William Hope Hodgson

The Ghostbusting Duo

There’s nothing better than reading a mystery that has a ghost or a monster in it. And that’s essentially what the occult detective genre is. A fusion of the traditional detective whodunit and the horror story.

Now, I will admit my description is a bit of an oversimplification. But for now, let’s run with it.

The prince, if not the king, of the ghostbusters is undoubtedly Jules de Grandin. Only Thomas Carnacki is perhaps more well-known.

Carnacki was the creation William Hope Hodgson. And Carnacki pastiches are almost as numerous as those of Sherlock Holmes. I’ll talk about Carnacki in another post.

Jules de Grandin and his “Watson”, Dr Trowbridge, were the creation of Seabury Quinn. They appeared in 92 stories and 1 novel, in the pages of Weird Tales magazine. From 1925 to 1951, the exploits of this dynamic duo thrilled readers of the Unique Magazine like no other.

GW Thomas, on his now defunct website, archived here, summarized de Grandin in this way:

Jules de Grandin is the master of the outrageous detective genre. Everything about him is over-the-top from his Hercule Poirot moustache to his outbursts of stilted French. De Grandin and his Watson-like companion, Dr. Trowbridge, live in Harrisonville, NJ, a town haunted by monsters, mad scientists and all manner of weird phenomena. As with Carnacki, not all of de Grandin’s adversaries were supernatural. The de Grandin stories appeared only in Weird Tales, where they were the most popular of all characters, beating even Conan the Cimmerian and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

From what I’ve read, Mr Thomas was spot on. Of all the writers who contributed to Weird Tales, Seabury Quinn was the most popular and, as a result, was paid at a higher rate.

Of all the characters to appear in WT, de Grandin was the most popular. And it was the promise of a serialized Jules de Grandin novel that held off the debt holders from shutting the magazine down in 1931.

Seabury Quinn and Jules de Grandin dominated Weird Tales. Quinn’s only real challenger was Allison V Harding in the 1940s.

Yet, Quinn was unfairly maligned and minimized by the Lovecraft Circle (because HPL didn’t like Quinn’s style and perhaps the fact that he wrote for money) and it has only been within the last dozen or so years that Quinn has come under reassessment. And I’m glad he has, because he was a good writer and should not be forgotten.

What I find interesting is that for all of de Grandin’s popularity, he was the product of having to meet a deadline. Quinn, himself, wrote:

One evening in 1925 I was at that state that every writer knows and dreads; a story was due my publisher, and there didn’t seem to be a plot in the world. Accordingly, with nothing particular in mind, I picked up my pen and — literally making it up as I went along — wrote the first story which appears in this book.

I don’t know what collection of stories GW Thomas got that quote from, but I find it simply delightful. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

I own the 5 volume Nightshade Books edition of The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin. You can, of course, find them on Amazon.

I’ve read over a dozen of the stories and I like them. The fun quotient is high and each story will give you an enchanting hour’s worth of entertainment. What more can you ask from a story?

Should you begin reading the de Grandin tales, and I encourage you to do so, keep in mind they were written for a monthly or bimonthly magazine. The storylines are somewhat formulaic. Certainly written to an established pattern. But then, so were the tales of Sherlock Holmes’ exploits.

I would recommend not reading more than a couple stories at one sitting in order to keep their charm and appeal fresh. Plus, doing so, will give you many, many days and weeks of reading pleasure. And who doesn’t want that?

Seabury Quinn was a superb storyteller. He had over 500 publishing credits during his lifetime, and was himself a magazine editor.

Approaching Quinn as a reader, I can say that he delivers the goods. He succeeds in transporting me to another time and place, and provides the entertainment value I’m looking for.

Approaching Quinn as a writer, I sit at the feet of a master and learn the craft of how to tell a story so that it will move the reader.

Last Christmas, I read Quinn’s Roads (his classic Christmas tale) to my sister and nephew. So captivating was Quinn’s prose that my nephew, at one point, uttered an interjection of awe. If only all of us writers could have that happen!

The occult detective genre is rich with exciting and spooky and chilling stories. The exploits of Jules de Grandin and Dr Trowbridge deliver on all counts.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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The Occult Detective

Fear is one of our oldest emotions — if not the oldest. And fear of the unknown is one of our greatest fears.

I don’t know what I don’t know, and that lack of knowing scares us. It is primal, that fear of the unknown.

Fear, and playing on our fears, is the stock in trade of the writer of the macabre. Those spinners of stories that parade our fears before us and scare us to death — and we love it.

For all of our façade of sophistication, biologically speaking we are no different than our ancestors from 300,000 years ago. We may no longer be afraid of thunder and lightning, and we may have outgrown our fear of what’s under our beds — we are, however, still controlled by our fears.

Just look at the nightly news. Listen to David Muir’s tone of voice. He’s playing into our fears. And how often do we say, “I’m afraid…” — no matter the context?

Is it any wonder that the tale of terror, the horror story, has never lost its appeal with readers?

Of late, I’ve been reading in the Weird West and Occult Detective genres.

I grew up watching Westerns on TV, although I didn’t read any until recently. I suggest any writers reading this to pick up a few old Westerns and read them. You will quickly see how most genre fiction today is really a Western in disguise.

The Weird West, as the name suggests, infuses the old West with something weird. It could be ghosts, demons, mad scientists, monsters of one sort or another, just as long as it falls into the category of weird fiction.

The Weird West is a somewhat recent category. The earliest examples I’ve found date from the 1950s.

The Occult Detective, on the other hand, had its beginnings in mid-1800s, and picked up steam in the wake of the success of Sherlock Holmes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been impressed with the Weird West stories I’ve been reading. They are either too weird, or they come off too campy.

On the other hand, the Occult Detective stories I’ve read have been quite good, on the whole.

For contemporary stories featuring occult detectives, I turn to the pages of Occult Detective Magazine. You can find their website here. They are the only publication totally devoted to the Occult Detective genre. It’s one super magazine, and I heartily recommend it.

Then there are the classics. Those occult detectives that began appearing in the 1890s and perhaps reached their peak in the 1940s and 1950s.

Flaxman Low probably started the subgenre, at least in the form that we know it today. He was the creation of E and H Heron. The stories are pretty good, although some readers might find them somewhat slow going. Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low is the only current edition I’ve found (both free and for purchase) that contains all of the stories. It is priced at present for less than $2, and that is a steal.

Thomas Carnacki, the creation of William Hope Hodgson, is perhaps the most famous of all occult detectives, and Carnacki pastiches abound. You can find the original stories at Carnacki the Ghost-Finder for free. Marcus L Rowland also provides a publishing history.

If you want the stories in book form, you can find them all in The House On Borderland And Other Mysterious Places, which is volume 2 of The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.

Thus far, my favorite among our Fighters of Fear is Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin.

Quinn wrote some 500 stories for the pulp fiction magazines. He was Weird Tales’ most popular writer and was paid at a higher rate than any other writer published by the magazine.

Today, Quinn is little known. Which is a shame. He was an engaging, entertaining, and talented writer.

However, a large selection of his work is available for free on the Internet. And publishers are finally starting to reprint his stories. All I can say is that it’s about time.

All of the Jules de Grandin stories have been collected in 5 volumes by Night Shade Books. You can find the books on Amazon.

Flaxman Low, Thomas Carnacki, Jules de Grandin, and Occult Detective Magazine. That should be enough to get you started enjoying the spooky and sometimes terrifying weird world of the occult detective.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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Terror in the Shadows – Sneak Peek

The third Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation — Terror in the Shadows — goes live next week. And today I thought I’d give you a sneak peek. Whet your appetite, so to speak.

Terror in the Shadows draws inspiration from the world HP Lovecraft created for his story “The Lurking Fear”. And as I explained last week, Lovecraft utilized the American Gothic fiction theme of the abhuman for the basis of his story.

The term “abhuman” was coined by William Hope Hodgson in his Carnacki stories, among others. The idea itself growing out of Darwinism. If we came from beasts, how are we not beasts? What is it that makes us human? And can we return to the bestial? Or maybe we simply are beasts hiding behind a veneer of civility.

Today’s sneak peek is from chapter 1 of Terror in the Shadows. Enjoy!

***

Mostyn looked out the window. The country through which they were driving could be described as nothing less than idyllic. Yet in all of the United States there are areas no more remote or unknown than parts of Appalachia. In spite of the relatively low height of the mountains, the region possesses some of the most rugged and nearly inaccessible terrain on earth.

From the beauty of the passing scenery, Mostyn once again turned his gaze back to the report. From the Catskills to Georgia, the same occurrences of cannibalism and human carnage. As abruptly as the Georgia horror had begun, in the 1940s, it had ended, news reaching the Federal government too late for war-stretched agencies to do anything about it. Then thirty years later, in the same area, bizarre tales of cannibalism and of the inhabitants of several small communities being torn apart on dark, storm tormented nights. Only blood and body parts being found in the morning.

And once again, as abruptly as the atrocities began, they ceased, news reaching Federal ears too late for any kind of government intervention. These accounts, along with many others, were passed on to the OUP when it was created. This time, however, word reached Doctor Bardon’s ears almost before it had reached the media. And when it did, Doctor Bardon jumped on it.

Mostyn read about the three reported incidents that had occurred so far this year in West Virginia, the four that had occurred last year, and the one the year before that. Brutal murders. Evidence of cannibalism. Vague reports of hairy, beast-like creatures that walked upright with an oddly human gait.

Around him were the sounds of Baker’s camera, Kemper’s and Cashel’s discussion, and Jones softly singing some ‘80s song. Somewhere out there, in the lush greenery of the hills they were passing through, was a hidden horror, a lurking fear that was terrorizing the people in the vicinity of the hamlet called Heirloom, West Virginia.

Four days ago, in the middle of a wild nighttime thunderstorm, was the most recent occurrence. In the little unincorporated village of Shiloh, located several miles to the southeast of Heirloom, a witness reported seeing at least half a dozen shapes, “things” the witness had called them, come out of the dense forest. That’s all the person saw because he’d found his missing dog and was on his way home.

The next day, however, the entire community quickly became aware of the disaster that had struck in the night. The Ardilla and Bosk families had been murdered in their sleep and eaten. Raw. The perpetrators showed no concern about hiding the dead or of concealing evidence. The county sheriff got numerous fingerprints, handprints, and casts of bare feet. Samples of hair were also collected. The forensic analysis concluded the hair was human, as well as the teeth marks on the bones.

And that’s when Doctor Bardon stepped in and claimed jurisdiction. Mostyn looked at Bardon’s small neat script and read his conclusion:

The incidents in the Catskills and those that occurred in Georgia in the 1940s and 1970s are too similar to these current incidents to ignore. Your mission is to determine the source, assess the danger level, and take appropriate action to eliminate the threat, if a threat exists, to the United States of America.

Mostyn’s gaze returned to the scenery outside his window. Somewhere out there was a horror that had been quietly at work for nearly a hundred years. Perhaps more. A horror hidden in the shadows of this beautiful paradise.

***

I hope you enjoyed the snippet. Comments are always welcome, and until next time — happy reading!

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