Ghost Stories, June 1931

by John Gregory Betancourt (Editor), Conrad Richter (Contributor), E.H. Heron (Contributor)

This reprint of Ghost Stories (Vol. 10, No. 6), features contributions from Conrad Richter (author of THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST) and a story by E. and H. Heron featuring their psychic detective, Flaxman Low.

132 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

John Gregory Betancourt is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and mystery novels as well as short stories. He has worked as an assistant editor at Amazing Stories and editor of Horror: The Newsmagazine of the Horror Field, the revived Weird Tales magazine, the first issue of H. P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror (which he subsequently hired Marvin Kaye to edit), Cat Tales magazine (which he subsequently hired George H. Scithers to edit), and Adventure Tales magazine. He worked as a Senior Editor for Byron Preiss Visual Publications (1989-1996) and iBooks. He is the writer of four Star Trek novels and the new Chronicles of Amber prequel series, as well as a dozen original novels. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as Writer's Digest and The Washington Post.

Reviews

[Thomas Rau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars, but don't let that deter you. I like pulp fiction, have read several of these facsimile reprints, and publications in other forms. This one just didn't do it for me - the stories are, mostly, ludicrous and terrible, which I usually don't mind. Here, I did. Give me spicy stuff and adventures, horror and fantasy, all great, but this pulp magazine wasn't for me.

There are several non-fiction features about numerology, graphology, horoscopes, that kind of stuff, that I found fascinatingly boring. Again, if you want to be fascinated, go for it.

One redeeming feature was the middle section of the three-parter "The Phantom Menace of the Screen" by Arthur T. Joliffe: An evil (and undead?) hypnotist uses his powers and science to manipulate the shooting of a film so that everybody who watches the film turns into a violent maniac - using the fairly recent invention of the optical sound track. A much-used trope, but this is the oldest version applied to film that I know of.