11 months ago

0:00:00 Statement of Horace Randall, Psychoanalyist
0:06:12 Diary of Thomas Shiel, Novelist and Short-Story Writer
0:17:14 Statement of Henry Greb, Prescription Druggist
0:22:17 Statement of Helen Bowan
0:29:16 Statement of Walter Noyes, Lighthouse Keeper
0:37:35 The Marvelous Boy [Curious Manuscript Found in a Bottle]
0:42:33 The Salmon Fishermen [Statement of William Gamwell]
0:50:34 News Item in the Long Island Gazette
0:51:12 The Box of Horror [Statement of Harry Olson]

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First published in 1927 in Weird Tales

Paul Rondoli: unless he's got a very different name in French, this appears to be a fictional person. Rondoli sounds Italian anyways, but I can't find anything about a person of this name regardless of nationality.

1 foot = 30.48 cm

8 to 10 feet = 2.4 to 3.05 meters

8 yards = 7.3 meters

1 mile = 1600 meters

a dime in 1928 would be worth probably around $2 today! HA! Not exactly an impressive amount, but still, you could buy a candy bar with that, which a little kid would certainly be happy about.

carbolic acid, a.k.a. phenol: C6H5OH. Today mostly used in making plastics, but historically it was used as an antiseptic, typically is soap form, but liquid form is sometimes used. It can even be used as an anesthesia. Also used in the manufacture of aspirin and certain other drugs. Very handy substance!

$12 for a night at a hotel... $12 in 1927 would be worth roughly $250 today. You could pay that much per night at a nice hotel, but I'm guessing this is some family-run roach motel (we know the place is infested with rats, at any rate), which in the New York metro area will probably run in the range of $50-75 per night.

Arabian Nights translated by a fellow named Lang: That would be Andrew Lang, his translation being published in 1898

rumrunner: in the USA, Prohibition was in place from 1920 to 1933, so yes indeed, there would have been smugglers trying to get alcohol illegally into the country in 1927, when this story was published. Prohibition, via the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. (But notably not the possession of!)

jormungandar: Jormungandr Walhallaensis was not discovered until 2015, so this must be Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent that encircled the world while biting its own tail. The releasing of its tail was said to signal the beginning of Ragnarök. I know I didn't use a proper Norse pronunciation, but this is 20th century American fishermen using the term, so of course they will not pronunciation it properly :-P I can't find a reference to anything else called by this name that lived in the Arctic, but I'm not a marine biologist, so if you recognize it as a real creature, please leave a comment below with details!

"Don't fire until you can look into his eyes" - an obvious reference to the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which it is claimed an American officer (which one depends on who is telling the story: Putnam, Stark, Prescott, Gridley) is alleged to have told his troops " "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes". It is generally accepted to today to be apocrypha, but it makes for an exciting story. An actual documented variation of this occurs with Gustav Adolphus, in the early 17th century, telling his musketeers "never to give fire, till they could see their own image in the pupil of their enemy's eye", and has been repeated in variations ever since down the centuries.

The picture used is the illustration for the 1927 Weird Tales publication of the story, by Hugh Rankin

To follow along: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Weird_Tales_1927-08.pdf

The version of the story in my book has many, many differences from the above link, mostly of a trivial nature, but still. I kind of prefer the original Weird Tales version, but I go with the book I have. This story did go through several publications over the course of McClusky's life, so I expect he did the edits, not some book editor without his knowledge or approval.

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