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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 2, 2020 20:57:12 GMT
Robert W. Sneddon – Painted Upside Down : ( Ghost Stories, Sept. 1928). Mark Shadow, the great ghost hunter, investigates suspected poltergeist activity and all manner of strange phenomena at a "whispering house" in New York. The three-story building was once home to Amos Hawthorne, brutal slave-trader. whose great-grand-daughter, Margaret recently bought the property cheap. It has been unable to shake an evil reputation ever since Amos hung himself in suspicious circumstances. Margaret is a celebrated artist, Since buying the property, she has involuntarily taken to painting scenes depicting voodoo ceremonies involving the worship of a monstrous God. She is also haunted by a ceaseless whispering. Shadow offers his services in exchange for his choice of her canvases. He and Maurice the valet temporarily move in with Margaret and her best pal, Janet Dunlop, a sensitive. Their presence soon lures multiple phantoms, including a hooded woman with no face, a skeletal hand, and a walking dead black with a knife through his throat. And they've yet to explore the cellar. It's going to be quite a night! Have you read Sneddon's "On the Isle of Blue Men?" It originally appeared in the April 1927 issue of Ghost Stories and can also be found--in reportedly altered form--in Charles G. Waugh et al.'s Lighthouse Horrors.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 3, 2020 14:53:07 GMT
Have you read Sneddon's "On the Isle of Blue Men?" It originally appeared in the April 1927 issue of Ghost Stories and can also be found--in reportedly altered form--in Charles G. Waugh et al.'s Lighthouse Horrors. I hadn't before you mentioned it. Thanks for the recommendation! Robert W. Sneddon - On the Isle of Blue Men: ( Ghost Stories, April 1927). When their yacht is caught in a storm, the narrator and wife Alice moor at the Seven Hunters lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides. Keepers Donald Macleod and John Ross happily accommodate the couple, but colleague Angus Jamieson is desperately unhappy at the intrusion. Doesn't the ancient legend warn: "Man's day will end when the Blue Men and the red-haired witch are together"? A thick fog descends. Sure enough, the tower comes under attack from a colony of ghastly, man-sized, amphibious monstrosities, tentacles so powerful they can tear a man's arm from his shoulder. Angus naively decides that, by giving himself to the creatures, his friends will be spared. I wonder how much Charles Waugh & Co. tampered with the version that appeared in Ghost Stories? Quite a bit, I'm guessing as, from those samples read, the editor's favoured material was never especially grim. Here's the relevant passage from Lighthouse Horrors.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 4, 2020 12:48:09 GMT
Arnold Fountain [Fulton Oursler] – He Fell in Love with a Ghost: ( Ghost Stories, July 1926). Pianist composer Dick Armstrong foolishly marries Etta Trent, widow of an army colleague who deliberately walked into enemy gunfire during the last days of the war. He now understands why. Etta's is a bitterly possessive "love", demanding of Dick's every second. She regards his music as a despised rival. Armstrong might just as well chop off his fingers - until heart and career are rescued by the sweet ghost of a living girl. T. Howard Kelly – The Ha’nts of Amelia Island: ( Ghost Stories, Aug. 1926). Author visits a small island off the coast of Florida bent to learning the location of Captain Kidd's treasure from 105-year-old African Indian. 'Uncle Jimmy' Drummond is friendly with those who guard it - a spectral band of cut-throat pirates (minus throats) and a maniacal phantom wildcat. Uncle Jimmy, very cold to the touch, is not in the business of betraying the dead, and warns the avaricious Mr. Kelly he has no business stealing their gold. Replace the dramatic photo's with an uninspired Heinmann illustration and, again, you might be reading something from a Baird Weird Tales. Blurb: In an era of odd magazines, Macfadden's GHOST STORIES (1926-31) was a standout of the strange. It tapped into occult interest by presenting haunted tales that may or may not have been true. If they were true, then GHOST STORIES was testament to the presence of spirits in every exciting arena, the Western Front, gangland, aviation, the Klondike, the circus, the theater; not coincidentally, all the varied settings that pulp stories employed.
The personnel that created GHOST STORIES, though not well remembered today in most cases, were an uncommonly talented and fascinating group. They include poets and scholars, war heroes and war correspondents, adventurers and Bohemians. A few were titans of magazine publishing and editing. A few developed into prolific pulpsters; a few became bestselling authors; a few went Hollywood; one earned a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. And because it's GHOST STORIES, a few led haunted lives: within these pages appear two murderers, a murder victim, a suicide, and several casualties of tragic accidents.
This first of two volumes presents 19 spooky tales from GHOST STORIES, complete with original illustrations. Extensive nonfiction material includes the history of GHOST STORIES, and detailed biographies of every GHOST STORIES editor, and every author whose stories appear in this volume.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 4, 2020 14:08:57 GMT
Arnold Fountain [Fulton Oursler] – He Fell in Love with a Ghost: ( Ghost Stories, July 1926). Pianist composer Dick Armstrong foolishly marries Etta Trent, widow of an army colleague who deliberately walked into enemy gunfire during the last days of the war. He now understands why. Etta's is a bitterly possessive "love", demanding of Dick's every second. She regards his music as a despised rival. Armstrong might just as well chop off his fingers - until heart and career are rescued by the sweet ghost of a living girl. This reminds me of my favorite song about falling in love with a ghost: "Little Ghost," by the White Stripes. It plays during the end credits of the stop-motion film Paranorman, which I adore and have seen twice (the design for the film's main ghost is electrifying):
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Post by dem bones on Jul 5, 2020 5:42:54 GMT
A pair from the magazine's first year via issues available on archive,org. Robert W. Sneddon - The Terror of Laughing Clay: ( Ghost Stories. Oct. 1926). No scientists experimenting ten thousand years could make a lump of potter's clay live - and yet - Rabid skeptic John Bolton's offer of $10,000 to the man who can convince him that there is more to the so-called 'supernatural' than fakery and delusion remains unclaimed. Bolton's fury at all things mumbo jumbo has led to a falling out with his cousin, Prof. Joseph Carter, "a cranky dabbler in dark matters," who is now sworn to shatter his complacency. To this end, Carter raises an elemental and sets it loose in Bolton's mansion. One by one loyal servants quit, the butler reluctantly citing something diabolically wrong with the hallway chest. Bolton curses the household for superstitious fools until his near-asphyxiation by soggy invisible mass urges a drastic rethink. Perhaps it's time to swallow his pride, approach Mark Shadow, ghost-hunter supreme, for help? M. Bouillard [as told to Ed Powers] - In The House of Screaming Skulls: ( Ghost Stories, Dec. 1926). Those skulls were broken to fragments - battered against walls - hurled from windows - and still they continued to scream their curse on the house of M. Bouillard. The legend of Calgarth Hall, Cumberland, relocated to seventeenth century Lavignac in central France, with the Bouillards cast as the Phillipsons, and Jule and Madame le Front replacing the unfortunate Kraster and Dorothy Cook. Jacques Bouillard wishes to demolish the DeFront's cabin and build a mansion, but the couple refuse to sell. Eventually Bouillard concedes defeat, warmly invites his neighbours to Christmas dinner to show there are no hard feelings. After the festivities, the DeFronts are arrested for the alleged theft of a valuable goblet. Conviction is a formality - Bouillard has friends in high places. The innocent DeFronts are duly pronounced guilty and executed, but not before the wife visits her blood-curdling curse on the house of Bouillard.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 5, 2020 12:17:16 GMT
I have to look them up on archive,org. The drawings/fotos seem to be pretty well done. It appears to be a lot of effort for such a magazine.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 22, 2021 18:40:47 GMT
Harold Hersey [ed.] - Ghost Stories, June 1931 (Wildside Press Pulp Classics #2, 2004) Harold Hersey - Editorial: This World and the Next
Donald Wylie - When Fear Rides [Serial: Pt. 1 of 4] Jack D'Arcy - Talisman of Fate Louise Rice - Your Destiny in Your Scribble Stuart Palmer - Chicago's Flying Horror Hereward Carrignton, Ph.D - The True Ghost Story Arthur T. Jolliffe - The Phantom Menace of the Screen [Serial: Pt. 3 of 5] Dr. Paul Bronson - There Is No Medicine for This Conrad Richter - The Toad Man Specter Florence Campbell, M. A. - Find Your Life Numbers Florence Campbell, M. A. - The Month of June and Its Numbers E. Heron and H. Heron - Who Was the Strangler? [The Story of the Grey House] H. Thompson Rich - The House of the Fog ([Serial: Pt. 6 of 6] Stella King - Were You Born In June? Stella King - What the Stars Foretell for Every Day in June Count Cagliostro - Spirit Tales Margaret Rowen - What Do Your Dreams Mean? Meeting Place Carl T. Pfeufer Stuart Palmer - Chicago's Flying Horror: Right under the noses of the Windy City police, too! Chris Vlahos, a powerful sorcerer, nightly communes with spirits in the three story house on West Sycamore. The Neighbours block their windows and refuse to let their children out after dark on his account. Now Marya, the long-suffering 'wife,' has escaped to make a new life with lover William Chatoris. Vlahos, true to form, vows to destroy Chatoris with black magic and sets to work on a a wax effigy. But somehow he miscalculates! Witnesses describe something resembling a black overcoat swooping down upon the terrified Vlahos as he lay mangled in the street, having leapt screaming through a shuttered third floor window. By the time the police arrive, the magician is dead - stabbed through the heart with an icicle! "The statuette is now a prized exhibit in the 'museum' of the Chicago police department, among hundreds of other objects which have played a part in ancient crime. The wax statuette stands next to the hypodermic needle used in the recent Lake Forest murders, the glasses worn by Dicky Loeb and the chisel that killed Bobby Franks." deSola Jack D'Arcy [D. L. Champion] - Talisman of Fate: What a difference when three wishes are reversed! Dolores, the most beautiful girl in Havana, is dead by her own hand, the latest victim of Grimmel, handsome company executive and callous womaniser. Now her grandfather, Old Luis, has Grinnell fetched to his deathbed. Much to the American's surprise, "the filthy spiggotty" holds out an emerald. "While this is in your possession you shall never achieve the three things you most desire! Voice a wish to attain the goal your heart most wants, and while you possess this stone, your wishes shall never be realised! Once, twice, thrice you shall be frustrated! And the third time shall bring you death!" Grinnell greedily pockets the jewel and laughs off the curse would give him expensive presents! The following morning, he receives notice that his big promotion has fallen through at the last moment. Some months on, the unthinkable happens. The ladykiller falls in love with Nadina, daughter of a wealthy sugar planter, and sets about mending his ways. On the eve of the wedding, he drinks too much and, egged on by cronies - "Let Grinnell prove that white man's reason can lick a half breed's magic!" - makes a second wish, determined to prove the 'curse' is hogwash ....
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Post by dem bones on Mar 23, 2021 10:02:07 GMT
Carl T. Pfeufer Conrad Richter - The Toad Man Specter: Why did ether fumes always precede this hideous apparition ?. Mr. Wilder, an attorney handling the sale of the old Horrow House, is persecuted by a squat ghost with puffy fat face and the most horrible "frog eyes" who reeks of chemical. Another dangerous case for psychic investigator Matson "sometimes called the Spook cop" Bell, who fast establishes that someone no longer of this world is murderously determined to prevent demolition of the derelict property, but who - and why? Hereward Carrington, Ph.D - The True Ghost Story Corner: Taken from the daily life around us. A severed finger beckoning from a woodland pond of blood and a visitation from the Lady Headless of Brook House. Revelling in the spotlight, Mr Carrington's informants - 'A Correspondent' and Mr. Ralph Hastings respectively - positively trowel on the drama. Not the biggest fan of Ghost Stories' numerology/palmistry/true ghost interludes as a rule, but Dr. Carrington's column is an exception.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 24, 2021 20:36:36 GMT
Carl T. Pfeufer Arthur T. Jolliffe - The Phantom Menace of the Screen: Pt. III: El Toroso alias Magnus plans a release of Universal Evil. Ramon Magnus, modern day incarnation of El Toroso, the world's most evil hypnotist and black magician, has infiltrated Hollywood. His aim: to unleash homicidal mania on mankind via thought transmission! The vehicle is a bio-pic of Marie Antoinette starring Madelaine Courtney, brightest of Tinsel town's stars, as the doomed Royal, and Quaath, his own hideous, gorilla-like servant, as executioner. The only man standing between Magnus and entire world domination is his nemesis down the centuries, Dr. Bridger, psychic, physician, and conjurer of elementals. The stage is set. Fans of Paul Ernst's Dr Satan might like.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 29, 2021 20:34:02 GMT
Dr. Paul Bronson - There is no Medicine for This: Remedies are in vain when lovers are parted forever. Laurence Poulson and Anita Grey are due to wed when she is struck dead by a rock fragment fallen from scaffolding around a new building. Initially, Laurence refuses to accept Anita's death, holding continuous conversation with his beloved, even replying in her voice. As the truth dawns, he insists Dr. Bronson put him out of his misery; "With all my heart and soul and mind I want to die, but my rotten, life-loving body won't permit it." When Bronson refuses, Poulson threatens to kill him. The Doctor feigns compliance, insists the patient accompany him to the surgery where he can accomplish the mercy killing. On the way they pass the spot where Anita met her end. Will history repeat? As Ghost Stories material goes, this is atypically grim for the most part. Includes brief haunted photo sequence. Carl T. Pfeufer (?) E & H Heron - Who Was the Strangler?: Something was at work in these murders beyond human belief. Flaxman Low's Devon vacation proves a busman's holiday as he agrees to investigate three horrific murders on the estate inherited by young Montesson. The heir, a decent, plucky chap, can find nobody to live there on account of its terrible reputation. "The persons who die at the Grey House are hanged by their necks until they are dead," All, that is, save the first casualty, Lampurt the mad botanist, "a squint-eyed, pig-faced fellow who sidled along like a crab and could not look you in the face," who died of shock. Could he be in some way responsible for the subsequent tragedies? Probably better known under its original title, The Story of the Grey House.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 9, 2021 6:51:40 GMT
John Locke (ed.) – Ghost Stories: The Magazine and Its Makers: Volume 2 (Off-Trail Publications, 2010)
Introduction The Authors (Volume 2) Margaret Jackson (as told by Jane Hardin) – The Thing on the Roof (Dec. 1928) Paul Ernst - A Crystal Gazer's Crime (June 1929) Edwin A. Goewey (as told by James Halliday) - The Phantom of the Sawdust Ring (Oct. 1929) Ghost Hour on the Radio (letter, Nov. 1929) Perry Paul - The Thing in the Laboratory (June 1930) Jack D'Arcy (D.L. Champion, as told by Robert Patten) - The Gospel of a Gangster's Ghost (Nov. 1930) Douglas M. Dold - Prisoners of Fear (Feb. 1931) Wilbert Wadleigh - The Prehistoric Phantom (Feb. 1931) W.H.D. Bence - Midnight Sorcery (Apr. 1931) Gordon Malherbe Hillman - The Thing That Limped (July 1931) Stuart Palmer - White Witch of Stoningham (July 1931) E.W. Hutter - Salt is Not for Slaves (Aug./Sept. 1931) Edith Ross - Out of the Shadows of Madness (Aug./Sept. 1931) Theodore Kuntz - Long Fingers (Oct./Nov. 1931) George Tibbitts - Green Death (Dec. 1931/Jan. 1932) Conrad Richter - Monster of the Dark Places (Dec. 1931/Jan. 1932) The Artists Cover GalleryAs with Volume 1, the author biographies provide some of the most interesting reading in Volume 2. This time around, they include pulp workhorses Champion and Ernst, novelist-turned-murderer Hillman, and the amazing Dold (a former doctor who went into fiction writing after losing his sight helping WWI refugees in a combat area). The revelation of the anthology, however, is the mysterious Tibbits, whose Green Death (which could have been called "The Green Lodge," as it reminds me of a certain H. R. Wakefield story) offers the sort of gung-ho pulp horrors that are missing from most of the other stories. Runner-up honors go to Palmer's tale. Somewhat to my amazement, Conrad Richter--who later wrote The Light in the Forest, which I found quite devastating as a kid--contributes a solid supernatural sleuth story set in a coal mine. Page Trotter Paul Ernst - A Crystal Gazer's Crime: (June 1929). She thought she could win the man she wanted — if only the fair-haired girl were out of the way. And she dared to plot a psychic murder! Venevra Fleming, crystal gazer, hypnotist and medium, abuses her gifts to be rid of a love rival. She succeeds, but the consequences are not to her liking. Narrated by a staff member at the Insane Asylum. E.W. Hutter - Salt is Not for Slaves: (Aug./Sept. 1931). Six dead men danced macabre through the burning streets of an ancient, sin-cursed Haiti — till they knew they were dead. Early nineteenth century at the beginning of Christophe's uprising. With the master otherwise engaged on the Cape, Tresaint, the slave overseer, sets free his people to ransack the villa. Emboldened by rum, he and five others break the master's sacred rule; "You shall not eat salt." As related by Marie, aged one hundred-and-fifty years. Spoiler warning: Story exhumed by Peter Haining in Zombie: Tales of the Walking Dead.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 10, 2021 6:51:22 GMT
Could be I'm misremembering, but there seems more emphasis on supernatural horrors in this volume/ no matter, I liked all three of these, Prisoners of Fear in particular. Also learned a top new euphemism for strait-jacket ... Clare Angell Douglas M. Dold - Prisoners of Fear: (Feb. 1931). Not a story for midnight reading unless you want goose-flesh all over you and your spine turned unto an icicle — "Three testimonies relating to the strange death of Dr. Henry Corner, brilliant young pathologist, experimentalist and Edgar Allan Poe lookalike (!). Dr. Corner leaves behind his corporeal body to travel the astral, floating among the spirits of the departed, some of whom he recognises as late friends and colleagues. These true dead, however, resent Corner's intrusion on a world not yet his to explore, and the nastier ones prevent his return to body until after it has been pronounced dead and buried in Greencrest Cemetery. The shock of his passing proves too great for fiancee, Emily Trigeau. She stubbornly refuses to accept that Henry is no more and demands a second opinion, until strapped into a 'camisole' and incarcerated in the Pines Sanatorium. But Emily is a force to be reckoned with. The belief that the man she loves is not yet lost gives her strength to bend the iron bars of her window and slip out into the night, destination Greencrest. "What would I find in the coffin? If I broke through the dreadful lid , would my dear, dear love come back into his own? Or were these things, now screaming in my ears, right? Was I a forlorn, mad girl, desecrating a grave, breaking into the decencies of the dead, dragging to light again what light should never see? My love, my belief, were they lies? Should I go on? Or should I ..." Tinal testimony is provided by Dr. Marshall of the Pines Sanatorium. Edwin A. Goewey (as told by James Halliday) - The Phantom of the Sawdust Ring: (Oct. 1929). Happiness for two hung in the balance — when a specter stalked beneath the Big Top and horror froze the crowd. Vicious bully Gilo Feretti, tiger-tamer, is furious at his step-daughter Edna's romance with bare-back rider Will Halliday, not least because he wants to force her into marriage — with himself! Lucky for the young lovers, the ghost of Joie 'Daddy' De Silva, world famous acrobat and clown, is wise to Feretti's murderous designs. Dr. Theodore Kuntz - Long Fingers: (Oct./Nov. 1931). There is no medicine for certain wounds, no balm in all Gilead for the curse-mark of the tropics. Whitman Waterman seeks a cure for festering facial sores, legacy of his plantation bride, Halos, who cursed him to Hell before leaping from a cliff when she realised he was deserting her for a sack of black pearls. Far worse, he has also murdered their son, Gah, whose deformed, claw-like hands got on his nerves so. Since arriving back in America, every specialist consulted by Waterman has been throttled on the eve of wheeling him into the operating theatre.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 11, 2021 9:52:39 GMT
Margaret Jackson (as told by Jane Hardin) – The Thing on the Roof: (Dec. 1928). What ghastly mission could lure a creature from another world into the flower-scented roof garden of a Park Avenue hotel?Jane is sunning herself on the penthouse roof when five aggressive cops burst in and question her over the disappearance amid obvious signs of violence of her wealthy neighbour across the roof. They've found a candidate for chief suspect - the man's nephew, Rollo, stands to inherit a fortune - but his alibi is so watertight; he's been nowhere near New York until today, Even the police admit that, even should they charge him, there is no chance a jury will convict. Jane sympathises with Rollo, who is desperate to find his uncle's killers (everyone agrees the old man been murdered for his stash of jewels). If only they could find the body! A phantom perfume, and a shadowy figure hovering about a huge urn, provide assistance. Blurb and Mekon-headed thing had me fearing worst, but no, it's a traditional ghost story, if not quite as ripping as Prisoners of Fear.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 12, 2021 12:32:01 GMT
Charles Flanders (?) Perry Paul - The Thing in the Laboratory: (June 1930). While convalescing in the Dresdenbourg mountains, Dr. Gaston Jussac, a leading French antiquarian and foremost authority on medieval black magic, visits the library of an ancient monastery. The Sexton is suspiciously happy for him to borrow a manuscript hidden among a jumble of ecclesiastical ephemera. Small wonder the monks don't want it back! The cursed MS lets loose a terrible entity from "the realm of the unreal." A partner to the damned, the Incubus. A haunter of the shadows. Vague ... intangible. Tentacle-like arms reached out to enfold its prey. Yellow, bloodshot eyes with pupils slit like a cat's glowered out of the darkness. Bestial, serpentine eyes, such as the Medusa had. Mats of pallid hair, stiffly erect. Skin like dry parchment, leprously white. Pointed fangs stained with venom. Drivelling, lecherous lips. Muscles taut under dry skin. Any details which the monk might have missed were supplied for the harassed antiquarian by his own vivid imagination.Hints at male rape which can't have been too common in 'twenties pulps (?). The stories in vol 2 do seem to have the horrific edge on their predecessors.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 13, 2021 6:11:32 GMT
Conrad Richter - Monster of the Dark Places: (Dec. 1931/Jan. 1932). Do you know what darkness is? There are strange dwellers in the underground. "Supernatural detective" Matson Bell - i.e., he who saw off The Toad Man Specter - investigates the haunting of a mine-shaft by a phantom with no face. Could there be a connection with a charge-hand who inexplicably threw in the job and quit town one night?
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