Crosses on the Cover of Weird Tales

Today is Good Friday, representing the day on which Jesus Christ died upon the Cross. Weird Tales was of course a popular and secular magazine, although I would guess that most of its writers were either Christians or Jews, or nominally so.* I'm sure there were some atheists in there, too. Even so, "The Unique Magazine" published stories that have a religious background, or they contain references to religion and faith, or some of their characters are believers in God. Six years ago, I wrote about Easter stories, of which there were at least three in Weird Tales. You can read what I wrote by clicking here. If anyone finds more Easter stories, I would be happy to hear about them.

I have found crosses on six covers of Weird Tales. Most of these are incidental to the picture. Three are of crosses as headstones or parts of headstones. The first illustration below, created by Hugh Rankin, shows men who look like Crusaders, but the crosses on their surcoats appear to be upside down. And they are looking to a cross upon which a bat is hung. So even though this looks like it could be a Christian scene, it's not. It's actually an inversion and corruption of Christianity. Reading the story confirms as much. The third picture below, by C.C. Senf, is a picture of torture or punishment. It sure looks like the red-robed cultists are affixing a woman to a cross.

Regarding the second picture below, illustrating "A  Million Years After" by Katherine Metcalf Roof, I am reminded of something I noticed several years ago in the comics page. It used to be that in the comic strip Beetle Bailey, drawn by the late, great Mort Walker, any long view of Camp Swampy would show the camp church or chapel with a cross on top. That's what churches are like. But then, after Mr. Walker died, an editor must have gotten ahold of the strip--an editor who must think of crosses as being exclusive or offensive, I guess--because the cross disappeared. There was and still is a chaplain, Chaplain Stainglass, but he appears to be a preacher without portfolio, for the Cross is the symbol of his Christian faith and now it's gone from his chapel. What a ridiculous and insulting thing for the people behind Beetle Bailey to do. How stupid and petty. But we should remember that there have always been and always will be anti-Christian people, ideas, and actions--until there aren't anymore. Anyway, Happy Easter to Everyone, even if you don't believe in anything.

-----

*One of those writers was a Christian minister, Reverend Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932).

Weird Tales, December 1928, with cover art by Hugh Rankin. Cover story: "The Chapel of Mystic Horror," a Jules de Grandin story by Seabury Quinn.

Weird Tales, November 1930, with cover art by C.C. Senf. Cover story: "A Million Years After" by Katherine Metcalf Roof.

Weird Tales, February 1932, with cover art by J. Allen St. John. Cover story: "The Devil's Bride" by Seabury Quinn.

Weird Tales, April 1939, with cover art by Virgil Finlay. Cover story: "Susette" by Seabury Quinn.

Weird Tales, May 1946, with cover art by Ronald Clyne. Cover story: "The Valley of the Gods" by Edmond Hamilton.

Weird Tales, January 1952, with cover art by Jon Arfstrom. I talked to Jon Arfstrom at PulpFest, in Columbus, Ohio, in the last year of his life. He said that this was a portfolio piece that he submitted to Weird Tales. The editor decided to run it as a cover, but the proportions were off, and so a green shape was added to the top of Mr. Arfstrom's illustration and the main title logo placed over the top of it. The cover text reads "The Black Island" by August Derleth, but I can't say that Derleth's is the cover story.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!
From The Parisienne Monthly Magazine, January 1916.

Terence E. Hanley December 31, 2024-January 1, 2025

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from

Tellers of Weird Tales!

From The Century Magazine, December 1916, back cover art by Canadian-American artist Norman Mills Price (1877-1951). There may be product placement in this illustration--look for a container of Baker's Cocoa in the young woman's basket--but at least we have a break from the mostly dreary and unhappy contents of the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales.

Terence E. Hanley, December 24-26, 2024.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Happy Thanksgiving

from Tellers of Weird Tales!

Wild West Weekly, November 26, 1930. The cover artist is unknown. I have this image from a blog called Rough Edges, conducted by James Reasoner. He got it from The FictionMags Index, which is the work of Phil Stephenson-Payne. Thanks to both.

2024 Terence E. Hanley

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from Tellers of Weird Tales!

Detective John O'Keefe (?-?)

On the evening of September 26, 1913, Henry C. "Harry" Spencer, born Jindred Shortna, murdered tango dancer Mildred Allison Rexroat as they walked along a set of railroad tracks in DuPage County, west of Chicago, Illinois. Spencer shot her in the head with his revolver. If that had failed, Spencer had planned to beat her to death with a hammer he had staged at the scene. A week later, two local men were searching the area when they found the hammer. They also found nearby a card with the name "Anthony Melville Rud" printed on it. Anthony M. Rud (1893-1942) was in no way connected to the murder. At the time he was just an innocent medical student. Rud would go on to write pulp-fiction stories, including a series of stories about a detective called Jigger Masters.

One of the men who investigated the murder of Mildred Rexroat was Detective John O'Keefe of the Chicago police department. Below is a photograph of O'Keefe and a fellow detective, named Trant, escorting Harry Spencer after having interrogated him for the murder. O'Keefe is on the left, Spencer in the middle, and Detective Trant on the right. You can see that their names are written on the image, though in reverse.

Henry C. "Harry" Spencer (center), born Jindred Shortna in 1877, is shown here leaving an interrogation session, escorted by detectives Trant (right) and John O'Keefe (left). The date is October 21, 1913. This photograph was published in the Chicago Daily News and is now in the negatives collection of the Chicago Historical Society. Spencer was soon hanged for the murder of Mildred Allison Rexroat (Jan. 1876-Sept. 26, 1913).

Nine years after the murder, two business partners, J.C. Henneberger and John M. Lansinger, began publishing a pulp magazine called Detective Tales. The first issue was dated October 1, 1922. Henneberger and Lansinger's company was called Rural Publishing Corporation. In March 1923, they put out a second pulp title, Weird Tales. Edwin Baird was the editor of both magazines.

The first cover story of Weird Tales was entitled "Ooze" and was written by Anthony M. Rud. Rud had two more stories in the second issue of Weird Tales, April 1923, one under his own name, the other under a pen name, Ray McGillivray. He also had a letter in each of the first two issues. What's missing from accounts of Rud's writing career in regards to Weird Tales is that he also had a story--a two-part serial--in Detective Tales. The title of it is "The Scarred Men." The first part was the cover story of Detective Tales for May/June 1923. The second part appeared in the July/August issue.

Detective Tales, May/June 1923. Cover story: "The Scarred Men" by Anthony M. Rud. Cover art by an unknown artist, possibly or probably William F. Heitman, who was also busy creating covers for Weird Tales at that time. In fact, the covers of the May and June issues of "The Unique Magazine" were his work. If this were a Weird Tales cover, it would go into the category of "Red Robes and Cultists."

Detective John O'Keefe also contributed to Detective Tales. Was he the same O'Keefe who had, a decade before, investigated the Tango Dancer Murder Case? I don't know for sure, but I assume that he was. Did he and Anthony Rud know each other? Again, I don't know. They would have had a chance to meet in 1913. And could they have been connected somehow through their writing? Once again, I don't know, but both wrote for Detective Tales. Whatever might have happened, I find their both being connected to the case of 1913 and their both writing for the same magazine to be an interesting coincidence.

Anyway, Detective O'Keefe conducted a regular column or department called "Fingerprints" in Detective Tales and its successors, Real Detective Tales and Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories. I don't know when it began and when it ended, but the installment of June/July 1927 is Number 39 in the series. Everything I have for O'Keefe when it comes to his credits is from The FictionMags Index, as is the cover image above. As always, I'm greatly indebted to the Index, an invaluable resource for anyone conducting research on popular fiction in America.

"Fingerprints" by Detective John O'Keefe

Detective Tales

• March 1923
• July/August 1923
• February 1924

Real Detective Tales

• May 1924
• June 1924

Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories

• February 1925
• March 1925
• April 1925
• May 1925
• July 1925
• August/September 1925
• December 1925/January 1926
• February/March 1926
• April/May 1926
• June/July 1926
• August/September 1926
• October 1926
• December 1926/January 1927
• February 1927
• March 1927
• June/July 1927 ("Fingerprints, No. 39 Are Fingerprints Ever Alike?")
• August 1927
• September 1927
• December 1927
• January 1928
• February 1928
• March 1928
• April 1928
• May 1928
• July/August 1928
• October 1928
• November 1928

These are his known credits. I'm certain there are more of his columns hiding in the pages of these three titles.

Unfortunately, I don't have any biographical or genealogical information on John O'Keefe, who had a fairly common name. Welcome to the world of Irish genealogy, where all of the men are named John, Michael, or William. I have a candidate, though. He was John O'Keefe, born in or about 1873 in Ireland, and a police officer with the Chicago police department. He was married to Agnes Quinn O'Keefe. They had a daughter, but this John O'Keefe did not live long enough to see her marry, for he died on March 27, 1933, in Chicago, ninety years ago this month.

I have written before about Detective O'Keefe, Anthony Rud, and Mildred Rexroat in "Anthony Rud and the Tango Dancer Murder-Part Two," posted on February 4, 2016, here.

Further Reading

"Interesting Questions Answered: Read This Interesting Correspondence Between Detective John O'Keefe, F.P.E. and Kennie MacDowd, Layman" in Finger Print Magazine, June 1928, pages 16-18.

Wearing green and sporting red hair, she wishes you a

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Happy Halloween, 2022!

Terence E. Hanley, 2022.

Merry Christmas!

May Your Holiday Dreams

Take Flight!

Merry Christmas from

Tellers of Weird Tales!

Happy Thanksgiving! (Puritans on the Cover of Weird Tales)

Puritans on the cover of Weird Tales:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Compiled by Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

Happy Veterans Day

 

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

Happy Halloween!

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

Memorial Day 2021

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from Tellers of Weird Tales!

 

(The only Easter-themed pulp cover I could find.)

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Terence E. Hanley, 2021, 2023.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have been writing about some not very happy things, including 1984, one of the most depressing and dispiriting books I have ever read. That's not quite right for Thanksgiving week, so I'll put it on pause. I have a little more on the topic, including at least one more quote, but that can all wait until next week.

* * *

I read the words of a writer on the Internet who wrote that he has over 46,000 unopened--or maybe it's unanswered--emails in his inbox. I don't feel so bad now. I have email messages, comments, cards, letters, and other things that have gone into limbo. They have been there for weeks and months, some for years. This isn't a good way to be.

If you read my lone entry from last month, you know that things have suddenly changed a lot for me and my family. Our situation from the last five years, which culminated in the death of our dad in August of this year, hasn't quite reached its end, but there has come an unavoidable and irreversible turning in our lives. As some of you know and the rest can imagine, this is a really hard thing to go through. I and we--suddenly orphans, all of us--are struggling every day. But not everything is so bad or so difficult. There are some positives in our lives and in the way things are turning. In any case, life goes on. My friend and his wife had a baby this month, for example, and life goes on. I hope that there will soon be a turning in our whole country, too, and that this will mean we can all go back to living lives again instead of the half-lives--or less--that we have been enduring in this sad, lonely, bizarre, and utterly stupid year.

* * *

Despite everything that has happened this year, we have so much for which we can be thankful. I am thankful for many things, large and small. I am thankful for whatever gifts I might have received in my abilities to think about, research, and write about the things that you read and see here. I am thankful, too, for the chance I have in this digital age to do the things that I have always wanted to do--to write, draw, and publish what I write and draw, all on my own and at little or no cost--things I might not have been able to do so easily in previous ages. I thank everyone who reads this blog and who keeps coming back to it, for whatever reason, whether for enjoyment or edification, or even if it's to find something about which to be angry, offended, or infuriated. You are welcome here as well as anyone. I want to say thank you to the people who have written to me, either on this blog or directly by email, in sympathy, support, and understanding, since I came back at the end of September. I will write back to thank you personally. I especially thank Randal A. Everts, who has been generous and supportive in offering information, photographs, and corrections from his vast trove of research, stored in "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis."

* * *

The American project began as an adventure, an escape from oppression, and a vision and ambition to found a place in which we and our posterity might live out and enjoy our lives in freedom. We haven't always done very well in all of that, but if there are arcs in history, the arc in ours is towards greater freedom, justice, and prosperity. Sometimes there is a drawing back, but always there is a going forward again, towards the goals and ideals of our founding. These are too big, I think, for any small person or group of people to overcome, let alone to defeat. It hasn't happened before, and it isn't going to happen now. Our country is built upon a rock, deeper, greater, and more solid than the one upon which the Pilgrims disembarked--an event that was at once, I guess, apocryphal and symbolic--400 years ago next month. No one is going to dislodge the rock or break it up, I'm convinced of that, and our nation will go on. We will not only survive the current hard times but come to thrive and prosper again. I'm convinced of that, too. And so I wish everyone life, freedom, and prosperity, and I say:

Happy Thanksgiving, America!

Weird Tales, October 1930, with cover art by Hugh Rankin. This is an October cover so not quite right for Thanksgiving, but it has autumn leaves in bright colors. Just ignore the knife. 

Copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Easter Stories

The holiday is past us. Now people all over the world will have to wait until next year to worship Easter again. Hopefully their holy colored eggs and sacred chocolate bunnies will last for a while. In the meantime, there has been an attack on Passover worshippers in California. It happened on the seventh day of the holiday that they worship, about forty-eight hours after the New York Times published a cartoon showing the current prime minister of Israel as a dog leading our current president--depicted as a blind man wearing a yarmulke--wherever he pleases, I guess. And he's not just any dog. He's a dachshund. You know, a German dog. Isn't that so funny? Isn't the New York Times just the greatest? The really funny part will come when they try to condemn Jew-hatred after having perpetrated it in their own pages.

In all seriousness, the root of the problem before us is not so much that there are barbarians at the gates as that there are those inside the gates who wish to fling them open to allow the barbarians in. I suppose the reason is that the barbarians will do what the enemy already inside the gates wishes to be done, namely, lay waste to this city called Civilization. Only then might Utopia be built upon its ruins. The shooters and the bombers are without a doubt monsters, but the philosophers, inspirers, and facilitators of and apologists for mass murder may be more monstrous still and an even greater danger to all of us. A Jewish woman in California gave her life saving a life on the last day of Passover. More than two hundred Christians died in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. I would wager that the faith of no one is shaken by these things. It is likely only strengthened. The enemies that we have with us inside the City should know that, and they should know also that--despite any power, prestige, status, or fame they might have attained--they cannot win and that their grand ideas and schemes will be the ones to perish.

* * *

It's a little late for this year, but here's a list of weird fiction and fantasy stories with themes of Crucifixion and Resurrection. This list is by no means complete. Feel free to add to it in the comments section below.

• "Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani" by William Hope Hodgson, originally entitled "The Baumoff Explosive" and published (posthumously) in Nash's Illustrated Weekly for September 20, 1919. Reprinted in Weird Tales, Fall 1973. I should warn you that this is a muddled story and one that relies in part on the obsolete notion of the ether, published in the same year in which Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was validated by the observation by astronomers of the bending of light waves during a solar eclipse. That was a century ago, in a seminal year and by Paul Johnson's estimation the beginning of the twentieth century.

• "When the Graves Were Opened" by Arthur J. Burks, published in Weird Tales, December 1925. Reprinted in Weird Tales, September 1937. An unusual story of faith and time travel and one that attempts to puncture materialism by an encounter with the supernatural.

• "Roads" by Seabury Quinn, published in Weird Tales, January 1938. The fourth most popular story, as judged by readers, in the period 1924-1940. "Roads" is also a Christmas story and a Viking story. If you haven't read it, I urge you to. Remember when it was published, too, in the last full calendar year before war began again in Europe.

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in 1928-1940, published in an English (American) edition in 1967 by Signet. An extraordinary work from a Russian author who labored away under sickness and Stalinism but who continued to love and to hope.

Updated on October 31, 2022.

Copyright 2019, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Orville R. Emerson (1894-1945)-Part One

Teacher, Soldier, Author, Attorney

Born June 12, 1894, Burlington, Iowa

Died January 23, 1945, Los Angeles, California

Orville R. Emerson wrote just one story for Weird Tales. Called simply "The Grave," it appeared in the inaugural issue of the magazine in March 1923 and was selected by editors John Gregory Betancourt and Marvin Kaye for inclusion in their 1997 anthology The Best of Weird Tales: 1923. If there is such a thing as trench-art literature, "The Grave" might be an example. It's a simple but horrifying tale of the Great War. "The Grave" is set in Flanders in the final month of a conflict that ended one hundred years ago last month. The discovery of the manuscript that makes up the bulk of the story takes place on Christmas Day 1918. I would hardly call "The Grave" a Christmas story. Nonetheless, I have chosen to write about it today, Christmas Day 2018.

The author of "The Grave," Orville R. Emerson, was born on June 12, 1894, in Burlington, Iowa. His father was the Reverend Frank W. Emerson and his mother was Eva M. Anderson, both later of Bonham, Texas; Ontario, California; and Albany, Oregon. Orville R. Emerson graduated from the law school of the University of California with an A.B. degree and taught grammar at Page Military Academy in Los Angeles prior to the American entry into the Great War. Emerson received his commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army at the Presidio in San Francisco before moving on to Camp Lewis in Washington State. On December 9, 1917, he married Lila Strait in Tacoma, Washington. A student at the University of Southern California, she had left school unbeknownst to her parents to travel to Washington for the wedding. Her intention was to remain there for as long as her husband did. The wedding itself was a surprise to them.

During the war, Lieutenant Emerson served as regimental intelligence officer with Company I of the 363rd Infantry, 91st Division, in Belgium and France. He was at Saint-Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September-November 1918. His story, "The Grave," mentions Watou and Mount Kemmel. Both places are in Flanders, and it seems certain that Emerson was near there as well. He may even have fictionalized himself in his own story.

Once returned to civilian life, Orville Emerson organized the Redlands, California, post of the new American Legion in 1919 and became its first commander. He was at the same time executive director of Mutual Orange Distributors, a company run by his father-in-law, J.H. Strait. In March 1923, when his first and only known genre story was published, Emerson was serving as press representative of the American Legion post Redlands. He later returned to the office of commander.

Emerson seems to have devoted himself to public and community service. He was an officer in his local chamber of commerce and a member of fraternal and service organizations, including Kiwanis and the YMCA. In 1932, he ran for state assemblyman. In 1934, he spent six months as a commander at the San Juan Capistrano Hot Springs CCC Camp in California. And in 1935, he moved to Pasadena, California, and took the position of deputy district attorney for Los Angeles.

Emerson served a second stint in the army in 1941-1944. That stint began when then Captain Emerson was recalled to active duty in June 1941 to serve as commanding officer at an army recreation area in Savannah, Georgia. Promoted to major, he went from Savannah to Hamilton Field, California, in January 1942. He later served as commanding officer of an army recreation area in Panama City, Florida. Honorably discharged for ill health in November 1944, Emerson died of a heart attack at a luncheon in Los Angeles on January 23, 1945. He was only fifty-one years old. Emerson was survived by his wife and two daughters.

Orville R. Emerson's Story in Weird Tales

"The Grave" (Mar. 1923)

Further Reading

There are many newspaper articles on Orville R. Emerson, including his obituary, "Orville R. Emerson Stricken in L.A.," San Bernardino County Sun (CA), January 24, 1945, page 9.

Next: Connections.

Orville R. Emerson, 1932.

Merry Christmas to Readers of Weird Tales!

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

I'm Dreaming of a Weird Christmas . . .

Or

Scenes of Winter, Snow, and Ice on the Cover of Weird Tales

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and for the occasion I would like to show the covers of Weird Tales in which there are scenes of winter, snow, and ice. There are five of them, and they're a mixed bag to be sure. The first, by R.M. Mally, isn't bad. I'm actually intrigued and would like to read about Joe Scranton and his amazing adventure. The second, by Andrew Brosnatch is also intriguing. C. Barker Petrie's cover from January 1927 is my favorite. In fact it's one of my favorite of all Weird Tales covers. And from there it's downhill again to the last cover, from May 1939. So here they are, and . . .

Merry Christmas to

Readers of Weird Tales!

Weird Tales, October 1923. Cover story: "The Amazing Adventure of Joe Scranton" by Effie W. Fifield. Cover art by R.M. Mally. An icebound ship makes me think of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge . . .

Here illustrated by Gustave Doré. This episode from the poem is set in the South Atlantic, so there shouldn't be any polar bears. Oh, well.

Weird Tales, July 1925. Cover story: "The Werewolf of Ponkert" by H. Warner Munn. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch.

Weird Tales, January 1927. Cover story: "Drome" by John Martin Leahy. Cover art by C. Barker Petrie, Jr.

Weird Tales, March 1933. Cover story: "The Thing in the Fog" by Seabury Quinn. Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

Weird Tales, May 1939. "The Hollow Moon" by Everil Worrell. Cover art by Harold S. De Lay.

Text and captions copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Circles and Spirals on the Cover of Weird Tales

Revised Jan. 27, 2016
The year ends and begins again. The calendar is a circle and the seasons are cyclic. Circle and cycle are drawn from the same Greek root. Both represent never-ending renewal, as all things in nature move in cycles and are renewed. The history of the universe itself may very well be cyclic, stretching beyond our vision and comprehension into the unseeable past and future. In the end it will begin again.

Spirals seem related to circles. Spiral is from a Greek root, too. It means a twist, a coil, or something wound. The spring underlying the circular clock face is a spiral. The golden spiral in nature seems eternally wound in and by the structure of the universe. Circles are never ending, however: they close upon themselves and go on forever. Spirals are open. Do they require rewinding? If so, by whom? In their openness, spirals imply ending, winding down, descent. We talk of the downward spiral of an airplane or a bird shot out of the air. Of a falling, whirling maple seed at the end of a season of life and growth. Of dark whirlpools and maelstroms and of the spiraling accretion disk around a black hole. Of a widening gyre, suggesting chaos, dissolution, or decay, as in the poem by Yeats:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;

    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know

    That twenty centuries of stony sleep

    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

"The Second Coming" was written in 1919, that crucial year in the world's history and in the origin of Weird Tales. The poem is heavy with vision and prophecy. It speaks of our time as easily as it does of its own. The artist, being a seer or visionary, like Yeats, sees patterns: cycles, circles, spirals. Those patterns show up in the artist's work, symbolizing or illustrating ascent, descent, decay, the passage of time, or passage into another turn of the cycle. I count five covers [now, in November, seven covers] of Weird Tales with circular or spiral motifs. Three came out as one year turned into the next, either in December or January. A fourth came as summer gave way to fall. [The two I have added came in the middle of the year.]

Weird Tales, December 1933, with cover art by Margaret Brundage. The meaning of the circle here is unclear, but its face is divided into twelve equal pieces as is a clock, calendar, or zodiac.

Addition, Nov. 7, 2016: Weird Tales, July 1935. Cover story: "The Avenger from Atlantis" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. This is the first of three covers showing spirals or swirls of human beings. It's an unusual cover for Margaret Brundage, not only in its more painterly technique but also in its conceptual rather than strictly illustrative approach.

Weird Tales, September 1941, again with cover art by Margaret Brundage. The cover story is "Beyond the Threshold" by August Derleth. Note the suggestion of passage and perhaps also of renewal. This image reminds me of the carrousel scene from Logan's Run in which the audience chants, "Renew! Renew!"

Weird Tales, May 1944, with cover art by Margaret Brundage. A ghastly figure, the "Iron Mask" of Robert Bloch's cover story, beckons the hero and heroine to pass through a circular opening, from darkness into light, from a dark present in the Underground to a bright future in a newly free France. There's more to Iron Mask than meets the eye, however . . .

Addition, Nov. 7, 2016: Weird Tales, May 1945. Cover story: "The Shining Land" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Peter Kuhlhoff. Again a spiral or chain of human forms.

Weird Tales, January 1950, with cover art by Matt Fox and a cover story, "The Ormolu Clock," by August Derleth.

Finally, Weird Tales, January 1953, with cover art by Frank Kelly Freas and a cover story, "Once There Was  Little Girl," by Everil Worrell.

Happy New Year from Tellers of Weird Tales!

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 by Terence E. Hanley

F.B. Ghensi (1865-1943)

Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi
Aka Norbert Lorédan
Government Worker, Diplomat, Theatre Director, Librettist, Lyricist, Journalist, Editor, Publisher, Author 
Born November 21, 1865, Toulouse, France
Died January 30, 1943, Paris, France

In its May issue of 1940, the month in which the Sitzkrieg ended and the Nazis invaded France, Weird Tales printed a story it called "The Red Gibbet" by an author it called F.B. Ghensi. Like the Sitzkrieg, the title and the author's name were phony. His identity has been a minor mystery since then. The Internet allows a solution to the mystery.

Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi was born on November 21, 1865, in Toulouse, France. He studied in Castres and in Toulouse. In 1887-1889, he worked on the revue Le Décadent littéraire et artistique, where he wrote under the pseudonym Norbert Lorédan, but his literary career stalled and he went into politics.

Gheusi was well connected. Among his friends, associates, and supporters were scholar François de Vesian, politician Jean Jaurès, poet and essayist Laurent Tailhade, musician Georges Pierfitte, author Émile Zola, and poet Catulle Mendès. In 1889, Gheusi joined the political campaign of Jaurès in Castres. For several years after that, he held government posts, including in Rheims. In 1894, Gheusi relocated to Paris. In that same year, he married Adrienne Willems, niece of the painter Florent Willems. In 1897, Gheusi made an inspection tour of the Christian schools in Palestine. In 1906, he held a post at le Ministère des Colonies. And in 1911, he served as a diplomat in working to restore relations between France and Venezuela.

From 1888 to 1931, Gheusi wrote works for the stage, including lyrics, libretti, dramas, and comedies. He also authored histories and other works of non-fiction. His first novel was Gaucher Myrian, vie aventureuse d'un escholier féodal. Salamanque, Toulouse et Paris au XIIIe siècle, written with Paul Lavigne and published in 1893. Eleven more novels followed, the last of which, La Fille de Monte-Cristo, was published posthumously in 1948. I have not read any of his books and know nothing about them except for their titles. At least two have titles suggesting genre fiction, however, Le Serpent de mer, roman à clés (The Sea Serpent, a key novel, 1899) and Les Atlantes, aventures de temps légendaires (The Atlanteans, Adventures of Legendary Times, with Charles Lomon, 1905). As it turns out, Les Atlantes is a fantasy, and it has recently been reprinted. (See below.)

In later years, Gheusi held various positions of directorship or editorship, including of Le Gaulois du dimanche (1897), Nouvelle Revue (1899), le Paris Opéra (1906, 1914), l'Opéra Comique (to 1918), le Théâtre Lyrique du Vaudeville (1919–1920), Le Figaro (to 1932), and again l'Opéra-Comique (to 1936). During World War I, he was on the staff of General Joseph Gallieni. Gheusi also used his castle near Biarritz as a hospital for French troops.

The life of Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi was very nearly bracketed by German invasions of his native land. The Franco-Prussian War broke out when he was only four years old and ended not long after his fifth birthday with a humiliating defeat for the French. (His distant cousin, Léon Gambetta, was a leading figure during the war.) Sixty-nine years later, Germans reentered France and again dealt it a humiliating defeat, worse than in his childhood. He would not live to see his country liberated. Gheusi died on January 30, 1943, in Paris.

Three years before, perhaps unbeknownst to him, Weird Tales had reprinted the story "The Red Gibbet," translated by H. Twitchell. Twitchell translated numerous works from numerous languages into English. Unfortunately, Twitchell seems to have left his or her Christian name unrevealed except for its initial. The translator would appear a dead end. The phrase "the red gibbet," however, leads to a solution as to the identity of the author.

I have not read the the story "The Red Gibbet" in Weird Tales, but it seems certain to me that it is merely a retitled reprinting of "The Christmas Wolves" by P.B. Gheusi, originally published in French in Figaro Illustré in February 1897, then in an English translation by H. Twitchell in The International: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine in December 1897 (Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 546-552). You can read it by clicking here. As its title implies, the story takes place at Christmastime. It involves not only wolves but also a hanged witch. Oddly for a Christmas story, it is a tale of revenge.

So why did Weird Tales change the name of the story and its author? I don't know. The misspelling of Gheusi's name may simply be a typographical error. I doubt it, though. I think it more likely that the magazine was trying to avoid problems with copyrights or other legalistic matters. In any case, the mystery of "The Red Gibbet" is solved, and we have another French author to add to the list of those who were in Weird Tales.

F.B. Ghensi's [sic] Story in Weird Tales

"The Red Gibbet" (May 1940; originally published in the United States as "The Christmas Wolves" by P.B. Gheusi in The International: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Dec. 1897)

Further Reading

"Gheusi, Pierre-Barthélemy," in French, at the following URL:

http://tybalt.pagesperso-orange.fr/LesGendelettres/biographies/Gheusi.htm

"Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi" on the French version of Wikipedia:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Barthélemy_Gheusi

A portrait drawing of Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi. Note the reference to Gallieni, "the savior of Paris."

On October 31, 2015, Hollywood Comics/Blackcoat Press published The Last Days of Atlantis by Charles Lomon and Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi. The book was originally published in 1905 as Les Atlantes, aventures de temps légendaires. Artist Mike Hoffman created the cover illustration.

Merry Christmas from Tellers of Weird Tales!

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley