"A Penny A Word"

It is sometimes shocking what occult information can be unearthed. While researching my family history, I discovered that my paternal great-grandfather Jacob Klau (d. 1933) wrote short fiction under the pseudonyms “S. B. H. Hurst” and “Bugs Sinnat.” His modest output produced in 1931-32 at least two known short stories for Weird Tales and one story for Oriental Tales. One of the stories “The Ball of Fire” re-appeared in the reprint anthology Oriental Stories edited by William H. Desmond, Diane and John Howard, and Robert K. Weiner (Odyssey Publications OP 3, 1975) and another “The Splendid Lie” was used in [book=100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories:] edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble, 1993). For most of his life, Klau worked as a train conductor and there is strong evidence that he inspired Robert Bloch's classic tale “That Hellbound Train”.

Hungry for more information about my ancestor, I visited the Library of Congress. After a search through government documents turned up nothing further on my great-grandfather on a whim I looked for Weird Tales. Below is the transcript of Vito (Sonny) DiCarlo's shocking May 11, 1951 testimony before Estes Kefauver's legendary Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce (aka The Kefauver Committee), the first such committee established to challenge organized crime. While DiCarlo's statement may on the surface appear ludicrous, it does cast an interesting light on that generation of pulp writers especially Robert E. Howard in whom Kefauver seemed to have a particular interest. The notes in parenthesis are mine. I also cleaned up some the spelling inconsistencies.