Jungle Stories is usually thought of as a Fiction House pulp from 1938, running alongside Planet Stories, Indian Stories and North-West Stories. But there was another Jungle Stories, appearing for three issues in 1931. The publisher was William Clayton, the Pulp company that produced Astounding Stories of Super-Science and Strange Tales. The chain went bankrupt in 1933 but killed this pulp years before, I suppose because of lack of sales. (What other reason is there for a Pulp chain?)
A look at some of the contents is interesting:
“Slavery” by L. P. Holmes
“The Seventh Bullet” by Murray Leinster
“The Monkey Wrench” by Henry Kuttner [as by Bertram W. Williams]
“The Caco Trail” by W. J. Stamper
“Sangroo the Sun-God” by J. Irving Crump
“One of the Judds” by Oscar Schisgall
“Dead Gods” by Nels Leroy Jorgensen
“The Affair on Manoa” by Albert Richard Wetjen
“The Rat of Cayenne” by Gordon MacCreagh
“Hayden and the Cannibal” by H. Hesketh Prichard
The contents pages gives us some familiar names: Murray Leinster, Oscar Schisgall and Henry Kuttner are best known in Science Fiction circles, though all sold to other Pulps. L. P. Holmes and Nels Leroy Jorgensen are Western writers. W. J. Stamper was an adventure writer, mostly famous for his stories about voodoo that appeared in Weird Tales. Albert Richard Wetjen specialized in stories about the ocean for pulps like Adventure. Gordon MacCreagh is our only bonafide African adventurer who made a living writing hundreds of African stories afterward. Hesketh Prichard was famous as a military man but also author of ghost stories and Canadian adventures.
The star of the first two issues is Sangroo, the only stories original to the issue. The author Irving J. Crump was an editor at Boys’ Life, where he would publish his much more famous Og, Son of Fire series.
Jungle Stories was a reprint magazine, perhaps with the intention of phasing out reprints later for new material. The editor, H. A. McComas, had his pick of writers in that all the stories were reprints from The Danger Trail, Ace-High or Pearsons’. If Jungle Stories had sold better perhaps it might have started using more new fiction.
“A Creeping Terror” by Douglas M. Dold (1888-1931) is the only story from this magazine run that I could find. (Unlike the Fiction House JS, the 1931 issues are very hard to find.) Douglas M. Dold was brother to pulp illustrator Elliott Dold Jr. Dougie was also editor of Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories, a very minor SF pulp. “The Creeping Terror” was a reprint, having appeared in two other Clayton pulps previously: Ace-High Magazine (February 17, 1923) and The Danger Trail (February 1926).
The story begins with a man named Garry Lloyd fleeing through the jungle, a creeping terror following close behind. Is it fire, army ants, or something unnatural? He comes across a woman, Myrtle Tabor, in a boat, her uncle and guardian now dead. Lloyd takes her under his wing and helps her unload the boat.
More and more animals invade their small island as the terror comes, the crocodiles surrounding them. Lloyd climbs into a palm tree. Safe in the tree they wait out the terror, which is the rising water that claims most of their dry land. Lions, snakes and other animals die all around them. At the last it is a herd of elephants that threaten them, possibly knocking over their tree. Lloyd shoots several with his express rifle. The brave male fights the crocodiles but loses.
The next morning the water has abated and the two survivors are rescued. Myrtle recounts all that has happened to their rescuers but Lloyd is much calmer about it, saying, “…It’s Africa’s way…” Not the best African tale but popular enough to be reprinted twice, it does have a driving peril to it that is shadowy and creepy. At first I thought the terror was going to be army ants ala “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson but it turned out to be a flood that fed the crocodiles.
Fiction House would use the title of Jungle Stories again in 1938 but unlike Clayton decided that each issue should feature a “novel” centered on their Tarzan wannabe, Ki-Gor followed by more original stories. This obviously helped because the magazine ran for 62 issues until 1954 when the Pulps died out. Ki-Gor had more novels about him than even Tarzan himself.
