SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: FORGOTTEN HARBOUR

"Forgotten Harbour" by Gordon Malherbe Hillman  (first published in Ghost Stories, Aoril 1931; republished as "Town of Terror" in True Twilight Tales, Fall 1963; included in Phantom Perfumes and Other Shades:  Memories of Ghost Stories Magazine, edited by Mike Ashley, 2000; included in The Ghost Slayers:  Classic Tales of Occult Detection, edited by Mike Ashley, 2022)

I have a weak spot for occult detectives.  I mean, you have a supernatural story and  a detective story. all rolled into one...how can you go wrong?  John silence, Jules de Grandin, Carnaki, Flaxman Lowe, Morris Klaw, Harry Escott, Martin Hesselius, Flaxman Lowe, Norton Vyse, Alymer Vance, Dr. Taverner, Semi-Dual, Miles Pennoyer, Simon Iff, John Thunstone, Lucius Leffing, Gees, Steve Harrison, and (of course) Carl Kolchak, and so many others...I love them all.

But there was one occult detective who had escaped my notice:  Cranshawe (no first name given), created by Gordon Malherbe Hillman.  Understandable, because he appeared in only two short stories, both in the somewhat forgettable Ghost Stories in 1931.  Cranshawe is "the greatest american authority on poltergeists" and "a sort of psychic detective.  The only one in America."  Ghost Stories was one of the magazine published by physical fitness guru Bernarr Macfadden, who gave us Physical Culture, True Story, True Detective, True Romance, Photoplay, SPORT, and Liberty Magazine, among others.  Ghost Stories was modelled on the "confession-style" of True Story, with early issues purporting to be fact-based articles, usually on an as-told-to basis, complemented with blurred double-image photographs supposedly of actual spectres.  The magazine ran for 64 issues, from July 1926 to December 1931, with stories in later issues dropping most of the confessional facade.

"Forgotten Harbour" is a small coastal town whose lighthouse has been popularly named the"Lighthouse of Death" due to an incident which happened a year before in which the lighthouse keeper and his assistant vanished, with no trace of their bodies ever being found.  Since that time, call from the lighthouse has been received at the local telephone office each day at midnight; there is no one on the opposite line, only the thump, thump thump sound of a heavy cane moving across a floor, the same sound that had been made by the missing lighthouse keeper, a cripple.  There are also two graves that appear at sunset, then mysteriously vanish. A strange, often invisible figure is seen, carrying a lantern, walking over the water.  A horrific-looking head appears out of the dense fog.  A ghost smashes through a lighthouse window and attempts to strangle a person.  the townspeople are terrified.  A steamship appears fated to crash outside the town, echoing a traffic accident from decades before.  Can Cranshawe determine why all this is happening and stop it?

Gordon Malherve Hillman (1900-1968) ws a somewhat successful writer of stories for both the pulps and the slicks, although the FictionMags Index only lists his contributions to Ghost Stories; perhaps his other works appeared pseudonymously.  As his market began to dry up during World War II and the years immediately after, he fell on hard times and turned to alcohol.  He found it increasingly difficult to care for his invalid mother, and ended up bludgeoning her to death in 1950.  He turned himself into the police, pled guilty, and was convicted of manslaughter.  He was released in 1954 and was left to pick up the pieces of his life.  I don't know if he was able to pick up his writing career after that, but he did have one story adapted for Four Star Playhouse in 1955, in an episode starring Charles Boyer and a 17-year-old Natalie Wood.