Jessie Bond (1894-1991)

Jessie C. Bond Munroe
Aka Bonnie Bee, Bonnie Bond, Bonnie Munroe
Fashion Artist, Illustrator, Poet, Painter
Born January 4, 1894, Decatur, Illinois
Died January 20, 1991, Palm Beach County, Florida

She was born in January, married in January, and died in January, and so in January I will write about artist and poet Jessie Bond. She was born on January 4, 1894, in Decatur, Illinois. Her father, William Branham Bond (1853-1913), was a millwright. Younger than her husband by a generation, Jessie's mother, Flora Etta (Williams) Bond (1871-1949), was a solicitor of public houses and later kept boarders. (Maybe those two things are the same.) Jessie Bond lived in and received her schooling in Decatur, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. By 1920, she and her mother were in Indianapolis. Flora Bond lived on Massachusetts Avenue in that census year. In 1930, she resided on 30th Street, just west of Meridian Avenue. By then her daughter had gone far from home and would soon be herself a mother.

Jessie Bond is someone new to me. Her last name is in Jaffery & Cook's Collector's Index to Weird Tales. I found her first name in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Jessie Bond had six known illustrations in Weird Tales, from December 1924 to March 1925. These were in Farnsworth Wright's first half-year as editor of the magazine. I pretty quickly found an artist named Jessie Bond who lived in Florida. But was she the same Jessie Bond? What could her connection have been to Weird Tales? Then I found that Jessie Bond had moved to Florida in late 1924 from Indianapolis. I also found that she had studied at the John Herron School of Art in that same city. Remember that the editorial offices of Weird Tales magazine were in Indianapolis from 1923 to 1926. Weird Tales and Farnsworth Wright had addresses in the Circle City during those years, and they found artists among its residents, including William F. Heitman and George O. Olinick. Jessie Bond was one of them, too.

To start again, Jessie Bond went to school in St. Louis. In 1918-1919, she studied at the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. (One of her classmates was Hoosier cartoonist Russell Berg [1901-1966].) Jessie worked as a staff artist at the William H. Block Company department store in Indianapolis. Founded in 1874 by an Austro-Hungarian immigrant, Wilhelm Herman Bloch (1855-1928), the Wm. H. Block Co., or Block's, was a mainstay in downtown Indianapolis for many decades. I remember going there with my mother when we were children. Maybe that was the first time I ever rode in an elevator. I remember full-page, hand-drawn fashion advertisements for Block's clothing in the Indianapolis Star. These were a mainstay, too. The Block's building, located at the corner of Illinois and Market streets, was designed by architects Vonnegut & Bohn, the Vonnegut part for Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. (1884-1957). He was the father of author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007), who found success early on in the pages of slick magazines and probably never had to turn to the pulps for income. I wouldn't rule out that he read Weird Tales as a child. I wonder if he knew that "The Unique Magazine" had originated in the city of his birth.

About the time that October turned into November 1924, Jessie Bond moved from Indianapolis to Miami, Florida. She must have been joyous in her move from a midwestern November to an eternal far southern summer. In a contemporaneous newspaper feature article, she was quoted as saying, "I find that I go at my work here with a different spirit. Miami is a playground, and that spirit seems to unconsciously enter into one, until one ceases to take even work seriously, and one does it more for the joy of accomplishment."

By the time she moved, Jessie must have already established a connection to Farnsworth Wright and Weird Tales. He was brand new as editor in November 1924. She had one or two drawings in each issue from December 1924 until March 1925, including two in the January 1925 issue. One of these was for "The Specter Priestess of Wrightstone" by Herman F. Wright. Herman F. Wright is an unknown author. I wonder now if he was actually Farnsworth Wright--F. Wright--in disguise. Wright had another work, a poem called "Two Crows," in that same issue. This was published under his pseudonym Francis Hard.

For five years Jessie Bond worked as a fashion artist for William M. Burdine's Sons department store in Miami. She also conducted the fashion page at the Miami Herald for one season. On January 11, 1928, she married New York native Robert Morris "Bob" Munroe (1896-1971) in Broward County, Florida. He worked as a newspaper columnist and as the director of advertising and publicity for the city of Coral Gables. Their son, John Macgregor Munroe, Ph.D., born on February 2, 1931, died just three years and three months ago, on November 4, 2021, at age ninety. He was a musician, educator, and choir director. He named one of his own daughters Bonnie, presumably after her grandmother . . .

Bob Munroe was a humorist and poet. His wife was a poet, too. Jessie Bond wrote under a pen name, "Bonnie Bee." She was also called Bonnie Bond and Bonnie Munroe, and she had poems in the New York World, the Tampa Morning Tribune, and Florida Poets--1931, edited by Henry Harrison. Bob and Jessie Munroe were acquainted with Vivian Yeiser Laramore (1892-1975), the first and only female poet laureate of the State of Florida. Vivian wrote about both of them in her column "Miami Muse," about Florida poets, in the Miami Daily News. Imagine a time when there was poetry in newspapers and a newspaper column was devoted every week to poets and their work.

After the birth of her son, Jessie became a portrait painter. She liked to collect seashells, and she loved the subtropics of Florida and the Bahamas. She seems to have lived in Florida for the rest of her blessedly long life. Jessie C. Bond Munroe died on January 20, 1991, in Palm Beach County, Florida. She was ninety-seven years old.

Jessie Bond's Illustrations in Weird Tales
"Fairy Gossamer" by Harry Harrison Kroll (Dec. 1924)
"Phantoms" by Laurence R. D'Orsay (Jan. 1925)
"The Specter Priestess of Wrightstone" by Herman F. Wright (Jan. 1925)
"An Unclaimed Reward" by Strickland Gillilan (Feb. 1925)
"The Magic of Dai Nippon" by J.U. Giesy (Feb. 1925)
"Black Curtains" by G. Frederick Montefiore (Mar. 1925)

(Of the six authors listed above, two--Harry Harrison Kroll and Strickland Gillilan--can be classed as Hoosiers. If Herman F. Wright was Farnsworth Wright, then that would make three. The FictionMags Index lists another credit for Jessie Bond, illustrations for "New Stories of Gilbert and Sullivan," with Rupert D'Oyly Carte, J. M. Gordon, Isabel Jay, Henry A. Lytton, and Courtice Pounds, published in The Strand Magazine in December 1925.)

Further Reading

• "Business Girls Sound Praises of Work and Recreation in Miami" by Isabel Stone, The Herald (Miami, Florida), November 15, 1924, page 4-B.

• "Miami Muse: A Weekly Column Devoted to Florida's Poets" by Vivian Yeiser Laramore, Miami Daily News, March 26, 1933, Society Section, page 11.

• "Miami Muse: A Weekly Column Devoted to Florida's Poets" by Vivian Yeiser Laramore, Miami Daily News, September 22, 1935, page 7, which includes some of her poems.

• "Gables Artist Plays Role of Santa To Give Orphan Long-Sought Lessons" by Judy Whitney Malone, Miami Daily News, December 15, 1939, page 19. 

Jessie Bond Munroe, aka Bonnie Munroe, in a newspaper photo accompanying the feature article "Gables Artist Plays Role of Santa To Give Orphan Long-Sought Lessons" by Judy Whitney Malone, in the Miami Daily News, December 15, 1939, page 19.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Reactions to "Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas

"Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas (Mark R. Harrington) was the cover story for the November 1924 issue of Weird Tales. The issue of January 1925 was the first in which readers had a chance to respond to that issue and its stories. Before printing their responses in the revived letters column, called "The Eyrie," the new editor, Farnsworth Wright, provided some answers to his question about what kind of stories Weird Tales should print. Should they be horror stories or something else? The readers would have their say.

Reader W.S. Charles of Pendleton, Oregon, wrote: "I herewith put in my oar against 'horror stories,' particularly that class that are somber and in the main vicious, beyond the realm of reason." By "beyond the realm of reason," I think he meant "unreasonably" or "extremely." Too bad W.S. Charles and people like him (or her) are not around today to make their demands. I think we would have better and more enjoyable stories, as well as a higher level of art and accomplishment in weird fiction, if they were. Instead we have writers indulging in their sickness for the sake of themselves, their sick friends, and their sick readers.

Farnsworth Wright took the measure of the readers in 1924-1925, responding:

Well, readers, we are going to keep the magazine weird, but NOT disgusting. The votes for the necrophilic tales were so few that we are satisfied you want us to keep the magazine clean. Stories of the [Edgar Allan] Poe type -- scary stories -- spooky stories -- mystic and occult fiction -- thrilling mysteries -- bizarre crime stories -- all these will find place in Weird Tales, but those of you who want tales of blood-drinking and cannibalism will have to make your opinion register a great deal more strongly than you have yet done before we let down the bars to this type of stories [sic]. We repeat here what we have said before: Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers, and we will be guided by your wishes.

That last part bears repeating (and condensing):

Weird Tales belongs to the readers.

Authors, editors, publishers, and critics of today would never allow that, though. Never. For to allow Weird Tales and weird fiction in general to belong to the readers would make of all of this a democratic instead of an elitist thing. They would have to give up control and open up their clique. And as we have seen in election after election, democracy is intolerable to self-anointed elites, for if the people are allowed their say, they will inevitably choose things the elites must hate.

* * *

Also in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright instituted a voting process among readers for their favorite stories in every issue. The first winner was "The Brain in the Jar" by Norman Elwood Hammerstrom (Hamerstrom). Second place went to "Teoquitla the Golden." In the issue of January 1925, Lieutenant Arthur J. Burks wrote to say: "Ramón de las Cuevas is a writing hombre." (Sometimes the accent mark went one way and sometimes the other.) I like that compliment. Having served in the Caribbean, Burks recognized the meaning behind the pseudonym, continuing: "Also keep 'Ramón of the Caves' busy--he knows his stuff! His description of the old beggar woman took me bodily back to the West Indies. In any case my vote for the best story goes to him." In the March 1925 issue, Cecil Fuller of Tulare, California, asked for a second story by Ramón de las Cuevas. Alas, this was not to be.

In its May issue of 1925, Weird Tales observed (obliquely) its second anniversary. Among the letters in "The Eyrie" was one from an anonymous correspondent in Moscow, Idaho, in which he criticized what he termed "impossibilities":

"Just one instance: Teoquitla the Golden was very clever and entertaining, but the permutation of sex described is a biological impossibility. Let me qualify that. Sex has apparently been changed experimentally in certain lower animals; varying degrees of change from female to male are known to take place in cattle (the freemartin phenomenon), and possibly may also occur in other mammals. But the important point is this: such changes can only take place during the embryonic stage of development. After that, they are impossible. Any biologist will tell you that. Of course, fiction of the weird sort is not intended to stick to scientific facts, although realism in any story will be enhanced if the scientific basis is properly regarded. Still, Teoquitla the Golden was clever."

What was true at the beginning of time was also true in 1924 and is still true today: sex in human beings cannot be changed from one to the other. (Yes, there are only two.) A man cannot be a woman and a woman cannot be a man. There are those of us who like to think of history as being a positive progression and people of the past as being primitive, while we are naturally more advanced. But at least in 1924, someone in small-town Idaho knew and wrote the truth. He could have been a grade school dropout, a factory worker, farmhand, or common laborer, and he would still have been smarter and more sensible than so many people of today, including politicians, pundits, commentators, physicians, surgeons, teachers, librarians, college professors and administrators, journalists, authors, artists, and people in entertainment, sports, and the media. The worst of them are vicious, hateful, violent, aggressive, destructive. They wish to carry out--and do--the kind of necrophilic and cannibalistic horrors that readers in 1924 objected to. Worse yet, they wish to do these things to children. And the best of them? Dupes--people too weak in will and in the mind to think for themselves or to stand up for the truth. They are people who have fallen for lies, believe lies, and tell lies, even if it means women and children are harmed in the process. And they're always so sure they're smarter and better than those of us who speak and act on the truth. They are always so sure they're morally and intellectually superior to us. Shame on them all. If there are forces in history, surely the most powerful of these is divine in its origins. This force is expressed directly through truth, fact, unalterable reality, and immutable law, and their most horrible ideas will surely fall before it.

* * *

One thing the anonymous letter-writer here might have missed by a little is that weird fiction need not be scientific, for weird fiction is the fiction of weird. Science fiction is the fiction of science. In reading weird fiction, we seek a departure from strict realism and into weird realms. The whole point in "Teoquitla the Golden" is that it's a story in which Weird has her way. A man who was a hater of a woman meets his weird in being transformed into and living as a woman.

In looking for a candidate writer of that letter in Weird Tales regarding Teoquitla and science, I have come upon Dr. Carl DeWitt Garby (1890 or 1892-1928), lifelong friend of then unpublished but soon-to-be renowned science fiction author E.E. "Doc" Smith (1890-1965). Smith and Garby were roommates at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Both graduated in 1914. Like Smith, Garby was a fan of science fiction. Garby's wife, Lee Hawkins Garby (1890-1957), was, too. She collaborated with Doc Smith on his famed serial, then novel, The Skylark of Space (1928). All three lived and worked in Washington, D.C. Poor Dr. Garby died while quite young, presumably in that city. I can't say that Dr. Garby was the author of that letter to "The Eyrie"--I don't know about the timeline exactly. Could he have been in Moscow in 1924? Or could his friend Doc Smith have been the writer? The world, I guess, will never know.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

"Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas

One hundred years ago this month, in November 1924, Weird Tales came back. It had been gone for three months by its cover date but closer to six or even seven in actuality. The last issue before the hiatus was the first and only quarterly issue of the magazine, dated May/June/July 1924. There was an overhaul of the magazine, the business behind the magazine, and some of its staff in that time. There was a new editor in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright, and a new cover artist, Andrew Brosnatch (1896-1965). Brosnatch's first cover illustration was for a story called "Teoquitla the Golden" by a pseudonymous author, Ramòn de las Cuevas.

Ramòn de las Cuevas was actually the archaeologist, anthropologist, and museum curator Mark R. Harrington (1882-1971). He is supposed to have taken his nom de plume from the name of a Spanish-American historian. I haven't found a historian by that name, but Harrington mentioned a historian called Las Casas in his story. He was Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566). I wonder if Harrington transmuted las Casas' name to arrive at his own pseudonym. In Spanish, las Casas means "the houses," and las Cuevas, "the caves." And so Ramòn de las Cuevas means "Ramòn of the Caves." Harrington's middle name, by the way, was Raymond.

Caves meant something to Harrington, I think. In his story, he wrote:

     Dr. Branson turned to his new friend, Lewis, who lolled in a deck-chair beside him. "I'll bet," he suggested, "the old Indians used to have great times up in those caves before Brother Columbus butted in!"

     "Yes," agreed his companion, "the Cronistas tell us that the Taino tribes held some of their most important ceremonies in caves."

"Teoquitla the Golden" was Harrington's only story in Weird Tales. I wonder if there was an original in the folk tales, mythologies, or histories--the European Cronistas--of Mesoamerican Indians. If so, he would have been the right person to have come across it.

Set in Mesoamerica, "Teoquitla the Golden" is about an American explorer named Robert Sanderson who discovers a place called Nahuatlan, located "in the Hidden Valley, the last stand of the Aztec nation." The discovery of a hidden or lost valley is a convention in genre fiction. You can call it a trope if you want. Otherwise, "Teoquitla the Golden" is a very unusual story. And I mean very unusual.

I'll cut to the chase: "Teoquitla the Golden" is about the transformation of a man into a woman. This isn't by any of the fake-scientific or pseudo-medical butchery employed today. The transformation is actually carried out with ancient ways and the use of potions--evidently plant-based--blown into the man's body through straws. (Is he a genetically modified organism?) The transformation is gradual. It is also complete. I should add that Sanderson did not like women before his transformation. His weird is that he would become something he once disliked. This idea makes me think of the movie Watermelon Man (1970) starring Godfrey Cambridge and directed by Mario Van Peebles.

I'm surprised that Weird Tales would have printed a story like this one in 1924, but then it was "The Unique Magazine." "Teoquitla the Golden"--the title refers to the man after he has been transformed into a woman--is an unusual and weird story, but it isn't told in a weird or sensationalistic way. The tone is actually pretty even, as you might expect from a man working in a science-based discipline. And the narrative is sympathetic to the man in his transformed state.

The online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an entry on what it calls "Transgender SF," SF indicating science fiction. Science fiction is of course supposed to be based in science--real science and not fake. Science is right there in the name of the genre after all. Transgenderism, though, is not scientific. There is no science in it. In fact it's antiscientific, as well as pseudoscientific. Its true nature is political. In fact, transgenderism is a political belief system that is totalitarian in all of its intensity, scope, and ambitions. If you doubt that, just speak those words and wait for the blowback from people who want you not only to shut up, but who also want to force you to accept, embrace, and internalize their belief system. If you transgress, you must grovel in apology. You must be humiliated into speaking lies as the truth. And if you hold to the truth, you must be silenced, shouted down, banned, canceled, ostracized, and even fined or imprisoned. Dissent simply cannot be tolerated. Once you have spoken the truth, it won't take long for them to lash out. They are likely to be exceedingly vicious in doing it. Don't falter, though. Stand up for yourself, and tell it like it is. In this, it's helpful to have knowledge of the totalitarian principle, possibly first articulated in genre fiction: "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." This is how they think. You must agree with them. And if you won't on your own, you must be made to agree. This is what they have planned for you. So remember: to be forewarned is to be forearmed against their certain assaults.

As for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, it has obviously been ideologically captured, the evidence of that being, if nothing else, its use of the phrase "gender reassignment surgery," which is an atrocious euphemism for the mutilation and removal of breasts and genitalia: healthy and normally functioning tissues and organs, removed from healthy and normally functioning human bodies, including--and seemingly as an especial target--the bodies of children. And here I thought the first command of medicine is to do no harm.

I hesitated to write about "Teoquitla the Golden." I don't like to fuel people's delusions and ideological insanity. I also don't want to point the way to a work of art that will no doubt be used for propagandistic--i.e., anti-art--purposes. But this blog is about Weird Tales, its authors, artists, stories, and poems, and so I feel an obligation to do it. This is also an anniversary, the 100-year anniversary of what very well could have been the first sex-switch in the history of pulp fiction. And "Teoquitla the Golden" is actually a good and interesting story. But if you read it, you should set aside your twenty-first-century self and attempt to read it in the mindset of a person from one hundred years ago. Forget politics. Forget insanity. Remember art and literature and their purposes.

Weird Tales, November 1924. Cover story: "Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. Considering the subject matter of the story, you could take Brosnatch's last name as an obscene pun. Try not to.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The First Anniversary

I wrote last year and have been writing this year about Weird Tales in its first thirteen issues, published from March 1923 to May/June/July 1924. This baker's dozen can be taken together because all were published by The Rural Publishing Corporation under its co-founders, J.C. Henneberger and J.M. Lansinger, with Edwin Baird serving as editor, at least, as far as we know, for the first twelve issues. There are similarities among formats and aesthetics in these thirteen issues, even if they can be broken down into smaller categories. I just finished writing about one of these categories, the three Houdini issues of March, April, and May/June/July 1924. Weird Tales was a different magazine after it returned in November 1924.

The March 1924 issue of Weird Tales was its actual first-anniversary issue, but as far as I can tell, that event went observed for another two months, until the quarterly issue of May/June/July 1924. Even then, the observance, consisting of two words, "Anniversary Number," was only on the cover. The great length of the anniversary number, 196 interior pages, would also seem to have been a celebration, while inside was an essay called "Why Weird Tales?", written anonymously by Otis Adelbert Kline. Although its appearance wasn't explicitly on the occasion of the first anniversary of the magazine, Kline's essay seems to me simultaneously a celebration, a mission statement, a manifesto, and a dedication to the future of weird fiction.

Unfortunately, that future seemed short, for Weird Tales disappeared for the three months following the anniversary number. Fortunately it came back in November 1924 and lasted until September 1954 . . .

. . . in its first incarnation. Since then, Weird Tales has come and gone. Sometimes it has been around for its own anniversaries and sometimes not. I would like to go through them, year by year, or five years by five years, or whenever they occurred, culminating in the 100-year-anniversary issue of 2023.

Weird Tales, The Unique Magazine, in its anniversary number of May/June/July 1924, one hundred years ago this month. The cover story is "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," written under the byline of Houdini but ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft. The magazine took note of its anniversary on its own cover. The blurb after that--"Fifty Distinct Feature Novels, Short Stories and Novelettes"--isn't quite accurate. But there were thrills, mystery, and adventure to be sure, hopefully enough for three (or six, as it would turn out) month's reading. The cover art was by R.M. Mally, now known to have been George W. Mally and his wife Ruth M. Mally. Or maybe R.M. Mally was Ruth alone.

Text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Who Was the Editor of the First-Anniversary Number of Weird Tales?

In the previous entry, I went back in time to January 30 of this year. Now I'm going even further back to almost the beginning of 2024, to an entry of January 6. That entry is entitled "Weird Tales in the First Year (and More)." A question came up in that entry, namely: Who was the editor of the first-anniversary number of Weird Tales? Some comments went back and forth. I can't say that we have a definitive answer. I'm not sure there will ever be a definitive answer. But I would like to summarize what we know.

First: Edwin Baird edited Weird Tales from its inception until, presumably, April 1924 (or maybe only March). There isn't any editor credited in that issue, nor in the issues preceding or following it. Baird was also the editor of Detective Tales, a companion title to Weird Tales and one that preceded it in print, beginning with a first issue on October 1, 1922.

In the spring of 1924, The Rural Publishing Corporation, publisher of both Weird Tales and Detective Tales, was in financial trouble. Co-founded by Jacob C. Henneberger and John M. Lansinger, The Rural Publishing Corporation came to an end with the first-anniversary number of Weird Tales of May/June/July 1924. Baird went with Lansinger and Detective Tales. That left Henneberger with Weird Tales--and no editor.

In my entry of January 6, I called the anniversary number "jumbo-sized" and a "triple issue." It was actually neither. That number, or issue as we say now, had the same number of pages as the first two issues of the magazine, 196 in each. So it wasn't jumbo-sized exactly, although that's still a lot of pages. Also, it wasn't a triple issue, even if it covered a three-month period. In fact, the May/June/July issue of 1924 was a stated quarterly issue, the first and as far as I know only quarterly issue during the first run of the magazine, i.e., from 1923 to 1954. By the way, Edwin Baird died in September 1954, which was when the last issue of Weird Tales came out. I might call that weird, or an instance of the workings of Weird.

So who was the editor of the first-anniversary number of Weird Tales?

Well, in The Weird Tales Story (1977), author Robert Weinberg wrote, without citation: "Otis Adelbert Kline and Farnsworth Wright put together one gigantic issue," i.e., the first-year anniversary issue. (p. 4)

In The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales (2018), author John Locke went into more detail, quoting, first, Kline, who claimed editorship of the issue in a letter to Robert E. Howard's father, dated 1941; and, second, quoting Henneberger, who wrote in 1924 that Baird was the editor until the last issue, i.e., the first-anniversary issue. According to Mr. Locke, Wright had also served as an uncredited editor since April 1924. He wrote: "Wright was the actual editor of the issue in its early stages of preparation [. . .]." Wright quit the company in anger, though, at which point, "Kline was recruited as temporary editor [. . .]." (p. 168) John Locke's conclusion: "all three individuals [Baird, Wright, and Kline] edited the issue!" (p. 168)

Biographer, essayist, book reviewer, and encyclopedist Phil Stephenson-Payne left comments under my entry of January 6, 2024. He had credited Edwin Baird as editor of the first-anniversary number in his online source, The FictionMags Index. (Forget what I have done in this blog. Mr. Stephenson-Payne has done far more in his career.) He quoted an article written by Robert Weinberg and published in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines (Greenwood Press, 1985) as follows: that the first-anniversary number was "assembled by Jacob Henneberger and Otis A. Kline from dummies assembled by Baird." After consulting with Mike Ashley and John (presumably) Locke, he left a comment quoting John, as follows:

The short version is that Baird initiated work on the Ann[iversary] Issue in the midst of the "reorganization," which was editorial until the financial axe fell. Mid-course, Baird was pulled off of W[eird] T[ales] to devote his exclusive time to Detective Tales. Wright came in as a part-time interim editor for WT (while J[acob] C[lark] H[enneberger] unsuccessfully tried to recruit [H.P.] Lovecraft). Wright found out about the many debts to contributors, couldn't get any resolution from JCH, and stormed out in protest with the Ann[iversary] Issue unfinished. JCH got Kline to get it out the door. It's fair to say that the issue was edited by Baird, Wright, and Kline, in that order. I don't think it follows that any two of them worked together as co-editors. (Italics and boldface added.)

That sounds like a good and reasonable answer to the question: first Baird, then Wright, and finally Kline had a hand in editing the first-anniversary number, all or some with an assist from Henneberger. Lovecraft famously declined the editorship of the magazine at around that time. What a different world it would have been if he hadn't! In any case, the May/June/July 1924 issue of Weird Tales was the last for several months. Like a revenant, though, it came back in November 1924, then and for the next fifteen and a half years edited by Farnsworth Wright.

Thank you to Phil Stephenson-Payne, Mike Ashley, and John Locke for their information and clarifications. Thanks also to the late Robert Weinberg.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley. Text and comments by John Locke and Phil Stephenson-Payne are their own property.

Houdini Connections

I began writing about Harry Houdini and his association with Weird Tales nearly six months ago, on January 30, 2024. The occasion was the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Houdini issues of "The Unique Magazine." There were three Houdini issues in all. The first came along in March 1924. The last was the first-anniversary number of May/June/July 1924. So, even though nearly half a year has gone by since I first wrote on this topic, we're still in the Houdini-issue centenary.

Although Houdini's byline was attached to three stories in Weird Tales, he almost certainly did not write any of them. These three stories are:

• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (March 1924)

• "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (April 1924)

• "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924)

"Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," also known as "Under the Pyramids" and "Entombed with the Pharaohs," is known to have been ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft. If readers didn't know about it before, Lovecraft's authorship of the story was revealed when it was reprinted in the July 1939 issue of Weird Tales. By then, the magazine was printing and reprinting everything it could by Lovecraft. After all, he had been their bread and butter for many years. I have proposed Otis Adelbert Kline as the author of "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt." John Locke has put forth Harold Ward as the author of "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover."

There were other connections between Houdini and Weird Tales. I wonder about the possibility that Kline, as a possible or the probable author of non-fiction fillers in the magazine, borrowed from Houdini a copy of The Terrific Register; or, Record of Crimes, Judgements, Providences, and Calamities, published in two volumes in 1825, as his source. I don't know that Kline was in fact the author of those fillers. I also don't know that Houdini owned those two volumes. And I don't know whether there was any borrowing going on.

Houdini is supposed to have been the author of two installments of a letters column called "Ask Houdini." I would not rule out that the first was not Houdini's work after all. At least a couple of letters may have been plants, for they bear Harold Ward's initials and originated in or near northern Illinois towns where Ward lived or worked. The second installment reads more like something that came from Houdini's pen. We will probably never know who were the writers of the twenty-two letters that appeared in "Ask Houdini." I suspect that comparing initials to known authors in Weird Tales would lead to some candidates.

Among Houdini's other published works of 1924 was the book A Magician Among the Spirits, which came out in May of that year. C.M. Eddy, Jr., of Providence, Rhode Island, was the uncredited co-author or ghostwriter of that book. According to Wikipedia: "In 1926, Harry Houdini hired H.P. Lovecraft and his friend C.M. Eddy, Jr., to write an entire book about debunking religious miracles, which was to be called The Cancer of Superstition." That project fell through upon Houdini's death later in the year.

Like Edgar Allan Poe, the Great Houdini died in October, in his case on Halloween, October 31, 1926. If Poe died by violence, then maybe they had that in common, too, for Houdini died of peritonitis, possibly brought on by appendicitis and a blow or blows to the abdomen.  

Houdini's brother was also a magician, escape artist, and debunker of spiritualism. His birth name was Ferenc Dezső Weisz, but he was known as Theodore "Dash" Hardeen. The brothers performed together early on. Hardeen continued performing after Houdini's death. He was on stage in Hellzapoppin in 1938-1941. In 1936, Hardeen played a detective investigating a fake medium in a movie short called Medium Well Done It. Houdini's wife, Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess" (Rahner) Houdini, was also in movies--or a movie, Religious Racketeers, released in 1938. The movie begins one day short of the ten-year anniversary of Houdini's death. Bess Houdini played herself. Also in the cast was Helen Le Berthon, daughter of Ted Le Berthon, who also wrote for Weird Tales. As in Houdini's career, the subjects of Religious Racketeers are spiritualism and fake mediums. Another connection to Edgar Allan Poe: Houdini and his wife had agreed to communicate, if possible, by way of a substitution code, as in "The Gold-Bug," after his death. Their coded message: "Believe."

The biographies of Houdini and his wife were adapted to film in 1953, with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in the lead roles, and again in 1976 with Paul Michael Glaser and Sally Struthers. We watched The Great Houdini, also called The Great Houdinis, on television when we were kids. I have always remembered the scene and the terrible tragedy of Houdini receiving blows to his abdomen and dying from his injuries.

What grief. What terrible grief. But there was triumph, too, and imperishable love.

"Do Spirits Return?", a poster advertising shows by Houdini at the Lyceum Theatre, Paterson, New Jersey, on September 2 through 4, presumably in 1920. 

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Harry Houdini & Psychical Research

"The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," written by Otis Adelbert Kline, was the first serial to appear in Weird Tales. Part one was in the first issue, dated March 1923. Part two followed in April of that year. At the opening of part one, the narrator learns that his uncle has died. That would make "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes" the first "Uncle story" in Weird Tales. You might question whether the "Uncle story" was or is actually a thing, but I'm pretty sure that it is. I remember when we were kids watching and enjoying a movie called Let's Kill Uncle (1966), with Nigel Green in the title role. A Thousand Clowns (1965) starring Jason Robards and Barry Gordon, may also be an Uncle story. Maybe what we need is an Internet Uncle Story Database (IUSDb).

The narrator of Kline's story lets us know that his Uncle Jim was involved in researching psychic phenomena. He was a member of the London Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart. Both were real organizations. The London society was formed in 1882, the American Society for Psychical Research in 1884. In "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," there is a séance, some automatic writing, and a lot of ectoplasm flying, flowing, and oozing through the room. These elements of spiritualism appear in earnest in the story, although, to his credit, Kline didn't exactly fall for spiritualism. Instead he proposed a materialistic or naturalistic explanation for all of its elements. He also placed everything under God, and so nothing under God can be called supernatural. To call anything under God supernatural would of course be an oxymoron.

Kline had stories in several issues in Weird Tales over the next year. He wrote the essay "Why Weird Tales?" for the first anniversary number of May/June/July 1924. He probably also edited (or co-edited) that issue. After a little more than a year, Kline seems to have begun changing his tune when it came to spiritualism and psychic phenomena. Here is the opening text from his Dr. Dorp story "The Malignant Entity" (Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924):

     "I TELL you, Evans," said Dr. Dorp, banging his fist on the arm of his chair for emphasis, "the science of psychology is in much the same stage of development today as were the material sciences in the dark ages."

     "But surely," I objected, "the two centuries of investigation just past have yielded some fruit. It cannot be that the eminent men who have devoted the greater part of their lives to this fascinating subject have labored in vain." 

     The doctor stroked his iron-gray Van Dyke meditatively.

     "With a few--a very few exceptions, I'm afraid they have," he replied, "at least so far as their own deductions from observed phenomena are concerned."

     "Take Sir Oliver Lodge, for example--" I began. 

     "The conclusions of Sir Oliver will serve as an excellent example for my analogy," said the doctor. "No doubt you are familiar with the results of his years of painstaking psychical research as expounded in his books."

     "I believe he has become a convert to spiritism," I replied. 

     "With all due respect to Sir Oliver," said the doctor, "I should say that he has rather singled out such facts as suited his purpose and assembled them as evidence to support the spiritistic theory. It may seem paradoxical to add that I believe he has always been thoroughly conscientious in his investigations and sincere in his deductions."

     "I'm afraid I do not quite follow you."

     "There are times in the life of every man," continued the doctor, "when emotion dethrones reason. At such a crisis the most keen-witted of scientists may be blinded to truth by the overpowering influence of his own desires. Sir Oliver lost a beloved son. Only those who have suffered similar losses can appreciate the keen anguish that followed his bereavement, or sympathize with his intense longing to communicate with Raymond. Most men are creatures of their desires. They believe what they want to believe. Under the circumstances it was not difficult for a clever psychic to read the mind of the scientist and tell him the things he wanted to hear."

     "But what of the many investigators who have not been similarly influenced?" I inquired. "Surely they must have found some basis--" 

     I was interrupted by the entrance of the doctor's housekeeper who announced--"

Poor Oliver Lodge. But then nobody made him or people like him try to force their beliefs onto the world. Kline could just as easily have been writing about Arthur Conan Doyle, who also lost a son and who also, seemingly, let his feelings get in the way of his proper thinking.

So in 1923, Kline included some of the trappings of spiritualism in his first story, but by mid 1924, he seems to have become more skeptical of the whole business--if Dr. Dorp was saying what Kline wanted him to say, that is. So what happened in the interim? Maybe Kline fell under the influence of Harry Houdini, who signed his agreement with Weird Tales magazine in February 1924 and who busied himself in and out of its pages with busting psychic mediums and debunking the claims of believers in spiritualism. I have suggested that Kline, as the probable author of nonfictional fillers in Weird Tales, borrowed The Terrific Register; or, Record of Crimes, Judgements, Providences, and Calamities (two volumes, 1825) from Houdini, who is known to have had a vast library. I have also suggested that Kline was the ghostwriter behind "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," published under Houdini's byline in Weird Tales in March and April 1924. It's clear that Kline was intelligent and widely read. Maybe he saw the wisdom in Houdini's point of view. And maybe the London Society for Psychical Research saw it, too (or came to see things the same way anyway, independently of Houdini), for in 1930, there was a split in its numbers. Arthur Conan Doyle left that year. Others may have also. I can't say for sure, as I haven't looked into this business very closely. And I don't really want to, for spiritualism and its related psychic or parapsychological phenomena are so thoroughly uninteresting to me, being as they are completely ungrounded in fact or reality, and dripping, as they are, with lying, ignorance, gullibility, whining, special pleading, shabbiness, and so on. There are other, more interesting frauds and scams at work in the world. If you have only so much time to read about such things, you should choose the ones that interest you.

On November 18, 1922, Scientific American announced that it would pay $2,000 to anyone who could take a spirit photograph under test conditions and $2,500 to any medium who could produce physical effects from supposed spirits, again under test conditions or controlled conditions. (See Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls by William Lindsay Gresham [McFadden, 1961], p. 201.) Houdini put up $5,000 of his own money for similar purposes. Scientific American formed its Committee for Psychical Investigations, a name similar to but not to be confused with those of the London Society for Psychical Investigations and its American counterpart. At some point, Houdini became a member of that committee. And when his tour of the vaudeville stage ended in February 1924, he went out on a new lecture tour designed to talk about and expose fraudulent mediums. I'm pretty sure he was involved with Scientific American and its investigations for several months, possibly a year or more, around that time.

Houdini's stories and his letters column in Weird Tales, "Ask Houdini," coincided with his lecture tour that spring. In May 1924, his book, A Magician Among the Spirits, written on the same subject, was published. And that summer, Houdini exposed a psychic medium known as "Margery," real name Mina Crandon, of Boston, as a fraud. Houdini's investigation of Mina Crandon forms a major episode in his many biographies.

There had been plenty of that before and there would be still more to come for Houdini. Looking back on all of this, I have the impression that spiritualism in America was in decline by the mid to late 1920s. The lesson in all of it might have been: Don't mess with Houdini. By the way, there may have been some Houdini-adjacent content in the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales in the form of a nonfiction filler entitled "Woman Fails to Win Psychic Prize." That item, on page 74, is about the Reverend Mrs. Josi K. Stewart of Cleveland, Ohio, whom Scientific American had shot down the previous October. She wanted the prize. She went home with nothing, perhaps not even a lovely parting gift. Was Otis Adelbert Kline the anonymous author of that brief article? Maybe. And here's another by-the-way: Scientific American is currently involved in another fraud and scam, in this case transgenderism. The problem this time is that the magazine is on the same side as the fraudsters and scammers, the people who are trying their best to harm children. Shame on them and everyone who believes as they do. We can only hope that Scientific American goes down the tubes as a result of this and so many other bogus and idiotic ideas that they hold and have tried to promulgate in the world.

Weird Tales in 1923-1924 is full of content about spiritualism, psychic mediums, séances, spirits, psychic phenomena, automatic writing, ectoplasm, and so on. In the first half of 1924, the Great Houdini addressed those things in his "Ask Houdini" column and in his three ghostwritten stories. The kind of research I'm doing right now on spiritualism and psychic phenomena in Weird Tales could go on and on. But I'm getting close to the end of this series on Harry Houdini. I have one more part to go. Then it will be on to other things.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Fiction versus Spiritualism

I have written before that Weird Tales was the first magazine in America devoted to fantasy fiction. Now that I have read whole issues and many individual stories from the first year and more of the magazine, I find that not to be true. Or if it is true, it wasn't true until there was an entire issue of Weird Tales devoted exclusively to fantasy fiction. In other words, every story in a given issue would have to be a fantasy of one kind or another for Weird Tales to have been the first fantasy magazine in America. And when did that happen? I'm not sure. I would have to keep reading.

As we have seen, weird fiction is not necessarily fantastic: weird is in the real world and in our lives. It is at work in both. Nothing supernatural, nothing based in fantasy need happen for it to be weird. So maybe Amazing Stories, which made its debut in April 1926, was the first American magazine devoted to fantasy, science fiction being a sub-genre in the larger and vaguely defined genre of fantasy. But that's assuming there wasn't a whole issue of fantasy fiction in Weird Tales between March 1923 and March 1926. That seems like a tall order, but it would take a lot of reading to confirm or deny the notion. I'm not there yet.

Weird fiction is about the past. I have lumped it with the other more conservative genres of romance, supernatural horror, adventure, historical fiction, and so on. Science fiction may stand alone as the only progressive genre, although not all science fiction is progressive. There is, after all, conservative science fiction, too. In recent decades, authors have tried to make weird fiction more progressive. I'll leave it to others to decide whether that works. I can't imagine, though, rooting for or sympathizing with a protagonist who is engaged in a Marxist struggle against his hated bourgeoisie, or who wishes to silence and oppress, if not murder, Jews or Christians or women (the original kind) or anyone else who disagrees with him, or who believes that we can and must save children from harm by cutting off their breasts and genitals, or on and on through the parade of horrible, naïve, or just plain idiotic ideas that make up progressivism. Edgar Allan Poe wrote from the viewpoint of men living in pathological states of mind, but I don't think we're supposed to identify with mad Montresor or the unnamed narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart." Besides that, those two characters and others like them have only murder on their minds. They're not trying to lay waste to the past, or impose totalitarian systems upon the earth, or bring about an end to history. There isn't any ideological motivation behind their actions.

It's hard for us to imagine now just how close to the Victorian era was Weird Tales at its inception. We picture pulp fiction as part of the fast-talking, fast-moving culture of the 1930s and '40s. And yet, in 1923, there were still vast holdovers from the previous century and the pre-war era: twentieth-century America was still living in many of its old forms and not yet aware of all of its new ones.* Spiritualism was one of those old forms, a holdover from a previous time, not yet aware that it was itself as dead as its subjects, as dead as the concept in physics of the luminiferous ether. That concept was slain by Albert Einstein as well as by anybody. Maybe its date of death was in 1919, the same year in which J.C. Henneberger (a Victorian figure in his own right) arrived in Indianapolis, soon to issue, with his business partner, first, Detective Tales, then, in March 1923, Weird Tales.

But wait, you might say, you just said that weird fiction is about the past. Wasn't the nineteenth century part of that past?

The answer is, of course, Yes. But weird and an awareness of weird are older still. Spiritualism is comparatively new. You might even call it an innovation. It was certainly an outgrowth of nineteenth-century culture, which was, truth be told, very closely interested in science and the idea of progress. Weird lives apart from technology; spiritualism is tied to it. Spirit photography is as good an example of that as anything, but how many stories based in spiritualism have you read that include some scientific or technological means for detecting, proving the existence of, or even dispelling spirits? William Hope Hodgson's stories of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder are full of gadgets. There are also ghost-finding gadgets in early stories in Weird Tales, including in Otis Adelbert Kline's adventures of Dr. Dorp. We still see that kind of thing in the instruments that contemporary ghost-hunters use. Employing material instrumentation to find something that is supposedly not material at all--they are spirits after all--hardly makes sense, but here we are.

Spiritualism and all of its trappings were in early stories in Weird Tales. The first story to appear in the magazine, "The Dead Man's Tale" by Willard Hawkins, and the first serial, "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes" by Otis Adelbert Kline, both include elements of spiritualism. Hawkins' story is in fact a transcription from the dead, made possible only by automatic writing, the same trick that Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife tried to play on Harry Houdini in 1922. But spiritualism didn't have any legs and soon grew tired. There was going to have to be something else to take its place if Weird Tales was going to go very far in its field. I think an awareness of weird--weird, which predated spiritualism by more than a millennium--would do. So would H.P. Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror or science fantasy, a twentieth-century--or at its earliest a nineteenth-century--development. I don't know whether Houdini helped to make spiritualism go away, but he sure didn't hurt the cause.**

Houdini's stance against spiritualism, mediums, séances, and so forth also goes against the premises of so many early Weird Tales stories. Like I wrote the other day, he was not a natural fit for the magazine. Readers loved their spirits and their séances. Witness the letters published in "Ask Houdini." But maybe we should look at him and his presence in another way. In old Westerns, the new sheriff comes into town ("The new sheriff is near!") and says to the bad guys, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us." They had to ride out, either on their horses or in a hearse. Either the boondocks or Boot Hill would be their destination. So maybe Houdini was like that sheriff, saying, in effect, weird fiction can have either spiritualism or something better, but it can't and shouldn't have both. And it can't have both me and spiritualism. Not that Houdini laid down any kind of ultimatum. Not that Houdini and Weird Tales parted ways because of any conflict or difference of opinion on these things. (I think it more likely that their arrangement simply fell apart as the magazine did at about this time of year, one century past.) It's just that there were two opposing world-views, and, in competition with each other, the superior world-view won and spiritualism was shown the door. Readers and writers still hung on to spiritualism for a long time to come--there are trappings of spiritualism in Weird Tales as late as 1938 when Manly Wade Wellman's three-part serial "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" was published in the magazine. (Published under his pseudonym Gans T. Field, "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" was in the January through March issues of 1938.) But if spiritualism was already worn out and creaky in 1923, it was way worn out, and creakier still, fifteen years later. Wellman's including elements of spiritualism in his story actually weakens it in my mind. It also shows him as not yet having matured as a writer or a thinker. In any case, I'm not sure that any writer or reader of weird fiction today would countenance the whole business. Leave spiritualism to TV ghost-hunters and their gadgets. Let us instead have weird in our weird fiction.

-----

*In 1923, the most recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction were Edith Wharton, born in 1862, and Booth Tarkington, born in 1869.

**Another weakness of spiritualism is that it can work only in small, dark, and enclosed spaces, the natural habitat of the psychic medium, without whom none of it is possible. Weird works everywhere and all the time, even--by way of cosmic thinking not easily attained before the twentieth century--into the vast physical universe, all the way to the most distant and trackless stars. And of course it works for everyone. You might say that spiritualism, requiring a medium, is elitist, while weird is thoroughly democratic. In spiritualism there are experts.*** Weird can happen to anybody, no intermediary needed.

***And now here's a note to my note. It occurs to me now that pulp-era spiritualism and technocracy may have run on parallel tracks, even if they weren't connected at all. The proto- and early science fiction of that same era may have been more closely technocratic than was spiritualism. A return to weird and the creation of weird fiction, then, may have been a reaction to nineteenth-century science and progress, reaction being characteristic of certain brands of conservatism.

 

Technocracy has to do with gadgetry and technology-based processes, of course, but the key ingredient in technocracy is the expert, the one who knows and the one to whom we are to defer. (Maybe in that respect, technocracy is a kind of gnosticism.) In spiritualism, the expert is the medium or the psychic investigator. In technocracy (or bureaucracy), the technocrat is the expert. In either case, the expert is unassailable. In any system based on expertism (my new word), questioning the expert is verboten. Skepticism, let alone criticism, is not permitted. So: the coronavirus is naturally zoonotic. It came from a wet market in China. It did not escape from a laboratory. It certainly wasn't manufactured. Vaccines are safe and effective. They prevent disease. You must receive at least one if you are to be safe and to keep others safe. Masking, six-foot distancing, lockdowns, and wiping down your groceries and mail work. They prevent the transmission of disease. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are not effective against coronavirus. They are quack treatments. Only patented medicines work. (At this point, maybe we can call them--all of those things that are called vaccines--patent medicines instead. By the way, the spellchecker in Blogger doesn't even like the word hydroxychloroquine. That might just be a coincidence, but it could also indicate that we are not even to speak its name.) You may not question the experts on any of this. If you do, you're a xenophobe, a terrorist, an insurrectionist, a science-denier.

Now, an aside, an aside inside of a note to a note to a main article from which we are so far away that I can barely see it anymore: the concept of the expert might be related to the concept of the superhero or the superior man. Taken a little further, it might be related to the leader of a cult or to the cult of personality. Science fiction during the Golden Age of the 1930s and '40s, specifically the science fiction of John W. Campbell, Jr., and Astounding Science-Fiction, was caught up in the superhero/superior man idea. Very often, the powers of the superior man are psychic rather than physical. "Slan," by A. E. van Vogt, serialized in Astounding Science-Fiction in September-December 1940, is an example of a story about the psychic-superior man in science fiction. And we should remember that Campbell, reputed to be an exemplar of hard science fiction, began his career in college as a psychic investigator. I'm not sure that he moved very far beyond that, even late in life.

To return to the original topic, if spiritualism and technocratic or bureaucratic expertism have anything in common, it's that they don't and can't stand up to scrutiny. They can't stand the light of day and can operate only in the dark. And with spiritualism, it is literally only in the dark that it can operate. Anyway, the spiritualism craze and the technocracy craze ended a long time ago, but like TV ghost-hunting, technocracy and the cult of the expert are still with us. By the way, the advent of technocracy in America is dated to--guess when--1919.

Copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Eight

The End of the Line

Three stories appeared in Weird Tales under the byline "Houdini." I have nominated Otis Adelbert Kline as the author of the first, "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (two-part serial, Mar.-Apr. 1924). John Locke has offered Harold Ward as possible author of the second, "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924). The third story, "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924), is known to have been the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

There were also three letters columns with the heading "Ask Houdini." The first, in March 1924, was only an announcement under the larger heading of "The Eyrie," the regular letters column. "Ask Houdini" took the place of "The Eyrie" in the next two issues, April and May/June/July 1924. Houdini wrote all or most of the replies to letters written (ostensibly) by readers of "The Unique Magazine." I think that especially true of all replies written at length and in a skeptical and authoritative voice. Houdini must have been a formidable opponent in any debate, discussion, or investigation about spiritualism, mediums, séances, and related topics. I think it possible that a couple of replies in the first installment (Apr. 1924) were--like the short stories published under his byline--composed by a ghostwriter, but I don't have any evidence of that.

The publication of "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" and "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" coincided with a lecture tour of America that Houdini made in the winter and spring of 1924. Houdini announced his tour in mid-February. Coit-Albee Lyceum made the arrangements. Houdini was supposed to have played twenty-four dates in all. He was in Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania, and in Cleveland, Ohio, in the last half of February. By early March, he had made his way south, to Birmingham, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; and other cities. On March 24, 1924, he celebrated his fiftieth birthday at his home in Harlem. I believe the tour continued afterwards, but maybe not for long. The subjects of Houdini's lectures were the same as those in his first two stories and in many of the letters that he answered in "Ask Houdini," namely, spiritualistic hoaxes, fake mediums, and fraudulent séances. His book A Magician Among the Spirits, written on the same topics, was published in May. The great escapist spent late spring and summer investigating fake psychics and fake mediums. By then Weird Tales was approaching death's door and Houdini's association with the magazine had reached its end.

The association was never a natural one anyway. As the letters in "Ask Houdini" indicate--moreover, as many of the stories published early on in the magazine indicate--readers and writers were inclined towards spiritualism, automatic writing, ectoplasm, mediums, séances, and so forth, while Houdini was a thoroughgoing skeptic and an active debunker of all of those things. He would have been, I think, an unwelcome guest, and like Arthur Conan Doyle, they couldn't have been very happy with his efforts. But then Weird Tales magazine and weird fiction in general were still in their early stages. The small, cramped, and shabby belief system that was and is spiritualism was able to fit easily enough into its very often conventional and unimaginative pages. The cosmic approach and the cosmic view of Lovecraft and others--an approach and view that would push everything outwards and make of Weird Tales what we remember it to have been--was still mostly in the future. Lovecraft was a skeptic, too (even if he mentioned Theosophy in his composition of "The Call of Cthulhu" just two years after the Houdini issues). Maybe he and Houdini would have gotten along just fine.

Books about Houdini mostly skimp on his association with Weird Tales, a little less so on his lecture tour of 1924. I find that odd. It indicates to me a kind of squeamishness when it comes to pulp fiction in general and anything with the word weird attached to it in specific. Houdini was a popular entertainer. Houdini's biographers have written at length about both popular (read low) culture and the unseemly topic of spiritualism. And yet they have shied away from Weird Tales. (At least author William Lindsay Gresham mentioned H.P. Lovecraft in his book. See below for the title.) Or maybe they just didn't see these things as being very important in Houdini's life story. In any case, in this series, I have tried to correct the oversight. I have two or three more entries on Houdini before moving on. Thanks for reading and for staying with me.

Harry Houdini's Stories & Columns in Weird Tales

• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," part one of a two-part serial (Mar. 1924)
• "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924)
• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," part two of a two-part serial (Apr. 1924)
• "Ask Houdini" (letters column; foreword and answers by Houdini to seven letters, Apr. 1924)
• "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924; reprinted in June/July 1939; ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft)
• "Ask Houdini" (letters column; answers by Houdini to fifteen letters, May/June/July 1924)

Of & About Houdini in Weird Tales

• Cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (Mar. 1924)
• Interior art by William F. Heitman illustrating "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (Mar. 1924, page 3)
• Untitled introduction to "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" by The Editor (Mar. 1924, page 4)
• Announcement for the letters column "Ask Houdini" by an anonymous author under the heading of the regular letters column "The Eyrie" (Mar. 1924, page 83)
• Introduction to the letters column "Ask Houdini" by an anonymous author, presumably the editor (Mar. 1924, page 83)
• Cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924)
• Interior art by William F. Heitman illustrating "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924, page 3)
• Interior art by William F. Heitman illustrating "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (Apr. 1924, page 52)
• Heading for the letters column "Ask Houdini" by The Publishers (Apr. 1924, page 86)
• Cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/Jul 1924)
• Interior illustration by William F. Heitman illustrating "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924, page 3)
• Heading for the letters column "Ask Houdini" by The Publishers (May/June/July 1924, page 167)

Further Reading

• Houdini: His Life and Art by The Amazing Randi and Bert Randolph Sugar (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976).
• The Secrets of Houdini by J.C. Cannell (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1973).
• Robots Robots Robots by Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman, editors (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978).
• Houdini's Escapes and Magic by Walter B. Gibson (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1976).
• Secrets of Magic: Ancient and Modern by Walter Gibson (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1967). Illustrated by Kyuzo Tsugami.
• Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls by William Lindsay Gresham (New York: Macfadden Books, 1961; 1967).
• The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman (New York: Atria Books, 2006).
• Harry Houdini: Master of Magic by Robert Kraske (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1973).
• The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales by John Locke (Elkhorn, CA: Off-Trail Publications, 2018).
• The Great Houdini by Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1951; 1965). Introduction by Walter B. Gibson. Illustrated by Louis Glanzman.

The front and back covers of The Great Houdini by Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein (Scholastic T76, 1965). The art is by Louis Glanzman (1922-2013), brother of comic book artists Sam Glanzman (1924-2017) and David C. Glanzman (1928-2013). You'll notice that the back cover here takes the form of a comic book sequence.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley