Ghost Stories: The Magazine and Its Makers: Vol 1 the Magazine and Its Makers: Vol 1

by John Locke

Macfadden's GHOST STORIES magazine (1926-31) offered spooky tales in every flavor, many of them told in the confessional style of Macfadden's "true"-style magazines. This first of two volumes includes 19 stories, complete with original illustrations. Extensive nonfiction material includes the history of GHOST STORIES; as well as detailed biographies of every GHOST STORIES editor, and every author whose stories appear in this volume.

258 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2010

About the author

John Locke is a historian of the American pulp fiction magazines of the first half of the Twentieth Century. He has paid particular attention to the phenomenon of pulp fiction as a writers’ paradise in the boom years of the twenties, to its sudden downfall after the Crash of ’29 into a writers’ ghetto where writers were forced to pound out “speed art” on their typewriters at a penny a word in order to make a living. One of the central characters that evolved in the pulps is the hardboiled detective, in magazines like Black Mask and Dime Detective; the central character behind the scenes of the 1930s pulps is the hardboiled writer, a Manhattan denizen thriving on booze and cigarettes, using a typewriter like it was a machine gun, and slowly going nuts. Locke has explored the pulp writing phenomenon in three key works: Pulp Fictioneers (2004), Pulpwood Days: Volume 1: Editors You Want To Know (2007), and Pulpwood Days: Volume 2: Lives of the Pulp Writers (2013).

Locke’s Off-Trail Publications specializes in books which combine vintage pulp fiction reprints with related histories of the era, the authors and the magazines. Gang Pulp is a pioneering look at the violent gangster fiction that came into vogue during the last years of Prohibition. Single author gangster collections include: If She Only Had a Machine Gun , by Richard Credicott (2011); Queen of the Gangsters: Volume 1: Broadwalk Empire , by Margie Harris (2011); and The Gangland Sagas of Big Nose Serrano , by Anatole Feldman, introductions by Will Murray, Volumes 1-3 (2008-09). City of Numbered Men: The Best of Prison Stories (2010) explores the brief reign of hardboiled prison fiction, and includes a 14,000-word profile of Harold Hersey, the most colorful publisher of the pulp era.

Adventure fiction collections include two volumes from Africa explorer Charles Beadle: The City of Baal (2007), and The Land of Ophir (2012); the exquisite Amazon Stories, Volume 1 (2008) and Volume 2 (2009), by Arthur O. Friel; Outdoor Stories , by J. Allan Dunn (2011); and The Golden Anaconda , by Elmer Brown Mason (2009).

Weird detective collections include the popular Weird Detective Adventures of Wade Hammond , by Paul Chadwick, Volumes 1-4 (2006-09); Grottos of Chinatown , by Arthur J. Burks (2009); and The Magician Detective and Other Weird Mysteries , by Fulton Oursler (2010).