Uncanny Tales, Arthur Pearson

Not the real cover of this book...

Initial Thoughts

Some of my favourite comics growing up were those black-and-white ones that had strange or mysterious settings, characters, and events. These tales often portrayed horror or supernatural stories with strange photos to go along with them. These comics included, but were not limited to the magazines, Strange Tales and Heavy Metal, and TV shows such as Serling's Twilight Zone. I think it was with this in mind that I found the book of short stories called Uncanny Tales. These are available freely at Gutenberg.org.

Also, a note about the author. Although in the Gutenberg.org text the author is listed as various, there is no information about who those writers were. Further, Google searches seem to indicate that Arthur Person was not just the editor, but also the author.

“The Unknown Quantity”

This tale concerns a haunting of a man, one Professor William James Maynard, who thought nothing of committing a capital crime in his pursuit of his dream of becoming a published and acclaimed mathematician. To that end, he murders his cousin in order to get at the inheritance. With this money, he believes he can develop the research required to make himself famous within his community.

On the one month anniversary of the death of his cousin, however, he discovers that a drop of blood has appeared on his wrist. Every month, on that same anniversary, he finds an ever growing drop of blood. This continues until ultimately, he slashes at his own wrists and kills himself in the process over they mystery of the splotch of blood which is a monthly reminder of the terrible crime that he had committed.

I cannot help but think of Edgar Allen Poe's “The Black Cat.” That's the story where the protagonist kills a cat, but is constantly haunted by it. However, one might say that the protagonist in that story was simply insane from guilt. However, in this story, it is other people who draw his attention to the blood on his wrist. So, we know that this particular haunting is not merely a fatal nag on his conscience, but a supernatural effect from the frightful deed he'd committed for something so trivial as fame. Which reminds me: perhaps I ought to reread Poe's dreadful stories once again. I think it's been long enough that it will be as dreadful to reread as they were the first time I fell in love with Poe's great masterpieces.

“The Armless Man”

This was a somewhat funny story. Bob Masters, the main character of the story and the narrator, are two Englishmen in South Africa, a long way from their native England. Bob has no arms. However, there are moments when Bob needs a pair of arms, and it would seem that he has found them. This becomes very apparent to the narrator on one occasion when he is trying to save Bob from falling off a boat during a rough storm and into the sea, and manages to nearly wreck his own life in the process. He is about to go down into the drink when a pair of unseen hands manages to help him hang onto his life.

Bob explains that the girl whom he'd loved and lost, was with him still. She had somehow, psychically, lent to him her ghost arms whenever he was in dire need.

All goes well until one narcoleptic lady, Nancy, manages to faint as a train is coming into the station. There is nothing anyone might do to save her, except for armless Bob. He manages to save her, but his invisible ghostly arms are crushed in the process. In the end, the mystified doctor who cannot really explain the death says that the condition of his death suggests that he bled out, as of having lost his two arms.

“The Tomtom Clue”

I actually liked this particular sordid tale. Quite simply, a man wants to go and investigate the evidence that lead to his father paying for a capital crime with his life. The fact that his father was hung for murder has ramifications for his own life. His reputation of being the son of a murderer is destroying him.

However, knowing his father well enough, he does not believe the reputation he grew to have. In the effort, he makes his way to South Africa with a friend to investigate the crimes. He coincidentally meets with a chief, and has drinks with the old man. In so doing, the narrator who is the friend, spills much of the nasty tasting beer onto the skin of one of the tomtoms. When he tries to clean the tomtom skin, he discorvers the skin of the father.

Thus it comes about that it was not the father who was the murderer. It was his partner who had killed him and then taken on his name. The man who had hanged for killing a man was the very same as the man who had killed his father. This story is full of irony and dark humour. I really liked it.

“The Case of Sir Alister Moeran”

The narrator of this tale, one Maurice, had served in England's military in India for two years. He had expected to marry his cousin, I believe, on his return. However, this plan is stumped by the fact she had found someone in Egypt whom she fell in love with.

It turns out, however, that the object of her affection, one Sir Alister Moeran, is actually a shape-shifting tiger-vampire. Only through a little luck and preparation are they able to save Ethne, his cousin, from an episode of shape shifting which very nearly killed her.

“The Kiss”

A man wants to kiss a woman. But, even though she leaves him an opening, he declines to take her offer. He believes, however, that in kissing her he will harm her somehow. He tells her he is going away, but the story is not clear on where he's going or why. The reason he cannot kiss her is that he is already married.

Rejected, she walks off. But then, seemingly, he's changed his mind. They do have a kiss. Only, after she has the kiss, as she's leaving the building, she runs into a bit of commotion. A man had jumped from a window to kill himself. That was the very man who kissed her. I believe that this had happened before the actual kiss had taken place. Thus, it would seem the kiss she had gotten was from his ghost.

“The Goth”

This is actually quite a good piece of work. It concerns a man, Cargill, who is visiting a small town and is wooing for the affections of a young woman in that town. When he becomes aware of a superstition, he decides to challenge it. The superstition is that if one takes a boat into a certain lake, Tryn yr Wylfa, and looks down through the waters to see a village under water, that person will drown.

He does take a boat out to the lake, and he does see the sunken village. He laughs it off. The girl whom he held affections for, however, was not impressed. In fact, she says to him that she will not forgive him of his offence only when he has fulfilled the superstition of drowning.

Initially, he seems to have no problem with the superstition. However, as time goes by, he grows increasingly paranoid about it. Despite being described as a champion swimmer, he becomes paranoid at the thought of being close to water. At a point, a child falls into water and starts crying for help. But rather than go to rescue the child, he chooses to run away. This seems to haunt him more than anything.

Thus, he is plagued both by a fear of drowning and guilt at having not even tried to save the boy from drowning. When given an opportunity to make amends, he takes it. A ship is about to wreck herself on the shore during a nasty bout of weather. He takes it upon himself to swim out to the ship with a lifeline attached to him that they might save the crew. This is a suicide mission, and everyone knows it. However, he is more motivated by finding atonement for not saving the child than by self preservation against the superstition. I especially like how the tale ends: “Thus it was that he earned Betty Lardner's foregiveness.”

Of course, the question that I would beg to have answered is whether or not his sacrifice was made fruitlessly. Was the ship saved? Of the stories in this short book, this was perhaps my favourite.

“The Last Ascent”

This is kind of an odd-ball romance. An engineer/pilot manages to fly so high into the sky that he kind of meets some kind of female alien. Mysteriously, on the day that he manages to reach a certain height, his plane manages to land back down to earth without him. No trace of him is found, either. What's more, a certain photographer manages to capture an image of a blurry female at the height of his last ascent.

“The Terror by Night”

I also really appreciated this tale. A man, Maynard, also discards fancy rumours of monsters in a certain Celtic moor. He is fishing when he catches a fish that is too small. He tries to return it to the river, but finds it only too late. He then sacrifices it, with a kind of unbelieving humour, to the gods. As it turns out, as a young lady informs him who is familiar with the area, that the very place where he put the sacrifice and burnt it to a non-existent deity, is an old 'Phoenician altar' where burnt sacrifices used to go.

As he burns the fish, a young lady on a horse comes out to investigate. After having a bit of dinner together, she tells him about the superstition of some sort of Thing which hunts people to death. However, he does not believe her words, and is determined to sleep the night in the moor.

As he sleeps, he is awakened by something. It frightens him. He begins to run as if death itself is in pursuit, even before he thinks to run. Words that she'd said to him before she left were to the effect that cold iron was a thing that the Thing could not cross. He manages to make it to an area where there is a huge iron tyre, which is what purportedly saves him from the Thing.

Ironically, if C. Arthur Pearson is indeed the author of these tales, he too drowned. He drowned after falling in his bathtub and hitting his head.

“The Tragedy at the Loup Noir”

This tale concerns a kind of psychic witness to a murder. A man, in a sort of sleep-state, has set out paints and charcoal along with a canvas for work to be done in the morning. However, when he wakes up, he finds the painting already half way finished. It is of a girl in the act of being strangled. The strangler's portrait had not yet been finished.

In the morning, the girl is found strangled, just like in the painting. He thus becomes the subject of a trial and is quickly sentenced to be hanged. Before the hanging takes place, however, he is given the chance to finish the painting. He does, and the right person is apprehended and made to confess to the crime, saving him from the punishment.

Final Thoughts

All of these stories were fun enough to read. They are mostly fun at heart. I suppose that since I am not superstitious, I can find them comical. I have always found horror to be somewhat comical. Sometimes they make me think of something that I have never thought of before. I didn't find any of these to be particularly awe-inspiring. However, they were a nice escape from normal life.