Forbidden Worlds #59 (1957)

Ted Mallard, a brilliant but hot-headed scientist, is taken on a secret journey by his reclusive colleague Art Morley to a hidden spaceship, where he meets Theo—a visitor from the advanced planet Klexora. Taken to Klexora, Ted is stunned by the planet’s flawless society and the astonishing intelligence of its children, but his awe turns to unease when Theo reveals their next destination: the insectoid civilization of Micheen-4.

Jo, a woman haunted by her husband Bob Franklin’s strange behavior, recounts how their idyllic marriage was shadowed by his obsessive dread of pianos and Mozart—especially after he abruptly retired and began a frantic, purposeful journey through Europe, culminating in a terrifying night when he played a haunting composition in his sleep, unaware of what he was writing.

In a series of brief, illustrated anecdotes from the Institute of Psychic Research, Dr. Orin Blakely explores the origins of the lucky horseshoe superstition through four stories: a lost battle due to a missing shoe, a prospector’s accidental discovery of gold after discarding a horseshoe, a snakebite narrowly avoided by hurling a horseshoe, and a stamp collector whose safe survives an explosion thanks to a horseshoe nailed to it. Each tale presents a different twist on how a horseshoe might have brought luck, blending folklore and coincidence in a lighthearted, speculative look at why the belief persists.

When a grieving man named Hal Thornton begins seeing his presumed-dead wife Edith in photographs taken years after her plane crash, he turns to Professor Jonathan Welles for help. As the mysterious figure in the photos consistently points west—first toward the setting sun, then across states, and finally to a specific hospital in Los Angeles—the two men follow the trail in a race against time and the unknown.