Invisible monsters in Weird Tales would be a long list if I included every reference to “invisible bonds” or the feeling of being watched by invisible terrors. Instead I am going to focus on monsters that are clearly unseeable and important to the tale. The tradition of invisible foes goes back to at least the Victorians (if not further) to tales like “What Was It?” (Harper’s, March 1859) by Fitz-James O’Brien, Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla” (Gil Blas, October 26, 1886), “The Damned Thing” (Town Topics, December 7, 1893) by Ambrose Bierce, and of course, H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man ( Pearson’s Weekly, June 12-August 7, 1897).
The idea of a foe that you can’t perceive makes the monster immediately frightening. Take Griffin, the Invisible Man, for instance. He is just a man though you can’t see him. Fighting him hand-to-hand is no more or less terrible than fighting a visible enemy. Wells intensifies him by making him insane. He is an invisible maniac, with ill-will deep in his heart. The invisibility gives him an advantage for attacking you unawares, but it is malignant spirit that makes him truly frightening.
The authors of Weird Tales inherited the tradition but used it in many, different ways. One of the reasons for this that they had multiple genres in which to use invisibility. The traditional ghost was as present as the Wellsian Science Fictional transformation. You also have the hybrid of H. P. Lovercraft’s Cthulhu Mythos that offers strange new beings. Additionally, Weird Tales also published Fantasy like the Sword & Sorcery fiction of Robert E. Howard. Sprights, fairies and demons were as likely to show up in a heroic adventure tale. With so many options, it shouldn’t be surprising that the list is long and dominated by WT’s heavy hitters.
The 1920s
“The Whispering Thing” (April 1923) by Laurie McClintock and Culpepper Chunn stars a French occult detective and he is not named Jules de Grandin. He is Jules Peret, known as The Terrible Frog. He runs down and finally encounters the supernatural thing that is killing people. The local policemen are contemptuous in a way that ol’ Jules never had to deal with. I was surprised such a long story did not recent an illustration. But these were the earliest days of WT. The policy was to put the picture on the cover.
This cover for “Sunfire” doesn’t actually go with the story. I think it is based on Bierce’s “The Damned Thing”. Stevens’s story is a lost race tale with a giant centipede. That would have been a great cover!
“The Invisible Terror” (June 1923) by Hugh Thomason features a haunted pool from which a wolf-shaped shadow emerges. The men pour whitewash over the pool to make the invisible monster visible.
“The Invisible Monster” (November 1923) by Sonia H. Greene was revised by her husband, H. P. Lovecraft. Men who touch a rope in a lake can’t let go as the unseen monster reels them in. We don’t know if the thing is actually invisible as it never emerges.
“The Monster-God of Mamurth” (August 1926) by Edmond Hamilton features an invisible labyrinth and a gigantic spider that is also unseeable that lives there. This was Hamilton’s premiere as a writer. For more, go here.
“The Hand of the Invisible” (May 1928) by E. Irvine Haines is a ghost story about the Rough Riders of Teddy Roosevelt. Don’t fall in love with dead people.
“Invisible Threads” (September October 1928) by Arthur J. Burks was a two-parter about men who left their bodies to travel as astral phantoms to confront rich men who had done evil in the world.
“Beyond the Power of Man” (December 1928) by Paul Ernst has the ghost of a prehistoric man haunting a farm. Ernst does a good job of asking the question, if ghosts are real, why aren’t there any caveman ghosts?
“The Devil-People” (February 1929) by Seabury Quinn is the first Jules e Grandin tale with a good invisible enemy. This story features the Rakshasa of Malay origin. As de Grandin explains: “They can in certain instances make themselves invisible, though only to some people.”
“The Devil’s Rosary” (April 1929) by Seabury Quinn has Mongolian sorcerers who can make invisible doors and walk through them. (Shades of Dr. Strange!) When in invisible form the magicians can send death bolts or lightning against their foes but can not cross water or a puddle of chicken’s blood. Throwing blood upon them is the best way to dispel their invisibility.
“The Dunwich Horror” (April 1929) by H. P. Lovecraft features the cosmically horrible brother of Wilbur Whateley that the scholars of Miskatonic University must destroy. Usually the creature is invisible but we get to see it before it dies. The awful-looking monster made visible is a common Lovecraftian device.
“The Laughing Thing” (May 1929) by G. G. Pendarves has a laughing spirit that haunts a young boy. If the spirit ever takes solid form, the author has hidden it from us behind a door in a most “The Monkey’s Paw” kind of way.
The 1930s
“The Thought-Monster” (March 1930) by Amelia Reynolds Long has a monster that is a mental vampire. Like the Horla, it feeds invisibly on its prey. This story was filmed by Hollywood as The Fiend Without a Face (1958). The film certainly wasn’t going to have a monster you can’t see, so they made it look like a brain with a spinal cord. For more on this story and film, go here.
“The Druid’s Shadow” (October 1930) by Seabury Quinn has two lovers drawn into an ancient struggle between a druid priest and his sacrificial victim. Sylvia, who is the reincarnation of Cwerfa, is attacked by an invisible ghost, who ties her up with invisible cords. Unfortunately for her, James, her lover is the druid reincarnate. For more stories about druids, go here.
“The Horror From the Hills” (January February-March 1931) by Frank Belknap Long features the elephantine Chaugnar Faugn but Long suggests other Great Old Ones that are unseen:
“There are things from outside watching always, secretly watching our little capers, our grotesque pranks. Men have disappeared. You’re aware of that, aren’t you? Men have disappeared within sight of their homes—at high noon, in the sunlight. Malignant and unknowable entities, fishers from outside have let down invisible tentacles, nets, trawls, and men and women have been caught up in a kind of pulsing darkness. A shadow seems to pass over them, to envelop them for an instant and then they are gone. And others have gone mad, witnessing such things…Perhaps from fourth, fifth, six-dimensional worlds things with forms invisible to us, with faces veiled to us, reach down and take —instantaneously, mercilessly. Feeding on us perhaps? Using our brains for fodder?”
Being a quasi-SF tale, the men hunting Chaugnar Faugn create a machine that projects time and can hurt the monster. For more on this story, go here.
“The Charnal God” (March 1934) by Clark Ashton Smith features the terrible god Aformagon who is invisible.
“Mordiggian is the god of Zul-BhaSair…He has been the god from years that are lost to man’s memory in shadow deeper than the subterranes of his black temple. There is no other god in Zul-Bha-Sair. And all who die within the walls of the city are sacred to Mordiggian. Even the kings and the optimates, at death, are delivered into the hands of his muffled priests. It is the law and the custom. A little while, and the priests will come for your bride.”
“The Shambler From the Stars” (September 1935) by Robert Bloch is probably the best of all the Mythos tales featuring an invisible monster. Men playing with terrible tomes conjure up an invisible monster that snaps one of the men in half then becomes visible as it drains his blood.
“A Rival From the Grave” (January 1936) by Seabury Quinn uses a very old Gothic trope of the ex-wife’s ghost that haunts the new wife. The invisible haunter is exorcised by the use of modern x-rays!
“In the Walls of Eryx” (October 1939) by Kenneth Sterling & H. P. Lovecraft features another invisible labyrinth, this one on Venus, but lacks the giant spider. People stupid enough to enter simply can not find their way out again.
The 1940s
“The Thing From the Barrens” (September 1945) by Jim Kjelgaard has an invisible hunter of men. The creature is unseeable because it is a color that humans can’t see. The monster meets his match when he goes up against a trapper who is color blind. For more on this strange Northern, go here.
The 1950s
“The Invisible Reweaver” (November 1950) by Margaret St. Clair is an odd little tale of a man who is trying to fix a broken thread in a woven cloth and encounters the invisible fates. Not one of St. Clair’s best. That is probably why it ended up in the 1950s Weird Tales, a last choice for authors.
Conclusion
It shouldn’t be surprising that most of the invisible monsters here were ghosts. Weird Tales published a lot of ghost stories. My favorites are, of course, the Mythos monsters, that break all the rules. You simply don’t know what a Great Old One will do. Most ghosts can be dealt with by sprinkling holy water or with crosses. (And x-rays, I guess.) Keeping some Mnar stones handy for Cthulhu and his ilk might save you, but you are more likely to end up insane or Deep One chow.
I am sure I have missed some good invisible monsters in all those issues of Weird Tales. If you can think of one or come across one, let me know. I’ll add it in.
Next time…Invisible Monsters in the SF Pulps!
H. P. Lovecraft was married!?! Why didn’t I know that?!?
For about two years. He moved to new York with his wife but ultimately hated the city and moved back to Providence. There are several biographies out there though I found L. Sprague de Camp’s unkind.