Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 6 (1927-12).djvu/8



these weird beliefs of our ancestors before you without cutting down the number of stories, by printing short articles of only a page or even less in length. Alvin F. Harlow is the author of this series of very short articles, which he has called Folks Used to Believe. In the space of a page or less in each issue he will describe such legendary weird creatures as the vampire and werewolf; Lilith, first wife of Adam; the salamander, which can sit in a hot fire without being burned; the basilisk, with its deadly poisonous gaze; the phoenix, rising miraculously from its ashes; the barnacle goose, the unicorn, the cockatrice, and many other strange beings in which our ancestors believed.

"Lovecraft's story in the October issue, Pickman's Model, breathes the eeriest, most paralyzing and yet most realistic atmosphere of horror I have encountered anywhere, fiction or fact," writes Jack Snow, of Dayton, Ohio. "Most weird tales are fantasies pure and simple, told in a manner that is momentarily convincing. But Lovecraft's tales make you halt in the middle of a downtown business street and remark uneasily to yourself: 'Why, that might happen!' Lovecraft is the realist of weird fiction."

Max F. Myers, of Lewistown, Pennsylvania, writes to The Eyrie: "Mr. Lovecraft deserves pæans of praise for his latest, Pickman's Model. It is my estimation of a weird tale in every sense of the word. I believe that his technique is unparalleled by any of the authors who contribute to your magazine (my apologies to Mr. Quinn). 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' Perhaps that is why I went into ecstasies of joy and whooped with delight when I found Lovecraft's name on a story in the October issue."

Such enthusiastic letters encourage us to give you the heartening news that Lovecraft's greatest story, The Call of Cthulhu, will shortly be published in. We are fully aware that in calling this story Lovecraft's finest we are setting a high mark for the tale to live up to, for he has written such masterpieces as The Outsider, The Festival, and The Rats in the Walls; but we feel that the vaulting imagination the author displays in this story, his supreme artistry, and the uncanny hold that the tale takes on the reader make The Call of Cthulhu one of the greatest and most powerful works of weird fiction ever written.

Writes Iris Lora Thorpe, of Portland, Oregon: "The poem, Lake Desolation, by Leavenworth Macnab, in the August issue of, was wonderful, and I shall never forget the story, The City of Glass. As the secretary of the Northwest Poetry Society, I read a very great deal of poetry, and in I find some very fine work."

E. L. Mengshoel, of Minneapolis, writes to The Eyrie: "I have bought and read every issue of for the last two years, and I am going to keep on reading that 'different' magazine. Its unique literature affords