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The Night Wire

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"The Night Wire" by H. F. Arnold is a chilling tale set in a western seaport town's wire service during the night shift. Following the sudden death of Ambassador Holliwell, the atmosphere becomes eerie as strange news unfolds. The focus on operator John Morgan's peculiar behavior coincides with reports of a mysterious fog in Xebico, leading to escalating tensions and disturbing events. As the fog brings dread and despair, Morgan's actions spiral out of control, culminating in a shocking conclusion that leaves unanswered questions and a lingering sense of mystery.

5 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1926

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About the author

H.F. Arnold

20 books4 followers
Henry Ferris Arnold is another "lost" author from the days of the pulps, something that is quite surprising since "The Night Wire" was considered the most popular story ever published in Weird Tales. What few sources give any information about his life say that he was born in 1901, worked as an author and journalist and died in 1963, but even these sketchy details (and his actual name, for that matter) may, or may, not, be true. All that is known as fact about Arnold, is that his fictional output, at least in the fields of science fiction and horror, consisted of only 3 works: "The Night Wire", appearing in Weird Tales in 1926; "The City of Iron Cubes," serialized in the March and April issues of Weird Tales and a two-part serial "When Atlantis Was," that appeared in the October and December 1937 issues of Amazing Stories. Outside of that, Arnold remains an enigma.

From: http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/a...

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5 stars
90 (31%)
4 stars
123 (42%)
3 stars
62 (21%)
2 stars
12 (4%)
1 star
2 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
Profile Image for Eloy Cryptkeeper.
296 reviews230 followers
January 25, 2021
"Había algo extraño sobre este negocio de los cables nocturnos. Uno se sienta aquí y escucha los murmullos de la civilización. Nueva York, Londres, Calcuta, Bombay, Singapur... eran todos mis vecinos cuando se apagaban las luces de la calle y cuando el mundo se había ido a dormir."

" La niebla ha aumentado marcadamente. Todas las luces son ahora
invisibles y la ciudad entera está cubierta por la oscuridad más absoluta.
Como una peculiaridad del fenómeno, la neblina es acompañada por un olor malsano,
comparable a nada experimentado anteriormente."

La historia comienza explicando lo que es el negocio de los cables nocturnos y que también aplica a ciertos trabajos nocturnos que son bastante particulares y solitarios.
En una ciudad marítima, un par de trabajadores suelen pasar sus turnos de forma muy tranquila y monótona y no recibir mas de un cable nocturno por noche para luego transcribirlo. Pero esa noche a las 3 de la mañana comenzaron a llegar incesantemente reportes de una ciudad desconocida sobre una extraña niebla que lo cubría todo .


Una buena parte de la historia recuerda muchísimo a "The Fog" de John Carpenter (desconozco si esta historia le sirvió de algún tipo de influencia a Carpenter) salvando algunos detalles como los fantasmas piratas de la película y que en vez de ser una estación de radio, en la que transcurre gran parte de la historia, y aquí es una oficina donde redactan las noticias... pero realmente son similares las descripciones, la ciudad marítima etc. Y también algunos destellos que me evocaron a La Niebla de S.King y El Color que cayo del cielo de Lovecraft... Aunque la historia sigue por otros senderos Y el final es totalmente genial e impredecible.

Historia que originalmente vio la luz por primera vez en la mítica Weird Tales, por este autor/periodista, que es en cierta forma un enigma y que apenas nos dejo unos pocos relatos.
Cuando leo este tipo de historias no puedo creer que aun haya gente que desprestigie a Weird Tales y a la lectura Pulp y Weird. Son meros rótulos, ademas son géneros sumamente versátiles que permitían una variedad sumamente amplia de posibilidades y mixturas. Sin contar que no solamente estos géneros eran los que se editaban en esta revista y que han pasado infinidad de grandísimos autores .
Profile Image for Maria.
526 reviews92 followers
May 14, 2025
What a chilling short story. This story was written in 1926 by Henry Ferris Arnold, a man probably born in Illinois (not a lot is known) who only wrote three stories in his lifetime. It is a pity, the story is riveting and the writing is excellent.
Profile Image for William Russo.
Author 5 books
February 10, 2020
Night Wire Exposed!

When I looked at the various reviews of “The Night Wire” on Goodreads, I felt it was my duty to add what I have learned during research for my book, Titanic’s Lost Movie.

Yes, there is a creepier theme in the story that relates H.F. Arnold’s little horror tale to the infamous sinking of the luxury liner in 1912.

Published in the heyday of short story writing when magazines were devoted to the art, now basically lost to writers, were genre-periodicals as well as major magazines that published stories. Of course, in those days, you had H.P. Lovecraft, J.D. Salinger, and B. Traven.
Then in the 1920s, out of nowhere came a young writer graduated from a mid-Western college. He only wrote three stories in his life, all of the supernatural vein. You may well ask why.

Arnold’s background has been called mysterious and murky, some even questioning whether he used a pen-name. No, he was Henry Ferris Arnold. And, he went to Hollywood upon graduation from college to work in the publicity and movie advertising business. He was not necessarily a denizen of tabloid journals where he worked the graveyard shift in the Morgue (old newspaper term for the library).

He actually started out in the Goldwyn Studios and quickly rose to the exalted position as Sam Goldwyn’s Director of Publicity. He was also elected to various positions of importance at WAMPAS (Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers).

His sister Pauline Arnold, aka Polly, moved to New York in 1926 and became a pioneer woman in the advertising business—and the east coast tie-in with her brother. She founded a company called MRCA, and it was a press agency that handled people who wanted their name dropped into columns of Walter Winchell or Ed Sullivan.

Polly soon became partners with a man called Percy White, Jr.
What has this to do with “Night Wire” and Titanic?
It is the backstory.

Percy White’s father and brother died on Titanic in 1912. He was a man haunted by their ends. Polly then married Percy—and she told her brother about his family history.

“Night Wire” emerged when H.F. Arnold started to use details from Percy as the basis for a story that kept the family’s name out of it, but might be a sellable story to movies. He knew many people in movies who wanted to make a Titanic movie.

After all, one of the famous stories of wire operators centered on the two heroic Titanic men who sent out distress calls for two hours. It is the basic plot of the story.

Where are they? In a place called Xebico. If you are a cryptographer, you may have done your homework. Most have not. Xebico is an anagram for Icebox.
The fog washing over the victims might well be the frigid North Atlantic as the ship sank, becoming an icebox containing hundreds of souls.

The narrator observes the wire operator named John Morgan. IN some Titanic circles, one of the controversial figures is John Pierpont Morgan, who had a first-class suite on Titanic—and bailed out of sailing at the last moment. Some said he knew something bad was imminent.
So, that is a little background information.
Profile Image for Latasha.
1,360 reviews436 followers
October 31, 2017
I read this with the Facebook group, October Reading Club. At first the story is kinda dull. it's about two guys working in at ..a newspaper? One of them listens to the wire and types up the stories like nobody's business. that is my understanding of the set up. sorry if I misunderstood any of it.
so reports of this fog starts coming in and it gets worse and worse. the ending is astonishing. I NEVER saw it coming. This story is well worth the read, it's short and free. after reading this, I'm going to seek out more by this author.
Profile Image for Skylar Phelps.
242 reviews34 followers
October 19, 2017
My gosh! This one was good!
Awesome short story, check it out.

4.5 Stars
Profile Image for Katie.
78 reviews7 followers
March 4, 2014
One of the shortest, eeriest stories I have ever read. Classic horror, suspense and occult mystery at it's finest, condensed into a quick, fun and cohesive read.
2,046 reviews2 followers
Read
July 29, 2024
Give me news
any wire news
how that hard to give fog mist as news
and many death rain in same time
that mist unknow
grave dig near grav
what a time bed was like
any kneeling news at fog come
without warning come cold winter
have under wings call of many death
twist after one
many faces down
just that another life
near rare love
what wond was like
after that unsugar news
buy news
tap tap tap
bad nasty dream come true
many zamboy walk to that wire
what a yaers that
many wonds at fog make fragment of rare red flower
flaw over many faces
over cold seson
nasty fog open that door
what a wire can come by
miss of eyes of love
i cant forget
where wish to forget
lonely at cold fog
missing and caling at fog
and wish that i forget
fog
Profile Image for Rick West.
94 reviews
August 3, 2016
The Night-Wire is a 1926 short story by H.F Arnold. He was 24 years old when it was published. It turned out to be one of the most famous short stories ever published in Weird Tales. The story is about two men working a news wire service on the late shift. The narrator is a man named John Morgan who describes what takes place one night. There job is mainly to type out news feeds from all over the world. It is usually a slow night but this night they start receiving mysterious bulletins from a town called Xebico. This is a town that John has never heard of. The reports coming slowly over a period of time starts describing how the city has been enveloped by a massive fog. The reports begin to get more and more disturbing.

This is a great little "thinking" story. If your trying you will definitely start visualizing what is going on out in the streets.
Profile Image for Tim Pendry.
1,194 reviews501 followers
August 11, 2019

Possibly one of the most interesting and yet flawed pulp horror stories in the canon (published in Weird Tales in 1926). It is notable for switching mood quite suddenly more than once, for its ambiguities and for its combining of pulp horror tropes.

The late night news room that frames the story gives a sense of global immediacy much as live broadcasts and the internet are now used in horror films and TV to indicate much the same. The question of whether we are dealing with truth or 'fake news' gives it contemporary resonance.

The final twist will not be revealed here nor what it may mean in terms of American religiosity but the central section makes me wonder if it was a partial and perhaps forgotten source for two 1980 works - John Carpenter's 'The Fog' and Stephen King's novella 'The Mist'.

The ending has been criticised as obscure and unsatisfactory in terms of the expectations raised by the grim central section and there is some justification in that. It loses a star for that reason alone but I think it stands some scrutiny precisely because of a possible spiritualist cultural context.

Back in the mid-1920s, spiritualist thought was still credible and what we may want to be written as a zombie tale today may have been understood by its readers then as a story about 'the unknown' after death. The obscurity helps to represent the mystery of the afterlife.

From the first newswire describing a miasma arising from a church graveyard through the now common American horror trope of citizens seeking sanctuary in churches through to the multi-hued celestial light, the story is a half-poetic merging of weirdness and religiosity.

The book even starts with the sentence - "There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs". And to this religiosity is added scepticism - "Could I be mistaken, or far down in the canyons of the city beneath me did I see a faint trace of fog? Pshaw! It was all imagination."

The fact that the story ends without resolution is undoubtedly frustrating but Arnold would, if he was to be honest, have nothing scientific or factual to say about death and the afterlife or alien invasion or the end times or a zombie apocalypse. Or belief, invention or imagination.

To have resolved the story would have removed so many possibilities that, while we might be satisfied and move on to another story, I suspect it might have been relegated to just another pulp horror. Our frustration makes us puzzle at it which is why it is so anthologised.

Is what is happening local or global? Did it happen in reality at all? How reliable is our narrator? How reliable were the dispatches? Did they come from this world or another? Or from the future? Are they a description, a fantasy or a warning? Was it a just a hoax or a sign of madness?

Although flawed, as a weird tale, 'The Night Wire' stands up both as a creative concatenation of many different suggestive pulp horror tropes and as a slightly unnerving play on the boundaries between reality and fantasy, belief and scepticism, life and death.

You can read the story for yourself for free here.
Profile Image for Glen Engel-Cox.
Author 6 books66 followers
February 1, 2020
An atmospheric story (pun intended) told as dispatches received by the telegraph in a major coastal city (which one isn’t identified). The dispatches come from the town of Xebico, which you will not find on the map. There, a fog billows up from the graveyard and proceeds to take over the city, the instance recorded by the telegraph man who sits at the top of a 13-story building and can look down upon the fog as it settles over the town. There’s not really anything surprising here, at least for anyone who’s read a fair amount of horror, even though it’s done well.
Profile Image for Larue (Golnaz).
12 reviews4 followers
August 24, 2024
"I have made a discovery. There is nothing harmful in the lights. They radiate force and friendliness, almost cheeriness. But by their very strength, they hurt.”
Profile Image for Storm.
189 reviews7 followers
October 31, 2020
This was a short fun Halloween read. It had an ok creepy feel, some descriptive writing, and a good twisty ending. I'm giving this 2 stars because I'm pretty sure I'm going to forget all about it.
Profile Image for Denise.
Author 7 books21 followers
July 1, 2016
The night manager at a newspaper of unnamed western seaport town describes the process of receiving stories over the wire. The operator is a sober, unimaginative man who types with one finger but hands in perfect copy.

One night, a story comes in from a place called Xebico, a place the manager has never heard of. A thick fog has blanketed the town. Something seems wrong with the fog, even if one discounts the sexton's account. Each new develop coming in over the wire just appear more dire...

Please read the rest of the review here.
Profile Image for Michael Sorbello.
Author 2 books322 followers
January 3, 2021
A simple and sweet horror classic, playing off of the fears of working the night shift and being a newscaster in the early days.

***

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Profile Image for Juliana.
966 reviews1 follower
May 4, 2018
Well, this was crazy. I was reminded of The Mist in some ways even though this was obviously written first. Good, short story.
Profile Image for Tonk82.
168 reviews37 followers
October 1, 2020
Se me hace un poco raro reseñar un relato corto de 5 páginas por si solo, pero no se me ocurre otra manera de hacerlo.

H.F. Arnold es un escritor prácticamente desconocido del que solo sabemos que escribió 3 historias publicadas en Weird Tales y Amazing Stories, a lo largo de 10 años. Los poquísimos datos que tenemos, como que nació en 1901 y murió en 1963, y era periodista . Hay quien hasta cree que podría ser un seudónimo.

Y a pesar de escribir solo 3 historias y no dejar nada sobre su vida... "The night wire" fue una de las historias mas populares de Weird Tales, y sigue siendo publicada una y otra vez a día de hoy.

Gira en torno al turno de noche de una centralita de una agencia de noticias, que recibe noticias de todo el mundo y debe transcribirlas según llegan. El compañero del protagonista tiene la habilidad inusual de ser capaz de transcribir dos fuentes a la vez, en dos máquinas de escribir distintas. La noche de la historia es una noche rara, porque mientras una pila de su compañero parece normal, la otra empieza a narrar una serie de noticias realmente desconcertantes.

Es un relato magistral. Sus primeros párrafos describen lo que es trabajar un turno nocturno de maravilla, esa sensación de soledad e irrealidad, que contrasta con que su trabajo consiste en comunicaciones de todas partes del mundo. Y el desarrollo y final son atractivos y bastante desconcertantes. Genuina Weird Fiction de la buena.
9 reviews
July 18, 2018
An interesting and terrifying read, despite the short length, that has made me very intrigued in the enigmatic author's other work.

Using a very simple prose and writing style, a chilling tale of a town overrun by some unearthly fog is woven which demonstrates a mastery of using the unknown to horrify the readers. The plot twist ending adds another layer of horrific depth to it, yet, despite how much I wish to give it five stars, it ended far too abruptly for me to do so. It leaves me wanting more and wondering what happened to the town of Xebico.

A must-read for any fans of horror.
66 reviews3 followers
March 14, 2020
Beautiful story. (This has been adapted to radio a few times. Horrorbabble has done a 2020 adaptation that's worth a listen.) Scary, in the tradition of a story structured around the contents of a diary or a found footage movie.

A narrative around a sequence of messages coming over a telegraph wire to an operator in a West Coast port city. A mysterious and dangerous fog and rolls in to the town of Xebico. If the plot sounds familiar, that's because it is a timeless story.

Profile Image for Jay C.
400 reviews53 followers
February 18, 2018
I read this very short story for my short story “book” club. I love stories like this and, unlike some, was not bothered by the ending at all. When one is left with a mystery one may imagine “the rest of the story” in any way he pleases. Where is the city/town Xebico? Probably in the same region as Premendra Mitra’s Telenapota...
Profile Image for Red Claire .
396 reviews5 followers
December 28, 2021
A spare and intensely evocative weird tale of the 1920s with something of the deeply unnerving atmosphere of Lovecraft’s works of the period, though a very different style which is much more resonant with the modern reader. The author only published three stories, which is to be regretted, given his proficiency here.
Profile Image for Giuliana da Cruz.
107 reviews14 followers
November 28, 2024
El cable nocturno (The night wire) es un relato de terror del escritor norteamericano H.F. Arnold, publicado en la edición de setiembre de 1926 de la revista Weird Tales. Se trata de un cuento muy original, y de un ejercicio narrativo notable, donde la evolución de los sucesos llega mediante un inquietante cable informativo.
Profile Image for Richie  Kercenna .
263 reviews17 followers
November 18, 2025
Unsettling in the best way possible. For me, a story that can involve the technology of its day with the gloomy realm of horror without sounding false or ridiculous is excellent. This one does just that with the titular night wire. It builds its terror slowly, sowing the seed of unease which eventually culminates in ... ah but you'll have to read it yourself!
Profile Image for Blake Griggs.
154 reviews
January 6, 2026
Maybe exaggerating on rating, but I really liked the compression, focus, and parallel narrative scales of this one. First one that actually got a bit of a chill from me. Reminds me a bit of Pontypool, and The Fog/The Mist, of course.
Profile Image for Luke Allen.
Author 11 books23 followers
October 29, 2017
Creepy and effective story, of a bit short to have any staying power.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews