and find out
her 18th century ancestor was a deuce bag who tried to rape a local Mulato in Haiti. The girl
hits him and is condemned to a horrible death. The cursed ancestry remained in the stones
of the Haitian house of the evil man and the memory of the stones (?) somehow manifested.
It is unclear how de Grandin claims this is not supernatural but just make-belief when no one
in the story ever heard the tale.
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A Gamble in Souls (1933.1) (An Arab savant cuts through a web of treachery and injustice in
amazing fashion) – a girl falls in love with a twin but the dude's twin brother manipulates her
to believe he cheats on her so she marries the other twin. Later, her husband becomes a
drunkard and he kills his father and blames the whole thing on his brother to get the money.
The girl discovers his treachery as the other twin is sentenced to death. De Grandin helps the
suicidal girl by using the help of some Arab wizard who lives nearby. The dude transplants
the evil twin's soul into the good twin and thus the good twin gets the girl and the evil one is
executed.

The Thing in the Fog (1933.3) (A goose-flesh werewolf novelette, replete with chills and
shudders) – the detective and doctor save a guy attacked by a wolf while his friend was killed
by the creature. The man calls his fiancée who seems aware of the attacks. The detective
asks her and she tells how she fell in love with a Greek dude who gave her something to
drink and married her while she was delirious by the drink with a strange ceremony in which
she turned into a wolf and ate a man. She escapes but the man tells her he will get her and
kill whoever marries her. The detective shoots the wolf when he attacks the following night
but misses his vital parts. The couple gets married and the wolf attacks again but some
redneck shoots him and he runs away. After their honeymoon the couple is having a party
and the girl sniffs some perfume given by an anonymous admirer. The girl turns into a wolf
as the vial contained some flowers that make a person a werewolf (Stupid!). The wolf-girl
comes to de Grandin's house and she helps them track the evil dude. They ambush him and
shoot him dead. De Grandin does a strange ceremony with some blood and holy water that
he stole from a church. The girl returns to be human. The story includes an interesting
paragraph about the forces of evil and supernatural creatures.

The Hand of Glory (1933.7) (A stirring tale of Jules de Grandin and a weird exploit) – again
the two assholes save a fainting girl. This time the girl's father is some occultist\archeologist
who got some ancient stone from some place that can make him a god. He intends to
sacrifice his daughter as a willing virgin is needed to activate the stupid stone. The two let
the girl stay with them. The girl is kidnapped but some other occultists. De Grandin tracks
the girl and, as usual, they witness a sick ceremony with a nude girl. De Grandin uses some
holy water with a local priest and the place crumbles down on the evil dudes with all the
good guys surviving miraculously.

The Chosen of Vishnu (1933.8) (A blood-chilling story of venomous cobras, Hindoo

vengeance and a beautiful dancing-girl) – Again, the French detective saves a fainting girl.
This time the girl is spat upon by an evil Indian princeling whom De Grandin punches to
unconsciousness. The detective knows the Indian as he served as an undercover agent under
his father and he knows how cruel the prince is. The girl is a runaway temple maiden in India
who got enlightened by the true Christian faith (so annoying) and escaped her role as
dancer, sacred girl and prostitute to rich princes with the help of a local parish priest and his
son with whom she falls in love. The Indian tracked her to Harrisonville and tries to kidnap
her several times until he succeeds. De Grandin manages to track him down, and, as usual,
the Doctor and Detective witness how a beautiful girl is stripped naked, humiliated and
acted upon as part of a dark ritual which they don't prevent until its bloody end (They
probably do so to witness the naked girl). This time, the torture is two cobras that force the
girl to dance and escape their fangs. Then, as usual, De Grandin interferes by shooting
everyone. He ends this by injecting a horrible serum to the prince which makes him almost
brain-dead and all of this in front of the eyes of the local head of police and the National
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Guard who support this. Apparently De Grandin controls both police, army and secret
services even though he is a civilian.

Malay Horror (1933.9) (A tale of stark terror, and a grisly thing that pursued a beautiful girl
to America – a story of Jules de Grandin) – The two stooges reach a mansion in a storm and
help a girl who gets choked by invisible hands. They witness an Eastern monster – a floating
head with esophagus and digestion sack that bangs on the window. Using some stupid
flowers the thing escapes. De Grandin explains that he heard about this thing. The girl
awakens and tells them how her father left home when she was ababy and after her mother
died. He promised a local Sultan in Malay that she will marry him if he lets him marry one of
his beautiful wives. The dude becomes filthy rich. When the girl wants to marry her cousin
the father sends her a letter that she must come because he wants to marry her to the old
Sultan. The girl reaches Malay and finds her father dead. His will gives her most of his money
and the infuriated sultan and her step-mother get nothing. She escapes the place with the
help of a friendly Chinese valet of her father. The step-mother kills herself and manages to
become a floating head that hides inside the father's coffin. Using the help of some flowers
de Grandin manages to kill the step-mother's floating head but she manages to turn the girl
into a floating head herself. Using surgery, de Grandin re-attaches the head to the body (???)
and everything is peachy. (women, children and dogs comment!)

The Mansion of Unholy Magic (1933.10) (An eery tale about a brilliant exploit of the
dauntless little French occultist, Jules de Grandin) – The two bastards go hunting in some
swamp. Their driver is an underage girl. The girl is scared and they are chased by a running
brute. They are told by the girl that the place is haunted by an evil friend of her father who
ggot interested in past lives and resurrects the evil spirit of his dead daughter in her form as
an Egyptian priestess and her evil servants. The mummies must have blood and terrorize the
countryside. That night the mummies reach town and kill the father. The girl vows
vengeance. They kill one of the mummies and then reach the place of the evil dude. The girl
is hypnotized to strip her clothes and lick the feet of the sexy mummy girl. De Grandin kills
the mummies by throwing Molotov cocktails at them. The girl is left to beat the evil friend to
death. She is sorry for that but de Grandin makes her feel better.

Red Gauntlets of Czerni (1933.12) (A breath-taking story of the little French occultist and
ghost-breaker, Jules de Grandin) – a rich bastard Hungarian hires de Grandin to help him
with his daughter's haunting. The dude killed an extremely evil Communist official from
Hungary who pried on him and tried to rape his wife. The dude used to torture his victims by
mauling their hands. The dude's apparition appears at night by the Hungarian's daughter's
bed and his head is created from a bubble that emerges from the girl's belly. De Grandin
comes at night and fails to remove the ghost by throwing holy water at it. The following day
the girl's hands must be amputated as her hand are mauled beyond recognition. De Grandin
manages to convince the doctor and the father that they will kill him if he fails to save the
girl's hands. He goes to the girl and using a knife and a vacuum cleaner vacuums the ghost
(ghost-buster- style) and then burns the ghost in a furnace. He then hypnotizes the girl to
think her hands are okay and they are okay.

The Red Knife of Hassan (1934.1) (A thrill-tale of the Assassins of Syria – an exploit of Jules
de Grandin) – The two bastard discover a body of a woman who was branded by some knife
at some ditch. They fail to discover her identity. They arrive at the party of some eccentric
dude who visited Syria. The lights go out and the dude's severed head appears on the
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temple – his chopped body next to it. A girl at the party shows signs of knowing the cause of
his death. Questioning the girl a trap is sprung and the detective saves the girl = a chandelier
has a head chopping mechanism. Asking the Middle-Eastern butler about it he feigns
ignorance. The butler disappears with trails of something that looks like blood. The detective
finds out it is red ink and that the house was booby trapped by a Middle Eastern dude.
Questioning the girl again she feigns ignorance too. They ambush possible attackers that
may come to the girl but they manage to kidnap her. They chase them to some basement
where a Quinnian scene enfolds –a naked girl being whipped, humiliated and tortured by
some cult. They kill all the evil dudes. The girl tells them how she, the mysterious missing girl
and the eccentric man traveled to Jerusalem and met a revival of the Hashashim cult, They
became members of the cult and one of the dudes had sex with her. They forced the trio to
do their bidding when they returned to America but they refused. They were warned by the
cult and killed one after another (only the girls were tortured for some reason). The head of
the cult was the Middle eastern butler.

The Jest of Warburg Tantavul (1934.9) (A ghost story of vivid power and gripping human
appeal – a story of Jules de Grandin) – An evil maniac father tortures his son and adoptive
daughter for many years. After he hears they intend to marry he becomes extremely glad
and insane. When he dies he inherits all his possession to his son on the condition of his
marriage to the adoptive girl. When the two marry the face of the dead evil man appears
and laughs in the wedding. After the two have a kid the face returns and after telling
something to the girl she tries to kill the baby and herself. She soon escapes from the house
and becomes a prostitute. De Grandin manages to locate her and to destroy the spirit (by
some electric metal screen). He erases her memories of the past year so that she will forget
what the dead spirit told her – she and her husband are biological brother and sister and the
father perpetrated the whole thing to avenge his betrayal by his wife – he kidnapped the
kids and intended that they will marry each other so that his evil promise to his cheating
wife will stay true. De Grandin knew the whole thing from the start but helped the two get
married and have a kid. Sick.

Hands of the Dead (1935.1) (A tale of weird surgery and dual personality – a startling story of
Jules de Grandin) – the two assholes go to some party where they find a woman with
beautiful hands. The woman went through surgery after her hands were maimed and about
to be amputated. The strange doctor who saved her hands is known to be morally off. The
girl plays pool and beats some guy even though she promised him she knew nothing about
the game. The man loses a lot of money on a bet to her and so n=blames her for being a
cheat. That night the girl plays the piano even though she does not know how and then kills
the man who called her a cheat. After exonerating her fiancée who was suspected of the
murder de Grandin learns from the girl that she met some weird hypnotist and magician
whom her fiancée hit in anger for pressing the girl to join his act, some months ago and just
before her hands were harmed. The magician had a sidekick who had beautiful hands and
also shoplifted, played pool, was very strong and liked to play the piano. The detective learns
that since the surgery the girl had some dreams about killing and almost stole from a shop.
De Grandin surmises that the magician and the unscrupulous surgeon joined together in
killing the sidekick (who was vegetable-like after the magician hypnotized her) harming the
girl and transplanting her with the sidekick's hands. De Grandin tells the girl to return home,
he takes an icepick from Trowbridge and silently murders the hypnotist at his home.
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The Web of Living Death (1935.2) (A sensational terror-tale- an amazing weird detective
story) – some insurance detective hitchhikes a ride with some Professor. They see a car
heading their way in the mists and crash in the swamp. They are abducted by some crazy
Middle Eastern guys. They are told by some guy who runs things that they will be recruited
for some master. They manage to escape and find a naked girl in chains who tells them she
is a sex slave for the recruits. They two are captured. The professor is shown cruel tortures
that awaits those who do not obey the master (one of the turtures has one girl who kills
herself from exhaustion and the other is some snake). The detective is shown a garden filled
with naked girls who drug everyone. The girl there, the one they met earlier, helps him fake
the taking of the drug. The detective sees the missing insurance guy whom he was to find
debasing himself after the tortures. They are faced with the master after their heads are
shaved and the dude decides to flog the naked girl who they met earlier. The detective starts
hitting everyone and so he is taken to the snake. The girl drugs the guards and the dude kills
the head servant. They take the snake after drugging it and killing some guards. They also
manage to find some chute that leads to the world above. They bring the snake to the
master who gets killed by it. In the chaos they take the professor and the missing dude and
escape. After they get some clothes and find out the Master was some rich deranged guy
who dressed like an Arab for fun, they discover that the open chute was flooded as they left
it open and so all the dudes and girls dressed like Arabs inside are dead.

Thorp McClusky

Victor Rousseau

The Phantom Hand (1932.7-11) (An astounding novel of Black Magic, eery murders, and the
kingdom of shadows) – an American returns home after being kidnapped by Chinese
brigands for two years. His fiancée ignored his letters and her senator father was sentenced
to death for murder. The man dreams he is her father being hanged. Upon his return he
finds out the father and daughter were part of some Persian congregation centered around
a mysterious Bab. A servant of the Bab tells the protagonist how the girl's father was framed
and that she is in danger and under the custody of an evil man. They visit the evil rich man
who plays a trick on his new T.V. set. The girl does not really remember her fiancée and acts
like an automaton until crying for help in a rare moment of lucidity. An Italian bootlegger,
who was also an accomplice for the father being framed, comes to the party and watches
the T.V. with them. On screen, the protagonist sees the hanging of the father and the girl's
face becomes like that of her father and filled with hatred. The party seems unaware that
something is wrong in the broadcast and that it plays some Opera. The Italian dies as if some
ghostly figure choked him. The dude comes back to his hotel and in the morning he returns
with the Persian to see the rich bastard. The rich bastard is tied down and tells them the girl
was kidnapped by a gangster. They suspect he is lying. They go to the gangsters' hideout and
are captured. They see the girl being possessed by her father's ghost and the ghost kills the
gangsters. They gangsters' ghost rise and are about to kill the party but they escape. They go
home and meet the third member who killed the girl's father but he is afraid and willing to
help them kill the evil master. The girl and the dude get married but when they drive out the
girl is abducted by the evil master. The man reaches the place of the master and he tortures
him and separates his astral body from his physical body. He is saved by the Persian Babist
who helps the father's ghost to return to the next world. The Babist also decides to sacrifice
himself for the man he knew for a couple of days and leave his poor family behind. He
manages to contact the last member of the evil party and he repents and tells him how to
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exonerate the dead father's name. Then, he dies by the spirit of the protagonist that is
controlled by the evil guy who also enlists the help of an ancient Obeah woman. The Indian
Bab takes the blame on himself and makes people believe he killed the last member. The evil
mastermind awakes the man and his wife and bids them goodbye thinking they will be
captured by the police that suspects the man after his spirit left many fingerprints in the
scene of the crime (what???). A man arrives to deliver a bottle of wine and sees the man so
the evil mastermind must kill him so that he will succeed framing the man. A mob kills the
poor Indian after lynching him. The police manages to get hold of the last member's
documents which frame the evil mastermind and exonerate the father. The evil mastermind
kills the poor delivery man. The police goes to capture the man who blames the man and his
wife but then he runs into the house and into the Obeah woman secret compartment. She
locks him inside until he dies.