Here's wonderfully nasty piece of supernatural horror, complete with black magic, ghastly apparitions, agonizing deaths, and a doctor willing to fight the powers of hell with whatever he can get his hands on!

Something horrible is loose in the Louisiana swamps, and the good people of La Foubelle are dropping dead faster than the undertaker can bury them.

Victims are found shriveled, wrinkled, and sucked dry, their bodies reduced to horrible, withered husks.

Which is kinda what I felt like after last night's party at my bowling alley. That pizza did not agree with me.

But anyway, back to our story.

One dude claims to have seen a hideous, smoky thing hovering over his dying mother, its monstrous face grinning out of the darkness. But since he's the town drunk, no one listens.

So in comes Dr. Hugo Lamontaine, a big, red-bearded, hard-drinking (people really liked to drink in those days!) physician who knows considerably more about witchcraft, sorcery, and the occult than your average country doctor. Ya know, just a little fun side hobby.

Things are about to get considerably weirder. Which is my address, baby!

The Life-Eater appeared in the June 1937 issue of the legendary Weird Tales magazine, written by Harold Ward.

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[–] _lilith@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I do love that in older fiction the option of punching or shooting or otherwise physically fighting supernatural stuff is not off the table. Is there a warewolf? have you tried beating the piss out of it? friggin great

lovely read real fun

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Right? Love that older pulpy stuff. Back in Uni when I had to read them for class, the stilted, dated writing felt bizarre and hard to get through, because I was so used to modern stuff. Penny-a-word rates seemed to make them go overboard sometimes.

But man, oh man, once I got used to it, I fell for the over-the-top, batshit-crazy energy. Writers going wild, editors pumping out pure exploitation for a dime. Shock-value covers. Heck, sometimes the art came first and the story got built around it!

Now I actually prefer this schlock. Collecting it is my main hobby main speciality now. My study’s packed with old mags on every shelf, and I actually have the hard copy of this Weird Tales issue. My gf hates all of it! lol