Tellers of Weird Tales
Artists & Writers in The Unique Magazine
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Weird Tales, Back to Old Habits
Friday, February 9, 2024
Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Four
"The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt"
So what about Houdini's other two stories in Weird Tales? Well, "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" came first. It's a two-part serial that appeared in the issues of March and April 1924. Although it was in two parts, I'll call it one story.
Monday, February 5, 2024
Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Three
"Imprisoned with the Pharaohs"
In January and February of 1924, Weird Tales magazine played cowboys and Indians on its covers. In the first illustration, a hatless cowboy wearing thick, furry chaps is seen fleeing on horseback from a ghostly rider twirling a ghostly lariat. In the second, an Indian seems to be summoning lightning from the night sky. With his straight arms raised and his hands open before him, he looks like the symbol of the Lone Scouts. With his flashing red cloak, he looks like the ape in Frank Frazetta's illustration for the Conan story "Rogues in the House." Both covers were by R.M. Mally.
Then the Houdini issues began.
There were three in all, in March, April, and May/June/July 1924. Although Houdini signed his agreement with Weird Tales in February 1924, the issue with the Indian cover was already on the nation's newsstands by then. The March issue was the earliest in which his byline could appear.
R.M. Mally was again the creator of the three Houdini covers. Houdini was supposed to have been the author of all three cover stories. They were:
- March 1924: "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt"
- April 1924: "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover"
- May/June/July 1924: "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs"
So there were three stories published under Houdini's byline in Weird Tales. But does that mean that Houdini was actually their author? The answer is obviously no in the case of "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," as H.P. Lovecraft is known to have ghostwritten that story. There was some drama attached to that, for Lovecraft wrote it in a hurry, lost his first version in an even quicker hurry, then rewrote it on his honeymoon, again in a hurry. (Most people are in a hurry on their honeymoons, though not to retype lost manuscripts.) Maybe the briefcase or satchel containing his typescript is in the same place as Hemingway's stolen suitcase. Maybe they're both at the dead letter office where Bartleby the Scrivener used to work. Wherever it went, Lovecraft was well compensated for his work, Houdini liked the result, and his story is still admired by fans of weird fiction. It also became the cover story of the only quarterly issue of Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924. (1, 2)
To be continued . . .
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
Friday, February 2, 2024
Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Two
Spirits & Sphinxes
Weird Tales magazine was apparently already in trouble when Harry Houdini (1874-1926) met J.C. Henneberger (1890-1969) in his Chicago office in February 1924. Henneberger must have seen a chance to capitalize on Houdini's name and fame by having him and it associated with his magazine. Maybe that would increase sales. And maybe Houdini saw an agreement between them as a chance to publicize his upcoming lecture tour of America. He wanted to talk about spiritualism, séances, and mediums. He wanted people to know that these things were (and still are) a scam, a hoax, and a great fraud.
What followed were three cover stories for Weird Tales written under Houdini's byline. Houdini also conducted a letters column called "Ask Houdini," which took the place of "The Eyrie" and ran in two installments, April and May/June/July 1924. I haven't checked this, but I believe "The Eyrie" was in every other issue of Weird Tales from March 1923 to September 1954. Only those two issues had something different. In any case, things didn't work out so well for Henneberger. Weird Tales foundered in mid-1924, and although he officially retained ownership of the magazine, he became indebted to others, including the men at the head of Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis. (I always like to point out that Weird Tales originated in my native city.) The quarterly issue of May/June/July was the last to appear until November 1924. By then, Edwin Baird, the first editor, had left, being replaced by Farnsworth Wright. Meanwhile, Houdini seemingly vanished, having moved on to another--apparently very successful--phase of his career.
* * *
The FictionMags Index provides a list of Harry Houdini's magazine credits. I have adapted it as follows:
- Letter in The Sphinx: The Official Organ of the Society of American Magicians, Sept. 15, 1916.
- "The Thrills in the Life of a Magician" in The American Magazine, Sept. 1918.
- "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," a two-part serial in Weird Tales, Mar.-Apr. 1924.
- "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" in Weird Tales, Apr. 1924.
- "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" in Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924, ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft. Reprinted in Weird Tales in June/July 1939 as part of a series entitled "Weird Story Reprint." Houdini still got the byline, but an introduction to the story identifies Lovecraft as its true author. It's ironic that a man who exposed ghosts also had a ghost behind his story.
- "When Magic Didn’t Work" in Collier's, Apr. 18, 1925.
- "Tricks of Fake Mediums" in Liberty, Nov. 28, 1925.
- "How I Unmask the Spirit Fakers" in Popular Science, Nov. 1925.
- "How I Do My 'Spirit Tricks'" in Popular Science, Dec. 1925.
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part One
Harry Houdini
Né Erik Weisz
Aka Eric or Erich Weiss, Harry Weiss
Performer, Magician, Illusionist, Escape Artist, Actor, Author, Aviator, Technical Advisor, Movie Producer & Director, Public Speaker, Psychic Investigator, Skeptic, & Debunker
Born March 24, 1874 (O.S.), Pest (Budapest), Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Died October 31, 1926, Detroit, Michigan
A lot has been written about Harry Houdini. I'm not sure that I can add to it. Instead I'll just write about him in his connections to genre fiction, genre films, and of course Weird Tales.
Born in Hungary to a rabbi and his wife, Houdini grew up in Appleton and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, then in New York City. He began performing--on a trapeze--at age nine and became a professional magician in 1891. He performed on the vaudeville stage, in circuses and museums, at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and--off and on from 1906 to 1923--in films. He was supposed to have played Captain Nemo in an adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but that deal fell though. Instead, he appeared in a number of other genre films:
- The Master Mystery (1918), a fifteen-part thriller/mystery/science fiction serial on which Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) of all people served as a consultant.
- The Grim Game (1919), a crime thriller and aviation picture.
- Terror Island (1920), a South Seas adventure.
- The Man from Beyond (1922), a time-travel adventure with the ever-popular man-frozen-in-the-ice-then-thawed-out-and-reawakened plot device. There is also a depiction of reincarnation in The Man from Beyond, now interpreted as an attempt at reconciliation with Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), whom had been alienated by Houdini's skepticism and debunking of spiritualism, mediums, and séances. (1)
- Haldane of the Secret Service (1923), a crime/detective story. Released on September 30, 1923, it was Houdini's last film. Weird Tales was halfway through its first year when Haldane arrived in theaters.
Although his name was known the world over, Houdini began slipping in his career by the time the 1920s rolled around. His last movies weren't very successful and so he put that business behind him. In February 1924, he announced that he was leaving the vaudeville stage and going on a twenty-four-date lecture tour to talk about "his experience with fraud medium." (2) He also announced that he had signed a contract to write a series of articles on the same subject for none other than Weird Tales magazine.
Maybe it was a step down for Houdini to get involved in pulp fiction, but that's what he did, meeting Weird Tales publisher J.C. Henneberger in his Chicago office in early 1924. (3) The two men swung a deal, and that's how the Houdini issues of Weird Tales came about. I won't go into the particulars here. You can read about the people, places, and events involved in John Locke's history, The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (2018), pages 136-156. Suffice it to say, Houdini had the cover story in three straight issues of the magazine, March, April, and the quarterly issue of May/June/July 1924. His likeness, by R.M. Mally, appeared on the first of the three, making Houdini the first author to be depicted on the cover of "The Unique Magazine."
To be continued . . .
Notes
(1) In his biography, Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls (MacFadden, 1961), William Lindsay Gresham wrote: "The idea [behind The Man from Beyond] was probably suggested to Houdini by a story which appeared in The American Weekly about the body of a viking, complete with winged helmet and flaxen beard, which had been discovered in the Arctic, perfectly preserved after a thousand years." (p. 196) If we had the title of that story, we could add it to the Internet Polar Fiction Database and the Internet Viking Adventure Database. Was it one of A. Merritt's works? (My paperback edition of Gresham's Houdini lacks an index. Mention of Weird Tales and H.P. Lovecraft--"the late, great H.P. Lovecraft"--is on page 236.)
(2) "Houdini Leaving Stage," Minneapolis Star, February 23, 1924, page 8.
(3) John Locke suggests the week of February 11, 1924, as the period during which they met. See The Thing's Incredible!: The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (2018), page 138.
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924-Non-Fiction & Other Fillers
Following is a list of the fillers in the May/June/July issue of Weird Tales, a list transcribed from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Thanks to them again. All are by uncredited authors. Most have asterisks around them. Read on to see what they mean.
- **"Juvenile Criminal," about the Hon. Grey Bennett and a boy named Leary. There really was a Grey Bennett, as remote from the first year of Weird Tales as we are from it.**
- **"Retaliation," about a British ship.**
- **"Providential Warning at Sea," about Captain Thomas Rogers and his ship Society in about 1694.**
- **"Pastime of Despots," about Czar Peter.**
- **"The Unnatural Son," about a theft in Salisbury.**
- **"Singular Discovery of a Murder in 1740," an account of events at St. Neots, England.**
- **"Giants," about very tall men known to history.**
- **"Sham Fight," about a battle between Christian and Musselman armies at Bostra [sic].**
- **"War Horses," about war in Funen, Denmark.**
- **"The Original Bluebeard," about Gilles, Marquis de Laval. Seabury Quinn had covered him before in his non-fiction series "Weird Crimes," in October 1923.**
- **"Distressing March of the Crusaders Through Phrygia."**
- **"Remarkable Accident," about Baptiste, an actor at the Comedie Francaise in 1820.**
- *"An Account of a Family Who Were All Afflicted with the Loss of Their Limbs," about John Dowling of Wattisham, England.*
- *"Hypocrisy Detected," set in Paris.*
- *"Force of Imagination," also set in Paris.*
- *"Immolation of Human Beings," about the Ashantees [sic] of Africa.*
- **"Imprisonment of Baron De Geramb."**
- *"Anecdote Concerning the Execution of King Charles the First."*
- **"Anne Boleyn."**
- **"The Heroes of Hindoostan."**
- *"Extraordinary Instance of Second Sight," about a French army officer quartered in Scotland during "the previous century."*
- **"Miracles," about a Dr. Connell and his patient, named Anne Mulligan, in 1777.**
- **"National Superstition," about two Venetians.**
- **"Death of the Duchess of Bedford."**
- **"Pardon for Forgery," a case from 1803.**
- **"Terrific Death of a Painter," about Peter Peutemann.**
- **"Deaths by Lightning," set in Ireland.**
- **"Wonderful Providence," about war in France in 1562.**
- **"Monsieur Rouelle," about the "celebrated chemist."**
- **"A Singular Experiment," about an Irish boy named Magrath who fell into the hands of a "subtile doctor," a kind of Procrustes who experimented on the boy and made of him a monstrous creation. This account goes along with my suggestion that medical doctors are very often psychopaths or sociopaths and see their fellow human beings as mere material and subjects for their bizarre and monstrous experimentation. We recently had one of those at the head of a large governmental agency. He and his fellows very likely developed and loosed upon the world a deadly virus and in response created an oppressive regime that is still lurking, still preying, including in the minds of his and their followers, supporters, and apologists. Monstrous medical doctors recently won a victory for themselves in Ohio, too. Now they have the power under the state constitution to decide who is a human being and who is not. Now we have another Moloch State.**
- **"Pentilly House, Cornwall," about a Mr. Tilly, an atheist.**
- **"Singular Combat," about England in the time of Henry IV.**
- **"Fatal Misfortune and Singular Instance of Affection in a Horse," set in England.**
- *"Punishment of the Knout in Russia."*
- **"Intrepid Conduct of Admiral Douglas," about a mutiny on board the ship Stately.**
- "Only Sound," a very brief item from the Los Angeles Times. (Below it are two jokes.)
- "Odd Facts," half a dozen brief fillers. (Below it are three anecdotes or jokes. So there are five untitled anecdotes or jokes in addition to 37 titled fillers.)
As I was about halfway through this list, I discovered the original source of most of these accounts. The source is:
The Terrific Register; or, Record of Crimes, Judgements, Providences, and Calamities, Volume I and Volume II, published in 1825 by Sherwood, Jones, and Co., of London, and Hunter of Edinburgh.
Presumably all are factual, so no fiction to add to the 37 stories in this issues. Items taken from Volume I have single asterisks around them in the list above. Those from Volume II have double asterisks. Seven of the items are from Volume I of The Terrific Register. Twenty-eight are from Volume II. That makes 35 in all, leaving only two that are from other sources.
So, if we're trying to get from 37 new stories in the interior of the anniversary number to the 50 promised on its cover, then we'll have to add 13 of the items listed above, I guess. You get to choose. A couple of them are almost as long as the shortest new stories.
It's clear that Otis Adelbert Kline was not the author of these fillers, as he had been (or probably was) in previous issues. But if he was acting as editor, or co-editor, then maybe he was the one who chose them for inclusion. And that makes me think that there must have been copies of these two volumes either in a public or university library in Chicago or in a private collection to which he had access. And now I think we had better look at the fillers in previous issues for their possible origins in the same two volumes of The Terrific Register.
I have written before about the Fortean method. I called it that after Charles Fort (1874-1932), author, gadfly of science, and collector of oddities. People who read and wrote for Weird Tales knew of Fort and his ways. Some became Forteans themselves. Others simply availed themselves of the Fortean method in creating their fictions. Like I said, I have suspected that Otis Adelbert Kline was the author of the many non-fiction fillers printed in Weird Tales in its first year, and maybe he was after all, taking after Fort in the process. But it's clear with this discovery of The Terrific Register as a source that Kline was not the sole author of the Weird Tales fillers and that Fort was not the first collector of oddities. He, along with Kline, was simply working in an older tradition. I wonder how far back that tradition goes. And I wonder: is history simply a field engaged in telling about the odd events--the crimes, judgements, providences, and calamities--of the past? Aside from that, are not these accounts simply retellings of how weird works in our lives and affairs?
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924-Stories & Essays
Following is a list of the contents of Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924, the first of two parts, this one showing the 37 stories, one essay, and two features or departments, transcribed from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Thanks to them.
- "Why Weird Tales?" by Anonymous, actually by Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946).
- "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Houdini (1874-1926), ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).
- "'Whoso Diggeth a Pit—'" by Vida Tyler Adams (1896-1976).
- "Deep Calleth" by Gordon Burns.
- "The Malignant Entity" by Otis Adelbert Kline, the middle story of his three featuring Dr. Dorp.
- "The Sixth Tree" by Edith Lichty Stewart.
- "The Haunted Mansion in the Pines" by Leonard F. Schumann.
- "Spirits" by J. M. Alvey.
- "Hypnos" by H. P. Lovecraft.
- "Ebenezer's Casket," part two of a two-part serial by J. U. Giesy (1877-1947) and Junius B. Smith (1883-1945).
- "Draconda," part six of a six-part serial by John Martin Leahy (1886-1967).
- "The Hand" by H. Francis Caskey.
- "The Loved Dead" by C. M. Eddy, Jr. (1896-1967), with an uncredited H. P. Lovecraft.
- "The Vow on Halloween" by Lyllian Huntley Harris (1883-1939).
- "Eyes" by Galen C. Colin (1890-1973).
- "The Man Who Thought He Was Dead" by Granville S. Hoss.
- "Called Back" by Dan W. Totheron [Dan W. Totheroh (1894-1976)].
- "The Sunken Land" by George W. Bayly.
- "The Dancing Partner" by Guy L. Helms.
- "The Last Entry (In the Diary of R. Q. P.)" by Meredith Beyers (1899-1996).
- "The Purple Death" by Edith Lyle Ragsdale.
- "The Imposter" by Norman Springer (1888-1974).
- "The Werewolf of St. Bonnot," an article in the series "Weird Crimes" (No. 6), by Seabury Quinn (1889-1969).
- "Just Bones" by Samuel Stewart Mims (1885-1974).
- "First Degree" by Robert Cosmo Harding (1883-?).
- "The Latvian" by Herman Fetzer, aka Jake Falstaff (1899-1935).
- "The Machine from Outside" by Don Howard.
- "Doctor Grant's Experiment" by H. A. Noureddin Addis (1884-1958).
- "Tea Leaves" by Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932).
- "An Egyptian Lotus" by Mrs. Chetwood Smith (1872-1950).
- "Deep Sea Game" by Arthur J. Messier.
- "The Soul Mark" by H. C. Wire.
- "It!" by E. M. Samson.
- "The Man Who Lived Next Door to Himself" by Frank Owen (1893-1968).
- "Mystery River" by Elwin J. Owens.
- "The God Yuano" by Marjorie Darter.
- "The Cellar" by Paul L. Anderson.
- "In the Weird Light" by Edward Everett Wright and Ralph Howard Wright, with an epigraph by William Wordsworth and including a graphic of the globe.
- "A Glimpse Beyond" by H. M. Hamilton.
- "Ask Houdini," letters column conducted by Houdini.
The thirteenth issue of Weird Tales was a big one, 192 pages in all, containing 37 stories, 37 titled fillers (and several untitled ones), Otis Adelbert Kline's anonymously published essay "Why Weird Tales?", and two features, "Weird Crimes" by Seabury Quinn and "Ask Houdini," a letters column conducted by Harry Houdini. All of that content was printed in three columns of small type on each page.
In terms of page count, the triple issue is twice as long as the most recent issue, #367 from last year, as well as many issues immediately after it, which began again in November after a hiatus of three months. Some of these stories are very short, only a page or two. Most have never been reprinted. I have read only a few, but several sound intriguing, including "Draconda," an interplanetary adventure by John Martin Leahy. H.P. Lovecraft was pretty prominent in this issue, with one story under his own byline, one that he ghost-wrote, and one on which he lent a hand, C.M. Eddy's scandalous tale "The Loved Dead." Notice that there is not one but two stories with titles in the form of "The Man Who . . .".
I have written about some of these authors before. Hover over their names, then click. And now I find that there are lots that I haven't written about, and they deserve some space . . .
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley