Wednesday, August 20, 2025

R.G. Macready (1905-1977)-Part One

Reginald Goode Macready
Author, Linotype Operator, Newspaper Writer & Editor, Teacher
Born April 18, 1905, Silo, Oklahoma
Died May 10, 1977, Arlington, Texas

Reginald Goode Macready was born on April 18, 1905, in Silo, Oklahoma, to Edward Daniel Macready (1849-1927) and Sallie Mattie (Goode) Macready. Born in New York State of an English immigrant father and an American mother, Edward D. Macready was an Oklahoma pioneer, arriving in the territory in the 1890s. He taught school for many years and was a newspaper editor and publisher. He also wrote poetry. His poem "Dream Valley," from 1912, was described as illustrative of "the weird, brooding spell of the Sonora Desert." (Source: "Necrology," in Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 5, No. 3, Sept. 1927, pp. 354-355.) My source for this poem is too faint in parts for me to read, but I can say that "Dream Valley" is in the genre of hidden valleys and lost worlds.

Reginald Goode Macready, called Goode in his youth, grew up in Bryan County, Oklahoma, where his father taught school. When he was seven, Macready contracted meningitis and as a result was made completely deaf. He studied at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf in Sulphur, where he was president and valedictorian of his graduating class of 1922. For his high honors, he was awarded a scholarship of $500 per year to attend Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., where he began in the fall of 1922. His course of study was to be for five years.

Upon his father's death in 1927, Macready went to work in the newspaper business in order to support himself. He worked as a linotype operator at the Durant Daily Democrat, Madill Record, and Holdenville Tribune, all in Oklahoma, and at the Denver Post. In 1939, he matriculated at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied journalism, English, and psychology. His ambition was to become a writer and teacher. Macready supported himself by working as associate editor and linotype operator for the Oklahoma Daily student newspaper. For his journalistic work, he received a Citation for Professional Achievement from Sigma Delta Chi. His studies were interrupted by injuries sustained when he was hit by a car in June 1942. Macready returned to school in 1943 and graduated with a bachelor of arts in journalism on June 26, 1944. He continued with graduate work and received his master of arts in journalism from the University of Oklahoma on July 31, 1945.

To be concluded . . .

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Sunday, August 17, 2025

Harold E. Somerville (1885-1935)

Author, Newspaperman, Editor, Amateur Astronomer & Mathematician
Born March 1, 1885, Vermont
Died April 26, 1935, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I will assume that the Harold E. Somerville who contributed to Weird Tales in July 1925 was the same Harold E. Somerville who worked as a newspaperman and editor in New England and Philadelphia from the early 1900s to his death in 1935.

Harold Ernest Somerville was born on March 1, 1885, in Vermont, possibly in Waterbury. His parents were Josiah Somerville and Florence L. (Brown) Somerville. He had two older brothers, Charles Edward Somerville (1866-1929), a telegraph operator, and Frederick Holland Somerville (1872-1937), a schoolteacher. The younger boys were apparently orphaned. In 1900, they were enumerated in the U.S. Census in the household of their aunt, Louisa S. Watts, in Waterbury, Vermont.

Harold E. Somerville was something of a prodigy. In 1901, he had letters in the Boston Globe regarding astronomy. These included a letter of March 11, 1901, about the planet Venus. He graduated from Waterbury High School in June 1901 at age sixteen. In 1902, he provided solutions to mathematical problems posed in a column called "Puzzle Problems" in the Boston Globe.

Somerville began working in the field of journalism as a young man. His first newspaper job was with the Waterbury Record. He matriculated at the University of Vermont in 1904, winning honorable mention in his freshman entrance examination in mathematics. While at the university, Somerville served as treasurer of the Green and Gold Debating Club (1906); associate editor of The Vermont Cynic, a weekly journal (1906-1908); and editor of The Vermont Handbook, yearbook published by the university Y.M.C.A. (1908). He graduated in 1908.

In 1908, Somerville secured a position as a teacher in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, where his brother Fred had taught before him. By 1910, he was back in Waterbury, in the household of his aunt, and working as a window sign painter.

Somerville's newspaper career began in earnest on January 1, 1914, when he became night editor of the Burlington Free Press. He resigned in July 1915 to take a job with the New Bedford Evening Standard in Massachusetts. In 1918 and 1920, he was working in Boston as a journalist and editor. This must have been with the Boston Herald. By 1930, he was living in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and working as a newspaper editor. Somerville was night editor for the Philadelphia Public Ledger. At the time of his death, in 1935, he was an editor with the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

As a New Englander, a writer, and an amateur astronomer, Somerville would seem to have been in the right time and the right place, and interested in the right things, to have come in contact with H.P. Lovecraft and others of his circle. But I haven't found any connections between them. Somerville contributed one story, "The Sudden Death of Luke A. Lucas," to Weird Tales. This was in July 1925. His story is very short and lightly humorous. It's about life in a small town and includes a visit to a newspaper office. Maybe it's an episode from Somerville's youth or from the town in which he grew up. The FictionMags Index has two other credits for Somerville, "Coming!--a Lunar Eclipse," in The Scrap Book (May 1909) and "Wreck at Clay," a short story in Overland Monthly (Aug. 1919).

Harold E. Somerville died on April 26, 1935, at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and was interred at Northfield, Vermont. He was at the time of his death just fifty years old.

Harold E. Somerville's Story in Weird Tales
"The Death of Luke A. Lucas" (July 1925)

Further Reading
Only a few newspaper items.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Thursday, August 14, 2025

Adrian Pordelorrar (?-?)

I would like to start out writing about the July 1925 issue of Weird Tales by writing about the last author listed in its table of contents. He or she was Adrian Pordelorrar.

Adrian Pordelorrar was almost certainly a pseudonym. I haven't found anyone by that name or surname in my searches of newspapers and public records. The last name Pordelorrar is unusual to say the least. Nothing comes back for it in an Internet search, either. That makes me think that there is meaning in the name, and so I have tried breaking it apart and entering its parts in an online translator. I had thought that the name could be from the Esperanto, but I didn't get very far in that. Por and del are easy enough. They are prefixes in Spanish. That leaves -orrar as the main part of the name. Orrar isn't a word in Spanish, but llorar is. It means "to cry."

If the last name Pordelorrar has significant meaning, then maybe the given name Adrian does, too. It's an ancient Latin name, a variation of Hadrian or Hadrianus. The root word seems to be adur, meaning "sea" or "water." Together, maybe the poet's name means something like "water of the crying" or "water for the crying." Maybe someone who knows Spanish can propose a better meaning or translation. As an alternative, maybe Adrian refers to the Roman emperor Hadrian as a conqueror as Time seems the conqueror in the poem.

The next step in all of this would seem to be: read the poem. And so here it is, a sonnet:

The Conqueror
By Adrian Pordelorrar 

Dark, even in the sunset's crimson glare,
     There grows, unknown, an ancient forest grove; --
A voice of myst'ry murmurs in its air
     Where Night for centuries has whispered love!
Dim mirrored in a crystal pool, found there,
     Lie strange, forgotten worlds, and things, whereof
One dares not dream. Dark eyes, through matted hair,
     Laugh from its depths, to mock at Life above.

Soft words, from unseen lips, make known their thought--
     The uselessness of lab'ring through the years,
While worlds and men and kingdoms they have wrought,
     Their efforts, and their loves, and secret fears,
Crumble before the sweep of Time, as nought,
     Despite their anguish, and unnoticed tears!

If -lorrar is a play on llorar, referring to crying, and Adrian refers to water also, then the imagery of crying and water in the name of the pseudonymous poet is also in the poem.

We will probably never know who was the author of "The Conqueror," but why not consider Farnsworth Wright as a possibility?

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Monday, August 11, 2025

Leavenworth MacNab (1872-1933)

Archibald Leavenworth MacNab
Author, Poet, Newspaperman
Born December 21, 1872, Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada
Died June 25, 1933, Illinois Masonic Hospital, Sullivan, Illinois

Archibald Leavenworth MacNab was born on December 21, 1872, in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. His parents were Alexander MacNab and Margaret (McArthur) MacNab. MacNab was educated at the University of Toronto. He came to the United States in June 1895 and was naturalized as an American citizen on May 25, 1923, at the age of fifty.

MacNab dropped his first name, sometimes or often, and went by Leavenworth MacNab. He worked as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco for ten years or more. He reported on the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906. MacNab also worked for the St. Louis Globe Democrat, the Chicago Chronicle, and The Music Trades. He also contributed to The Argonaut.

MacNab had stories in National Magazine and Sunset in the period 1902 to 1904. More than two decades passed before he had his next magazine credits, this according to the list in The FictionMags Index. These were four poems and a short story in Weird Tales, beginning in June 1925.

MacNab's story, "The Hanging of Aspara," isn't a short story so much as a slightly fictionalized piece of reporting. A footnote to the story tells us as much. The reporter in the story is named MacTavish, or Mac, a pretty transparent disguise made by the author. Mac works for a newspaper called only "the News." The subject of the story is Sam Aspara, also known as Sam Sparo or Sam Asparo. Or maybe "Aspara" was just another alias. In any case, he was hanged on April 28, 1905, in New Orleans for the murder of a mafioso named Antonio "Tony" Luciano. You can read more about the whole thing on a website called Mafia Genealogy, published by Justin Cascio, by clicking here. I take all of that to indicate that MacNab worked as a newspaperman in New Orleans, circa 1905.

Archibald L. MacNab died on June 25, 1933, at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Sullivan, Illinois. He was buried at Prospect Cemetery in Toronto, Canada.  

Leavenworth MacNab's Short Story & Poems in Weird Tales
"The Hanging of Aspara" (short story, June 1925)
"Lake Desolation" (poem, Aug. 1927)
"Despair and the Soul" (poem, Nov. 1927)
"Dirge" (poem, Aug. 1928)
"Let Night Have Sway" (poem, Jan. 1929)

Further Reading
A few newspaper articles.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Friday, August 8, 2025

Junius B. Smith (1883-1945)

Author, Magazine Columnist, Stenographer, Attorney, Poultry Farmer, Builder and Contractor
Born  September 29, 1883, Salt Lake City, Utah Territory
Died  April 3, 1945, Mapleton, Utah

Junius Bailey Smith was born on September 29, 1883, in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. I believe he is the first native-born Utahan I have written about in this blog and the first Mormon. His father was Samuel Harrison Bailey Smith (1838-1914), born two days before Mormons were driven from Nauvoo, Illinois, and carried thirty miles in a snowstorm to a place of refuge. Samuel H.B. Smith was a son of Samuel Harrison Smith (1808-1844) and a grand-nephew of Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844), founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Junius B. Smith's mother was Mary Catherine (Bailey) Smith (1842-1916). He had nineteen siblings and half-siblings. Smith was married at least three times. His daughter Mary Kay Smith was also a writer and won an award from Seventeen magazine for her poetry.

Junius B. Smith attended school in Salt Lake City and studied law at the University of Utah. He was admitted to the bar on April 9, 1914, and practiced law until 1939. He was the author of dozens of stories published in fiction magazines from 1910 to 1936 and by his own estimate 8,000,000 words in all. Titles included All-Story Weekly, The Argosy, Breezy Stories, The Cavalier, Hot Stories, Love Story Magazine, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, Thrilling Western, Top Notch Magazine, and of course Weird Tales. According to one obituary (below), he was a columnist for Street & Smith magazines.

Bailey is best known and had real success with his stories of the occult detective Prince Abdul Omar of Persia, better known as Semi-Dual. The first of these was "The Occult Detector," part one of which was published in The Cavalier on February 17, 1912. Smith collaborated with another teller of weird tales, J.U. Giesy (1877-1947), on the Semi-Dual stories and on other stories, too, including their serial "Ebenezer's Casket," which appeared in Weird Tales in April-May/June/July 1924. (The two earned mention in the June 7, 1924, Deseret News for their efforts [p. 7].) Smith also wrote two stories and a letter published in Weird Tales. One of these was of "The Man Who . . ." type. Following is the text of Smith's lone letter to "The Eyrie":

Junius B. Smith, author of An Arc of Direction in the June issue, writes: "I wish to congratulate you on the perfect typesetting of this story. It so frequently happens in all-fiction magazines that errors creep in which mutilate the story, that it is a pleasure to find a story set so well that not even a minor defect greets the eye as it is read. I think the magazine is improving in appearance all the time. The cover on the June number easily catches the eye of one interested in things that are weird."

After his retirement, Smith lived in Springville, Utah, and on a ranch in Hobble Creek Canyon before moving to Mapleton, Utah. Junius B. Smith died on April 3, 1945, in Mapleton, and was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery. He was just sixty-one years old. By the way, Smith was a champion checker player.

Junius B. Smith's Stories & Letter in Weird Tales
"Ebenezer's Casket" with J.U. Giesy (two-part serial, Apr.-May/June/July 1924)
"The Man Who Dared to Know" (Apr. 1924)
"An Arc of Direction" (June 1925)
Letter to "The Eyrie" (Aug. 1925)
 
Further Reading
  • "Our Home Writers" in The Deseret News, June 19, 1926, section 3, page VI.
  • "In Our Town . . . Junius Smith" in the Springville (Utah) Herald, June 1, 1944, page 1+.
  • Numerous obituaries and other articles.
From the Salt Lake Tribune, April 5, 1945, page 9.

Correction (Aug. 18, 2025): Thanks to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database for pointing out that when Smith was born, Utah was still a territory. I have made the correction.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

PulpFest This Week

PulpFest, the annual pulp-fiction and pulp magazine convention, happens this week, from Thursday, August 7, to Sunday, August 10, 2025, in the Pittsburgh area. This year, PulpFest celebrates the sesquicentennial of the births of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), and Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950). There will be programming on all three of those authors as well as on Doc Savage and Philip José Farmer. And there will be film screenings. PulpFest will be held at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh--Cranberry, located north of Pittsburgh. You can read more about PulpFest by going to their website. Click here for a link.

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Strange Rays & Weird Waves in Weird Tales

Weird Tales was a different kind of magazine when it came back in November 1924 than during its first year-and-a-third in print. There was a new look and a different format. Although some of the previous authors had returned, the cover artist, Andrew Brosnatch, was new. And of course there was a new editor in Farnsworth Wright. Weird fiction wasn't fully developed in the early days of "The Unique Magazine." You could say that the development of weird fiction as a genre actually happened in its pages from 1923 onward. Nevertheless, the stories published in Weird Tales between March 1923 and May/June/July 1924 tended to be weird-fictional. Things changed a little when Wright came on.

Farnsworth Wright contributed to Weird Tales in its first incarnation. His first story, "The Closing Hand" (Mar. 1923), is pretty conventional. His second to last, "An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension" (Oct. 1923), is far less so, for it treats the concept of a fourth dimension and touches on Einsteinian or relativistic physics. It's clear that Wright had an interest in stories of that type, which were called at the time pseudo-scientific stories or scientific romances. When he became editor, he set out to publish more in the pages of Weird Tales.

As I have been going through the issues published in 1925, I have noticed a recurring word: rays. I figured I had better make a search for that word and related words and concepts. Radio was big and new in the 1920s. Radium and radioactivity were in the news and in our culture, too. (Radium was discovered in 1898, X-rays in 1896.) We think of "Radium Girls" as a name for the young women of the 1920s who painted glow-in-the-dark watch dials and fell ill--and died--as a result. But in the early twentieth century, "Radium Girls" were performers on stage, their bodies literally highlighted by phosphorescent paint. Phosphorescence isn't the same as radioactivity. I can't say that Radium Girls on stage or in ballrooms were painted with radium-paint (despite the newspaper article shown below). Radium silk, of the same vintage, was not radioactive at all. But there seems to have been a fad for radium and a wider craze for radio. Maybe that's where all of the strange rays and weird waves in Weird Tales came from.

I can't say that this is a comprehensive list, but here are some ray and wave stories in Weird Tales from 1924 to 1926: 

  • "The Purple Light" by Ralph Parker Anderson (Nov. 1924) 
  • "Radio V-Rays" by Jan Dirk (Mar. 1925) 
  • "The Electronic Plague" by Edward Hades (Apr. 1925) 
  • "Under the N-Ray" by Will Smith & R.J. Robbins (May 1925)--Cover story. 
  • "The Ether Ray" by H.L. Maxson (Sept. 1925) 
  • "Red Ether" by Pettersen Marzoni (two-part serial, Feb.-Mar. 1926)--Cover story.
  • "The Devil Ray" by Joel Martin Nichols, Jr. (May 1925)--The title doesn't refer to a type of fish but to a devastating form of radioactivity.
  • "Queen of the Vortex" by F. Williams Sarles (May 1926)--This story had a sequel in "The Foe from Beyond" (Dec. 1926).
Stories of vortices lead into another category of proto-science fiction, one related to multiple dimensions of space and what we would call space warps. But that's a topic for another time.
 
Weird Tales Cover for May 1925
Weird Tales, May 1925, with a cover story, "Under the N-Ray," by Will Smith and R.J. Robbins and cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. There aren't any rays shown here, but there are waves.
 
Weird Tales Cover for February 1926
Weird Tales, February 1926. The cover story was "Red Ether" by Pettersen Marzoni. The cover artist was C. Barker Petrie, Jr. Here again, there aren't any rays and the only waves are in the distance. Maybe artists of the 1920s had trouble depicting rays, waves, and radioactivity.
 
Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley
 
And because I have messed up the formatting of this article and can't figure out how to fix it, a picture after the copyright notice: 
 
"Will Dance in a Glow of Radium," from the San Francisco Examiner, May 25, 1905, page 4. "Radium Girls" were in burlesque and vaudeville shows in America and Great Britain from 1904 into the 1920s. By 1930, "Radium Girls" were the young women poisoned by their use in industry of radium-paint. If there was a fad for radium, maybe it reached its end with the well-publicized lawsuit filed by and the deaths of the "Radium Girls" in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This illustration shows two "Radium Girls" in the original sense of the phrase. (The Margaret Hamilton shown here was not the same actress who played the Wicked Witch.) It also hints at "Radium Girls" in the second sense, showing as it does a young woman with a paint brush. By the way, there was revue called "The Radium Girl" performed in Britain in the early 1900s. The girl of the title is dosed with radium by the villain Zigani and "she becomes a girl fond of a butterfly existence." (Source: "The Hippodrome Visit from 'The Radium Girl'," in The Derby Daily Telegraph, May 2, 1916, page 2.) 

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Mortimer Levitan (1890-1968)

Abraham Mortimer Levitan
Author, Lecturer, Attorney, Banker, Gourmet, Book Collector, Traveler, Amateur Photographer
Born February 21, 1890, Leavenworth, Kansas
Died February 16, 1968, Madison, Wisconsin

Mortimer Levitan had a long and distinguished career completely outside the realm of magazine fiction. His writing career was brief, but it included a story, "The Third Thumb-Print," in Weird Tales, his only one for "The Unique Magazine" and his last listed in The FictionMags Index. It's worth noting that Levitan was born in the same year as H.P. Lovecraft and Jacob Clark Henneberger. I have found only one Mortimer Levitan in public records. I assume him to be our man.

Abraham Mortimer Levitan, also called Abe Mortimer Levitan, was born on February 21, 1890, in Leavenworth, Kansas. (Some sources say Glarus or New Glarus, Wisconsin, a place that has its own interesting history.) He was the son of Solomon Levitan and Dora T. (Andelson) Levitan of Leavenworth. Born in the Russian Empire, Sol Levitan (1862-1940) came to America as a child, his journey coming as a reward for having saved his uncle from a pogrom carried out in Crimea. The older Levitan started out as a laborer and a "pack peddler." He worked his way up into prominence, twice serving as Wisconsin state treasurer and working as a bank president. He was also a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1924, which chose Calvin Coolidge as its candidate. Coolidge was of course president during some very good months and years at Weird Tales, from August 1923 to March 1929. We don't often consider the historical context in which Weird Tales was published.

Mortimer Levitan attended grade school in Glarus and graduated from Madison High School. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1913, and Harvard University, from which school he received his law degree in 1915. Levitan had his own private practice in law in Chicago and Madison until 1932, when he became Wisconsin state assistant attorney general, a post he held for twenty-five years. In his career he handled over 600 cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and several before the U.S. Supreme Court. His career as an attorney was interrupted only by his service in the U.S. Navy during World War I.

The FictionMags Index lists six short stories by Mortimer Levitan, all published from 1918 to 1925:

  • "The Stop-Over," in Young's Magazine (Mar. 1918)
  • "The Manliness of Mr. Barney," in Young's Magazine (May 1919)
  • "Daniel Decides," in Snappy Stories (1st, Jan. 1920)
  • "Crawford Gets Paid," in Short Stories (Nov. 10, 1921)
  • "Legerdemain," in McClure's Magazine (May 1925)
  • "The Third Thumb-Print," in Weird Tales (June 1925)

His story for Weird Tales touches on eugenics and phrenology. It involves a means of determining whether a man is a criminal before he commits his crime, as in the movie Minority Report (2002), based on the novella by Philip K. Dick.

Levitan was a world traveler and amateur photographer, but his main avocation was as a gourmet and collector of cookbooks. These eventually numbered 2,615. In 1965, he donated his collection to the University of Wisconsin in honor of his mother.

Mortimer Levitan never married. He died on February 16, 1968, just five days before his seventy-eighth birthday, in Madison. He was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison.

Mortimer Levitan's Story in Weird Tales
"The Third Thumb-Print" (June 1925) 

Further Reading
  • "U.W. Savors Gift of 2,615 Cook Books from City's No. 1 Gourmet" by Vivien Hone, in The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin, January 14, 1965, page 1. This article includes a photograph of Levitan in his kitchen.
  • "Mortimer Levitan, 77, Former Attorney General's Aide, Dies," in the Wisconsin State Journal, February 17, 1968, page 15. This article also includes a photograph of Levitan.
  •  Many other newspaper articles.

(Abraham "Abe") Mortimer Levitan (1890-1968), his yearbook photograph from his senior year at the University of Wisconsin, 1913. 

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Monday, July 28, 2025

Charles Hilan Craig (1901-1970)

Author, Magician & Performer, Newspaper Reporter, Editor, & Publisher, Radio News Director, Congressional Aid 
Born December 23, 1901, Madison, Nebraska
Died June 21, 1970, North Platte, Nebraska

Charles Hilan "Charley" Craig, also called "Hi" Craig, was born on December 23, 1901, in Madison, Nebraska, and grew up in Morrill on the opposite end of the state. His parents were Charles C. Craig and Chrissie M. Craig, and he had two brothers and two sisters. Although he was known later in life as a newspaperman, Craig began as an author of fiction. It's pretty early in this biography to write of obituaries, but here's an account of Craig's start as a writer from his obituary:

     He once calculated that his writing career began in 1915, at the age of 13 when he purchased for a penny his first copy of "Lone Scout" in the community of Morrill where he was raised.

     "Discarded were my ambitions to become a lawyer, astronomer, policeman, locomotive engineer, millionaire, postmaster or train robber," he would say later in telling of his first by-line.

     "Instead I was going to write."

     And write he did.

From: "Charley Craig, former Telegraph editor, dies," in the North Platte Telegraph, June 22, 1970, page 1, the same source as the photograph below.

The Lone Scout was the national publication of the Lone Scouts of America, an early scouting organization designed for boys who lived in rural areas of the country. For The Lone Scout, Craig wrote a football story, "Fighting for Bradley," and a second serial called "The Spell of Sahara." The former won him a Quill award from the magazine. The latter was called by a historian of the Lone Scouts "probably the finest individual narrative to appear in Lone Scout." (Source: "'The Golden Years' of Lone Scouts," part two of a four-part series by Lucien W. Emerson, published in Southern Utah News, August 13, 1959, page 1+.) Craig prized his membership in the Elbeetian Legion, an association for former Lone Scouts of America. I have written before about the Lone Scouts in my mini-biographies of Ralph Allen Lang (1906-1987) and Merlin Moore Taylor (1886-1939). Click on their names to find your way to them.

Charles H. Craig attended Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. He was editor of the Hastings Collegian in 1922-23. On August 16, 1928, he married Rose Nellie Cecil in Castle Rock, Colorado. Craig had previously performed as a magician named Aladdin on the Chautauqua and Lyceum Circuits. After their marriage, they performed together. They had a son, David Alan Craig, a railroad worker, angler, woodworker, and hobbyist, and a daughter, Diane R. Craig.

Charles Craig worked as a newspaperman for most of his life. A summary of his career: publisher, Morrill Mail (three years); editor, Bridgeport News Blade (three years); reporter, North Platte Daily Bulletin (three years); editor of the same paper (1943-1946); news director, KODY radio, North Platte (1946-1956); with the North Platte Telegraph Bulletin before leaving to become an administrative assistant to U.S. Representative A.L. Miller in Washington, D.C. (1956-1958); news staff, North Platte Telegraph Bulletin (1958-1961); editor of the same paper from 1961 until his retirement in 1967. Craig was also involved in his community, and he considered North Platte to be home, even though he had lived in far-flung and perhaps more exciting places.

Charles Hilan Craig wrote under his own name during his career as a pulp-fiction author. He had eight stories in Weird Tales and one in its companion title, Detective Tales, as well as one in its successor, Real Detective Tales. From The FictionMags Index

  • "Old Man Davis Goes Home," in Detective Tales (Nov. 16/Dec. 15, 1922)
  • "The Wanderer," in The Black Mask (Dec. 15, 1923)
  • Letter in The Black Mask (Dec. 15, 1923)
  • "The River," in Real Detective Tales (May 1924)
  • "Damned," in Weird Tales (May 1925)
  • "Darkness," in Weird Tales (Sept. 1925)
  • "Stealer of Souls," in Weird Tales (Jan. 1926)
  • "The Curse," in Weird Tales (Mar. 1926)
  • "The Ruler of Destiny," in Weird Tales (Apr. 1927)
  • "The Gray Rider," in Weird Tales (Nov. 1927)
  • "The Man Who Walked Upon the Air," in Weird Tales (July 1930)
  • "The Red Sail," in Weird Tales (Oct. 1931)

Those are enough to make a collection if anyone had the mind to put one out. Notice that one of his stories is in the category of "The Man Who . . .".

I think any of us would be happy to have the writing career he had, especially beginning as it did when he was a child and full of dreams.

Charley Craig died on June 21, 1970, in North Platte, Nebraska, after a long illness. He was sixty-eight years old. 

As you can see, Craig's first story in Weird Tales was published in May 1925, one hundred years ago now. He is the last of the authors in that May issue about whom I will write for now. Next I'll write about June.

Charles Hilan Craig's Stories in Weird Tales
See the list above.

Further Reading
See the sources cited in this biography and other newspaper articles, too.

Here's a very early item on the contribution of a local author to Weird Tales magazine, from the Hastings [Nebraska] Daily Tribune, December 2, 1925, page 7.

Weird Tales January 1926 by Farnsworth Wright | Goodreads
That newspaper item refers to Charles Hilan Craig's long short story "Stealer of Souls," which was the cover story and lead story of the January 1926 issue of Weird Tales. The cover artist was Andrew Brosnatch.

Charles Hilan Craig (1901-1970).

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Friday, July 25, 2025

Susan Andrews Rice (1865-1938)

Author, Poet, Teacher of Music & Voice
Born September 1865, New York State, possibly in Croghan
Died October 5, 1938, at home, Washington, D.C.

Susan Andrews Rice was born in September 1865, possibly in Croghan, New York. Some sources give her birth year as 1866, but the U.S. census of 1870 indicates 1865 as the actual year. Her parents were Yale Rice, a farmer, and Helen Marie (Curtis) Rice. She had three sisters and a brother. The family moved from New York State to Falls Church, Virginia, in the 1870s or '80s.

Susan A. Rice studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was a pupil of Lyman Wheeler (1837-1900). She taught vocal culture in Washington, D.C., and wrote articles on music. She was also the author of poems and short stories. Her credits include:

  • "Music in America," article in The National Tribune (Washington, D.C.) (June 9, 1892)
  • "To Write or Not to Write," article in The Writer (1892)
  • "How to Entertain," article (syndicated) (1893)
  • "All Saints Day," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Jan. 2, 1896)
  • "Patty Jasper's Idea," short story (syndicated, including in The Independent [New York, New York]) (Aug. 20, 1896) 
  • "A Missionary Story," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (ca. Nov. 1897)
  • "The One Who Knows Me Not," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Feb. 13, 1901)
  • "His Particular Detestation," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Nov. 3, 1901)
  • "Delia Duty's Defection," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Oct. 22, 1911)
  • "The Girl in the Wheeling-Chair," short story in Harper’s Bazaar (June 1913)
  • Letter in All-Story Weekly (July 27, 1918)
  • "The Ghost Farm," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
  • "A Day in the Life of Aurelia Durant," short story (syndicated) (Oct. 1925)

Thanks to The FictionMags Index for some of these credits.

Her story for Weird Tales, entitled "The Ghost Farm," is short but good, I think, and memorable. I like the tone and the sentiment. It's an example of why weird fiction should come also from women and from writers outside the realms of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It was reprinted in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories (1993), even if it isn't ghastly at all. "The Ghost Farm" has as its background the many losses of the Great War. That was an unavoidable theme and subject of many stories and poems in Weird Tales during the 1920s.

Susan Andrews Rice died at home in Washington, D.C., on October 5, 1938, at age seventy-three. She was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Falls Church, Virginia, where her family had lived for many years.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

James C. Bardin (1887-1959)-Part Two

Following are some of the writing credits of James C. Bardin, first from The FictionMags Index:

  • "Blue Shade," poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine (Mar. 1911)
  • "The Watcher," poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine (Aug. 1911)
  • "In the Magnolia Gardens," poem in The Smart Set (Sept. 1912)
  • "The Strange Philanthropy of Juan Del Coronado," short story in Snappy Stories (1st, Jan. 1916)
  • "Tiger-Lily," poem in Snappy Stories (2nd, Aug. 1916)
  • "The Construction Gang," poem in Railroad Man's Magazine (Nov. 1916)
  • "The Philanthropist," short story in People's (Nov. 1916)
  • "Barren Sands," short story in Sea Stories Magazine (Feb. 1925)
  • "Death," article in Weird Tales (Feb. 1925)
  • "The Sobbing Bell," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
  • "The Golden Fleece," short story in The Golden West Magazine (Jan. 1928)

Bardin's contributions to Virginia Quarterly Review, from the website of that journal:

  • "The Last Available 'Place in the Sun'" (Autumn 1926)
  • "The Hate of Those Ye Guard" (Spring 1927)
  • "Lawrence" (Summer 1927)
  • "Before Columbus" (Spring 1928)
  • "Black Valley and the Tree of Life" (Autumn 1928) 
  • "Gongorism? -- What of It?" (Summer 1929)
  • "Mexico--And Indianismo" (Spring 1932)
  • "The Mexican Revolution" (Winter 1934)
  • "Thunder Over Latin America" (Winter 1939)

In Scientific American:

  • "The Amazingly Accurate Calendar System of the Maya Indians" (Nov. 1925)

In The Bulletin of the Pan American Union:

  • "A Song from Sor Juana" (1942) 

I have also found that Bardin wrote at least two stage plays:

  • Penningtons, Too: A Play in One Act
  • Second Samuel

I'm sure he had other writing credits, too.

James C. Bardin's Article & Short Story in Weird Tales
"Death" (Feb. 1925)
"The Sobbing Bell" (May 1925)

Further Reading
Numerous newspaper articles and, if you can find them, Bardin's own works.

Scientific American, November 1925, in which James C. Bardin's article on the Mayan calendar appeared. I don't know the name of the artist, but change the dress of the men in this illustration to something futuristic and it could easily have been on the cover of a science fiction magazine of the 1920s and '30s. This was when science was done in buildings that looked like barns by men and women who were true scientists. Now supposed "science" is carried out in multi-million-dollar facilities by people who believe in pseudoscience, anti-science, non-science, or simple nonsense. I can't tell what the two objects on the table are supposed to be, but they remind me of the Trylon and Perisphere at the New York World's Fair of 1939.

Acknowledgments to The FictionMags Index and the websites of Virginia Quarterly Review and Scientific American.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Saturday, July 19, 2025

James C. Bardin (1887-1959)-Part One

Author, Poet, Playwright, Book Reviewer, Translator, Military Officer, Explorer, Medical Doctor, University Professor, Public Speaker
Born September 25, 1887, Augusta, Georgia
Died October 13, 1959, Veterans Administration Hospital, Salisbury, North Carolina

James Cook Bardin had one essay and one short story in Weird Tales, both in 1925. He was born on September 25, 1887, in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Henry Clay Bardin and Mary Ella (Cook) Bardin. He appears to have attended Harvard University, graduating in 1908, and he attended the University of Virginia, there receiving his medical degree in 1909. Young Dr. Bardin was on the staff of Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, for one year before beginning as a teacher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Central State Hospital was a hospital for mentally ill black people, the first of its kind in the United States.

James C. Bardin taught Romance languages and history at the University of Virginia for forty-four years, from 1910 until his retirement. He had an admirable career not only as a university professor but also as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as verse, stage plays, and book reviews. Bardin had short stories in the lowly pulps as well as non-fiction articles in Scientific AmericanVirginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Raven Club, as well as societies in Latin America, where he often traveled. 

The Raven Club, which I think was also called the Raven Society, was a scholastic society at the University of Virginia. A newspaper article from 1909 lets us know at this late date that it was a "society made up of students who [had] distinguished themselves in literary work." That article, "Paying Tribute to Poe's Genius" (The Portsmouth [Virginia] Star, Jan. 18, 1909, page 1) makes it pretty clear that the "Raven" in Raven Club refers to the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The article also gives details on the celebration of the centenary of Poe's birth at the university. Poe of course attended the University of Virginia, as did Captain Luke Leary Stevens (1878-1944), teacher of J.C. Henneberger, later co-founder of Weird Tales magazine.

On June 19, 1915, Bardin married Sally Norvell Nelson (1891-1969) in Charlottesville. She was a watercolorist and a volunteer librarian, among other things. They had a son, Captain James Nelson Bardin (1926-2008) of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was also a writer, of non-fiction on aviation and handguns.

James C. Bardin entered the U.S. Army in 1918 as a first lieutenant and eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in the medical corps at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, and Camp Cody, New Mexico, in late 1918. Later he was a reserve officer in the geographic division of the Military Intelligence Service. And he served again during World War II. Bardin had been in Paris at the outbreak of the Great War, but he made it back stateside in one way or another. He traveled often and to many different countries. He was a student of the Mayan civilization and its languages. In 1929, he criticized Charles A. Lindbergh's flights over Mayan ruins, a photographic expedition, as being "worthless to science," according to a contemporaneous newspaper article. The current website of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has a different opinion.

Bardin retired to the coastal counties of North Carolina (as Captain Stevens had before him). James C. Bardin, M.D., Ph.D., died on October 13, 1959, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salisbury, North Carolina, after a very long stay. He was seventy-two years old. His death came in the same month of the year as Poe's and just six days after that anniversary, the 110th. Bardin was buried at Manteo Cemetery, Dare County, North Carolina.

To be concluded . . .

Dr. James Cook Bardin (1887-1959), from the Waynesboro [Virginia] News-Virginian, December 6, 1938, page 5, on the occasion of a talk Bardin gave on the Spanish Civil War.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

The Curse of Tut-Ankh-Amen

The first story by Donald Edward Keyhoe in Weird Tales was "The Grim Passenger," published in April 1925, one hundred years before I began writing this series. My move and other events have intervened. That one-hundred year anniversary isn't so timely now. But I'll complete this series today.

"The Grim Passenger" is a story of Egypt and mummies. It begins with a reference to "the opening of the tomb of King Tut-Ankh-Amen," which took place in February 1923 but was still pretty fresh in the minds of the reading public two years later. Weird Tales had had plenty of content related to Egypt, pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, and King Tut-Ankh-Amen, most notably in its first-anniversary issue of May-June-July 1924. There would be more.

Keyhoe's story is one of a curse. Its author was clever enough to connect the idea of an ancient Egyptian curse to a more recent historical event. I won't give away his twist ending. There are those who believe in what they call the Curse of King Tut. Still there are those who believe these things. Even as late as the one-hundred-year anniversary issue of Weird Tales, published in 2023, there seems to have been belief, this expressed in Tim Lebbon's story "Laid to Rest." I will quote a newspaper article from one hundred years before: "It is really remarkable that otherwise intelligent persons should give credence to stories of this character [. . .] ." And yet they do. (Source: "Spirits and Lord Carnarvon," in The (San Francisco) Recorder, April 7, 1923, page 6.)

The concept of an ancient Egyptian curse visited upon those who disturb ancient tombs and graves is an old one. Like so much in our popular culture, it appears to date from the nineteenth century. The originators of the living mummy and a mummy's curse appear to have been three women, plus an anonymous author. They were Jane C. Loudon, Jane G. Austin, Louisa May Alcott, and, of course, Anonymous. You can read more about that on Wikipedia, the website that knows everything, including many things the rest of us know as lies.

There is a pharaonic curse in the work of another author. He was H. Rider Haggard. In Cleopatra: Being an Account of the Fall and Vengeance of Harmarchis (1889), Haggard wrote of how Harmarchis robs the tomb of the pharaoh Men-kau-ra and how "the 'Ka,' or the spirit of the dead Pharaoh, brought about the degradation and death of both Harmarchis and Cleopatra for their impious deed." (Same source as the above quote.) In February 1923, Haggard in fact protested against "desecrating the tombs at Luxor," asking, "'What would England think if the great dead in Westminster Abbey were exhumed and treated this way?'" (Source: "H. Rider Haggard Flays Desecration," in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 20, 1923, page 2.) Haggard is about to come up again.

The idea that there is a Curse of King Tut seems to have originated with the sickness and death of Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the explorations at the tomb of Tutankhamen. The first use of that phrase--"the Curse of King Tut"--that I have found in an American newspaper is from March 20, 1923. Lord Carnarvon had fallen ill the previous day from an infected mosquito bite. He died on April 5, 1923, in Cairo, and his body was returned to his native land for burial. I feel certain it has remained undisturbed since then. In any case, "the Curse of King Tut" and Weird Tales magazine are, as you can see, of the same vintage, for both got their start in March 1923. I don't know who came up with the idea of the curse. The newspaper article, shown below, is unsigned. But its anonymous author wrote it as if Haggard were in his place, and I find that noteworthy. It's also fascinating to realize that the writing lives of the early Weird Tales authors overlapped with that of H. Rider Haggard.

"The Curse of King Tut! Egyptians Insist Avenger Has Struck Invader of Tomb." From The Cleveland Press, March 20, 1923, page 1. The author is anonymous, but the art is signed. Unfortunately, I can't read the artist's last name, only his first--Paul. The account reads like a weird tale, and the illustration of a man in a pith helmet and jodhpurs, fleeing from a giant insect, could easily have appeared in "The Unique Magazine" of the 1920s.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Sunday, July 13, 2025

From Irvington to the Stars

We lived and grew up in Irvington. Once its own town, Irvington was annexed by the city of Indianapolis in 1902. Irvington is and was a cultured place. Its streets were named for prominent authors and artists of the nineteenth century, including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Hoosier poetess Sarah Bolton, and John James Audubon. Butler University got its start in Irvington before moving to the north side of Indianapolis. The Disciples of Christ had a prominent place in our neighborhood for decades. We walked past the Christian Church on our way to school. As much as anything, Irvington is now known for its annual Halloween Festival.

The painter William Forsyth lived in Irvington, as did caricaturist Kin Hubbard, creator of Abe Martin. Bill Shirley, the original Prince Charming, was from Irvington. Marjorie Main--Ma Kettle--lived there for a time. So did C.L. Moore (1911-1987). One of the homes in which she and her family lived was around the corner from that of the Cornelius family, who saved Weird Tales from extinction in the 1920s. On the opposite end of the social order, H.H. Holmes murdered and hid the remains of young Howard Pitezel in a house in Irvington in October 1894. Holmes poisoned Pitezel with drugs he had purchased at a local pharmacy. That small fact will come into play shortly. We never heard of Holmes and knew nothing about those events from the distant past. Holmes and everything he did seems to have been forgotten after his execution in 1896.

When we were kids, we walked to a lot of local businesses, many of which were in a Tudor-style block of buildings on the north side of the National Road, U.S. Highway 40, which, in Indianapolis, is called Washington Street. One of those businesses was Peacher Drugs, located at the northwest corner of Washington Street and North Audubon Road.* The pharmacist was Rex Peacher (1913-1983). Only today did I learn his name or anything about him. Peacher started his business in 1956 after having worked for Haag Drugs and probably in other places. He seems to have been destined to become a pharmacist, for if you take away the 'e' from his Christian name, you're left with Rx. Peacher sold everything at auction in September 1975 and retired in 1976. Like Howard Pitezel, he died in October.

Rex Peacher attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. One of his classmates was Robert Padgett Moore (1913-1973), who also became a businessman. If you look back two paragraphs, you will see again the surname Moore. In this world of strange coincidences, Rex Peacher's high school classmate was first C.L. Moore's younger brother. Peacher's drugstore was just one block east of the Moores' childhood home, though those two places were separated by decades. Remember that she used the surname Padgett, her grandmother's maiden name, as a shared pseudonym with her husband Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) in their writing lives. Robert Moore was buried out of Shirley Brothers mortuary, run by the family of Bill Shirley.

I don't know whether there was a pharmacy on the site of Rex Peacher's drugstore before he set up shop in 1956. I don't know where in 1894 H.H. Holmes might have bought his killing drugs. But the house in which he committed his crimes was on Julian Avenue, only about four blocks east of the site of Peacher's drugstore. That house is supposed to exist still. Sometime in the twentieth century, though, it was turned to Good.

The entrance to Peacher Drugs, or Peacher's as we called it, sat at a slant facing the street corner. Upon entering the store, if you turned to the right and went all the way to the rear, you would find a shelf upon which plastic model kits were set up for sale. We didn't have much money when we were kids. Revell models were the high-end brand and were mostly out of reach for us. Monogram models were more affordable. Very often, though, we could afford only models from the Lindberg Line, which sold for $1.25 apiece.

I have always liked airplanes, and when I was a kid I usually bought only airplane models. (I made an exception for Aurora monster models, later for the AMT Gigantics series.) I remember building a Grumman Hellcat, one of my favorites, and a Messerschmitt Bf 109. I remember my older brother had an Me 262. Like kids did in those days, we hung our airplane models from the bedroom ceiling. Airplane models hung from the ceiling of the day room in our barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, too. On our last night there, late into the night, I built a C-119 Flying Boxcar to add to the collection. The next day, I slept almost the whole way on the bus to Sheppard Air Force Base. That's where I learned to work on the real thing, in my case the F-16 Fighting Falcon, sometimes in places far from the Irvington of my childhood, including in two war zones.

When I was a kid, I thought the Lindberg Line models were named after Charles Lindbergh. That seemed logical enough: he was a famous airplane pilot, the Lindberg Line were airplane models, and so the models were named in his honor. Only later did I find out that the Lindberg Line was named for the founder of the company, Paul Lindberg (1904-1988). Again, Lindberg models were cheaper than most other brands. The box art wasn't as good and there were fewer parts and fewer decals. But there were enough parts to put wings on a dream. 

I have been writing about Charles Lindbergh and Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988). Like Lindbergh, Keyhoe was an aviator. Born in Iowa, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1919 and became a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Keyhoe was injured in a plane crash in Guam in 1922 and later discharged. In his convalescence, he began writing. He wrote about aviation for magazines and newspapers, but he also wrote pulp fiction, including early stories for Weird TalesRobert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) also graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He, too, was discharged for medical reasons and became a writer of pulp fiction. Both men died in the same year, 1988, nigh on forty years ago. Heinlein of course won a far wider fame.

One of the ideas that came out of the Flying Saucer Era is that Earth was visited in ancient times by people from other planets. Although he wrote mostly on the flying saucers of the present, Keyhoe also touched upon this ancient astronaut hypothesis. Modern-day researchers have traced the origins of the ancient astronaut hypothesis to the works of another pulp-fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), especially to "The Call of Cthulhu" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1928) and At the Mountains of Madness (Astounding Stories, Feb.-Mar.-Apr. 1936). I have a feeling the idea goes back farther than that, though perhaps not very much farther. I wonder what, if anything, Charles Fort had to say about the whole matter.

Flying saucers were one of two major religious belief systems to come out of science fiction. The other, Dianetics/Scientology, also draws on the ancient astronaut hypothesis. The story is that a long time ago, in a galactic empire far, far away, an alien named Xenu packed his people into spacecraft that looked like the Douglas DC-8 and proceeded to bring them to Earth. I have seen online images of a Lindberg Line model of the DC-8. One of these bears the Pan Am logo. Remember that in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), there are spacecraft with the same logo. These are shown after a long, wordless opening sequence in which ancient astronauts influence pre-men into becoming men. They do this using a monolith that hums because they don't yet know the words. Anyway, there weren't any parts to make Xenu attached to the sprue of those old Lindberg Line models. If you had wanted him, you would have had to build him from scratch, just as his creator did in the dark depths of his twisted mind. By the way, L. Ron Hubbard served in the U.S. Navy, too, and styled himself a hero. Instead I think he was more or less a nincompoop and a far, far cry from Lindbergh, Keyhoe, and Heinlein.

 Next: More on Keyhoe and then an end.

----- 

For my younger brother, whom we have lost and whose birthday was last week.

----- 

*One street was named for a Federalist, the other for a Romantic, both frontiersman. George Washington never set foot in what is now Indiana, but John James Audubon almost certainly did. By the way, the grandmother of my classmate Mary, named Jean Brown Wagoner (1896-1996), was also an Irvingtonian and also an author. She wrote a biography, Martha Washington: Girl of Old Virginia (1947), among others in the Childhood of Famous Americans series published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis. She came to talk to us and answer questions when we were in grade school. Her father was Hilton U. Brown (1859-1958) of the Indianapolis News, Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc., Butler University, and the Disciples of Christ Church. If I have this right, he lived across the street from the painter William Forsyth.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Update After a Long Absence

I haven't written since May 19. That's the longest pause in my writing, I think, since I began this blog. The reason is that I have moved. Most of my things are now in storage. I think I can keep going with my research and writing, but things will be different for me, at least for a while. I will pick up again where I left off, with Donald Keyhoe and his connections to Weird Tales and flying saucers.

Thanks for hanging in there with me and continuing to read my blog during my absence. Last month there were nearly 67,000 visits here. I hope that most of those were real people and not robots or AI.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Monday, May 19, 2025

Donald Keyhoe in National Geographic-Part Two

As I was paging through Donald E. Keyhoe's article "Seeing America with Lindbergh," published in The National Geographic Magazine in January 1928, I was struck by an oblique aerial photograph, and its caption, of the new airport at Oakland, California:

The caption reads:

A GLIMPSE OF THE CROWD AT OAKLAND (SEE, ALSO, PAGE 39)

     This modern airport when completed will cover 825 acres and will be one of the largest in the world. At present it has one runway 7,000 feet long and 250 feet wide. There is also a square area, part of which is here shown, now ready for use. This is 1,700 by 2,500 feet. The white circle and the name "Oakland" are made permanent by the use of crushed stone. These markings are a very great help to the airman who is flying cross-country over strange territory. Hangars, night lighting equipment, and other apparatus are being installed.

- - -

Pay special attention to the word "Oakland," the white circle with its stem, and the white square with its longer stem to the left. These features, along with the words of the caption--"These markings are a very great help to the airman who is flying cross-country over strange territory"--reminded me of other images and other ideas . . .

The idea pointed out by Keyhoe in his picture and caption is that large symbols made on the ground can be used to communicate with viewers in the air. If you read works of Forteana, you have probably encountered this idea before. I know I have, and I might have a date for my first such encounter: January 5, 1973, when the documentary In Search of Ancient Astronauts was first broadcast on NBC-TV. Or maybe it was on September 6, 1973, when "one of the most talked-about television specials of the past season" was repeated. The source of the quote is a syndicated feature article from various American newspapers published in September 1973. I suspect the documentary was repeated at later dates, too.

In Search of Ancient Astronauts is based on the book Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken, published in 1968 and adapted to film in 1970. One segment of In Search of Ancient Astronauts is about the lines graven into the plains of Nazca in southern Peru. The "conclusion reached by von Däniken," says the narrator Rod Serling, using his best Twilight Zone/Night Gallery voice, is that these lines "represent a landing field: the Plain of Nazca is a gigantic abandoned airport."

Here are two images, with captions, from a double-page spread in Mr. von Däniken's book (Bantam Books, 1971):


The captions read:

(Above:)
Another of the strange markings on the Plain of Nazca. This is very reminiscent of the aircraft parking areas in a modern airport.

(It's also reminiscent of the circle and stem at the Oakland airport in 1927.)

(Below:)
This huge 820-foot figure above the Bay of Pisco points to the Plain of Nazca. Could this be an aerial direction indicator rather than a symbol of religious significance?

(In other words, could this figure have been put into place to help "the airman who is flying cross-country over strange territory"?)
- - -

The idea of communicating with people in the air from signals on the ground predated In Search of Ancient Astronauts, Chariots of the Gods?, and Donald Keyhoe's article from 1928, for in its issue of April 1920, Popular Mechanics published an article by Paul H. Woodruff called "Perhaps Mars Is Signaling Earth." The article begins with a recounting of events from January 1920, when "Marconi commercial-wireless stations at New York and London reported the receipt of certain strange and undecipherable signals." (p. 495) The author of the article quoted several prominent astronomers and physicists, including Albert Einstein, regarding these signals. An idea bandied about was that they were from people on another planet. A further idea was how we of Earth might signal them back.

There were different ways of doing that according to the men quoted in the article. Here is an illustration of one to go along with today's theme:


The caption reads:

Sir Oliver Lodge's Simple Suggestion Is to Form a Gigantic Geometrical Figure on the Surface of the Sahara Desert, Which Would Be Visible to a Martian Observer through a Telescope as Powerful as Those Used on Earth. It would be Understood as a Sign Because Geometry Is a Science of the Universe.
- - - 

We have encountered Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) before. Although he was a physicist, he was also the opposite of a physicist, that is, a spiritualist. I first wrote about him in an article called "Dr. Dorp by Otis Adelbert Kline," posted on September 4, 2023. You can read what I wrote by clicking here. Although Lodge, as a physicist, would have been interested in other planets and possible signals from outer space, I sense that his interest here had more to do with his beliefs in the paranormal and other things outside the realm of science. His geometric shape here might be a triangle, but it's also the shape of a pyramid in profile. (So now we have three basic shapes, circle, square, and triangle.) And look at that, there are four pyramids in the foreground. These are no doubt for scale, but they also introduce a connection to these ancient, mysterious, and some would say occult structures. Remember that proponents of the ancient astronauts hypothesis believe that the pyramids of Egypt were constructed with the help of extraterrestrial knowledge and technology. In the 1920s, there were paranormal and weird-fictional connections, for example in "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Houdini, ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft and published in the May/June/July issue of Weird Tales magazine. I'll have more on Egypt before too much longer.

The idea that people on other planets are watching those of Earth was older still. Here is the opening of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1897; 1898):

     No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
- - -

If Sir Oliver Lodge felt like Martians were watching us, maybe he had that idea from H.G. Wells in his work of less than a quarter-century before that April 1920 issue of Popular Mechanics.

But if Martians were watching us, we were watching them, too, and we believed we could see shapes and lines on the surface of their planet as well. In the 1880s and 1890s, American astronomers reported seeing canals and other strange and mysterious features on the surface of Mars. Among them was William H. Pickering (1858-1938), part of whose work was carried out at Arequipa, Peru, which is not very close at all to Nazca. By the way, there are pyramids near Nazca, too. These are called the Cahuachi pyramids.

The so-called Canals of Mars are most closely associated with Percival Lowell (1855-1916), though, who watched Mars for years and wrote three books about his observations. I can only assume that his first, Mars (1895), excited the imaginations of people all over the world and was an influence upon Wells in the composition of his novel of interplanetary invasion. Lowell no doubt inspired other authors of science fiction, too. From Wikipedia:

     Lowell's influence on science fiction remains strong. The canals figure prominently in Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein (1949) and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950). The canals, and even Lowell's mausoleum, heavily influence[d] The Gods of Mars (1918) by Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as all other books in the Barsoom series.
- - -

Like the circle at the Oakland airport, we come back to beginnings, namely Donald E. Keyhoe. In his last book, Aliens from Space . . . The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, published in 1973, Major Keyhoe devoted a whole chapter to what he called Operation Lure. Originally developed by--but not really, as we have seen--Robert Spencer Carr (1909-1994), Operation Lure would have been designed to lure space aliens to land as if they were ducks landing on a pond stocked with decoys. Here is Keyhoe's one-sentence summary of Operation Lure:

     The Lure will be an isolated base with unusual structures and novel displays, designed to attract the UFO aliens' attention. (p. 291)
- - -

The main observation post for Earthmen would have been called Control, like in Get Smart. A communications station twenty-five miles distance from Control would have been called "Relay," like in Pete Townshend's never-completed project, Lifehouse. If you have never heard The Who song "Relay," you might want to give it a listen. In it, Mr. Townshend invented the Internet. Listen for the lyric, "The word is getting out about control."

The circle is getting tighter still: in Aliens from Space, Keyhoe wrote about ancient aliens, mentioning the Piri Reis map, the Theosophical Book of Dzyan, the plains at Nazca, the pyramids of Egypt, and even Carl Sagan!

Next: Miscellany about Keyhoe, Lindbergh, Heinlein, and other things.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley