Weird Crimes by Seabury Quinn

You could say that in its first two years in print, Weird Tales was actually three magazines overseen by three different editors: Edwin Baird from March 1923 to April 1924; an uncredited Otis Adelbert Kline for just one issue, May/June/July 1924; and Farnsworth Wright from November 1924 onward. (There weren't any issues in August through October 1924.) Seabury Quinn had the second feature to appear in Weird Tales, not counting "The Eyrie," the regular letters column. That feature, called "Weird Crimes," was in all three versions of Weird Tales and was published under all three editors.

Seabury Quinn (1889-1969) wrote more stories than anyone in Weird Tales. He also wrote fourteen non-fiction articles for the magazine. Half of those were in the series "Weird Crimes." The entries in this series are partly documentary and partly dramatic. You might describe them as historical reenactments, like what you would see today on TV.

The subjects of "Weird Crimes" are mostly serial killers, before serial killer was a term. That makes me wonder whether Quinn was the first author in Weird Tales to write about the serial killer. There is also necrophilia in the seventh and last installment of "Weird Crimes," but by the time it was published in November 1924, that very lurid and sensationalistic subject had already been treated in the magazine, in C.M. Eddy's short story "The Loved Dead," in May/June/July 1924.

The sixth installment of "Weird Crimes" is called "The Werewolf of St. Bonnot." I believe that was the first use of the word werewolf in the title of a story or article in Weird Tales. The subject is a serial killer, not an actual werewolf, but I wonder whether Quinn introduced the concept of the werewolf into Weird Tales as well. (Historically, serial killers were often called werewolves or vampires, before the term serial killer was coined.)

Quinn was already in his early thirties when "Weird Crimes" appeared. His career writing stories for popular magazines had begun in 1918 with two entries in Detective Story Magazine. But even by 1923, he had had only five published stories to his credit, this according to the list in The FictionMags Index. Writing "Weird Crimes" must have been a good exercise for him.

Like H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), Seabury Quinn seems to have been waiting for a magazine like Weird Tales to come along. He had his first story in the magazine in October 1923, the same issue in which "Weird Crimes" made its debut. Entitled "The Phantom Farmhouse," it proved popular and enduring and was even adapted to a second-season episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery in 1971-1972. October 1923, one hundred years past, must have been a good month for Quinn in his budding career as a published author.

"Weird Crimes" by Seabury Quinn, Weird Tales, October 1923 through November 1924:

• "No. 1--Bluebeard" (Oct. 1923)--In the first installment of "Weird Crimes," Quinn wrote of Gilles de Laval (ca. 1405-1440), who is supposed by some to have been the inspiration for the fairy tale character Bluebeard. Quinn's account runs to nearly six pages in the magazine and closes with a note associating Gilles de Laval with Jack the Ripper as victims of "that form of insanity known to modern scientists as algolagnia."

• "No. 2  The Grave Robbers" (Nov. 1923)--The second installment of "Weird Crimes" is a little less than two pages long. Its subjects are Benjamin Shermerkey of Chicago; Samuel Deutsch of New York; and Samuel F. Ware of Atlanta. I did a quick search for these names in newspapers and came up empty on all counts.

• "No. 3  The Magic Mirror Murders" (Jan. 1924)--Andrew Bichel (ca. 1760-1809), an nineteenth-century Bavarian killer, is the subject of the third installment, which runs to a little more than four pages. The title refers to a crystal ball or looking glass that Bichel used to entice his victims. 

• "No. 4  Swiatek, the Beggar" (Feb. 1924)--The subject of the fourth installment of "Weird Crimes" is referred to only by the name Swiatek. Like Andrew Bichel, he was a serial killer, also of the nineteenth century, in his case in Galicia. His story fills almost three pages.

• "No. 5  Mary Blandy" (Apr. 1924)--Mary Blandy (1720-1752) knowingly or unknowingly poisoned her father, and for that she was hanged on Easter Monday, April 6, 1752. Seabury Quinn told her story in four pages and more of the April 1924 issue of Weird Tales.

• "No. 6  The Werewolf of St. Bonnot" (May/June/July 1924)--The sixth installment of "Weird Crimes" appeared in the jumbo-sized triple issue of May/June/July 1924. Its subject is Gilles Garnier (d. 1573), another serial killer, whom Quinn categorized yet again as "a victim," in this case of zoomania, or loupomania. It looks as though Seabury Quinn took a scientific view of murder and psychopathy. The explanation seems to be that serial killers are not responsible for their actions, as they are afflicted with mental illness. Quinn's account runs to three pages, plus his closing note.

• "No. 7  The Human Hyena" (Nov. 1924)--The November 1924 issue, the first after a hiatus of half a year, was also a jumbo-sized issue. It ran to 194 pages in all. "The Human Hyena" was the last installment of "Weird Crimes." I suspect it had been ready for publication earlier in the year and was simply held over during the months that Weird Tales was not in print. The case of the Human Hyena--François Bertrand (1823-1878)--was one of the most sensationalistic in the series. In 1924, Quinn could not have gone into detail very much regarding Bertrand's crimes. Suffice it to say, the term necrophilia was coined because of what Bertrand had done in the cemeteries of Paris. I wonder if Bertrand's story could have been an influence on C.M. Eddy in his writing of "The Loved Dead."

An illustration of François Bertrand reproduced in the French magazine Détective, Number 410 (Sept. 3, 1936). I swiped this image from Wikipedia, who swiped it from somebody else. Here's the caption as it appears in Wikipedia:

Le Vampire, gravure extraite des Mémoires de M. Claude, chef de la police de sûreté sous le second Empire (Paris, Jules Rouff, vers 1880) et reproduite dans la revue Détective, n° 410 (3 septembre 1936).

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley