Various

“ His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet life. He was too much of an animal, too little a man; yet it is through his deficiency that you have come to discover me, for the cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been my torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years. I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep, I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in the effulgent valleys. ”

“ The sorry planet shell being well-nigh spent, in less than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity.
A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. ”

“ From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged that he and the luminous thing had met on equal terms; that in his dream existence the man was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent references to flying through space and burning all that impeded his progress. Yet these conceptions were formulated in rustic words wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which drove me to the conclusion that if a true dream world indeed existed, oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought. ”

“ The lips, too, seemed unusual; being tightly compressed, as if by the force of a stronger character than had been Slater's. The whole face finally began to grow tense, and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes. I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged headbands of my telepathic "radio" intent to catch any parting message the dreamer might have to deliver. ”

“ Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream life of Joe Slater, I sought these instruments again; and spent several days in repairing them for action. When they were complete once more I missed no opportunity for their trial. At each outburst of Slater's violence, I would fit the transmitter to his forehead and the receiver to my own; constantly making delicate adjustments for various hypothetical wave-lengths of intellectual energy. ”

“ From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. ”

“ Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences—Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism—there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permits of no ordinary interpetation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. ”

“ The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation of the trouble; dreams whose vividness could for a time completely dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior man. With due formality Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and committed to the institution wherein I held so humble a post.
I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream life, and from this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to the study of the new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of his case. ”

“ It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves of radiant energy like heat, light, and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period. ”

“ The deeds of a real witch, who afterward comes to a horrible supernatural end in prison, are glibly imputed to the hapless Maria; and after a typical witchcraft trial with forced confessions under torture she is about to be burned at the stake when saved just in time by her lover, a noble youth from a neighbouring district. Meinhold's great strength is in his air of casual and realistic verisimilitude, which intensifies our suspense and sense of the unseen by half persuading us that the menacing events must somehow be either the truth or very close to the truth. ”

“ The horror-tales of the powerful and cynical Guy de Maupassant, written as his final madness gradually over-took him, presents individualities of their own; being rather the morbid outpourings of a realistic mind in a pathological state than the healthily imaginative product of a vision naturally disposed toward phantasy and sensitive to the normal illusions of the unseen. ”

“ He had habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. ”

“ Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the south, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of the native American people.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when I first beheld him. ”

“ Later on we see the stream divide, producing strange poets and fantasists of the symbolist and decadent schools whose dark interests really centre more in abnormalities of human thought and instinct than in the actual supernatural, and subtle story-tellers whose thrills are quite directly derived from the night-black wells of cosmic unreality. ”

“ Generally they convey the grotesque rather than the terrible. Most artistic of all the continental weird tales is the German classic Undine, (1814) by Friedrich Hein-Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouque. In this story of a water-spirit who married a mortal and gained a human soul there is a delicate fineness of craftsmanship which makes it notable in any department of literature, and an easy naturalness which places it close to the genuine folk-myth. ”

“ It is in Theopile Gautier that we first seem to find an authentic French sense of the unreal world, and here there appears a spectral mastery which, though not continuously used, is recognisable at once as something alike genuine and profound. ”

“ As two men of moderate size sought to restrain him, he had struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and need to find and kill a certain "thing that shines and shakes and laughs". ”

“ With this issue, we are dedicating each number to someone or something. H. P. Lovecraft, one of the greatest writers of the weird alive today, well deserves the honor of being the first, with a story and long instalment of his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" for October. The November issue will be dedicated to Clark Ashton Smith, December to Edgar Allan Poe, (in this issue Mr. Lovecraft's article deals entirely with Poe and is the longest one yet) and the January number to Weird Poetry. ”

“ Victor Hugo, in such tales as Hans of Iceland, and Balzac, in The Wild Ass's Skin, Seraphita, and Louis Lambert, both employ supernaturalism to a great or less extent; though generally only as a means to some more human end, and without the sincere and daemonic intensity which characterises the born artist in shadows. ”

“ Lovecraft's serial article; and 'Weird Whisperings.' I have only two kicks coming. You don't have enough science fiction material and I don't care for Mr. Pritchard's exciting experiences."—J. Sam Smart, New Bloomfield, Mo.
"It was easy to see that Barlow's 'The Fall of the Three Cities' was the best feature of the August issue. The best column was 'Gleanings' by Louis C. Smith. I hope to see this new feature every month. All in all, this issue was well above standard and I hope that during the next year you can give us fans as high a grade of material as you have been doing. ”

“ I enjoyed very much, too, the excellent poems, 'Necromancy' and 'The Unremembered Realm.' These two poems were certainly the product of masters of the art. 'The Annals of the Jinns' was also very good, as was the entire issue. I shall never grow tired of reading such a grand issue! Enclosed find ten cents for an additional copy."—Fred John Walsen, Denver, Col.
"Just a line to let you know how much I enjoyed the August TFF. R. H. Barlow scores again with his story 'The Fall of the Three Cities' and the one by Richard Ely Morse was splendid. ”

“ At one time Forrest Ackerman had a complete collection of Ghost Stories—the old large-size magazine of the photographic illustrations, featuring strange stories by Victor Rousseau, Ray Cummings, Frank Belknap Long, Jr., etc.—but disposed of them all upon coming across science fiction. This was when he saw his first Amazing Stories—Vol. 2, No. 6, the September 1926 number. Incidentally, this issue contains the only story by H. P. Lovecraft ever to appear in Amazing, "The Colour Out of Space." ”

“ Relating the advent to France of an invisible being who lives on water and milk, sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extra-terrestrial organisms arrived on earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind, this tense narrative is perhaps without a peer in its particular department ”