Weird Tales October 1923

by Edwin Baird (Editor), R.M. Mally (Illustrator), Preston Langley

Facsimile reprint of the seventh issue of Weird Tales pulp magazine from October 1923, containing 12 stories, two serial chapters, poetry, and editorial material.

Table of contents:

Preston Langley Hickey. Cauldron
The Eyrie
Effie W. Fifield. The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton
Seabury Quinn. The Phantom Farmhouse
H. P. Lovecraft. Dagon
Frank Owen. The Man Who Owned the World
Charles Horn. Grey Sleep
Austin Hall. The People of the Comet
A. Havdal. The Sign from Heaven
Arthur Edwards Chapman. The Inn of Dread
Neil Miller. The Hairy Monster
E. B. Jordan. Devil Manor
Francis D. Grierson. The Case of the Golden Lilly
Seabury Quinn. Bluebeard
Farnsworth Wright. An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension
Edgar Allan Poe. The Pit and the Pendulum
Sarah Harbine Weaver. After the Storm

Genres: Horror, Short Stories

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1923

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine facsimile issue and a corner turned in content. October 1923 marks the first Lovecraft story in a Weird Tales ("Dagon"), an association that lasts until HPL's death, and the first story by Seabury Quinn ("The Phantom Farmhouse"), one of the magazine's most prolific and popular authors. Between the two stories here, one can see pretty much the next forty years of weird fiction in embryonic form. The cover feature, "The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton," is more interesting than most of the stories in the preceding issues too, being a sort of edgy social satire, a bit like Thorne Smith's works, about body swapping. The rest of the magazine is pretty much like the earlier numbers, a mix of weak suspense, dated detection, and a classic, Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum." Another sign of things to come is the increased amount of illustration accompanying the stories, though nothing especially striking appears yet. Still, one can feel the magazine finding its legs, or pseudopods, and slowly creeping toward the glories ahead.

[Werefox by moonlight: Half man, half beast, but all horror]

Reviewed so far:

The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton - First half of a serial. A man uses astral projection to carry out an affair with his friend's wife, but things are complicated when another astral traveler hijacks his body and takes over his life.

The Phantom Farmhouse - A man staying at a sanitarium becomes fascinated by a house in the woods that the locals insist doesn't exist, only to discover that it is inhabited by ghost-werewolves. A solid piece of horror fiction with some nicely eerie touches (the way the narrator perfectly imagines what the house and its inhabitants look like without having seen it, only to find that such a house actually exists; the water from the well that seems to whisper when poured), easily one of the best things the magazine has published up to this point.