NOLA Bert’s Reviews > WEIRD TALES OCTOBER 1936 > Status Update

“The Great Keinplatz Experiment” by A. Conan Doyle

A Weird Story Reprint. A humorous story about mesmerism and the mind/body problem. A bit too stodgy for my tastes. Originally published in Belgravia magazine in 1885.

“The Doors of Death” by Arthur B. Waltermire

A family curse and an attempt at cheating death. A good, solid story with a satisfying ending.

“The Secret of Kralitz” by Henry Kuttner

Another family curse. This one invokes the Cthulhu Mythos. The revelation at the end wasn’t unexpected, but it was still satisfying.

I was going to skip it since it’s just the last part of “Red Nails,” but I decided to read it anyway. I want this to be my first cover-to-cover read of Weird Tales. “Red Nails” is one of my favorite Conan stories.

“The Tree of Life” by C. L. Moore

I liked the creepy weirdness of the story. It’s a very unique situation and setting, but I felt Moore’s style is overwrought like Lovecraft. I wanted the story to pick up the pace, but it’s almost as if to give the reader a sense of the unfathomable nature of the horror present in the story, the description of it must go on, and on, and on . . .

“Doom of the House of Duryea” by Earl Peirce, Jr.

A really good vampire tale set in Maine. The vampire lore is quite different from Dracula and that makes it very interesting. The story has been reprinted several times in various vampire anthologies.