Weird Tales, March 1923

# Weird Tales, March 1923

This inaugural issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales features twenty-two short stories, three novelettes, and one serialized novel across 180 pages. Editor Edwin Baird positions the magazine as publishing "gooseflesh" horror fiction deliberately rejected by mainstream editors, targeting readers who enjoy "fantastic," "grotesque," and "strange and bizarre adventure."

The lead novelette is "The Dead Man's Tale" by Willard E. Hawkins, presented as automatic writing from physicist Dr. John Pedric. The story follows Richard Devaney, killed in the July 1918 Battle of the Marne, who unexpectedly discovers consciousness persists after death—contradicting his prior materialist beliefs that consciousness terminates when the body dies.

Anthony M. Rud contributes another novelette. Otis Adelbert Kline's serial novel, "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," begins a two-part story. Other short stories include "The Mystery of Black Jean" by Julian Kewdan, "The Ghoul and the Corpse" by G.A. Wells, "The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni" by Joseph Faus and James Bennett Wooding, and Walter Scott Story's "The Sequel," a continuation of Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." Contributors include Howard Eris Davis, Herbert J. Manchest, and Harold Ward.