Weird Tales, Vol. 1, No. 1

Weird Tales, March 1923, Vol. 1, No. 1 — The debut issue of this pulp magazine dedicated to horror and weird fiction features the leading novelette "The Dead Man's Tale" by Willard E. Hawkins and two additional novelettes ("Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud and "The Chain" by Hamilton Craigie). The main story follows Richard Devaney, killed in the Battle of the Marne in 1918, who discovers himself a phantom unable to interact with the living world. As a soldier, he had harbored violent jealousy toward his comrade Louis Winston over their shared romantic interest in Velma Roth. Devaney dies in an artillery barrage while attempting to murder Winston out of spite, only to become an impotent ghost watching Winston grieve over his body. The issue contains twenty-two short horror and weird tales by various authors, including entries by Joel Townsley Rogers, Howard Ellis Davis, and others, plus a full-length serial novel.