The Demon Spell

Today’s winter tale is by Scottish-born writer and artist Hume Nisbet (1849-1923). Nisbet is known for his stories and novels of the Australian outback, and for his ghost stories, too, which are set both in Australia and in the UK. This story is from his collection The Haunted Station and other stories (1894).

Henri Meyer The 10th Whitechapel Crime.

“The Demon Spell: A Christmas Eve’s Experience” is a spooky spiritualist tale, inspired by the notorious Whitechapel murders. I like to think that it’s Nisbet’s own theory of who–or what–Jack the Ripper was.

The narrator attends a séance at a friend’s house on Christmas Eve. The ghost of a wretched, murdered Whitechapel woman manifests—with a tragic tale and a warning for our hero.

Presently she raised her head and laid her hand upon mine, beginning to speak in a strange monotonous, far-away voice, “This is my first visit since I passed from earth-life, and you have called me here.”

You can read “The Demon Spell” here.

This is Mr. Nisbet’s second appearance in the Winter Tale series. I posted his previous story, “The Old Portrait” over ten years ago—it was my very first winter tale! And an eerie one, too; a fine debut to initiate my now yearly ritual.

I hope you enjoy them both.

A list (with links) of the winter tales I’ve shared in previous years is on my Winter Tales page.

Image: Henri Meyer, The 10th Whitechapel Crime (1891). Illustration for Le Journal illustré. Source: Dark Classics.

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Winter Tales 2025: The Picture Bedroom

It’s that time again! I’m kicking off my yearly tradition of sharing winter-themed and/or Christmas-y ghost stories, through December until Epiphany. This year, I’ll be posting a story every Monday, plus one on Christmas Eve. So find a warm blanket and a hot drink, and cuddle up in a comfy chair with my selection of spooky tales!

The first tale of the season is one presented in the traditional fashion: a ghost story told in the evening, in front of the fire, at a Christmas party.

H m brock

  • The Picture Bedroom: The best bedroom at Heatherstone Hall has a sinister reputation: every family member who sleeps there dies a mysterious death. But the new heir doesn’t believe such nonsense. He makes the haunted room his bedroom. It goes without saying—that was a mistake.

This is a classic example of the cursed room story–with a touch of vampirism–told with a touch of humor and self-deprecation. It appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany, January 1840, with the byline “Dalton.” Do enjoy!

A list (with links) of the winter tales I’ve shared in previous years is on my Winter Tales page.

Image: H..M. Brock, “Ghost Stories Round the Christmas Fire” (1911) . Illustration for The Christmas Tree by Charles Dickens

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Poirot and Wolfe as They Might Have Been

I spent a lazy day-before-Thanksgiving today, reading and watching videos. In the course of my meandering, I came across a couple of interesting old TV shows: two unsold pilots for prospective mystery series. One for Hercule Poirot, and one for Nero Wolfe (with a now very famous actor as Archie Goodwin). Naturally, I had to check them out.

It’s interesting to compare these mid-twentieth-century adaptations of classic detective series to more recent stabs at the same characters and storylines. What if these shows had been picked up? Would they have altered the popular perceptions of these two great literary sleuths? Let’s find out. I’ll share the shows, and my spoiler-free thoughts, below.

Continue reading →

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Winter Tales Pre-Treat 2025

American homestead wintercurrier and ives 1869.

It’s been a while since my last post––apologies for that. I’ve had a busy few months. But I did spend a good part of November poring through my archives and scouring the web, picking stories for this season’s Winter Tales series. Today, I’m sharing a story that almost made the cut, but that I ultimately decided against, for reasons you shall see, once you read the story.

  • The Ghost of Rhodes House: The loving but cash-strapped Rhodes clan is spending one last Christmas at their ancestral country manor, before selling it to an acquaintance of the family. However, it seems that dear departed Grandpa Rhodes objects to the sale, and is making his displeasure known.

“The Ghost of Rhodes House” appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine vol. 55, no. 5 (May 1895). It’s credited to one William T. Nichols, who I think is William Theophilus Nichols (1863 – 1931), an American author and journalist. He is known today for his juvenile-oriented fiction, in particular the The Safety First Club series, about a group of teenaged boys growing up and having adventures.

This particular story is not aimed at young adults, and it feels soooo much like the sort of tale I like to share, and yet… . It’s also rather fun, which is why I’m presenting it now as a pre-season amuse bouche. I hope you enjoy it!

Image: Currier & Ives, American Homestead Winter (1869). Source: Artchive

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A Cry From Beyond

We’re concluding the Occult Detectives of Victor Rousseau with one last story, from Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, September 1931.

In A Cry From Beyond, Dr. Claude Merrick investigates a case at the behest of a spirit: the late artist, Weathermore. The wife of Alfred French, another artist, keeps falling into strange, cataleptic sleep; their daughter is mysteriously wasting away. Could French’s dead first wife be the culprit?

Cry from beyond.
“It had taken the form of a young woman.” Source: Internet Archive

Taken on its own, this isn’t a bad story at all. But if you’ve been reading a lot of Rousseau’s occult investigator fiction, you’ll find this tale fairly derivative. The plot is a variation on the first Dr. Martinus story, “Child or Demon–Which?”. The discussion of “elementals” waiting to prey on the living harks back to the Ivan Brodsky series. And like Brodsky, Merrick believes that most cases of insanity are really due to spiritual possession.

The basic character setup of an occult investigator with a servant cum medium as his assistant is just like the previous story I shared, featuring Dr. Rinaldi. There are details, like the poltergeist anecdote, that I recognized from previous stories. The only work this story doesn’t remind me of is the Dr. Immanuel series.

But as I said, it’s not bad, and it does have some of the horror story elements that Rousseau began introducing into his occult detection tales with the Dr. Martinus series. I liked that Dr. Merrick got “hired” by a ghost to take on this case. I also liked the public telephone analogy of communicating with the other world:

Imagine a public call-box, with the receiver off the hook, and a mob, all at the same time, trying to transmit messages, while half asleep, to various friends; also imagine a group of urchins interrupting them to shout opprobrious epithets or to play pranks, and you begin to get some notion of the difficulties of posthumous communication.

Dr. Merrick’s servant/medium is his Chinese “houseboy” (ugh) Charlie Wing, which is cringey, but I’ve read worse. His Watson is his personal secretary, Benson.

Overall, a satisfying way to wrap up this series. Do enjoy.

(Previously posted at Dark Tales Sleuth.)

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The Blackest Magic of All

We are coming near the end of my Occult Detectives of Victor Rousseau project. By now, I’ve shared with you: Rousseau’s Ivan Brodsky series, one of the earliest occult investigator series; his Phileas Immanuel series, also from the 1910s; and what I could find from his Dr. Martinus series, published in the late 1920s. Rousseau continued to write stories in various genres, on through the 1930s into the late 1940s, though he eventually ended up in the “spicy pulps” market to support himself.

I’ve found a couple more occult investigator stories from Rousseau’s post-Martinus years; there may be more out there yet to be discovered. The two I found aren’t bad, and the one I’m sharing today is definitely the better of the two.

Found drowned 1867(1).jpg!Blog.
Found Drowned, George Frederick Watts (1867). Source: WikiArt.
  • The Blackest Magic of All: Mr. Goodrich’s sister drowned in a tragic accident many years ago, in Czechoslovakia. But Goodrich suspects she was murdered. Now he’s engaged occult consultant Professor Rinaldi to help bring the killer to justice.

Continue reading →

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The Doll That Came to Life

Another addition to the series Dr. Martinus, Occultist, over on Dark Tales Sleuth:

Doll that came to life illo1.
Story illustration from Ghost Stories Magazine, January 1927

In The Doll That Came to Life, Dr. Martinus wrangles with a fraudulent spiritualist over the fate of their mutual client’s departed daughter. Is that really little Doris inhabiting her old doll–or is it some more malevolent spirit?

This is, unfortunately, the last Dr. Martinus story I could find, other than the first installment of the multi-part serial, “The House of the Living Dead.” It seems cruel to post that without giving you the rest of the story, so I won’t. If you really want to read it, I have the original publication information for all the published stories on the project page. Maybe someday more issues of Ghost Stories magazine will come to light, and we will find more Martinus tales.

If Rousseau’s pattern holds, he likely killed Dr. Martinus off at the end of this serial; but over the next few years, he wrote at least another two occult researcher stories. Both of them bear a strong resemblance to Dr. Martinus, at least in their setup and their modus operandi. I will share those with you as well, as time permits.

In the meantime, enjoy!

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Dr. Martinus, Occultist

Continuing with my series on The Occult Detectives of Victor Rousseau, with Rousseau’s third series: Dr. Martinus, Occultist. Dr. Martinus investigates psychic phenomena, largely through the use of mediums. His Watson is his research assistant Branscombe, an ex-newspaper reporter.

Two men stand at a crib, looking down at a child sitting up in the crib.
Dr. Martinius and Branscombe scrutinize a supposedly possessed infant. Image Source: Internet Archive

You can read my full discussion of Dr. Martinus, at Dark Tales Sleuth.

The Martinus series came out beginning in October 1926, about a decade and a half after Rousseau’s previous two occult physician series, and has a rather different take. The Immanuel series explored the consequences of reincarnation; the Brodsky series was more about possession, but Brodsky and Immanuel had similar metaphysical theories. Both were skeptical of popular Spiritualism and seances.

Martinus, in contrast, exists in a world where popular Spiritualism is real: mediums can genuinely communicate with the dead and produce ectoplasmic manifestations; seances are authentic. There’s a little bit more of a “horror story” flavor to the Martinus stories, compared to Rousseau’s previous tales–though they aren’t horror stories per se. One suspects this is Rousseau’s response to the change in popular taste.

I’ve posted the first Dr. Martinus story over at Dark Tales Sleuth:

  • Child or Demon—Which?: Dr. Martinus investigates the case of an infant whose personality and development have dramatically altered–supposedly because he’s been cursed by his mother’s late sister. Can Dr. Martinus free the child from this alleged curse?

(Note that the story uses outdated and ableist terminology for the developmentally disabled.)

All the Dr. Martinus stories were published in Ghost Stories Magazine, which presented the stories as “true” supernatural narratives, told in the first person by the tales’ protagonists. So Child or Demon—Which? is credited as “by Eugene Branscombe, as told to Victor Rousseau.” I’ll keep that conceit in my transcriptions.

Do enjoy!

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The Return of Claudia

At long last, my mini-series on Victor Rousseau’s Dr. Immanuel series draws to a close.

The last Dr. Immanuel, Tracer of Egos tale published in The Evening Republican appeared on April 18, 1917. In “The Return of Claudia,” Dr. Immanuel must deal with a case of dissociative identity disorder. Two personalities, “Gladys” and “Claudia,” are in conflict. And Claudia wants to murder Gladys’s fiancé.

Return of claudia.
Story illustration by G. Irwin Myers, for The Evening Republican, April 18 1917. Source: Hoosier State Chronicles.

Claudia, of course, is the reemergence of one of Gladys’s past lives, and she’s not very nice. In his discussion, Dr. Immanuel refers to an actual historical case, that of Christine Beauchamp, one of the earliest recorded diagnoses of what used to be called multiple personality disorder.

I had a lot of fun annotating this tale. In addition to the case above, the story has allusions to Plato and Shakespeare, and a reference to a folktale motif that I’ve retold on this blog before. We also see the tale’s narrator pull a “Captain Hastings” (named after Hercule Poirot’s original “Watson”): that is, he says something that seems rather stupid, but that turns out to be the key to the entire case.

There was one last story, “Noureddin Bey’s Sacrifice,” which did not appear in The Evening Republican. I don’t have a copy to post or link to, but I do know that in it, the current incarnation of Dr. Immanuel leaves this existence. Rousseau did the same thing with his previous occult physician, Dr. Ivan Brodsky. I guess when the man was finished with a series, he wanted to stay finished.

You can find pointers to all the Dr. Immanuel stories that I’ve transcribed or linked to, at the project page.

I’m not done with Victor Rousseau yet. Some time after the Dr. Immanuel series, Rousseau returned with another occult investigator: Dr. Martinus, Occultist. Stay tuned.

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The Wife of Ira Hopkins

Two more stories to post in for my series on Victor Rousseau’s occult physician, Dr. Immanuel, over at Dark Tales Sleuth….

Wife of ira hopkins.
Story illustration by G. Irwin Myers, for The Evening Republican, April 14 1917. Source: Hoosier State Chronicles.

In “The Wife of Ira Hopkins,” Dr. Immanuel attempts to treat a young woman who has been hypnotized into believing that she’s married to a man she barely knows. Seems like an easy case, doesn’t it? But the ways of “the existence beneath our incarnations” are more complex than we might realize….

This tale, in my opinion, is particularly ludicrous, and a bit classist, too. But it was amusing to see Dr. Immanuel get a comeuppance, of sorts.

You can find pointers to all the Dr. Immanuel stories that I’ve transcribed or linked to so far, at the project page.

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