My Cases

The Supernatural Writings of Stuart Palmer #

In progress. Stuart Palmer was a prolific and well-regarded mystery writer, active in the detective fiction community from the 1930s into the 1960s. But his earliest published work was for Ghost Stories magazine, much of which has fallen into the US public domain. I'm collecting and transcribing as much of his Ghost Stories writing as I can find.

The Occult Detectives of Victor Rousseau #

As complete as I can make it (for now). Victor Rousseau produced three occult detective series in the early decades of the twentieth century, and wrote a few standalone tales, too. I've collected links and/or have made transcriptions of all the stories from these series that I can find. Most of the missing pieces are from issues of Ghost Stories magazine that are not currently online. I am still keeping an eye out; and if any of those issues come to light, I will continue to add stories to this project.

Selected Stories of Austin Philips #

Done, for now. I've collected as many of the Post Office detective and Post Office supernatural short stories of Austin Philips as I can find online. Currently, most of these pieces have been posted; I'm not sure I'm going to post any more, as I feel the quality of the later pieces has somewhat declined.

Evening Tales for the Winter #

Case Complete! Evening Tales for the Winter is an 1856 anthology of gothic and supernatural tales, compiled by Henry St. Clair. Many of these "Wonderful & Supernatural Stories," were translated from German sources. Neither the translators nor original authors/stories are credited, so I’ve tracked down author and translator attributions for the stories included.

Selected Stories from Tales of an Antiquary (1828) #

Case Complete! This rather unreadable 1828 fictional "memoir" by antiquarian Richard Thomson has some interesting stories buried within it. I've revived some of these highlights and featured them here.

Quote Attributions #

Inactive. My attempts to correctly attribute incorrectly or incompletely attributed quotes. After I started, I discovered the Quote Investigator, who has been doing this for quite a while already. If I ever come across something QI hasn't researched (yet), I'll probably drop an entry here, but this project has largely been mothballed.

Miscellany and Digressions #

These are literary investigations that pop up while I’m in the middle of another project (often, another investigation). I get curious about things, and I can’t help but dig. Since the results don’t always fit neatly into the other “active case” categories on the site, I keep them here.

Vincent Price and Caedmon Records #

An early case, tracking down the sources of Vincent Price's readings on two spooky LPs he recorded for Caedmon Records in the 1970s.