Guy L. Helms (1898-1932)

Soldier, Newspaperman, Editor, Author

Born September 8, 1898, Salisbury, North Carolina

Died February 21, 1932, Salisbury, North Carolina

Guy Liston Helms was born on September 8, 1898, in Salisbury, North Carolina, to Clarence E. and Emma B. Helms. He enlisted in the U.S. Army before the American entry into the Great War and served as a recruiter in his hometown of Salisbury in 1916-1917. Helms trained at Fort Caswell, North Carolina, and went overseas, to France, in late 1917 or early 1918. He served in the 4th Company, 2nd Trench Mortar Battery, 2nd Infantry Division, a division that fought in most of the major engagements on the Western Front from July to November 1918. Helm's division served in occupied Germany after the war and returned to the United States in July 1919. Helms attained the rank of sergeant during his time in service.

Guy Helms was gassed during the Great War, though I don't know when or where. That injury determined the course of the rest of his life and resulted in his early death. After returning stateside and being discharged in May 1919, he took up studies in electrical engineering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That didn't last long, for in October 1919, he had to give up his studies and repair to a hospital in Statsen (sic), Wisconsin. Helms tried again, entering Columbia University, in Missouri, in the summer of 1920. Yet again he was forced to give up his studies and return to a hospital in Milwaukee.

The third time may have been the charm. In late 1920 or early 1921, Helms began studying at the Marquette University School of Journalism. In 1922, while still a student, he worked as poetry and exchange editor at the Marquette Journal. That same year he was appointed chief of staff of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), department of Wisconsin. He had previously been editor of Legion-Airs, a monthly newspaper printed by the Sergeant Arthur Kloepful Post of the American Legion in Milwaukee. By 1925, Helms was back with the American Legion as the editor of The Badger Legionnaire and director of a news bureau, which wrote and distributed news stories of interest to Wisconsin veterans.

Guy L. Helms wrote just one story for Weird Tales, "The Dancing Partner," in the jumbo-sized first-anniversary issue of May/June/July 1924. Helms would have been at the time affiliated with veterans' organizations, probably the American Legion, which had its national headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Indianapolis was also the city in which Weird Tales had its editorial offices (perhaps a grandiose description of what must have been only one or two rooms in an ordinary office building). By late 1924, both Weird Tales and The American Legion Magazine were being printed by the Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis. The November 1924 issue of Weird Tales was the first in which Farnsworth Wright, another veteran of the war, was credited as editor. I write all of this to point out that, again as in the case of Orville R. Emerson, there's reason to think that veterans of the Great War were drawn to submit their stories to Weird Tales through some kind of connection to the American Legion. I don't know what evidence there might be in favor of such a supposition--maybe an advertisement or a bit of correspondence. More likely, any evidence of such a connection has long since disappeared.

Guy L. Helms returned to his hometown of Salisbury, North Carolina, late in life, and that is where he died, on February 21, 1932, from complications of having been gassed during the war. He was survived by his parents, his wife, and his two children and was buried at Salisbury National Cemetery in Salisbury.

* * *

This is how I will close out the hundredth-anniversary year of the end of the Great War, which was, as should be so painfully clear to us now, one of the most disastrous events in human history. Like Guy Helms and millions of other men and women, we are still paying a price for that war, and we will go on paying a price far into the future. I hope there will come a time when we and our civilization will recover, just as its veterans hoped that they would one day recover. There is so much that depends on it. Some of the alternatives are unthinkable. They may in fact represent a slow slide into ice. The fire of the past might have been preferable, despite all of the suffering, pain, destruction, and death it caused, for even as the fire raged, there was still a chance for a different outcome. Now we are left in the aftermath of the war, living closer to ice than to fire. But as Robert Frost wrote, "for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice."

Guy L. Helms' Story in Weird Tales

"The Dancing Partner" (May/June/July 1924)

Further Reading

I have assembled this biography from snippets of information appearing in newspapers in North Carolina and Wisconsin from about 1915 to 1932. There is otherwise little that I could find on Helms, his life, or his career. I have to wonder, though, whether he was related to Jesse Helms, the longtime senator from North Carolina.

(Despite the image above:)

Happy New Year to Readers of Weird Tales!

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Robert H. Leitfred (1891-1968)

Aka Robert Fleming
Stenographer, Soldier, Author
Born August 5, 1891, Syracuse, New York
Died August 16, 1968, Orange County, California

Robert Henry Leitfred was born on August 5, 1891, in Syracuse, New York, to Henry and Jennie (Bennett) Leitfred. The surname is unusual. Nonetheless, it's not easy to find information on Robert H. Leitfred in newspapers, public records, or the Internet. As a young man, he worked as a stenographer. On October 26 (or 27 or 28), 1914, Leitfred married another stenographer, Mildred Snyder, in Syracuse.

In 1918, Leitfred enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served in a motorcycle unit and was in France from 1918 to 1919 before returning to his civilian job as a stenographer. According to The FictionMags Index, his first published story was in Detective Tales in December 1923/January 1924. Detective Tales was a companion magazine to Weird Tales. (The first issue was actually published in October 1922, five months before Weird Tales.) We might take that as Leitfred's introduction to Rural Publishing Company and its magazine titles, but his first story in Weird Tales was not published until 1935. In the intervening years he had dozens of stories in war, aviation, Western, and other types of pulp magazines. From his start in 1923 to his finish in 1951, these included Aces, Airplane Stories, Black Book Detective Magazine, Breezy Stories, Detective Story Magazine, Over the Top, Short Stories, Sky Birds, Three Star Magazine and Three Star Stories, War Stories, Western Trails, Wings, and other titles. Leitfred's credits in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and weird fiction include the following:

• "The Vanishing Ray" in Detective Tales (Dec. 1923/Jan. 1924)
• "Where Gravity Ends" in Air Wonder Stories #3 (Sept. 1929)
• "Prisoners of the Electron" in Astounding Stories of Super Science (Oct. 1930)
• "Prisms of Space" in Astounding Stories (Nov. 1933)
• "Yellow Doom" in Weird Tales (May 1935)
• "Seven Seconds of Eternity" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1940)
• "Core of the Purple Flame" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1941)

Under his pseudonym Robert Fleming, he wrote:

• "Thunder Over the Channel" in Battle Birds (Feb. 1942)
• "Just About Eels" in Fantastic Adventures (Aug. 1942)

Leitfred also wrote short stories published in newspapers during the early 1950s, three hardbound crime-detective novels in the 1930s, and a paperback novel in the 1950s:

• The Corpse That Spoke (1936)
• The Man Who Was Murdered Twice (1937)
• Death Cancels the Evidence (1938)
• Murder Is My Racket (1952)

In about 1930, Leitfred moved to Laguna Beach, California, to be among the growing colony of writers there. He went to Laguna Beach with Robert C. Du Soe (1920-1964), formerly of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, then and later an author of adventure stories and children's books. I have names of other writers who lived and worked in Laguna Beach during the 1930s, but those will have to wait for another day and another entry.

Robert H. Leitfred died on August 16, 1968, in Orange County, California, less than two weeks after his seventy-seventh birthday.

Robert H. Leitfred's Stories & Letter in Weird Tales

"Yellow Doom" (May 1935)
"Seven Seconds of Eternity" (Sept. 1940)
Letter to "The Eyrie" (Sept. 1940)
"Core of the Purple Flame" (Nov. 1941)

Further Reading
See "Robert H. Leitfred-Author" on the website PulpFlakes, July 15, 2017, here. For more on Robert C. Du Soe, see Clear Heart Blog by Joe Cottonwood, in an entry of September 6, 2012, here.

Robert H. Leitfred's story "The Vanishing Ray" was in Detective Tales in its December 1923/January 1924 issue. For a year or so, Detective Tales was a companion magazine to Weird Tales. You can see the connection in the cover designs for the two magazines in 1923-1924. All or most of these were two-color designs (usually red and black, as in this cover). Many of the artists did double duty as well, for instance, R.M. Mally, who created this design, as well as the covers for Weird Tales for most of the period June 1923-May/June/July 1924. As for Leitfred's story, I don't know what it's about, but the title makes me think there is some kind of proto-science-fictional theme or elements.

Without my intending to, this is becoming a series relating to World War I and a few of the tellers of weird tales who were also veterans of the war. Robert Leitfred was among them. I don't know in what unit he served and whether he saw combat, but Leitfred wrote war stories for years after his return to the United States in 1919. His story "The Fourth Squad," for example, was in Three Star Stories for July 1929 (#1). The cover art includes the artist's monogram, but I don't know who he or she was.

As the 1920s and stories of war gave way to the 1930s and a proliferation of crime and detective tales, Leitfred wrote more in those two genres. His story "The Devil Laughed" was the cover story for Detective Fiction Weekly for October 10, 1936. I don't know the name of the cover artist.

Leitfred had another cover story in Weird Tales in September 1940. It's called "Seven Seconds of Eternity," and the cover art, by Ray Quigley (1909-1998), is strange beyond belief.

After nearly thirty years as a professional writer, Robert H. Leitfred began to wind down in the early 1950s. Whether that was by choice or by the vicissitudes of the market, I can't say. In any case, he had a last hurrah as the author of a paperback crime-detective novel, Murder Is My Racket, a Harlequin book from 1952.

Text and captions copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

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

I sense two possible connections between Orville R. Emerson and Weird Tales, connections other than his authorship of a story for the first issue of the magazine.

First, Emerson's father, Reverend Frank W. Emerson, was affiliated with the Prohibition Party prior to World War I. Emerson himself was a member of the American Legion, which was established in 1919. In the year of its founding, the American Legion moved its headquarters to Indianapolis, Indiana. That same year, a young man of Pennsylvania, recently out of the U.S. Navy, also relocated to Indianapolis to work on an organ of the Prohibition Party. The young man's name was Jacob Clark Henneberger. In 1922, he formed, with his friend John M. Lansinger, Rural Publishing Corporation. Although the firm was based in Chicago, the editorial offices for its new magazine of 1923, Weird Tales, were in Indianapolis. I think it possible that Orville R. Emerson learned of Weird Tales through his father's connections to the Prohibition Party, more likely through his own connections to the American Legion. Both connections eventually led to Indianapolis, home also of the magazine in which his first and only story was published. By coincidence, the Cornelius Printing Company, which effectively gained control of Weird Tales in 1924, were also the printers of The American Legion Magazine beginning that same year.

Second, Orville R. Emerson was married to Lila Strait, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Strait of Redlands, California. J.H. Strait was president of Mutual Orange Distributors of Redlands, which was in business for many years inclusive of the 1920s. Well, in 1920, a future teller of weird tales was working as an orange packer in Redlands, and it wasn't Orville Emerson. Rather, it was F. Georgia Stroup (1882-1952), who had her story "The House of Death" in Weird Tales, by strange coincidence the same month in which Emerson's story "The Grave" appeared. So did F. Georgia Stroup work at Mutual Orange Distributors? And did she know Orville R. Emerson? Could they have talked to each other about their stories and about this new magazine Weird Tales? The possibility is fascinating to consider.

Text copyright 2018, 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

Benjamin F. Ferrill (1897-1960)

Author
Born March 31, 1897, De Soto, Mississippi
Died April 1, 1960, Washington, D.C.

Benjamin Franklin Ferrill was born on March 31, 1897, in De Soto, Mississippi, and was educated by his grandmother, Mrs. Love Ophelia Day Saxon. Ferrill lived in Laurel, Hattiesburg, and Lumberton, Mississippi. He was in Cleveland, Ohio, when he was inducted into the U.S. Army. (His obituary says that he was a World War I veteran. Public records say that he served after the war, in 1920-1921.) Ferrill lived in Washington, D.C., for about forty years, and it was in that city that he married Grace Murray of Providence and Jamestown, Rhode Island, in 1924. The couple had just one child, who was also named Grace. These two women may very well have overshadowed Ferrill, for Grace M. Ferrill, the oldest of eleven children, was a yeomanette at the Naval Training Station at Newport, Rhode Island, during World War I and a grain market reporter for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for forty years. She lived to the century mark. Their daughter, Grace Cecilia Ferrill, nicknamed Bunny, earned degrees in law and psychology and worked for the U.S. Departments of Labor and Treasury, also for many decades, and she lived to be ninety-one. (I think I would still take the career of a pulp writer over that of a government employee.)

Benjamin F. Ferrill wrote dozens of Westerns from 1926 to 1943, for Ace-High Magazine, Action Stories, Cowboy Stories, Fawcett's Triple-X Magazine, Frontier, The Golden West Magazine, Lariat Story Magazine, North-West Stories, West, Western Rangers, Wild West Weekly, and other titles. He also wrote a couple of crime and detective stories, published in Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine and The Underworld Magazine. His work for Weird Tales numbered exactly one short story. It's called "Dead Man's Vengeance," and it appeared in the December 1931 issue of the magazine. His story "The Black Cat's Eyes," originally in West for March 3, 1928, has more recently been reprinted in The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New (2013). Ferrill also wrote short stories for newspapers, including "I'm Tellin' You," which was in the Boston Globe for July 24, 1942.

Benjamin F. Ferrill died on April 1, 1960, in Washington, D.C., and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Benjamin F. Ferrill's Story in Weird Tales

"Dead Man's Vengeance" (Dec. 1931)

Further Reading

You can read more in obituaries for Ferrill ("Ben F. Ferrill Dies in Capitol," Clarion Ledger [MS], Apr. 29, 1960, p. 16), his wife (here), and his daughter (here).

Copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

H.F. Arnold

H.F. Arnold was the author of the short story "The Night Wire," one of the most popular to appear in the pages of Weird Tales between 1924 and 1938. It was voted second-most popular in the issue in which it appeared and was in the top 50 in popularity of all stories published during that period. The subject of Arnold's story is a real-time report of a creeping, malevolent fog that overtakes a city called Xebico, located in some unknown place in the world, out beyond the walls of a lonely night-wire office. "The Night Wire" is an unusual, inventive, and very memorable story. Readers loved it at its first printing and still do. It was reprinted in Weird Tales years after its original appearance and has been anthologized nearly a dozen times since. It has also been translated into German and French. The 1980 film The Fog bears some similarity to H.F. Arnold's story.

H.F. Arnold wrote just three published genre stories, two for Weird Tales, the third for Amazing Stories:

• "The Night Wire" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1926; reprinted Jan. 1933)
• "The City of Iron Cubes" (two-part serial) in Weird Tales (Mar.-Apr. 1929)
• "'When Atlantis Was'" (two-part serial) in Amazing Stories (Oct., Dec. 1937)

The FictionMags Index lists three more pieces by a Henry Arnold and a Henry F. Arnold:

• "The Cowgirl" (article) in Western Novel Magazine (Dec. 1929)
• "Loco Weed: The Cowman's Foe" (article) in Western Novel Magazine (Jan. 1930)
• "Out of Bounds" (short story) in Wings (Spring 1949)

I don't know whether this is our man or not.

H.F. Arnold's Stories in Weird Tales

"The Night Wire" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1926; reprinted Jan. 1933)

"The City of Iron Cubes" in Weird Tales (Mar.-Apr. 1929)

Further Reading

"The Night Wire" is in the public domain, and you can read it on a number of websites. You can read about the story and its author on the blog Sepulchral Stories by E.B. Neslowe in an entry of December 27, 2014, here.

"The Night Wire" by H.F. Arnold was the cover story of the June 1965 issue of Magazine of Horror, edited by Robert A.W. Lowndes. The cover artist was Fred Wolters.

Updates (April 23, 2021; Mar. 23, 2025): I originally wrote about Henry Ferris Arnold, Jr., but I don't think he was the right H.F. Arnold, and so I have moved and stricken through the biographical information I have for him while leaving the information on H.F. Arnold's writing career above. I'm on the case again and will let you know what I find.

Henry Ferris Arnold, Jr.
Public Relations Man, Author, Realtor, Businessman
Born January 2, 1902, Galesburg, Illinois
Died December 16, 1963, Laguna Beach, California

Henry Ferris Arnold, Jr., was born on January 2, 1902, in Galesburg, Illinois, to Henry Ferris Arnold, Sr. (1868-1927) and Anna Pauline (Ward) Arnold (1869-1936). Arnold the younger graduated from Knox College, his father's alma mater, in 1923 with a bachelor of science degree. In summers he worked for the commission that fixed the Canadian-American border in the area of Glacier National Park. Arnold worked in public relations for the movie business, also as a realtor and as a businessman. 

Henry F. Arnold enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 and trained for the tank corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He served with General George S. Patton's Third Army in France and was wounded in the advance in the Saar region of Germany. Arnold recuperated at a hospital in England and was returned to duty in Germany after V-E Day. He separated from the army at the end of 1947 as a first lieutenant. His last duty station was in the United States.

H.F. Arnold lived in Hollywood early in his career and spent the last ten years of his life in Laguna Beach, California. On December 16, 1963, he choked to death on a piece of meat, presumably in his home on Laguna Beach. He was survived by his daughter, three grandchildren, and a sister and was buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, California.

See the website Find A Grave for more on H.F. Arnold, including a photograph.

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Fortean and Cthulhian Phenomena

In yesterday's entry, I tore down The Lurker at the Threshold, a pastiche written by August Derleth, supposedly based on fragments by H.P. Lovecraft, and originally published in 1946. My biggest complaint against this book is its extreme prolixity or verbosity. (And this is coming from someone who can really wear out a topic.) Derleth committed other literary offenses, but he also came up with what I think are some innovations. Whether these were original in The Lurker at the Threshold, or this was just an early example of concepts that had previously appeared in some other work or works, I can't say. However, I'm pretty sure that Derleth tried something here that neither he nor Lovecraft had tried before. By coincidence, the innovation of which I speak has to do with a series I have worked on recently in this blog but which is on hold for now.

I have the Ballantine paperback edition of The Lurker at the Threshold from 1971 and 1976. This book is 186 pages long, but only on page 172 does the author finally get to a point, what we might call a thesis, in other words, far too late for it to carry any great weight or significance. Nevertheless, there it is, towards the end of a sentence that runs to more than 120 words, the first mention in this book of:

"a very large, though usually suppressed, body of occurrences [. . .] contradictory to the total scientific knowledge of mankind [. . .] some of which have been collected and chronicled in two remarkable books by a comparative unknown named Charles Fort [. . . .]" (p. 172) (1)

As you know, Charles Fort (1874-1932) was a free thinker and iconoclast who compiled accounts of strange, anomalous, and unexplained events from history and published them in four collections, beginning with The Book of the Damned in 1919 and ending with Wild Talents in 1932. Fort's main thesis, stated in the first few pages of The Book of the Damned, is that all phenomena are continuous with each other and that the break imposed by science between scientific phenomena and non-scientific or anomalous phenomena is arbitrary and artificial. In short, it's not based in reality, and the persistence and widespread occurrence of anomalous phenomena throughout history demonstrates that fact. Authors of weird fiction were well aware of the work of Charles Fort. Some even drew from it in writing their stories. I don't think there's any better example than "The Earth Owners" by Edmond Hamilton, from Weird Tales, August 1931. Coincidently, Lovecraft mentioned Fort in the very next story in that August issue of the magazine, "The Whisperer in Darkness":

Two or three fanatical extremists went so far as to hint at possible meanings in the ancient Indian tales which gave the hidden beings a non-terrestrial origin; citing the extravagant books of Charles Fort with their claims that voyagers from other worlds and outer space have often visited earth. (p. 36) (2)

As far as I can tell, that's as far as Lovecraft went in his references to Fort. In The Lurker at the Threshold, though, August Derleth went all out, more or less making the case that Fortean phenomena are continuous with Lovecraftian--or what I have called in my title Cthulhian--phenomena. (How do you like the italics for effect?) For several pages following his first mention of Fort, Derleth made a catalogue of sightings, encounters, and events, in the process copying Fort's approach to writing rather than that of his master Lovecraft. There are reports of falls of stones and globular lights in the skies, as well as accounts of unexplained disappearances, including that of Ambrose Bierce, who "hinted at Carcosa and Hali" (p. 175). (3) These Derleth linked to the fictional events of his story. I can't help seeing this as Derleth's subordinating--intentionally or not--H.P. Lovecraft's oeuvre to that of his predecessor Charles Fort. In any case, like the rest of The Lurker at the Threshold, Derleth's catalogue of Forteana and his attempt at establishing continuity among all things, like Fort before him, fails. Despite his passing reference to Fort, Lovecraft never tried to do anything of the sort, and wisely so in my view. Whatever similarities he might have had to Fort as a man, Lovecraft's vision was bigger and more lasting than any of that. (4)

"I felt myself grasped; a tentacle of light wrapped around me." An illustration by C.C. Senf for "The Earth Owners" by Edmond Hamilton, Weird Tales, August 1931. 

Notes 

(1) I tell you, quoting from The Lurker at the Threshold will wear out your ellipses key.

(2) Keep in mind that Fort's third book, Lo!, was published in 1931, the same year in which Hamilton's and Lovecraft's stories went to print. Were these two authors directly influenced or inspired by the publication of Lo!? I don't know. Whatever the case, they were almost certainly aware of Fort's previous books.

(3) One of the main characters in the book is named Ambrose Dewart; Charles Fort had previously remarked on someone in the universe who seemed to be collecting Ambroses.

(4) Charles Fort plays a prominent part in the 2011 film adaptation of "The Whisperer in Darkness" by the way, but clearly out of character for a man who was notoriously withdrawn and decidedly unadventurous, at least late in his life.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley