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.
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| "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
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