Weird Tales, May 1923-Part Three

Six authors about whom I know little or nothing at all, all of whom had stories in Weird Tales in May 1923:

William P. Barron (Dates unknown)--I found a newspaper item that mentions a Dr. William P. Barron who was president of the Free Lance Club of writers in Washington, D.C., in 1930 and 1931. If he's our man, then I believe he was the same William P. Barron (1877-1946) who hailed from Bonham, Texas, and served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War I. His story, called "Jungle Beasts," is another example of a found manuscript as the basis for a story. One of the readers of the manuscript is a medical doctor working in an insane asylum.

M. Humphreys (Dates unknown)-"The Floor Above" by M. Humphreys is a diary story, a story that begins with a summons from a friend, and a rooming-house story. H.P. Lovecraft liked "The Floor Above," but good luck finding any evidence of that on this vaunted Internet. The status of Humphreys' tale as one of Lovecraft's favorites seems to be based entirely on a single sentence in Lovecraft's letter to "The Eyrie," printed in October 1923:

"I lately read the May WEIRD TALES, and congratulate you on Mr. Humphrey's 'The Floor Above.' [for a moment I had a shiver which the author didn’t intend—I thought he was going to use an idea which I am planning to use myself!! But it wasn't so, after all], which is a close second to my favorite, 'Beyond the Door'."

(The brackets are in the original. "Beyond the Door," by J. Paul Suter, was in the April 1923 issue of Weird Tales.) As for the identity of M. Humphreys, it would be hard to discover one without having a first name.

Herman Sisk (Dates unknown)--There was a Herman Sisk who lived in Los Angeles, California, and wrote plays and other works. I suspect he was the same Herman Sisk who wrote "The Purple Heart," a short short story about a haunted cabin.

F.K. Moss (Dates unknown)--F.K. Moss' story is called "The Death Cell." There is a framing device again, in this case an introduction by one character followed by a manuscript by another. And now I have to say that reading or simply glancing through these early issues of Weird Tales becomes pretty tiresome, with the same kinds of stories, themes, motifs, devices, and settings, very often with the same kind of writing style, over and over again. You wonder where was the imagination. But then you have to admit to yourself that Weird Tales--and in a larger sense, weird fiction--was just beginning in 1923. It would take awhile before things got good.

F. Walter Wilson (Dates unknown)--I found a reference to an F. Walter Wilson who was a newspaperman in Boston and who may have had a connection to Quebec. The story "The Thunder Voice" is set in Quebec, and so we have another story of Canada. There is also a  found manuscript in the story. The blurb reads: "The Story of a Hairy Monster." That's an intriguing thing for those interested in cryptozoology. The hairy monster of the story might be a gorilla or a wild-man or possibly a Bigfoot creature before it was so named. I'm not sure.

William Merrit (Dates unknown)--William Merrit is going to be hard to find in any online search because of the similarity of his name to that of William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), a well-known painter from Indiana. Merritt's story is called "The Finale," but it's not the last story in the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales. That position goes to . . .

"The Closed Cabinet" by _____ _____, a very long short story written by an anonymous author and reproduced in the tiniest of fonts, all to make it fit, I guess, in the smaller number of pages in the May issue than in the previous two of Weird Tales.

William F. Heitman's illustration for "The Floor Above" by M. Humphreys in Weird Tales, May 1923.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley