Astounding Stories #22

Frank Embree, a reckless fortune-hunter who's squandered his inheritance, ventures into the Arizona desert seeking uranium riches—only to stumble through an explosive accident into a hidden subterranean empire teeming with gold and precious gems. The peaceful civilization that thrives in the depths offers him shelter, but Frank's greed keeps pulling him toward their most sacred treasure, a massive ruby idol that he can't stop coveting. When temptation finally gets the better of him, he learns just how serious the people from down under are about protecting their secret world.

A shady pawnbroker acquires a mysterious spyglass from a desperate stranger and discovers it possesses a terrifying power: anyone he peers through it at falls under a sudden, inexplicable spell. As Mac Macauley realizes the lens can kill without leaving a trace, he begins to contemplate using this deadly gift to transform his fortunes—but such power demands a reckoning he may not anticipate.

George Hastings and Alicia Bradwell, distant descendants of a pair of Colonial-era lovers, inherit the notorious haunted Cragside Hall together—much to each other's dismay. When they arrive at the crumbling mansion, they're confronted by eerie moans and a woman's voice singing a melancholy ballad, seemingly coming from nowhere, drawing the two into the house's darkest secrets. As George and Alicia investigate the strange phenomena, they uncover hidden passages and discover that the supernatural disturbances may hold the key to understanding what really happened to their ancestors all those years ago.

An antique dealer's greed gets the better of him when he discovers a mysterious mirror with a sinister power: at the stroke of midnight, it draws out a person's evil nature and releases their good counterpart into the world. When Homer Marson realizes he can exploit this supernatural artifact for his own twisted purposes, he sets a trap—but the mirror has plans of its own. As the line between good and evil literally walks out of the glass, Homer finds himself facing a version of himself he never expected to meet.

Elliot O'Donnell, a man gifted—or cursed—with the ability to perceive the supernatural, recounts his encounters with ghosts spanning decades, from a spectral visitation in a Dublin attic room that altered his life's direction to his later investigations of hauntings across Britain. Through vivid accounts of eerie manifestations—a mocking phantom, a mysterious eye in a tree, and a ghostly hand that leaves an cryptic message on a wall—O'Donnell demonstrates his expertise in the realm of things unseen, each encounter drawing him deeper into his unconventional career studying the unexplained.

When Margaret Blythe arrives to claim her inheritance of Lawrence Manor, she bears an uncanny resemblance to a portrait of Margaret Anders, an ancestor of the first Roger Lawrence who vanished centuries ago—and Roger Lawrence, the current heir, finds himself haunted by impossible memories that seem to belong to someone else entirely. As doubt about her legitimacy threatens to tear the family apart, Margaret experiences strange visions and dreams that pull her deeper into a past that shouldn't be hers, leading her on a disorienting journey through time itself. "Back to Yesterday" explores the mysteries of reincarnation and buried lives, asking whether the bonds that bind two souls can survive across the centuries.