Tag: Hans W. Wessolowski

This was the 7th and final issue. It also includes The Cairn on the Headland by Robert E. Howard, and the entire issue can be downloaded here.

This issue also contained a mystery that endured for almost thirty five years. On page 106 is a blurb about the stories in the next issue. They were The Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard, The Seed From The Sepulchre by Clark Ashton Smith and The Case Of The Crusader’s Hand by Gordon MacCreah. The problem here was that there never actually was a “next” issue. This was the final one. So what happened to the stories? Well, the Clark Ashton Smith story was picked up by Weird Tales for the October, 1933 issue. The MacCreah story, which would have been the third in his Dr. Muncing series, languished until 1951 when it appeared in Weird Tales for January of that year. By then it had been rewritten without Dr. Muncing and retitled The Hand Of St. Ury. But what about the Howard story? There was much speculation over the years. Had Howard changed the title and sold it somewhere else? They couldn’t ask Howard since he had committed suicide in 1936. A couple of Howard stories were suggested as possibilities. The Valley of the Worm and King of the Forgotten People. The mystery wasn’t solved until 1967 when, at the urging of editor Robert A.W. Loundes, Glenn Lord went through the Howard papers in his possession and discovered the original typed manuscript. There was no question that this was the correct story because attached to it was the letter from Strange Tales editor Harry Bates explaining why he was returning it. Apparently Howard never tried to sell the story to any other magazine. Lowndes published the story for the very first time, along with the letter from Bates, in his Startling Mystery Stories magazine for Spring 1967 as The Secret of Lost Valley.

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