Dr. Muncing, Exorcist was a ghostbreaker character from Strange Tales, one of Weird Tales biggest competitors. In the tradition of Jules de Grandin and other spook hunters, Muncing appeared in two (or was it three?) stories. “Dr. Muncing, Exorcist” (Strange Tales, September 1931) and “The Case of the Sinister Shape” (Strange Tales, March 1932). A third tale was originally destined for Strange Tales but did not appear because the Clayton chain went under.
Author, Adventurer
The author of Dr. Muncing’s adventures is a writer of some note. Gordon MacCreagh was famous in the adventure Pulps. MacCreagh’s history is uncertain but one version says he went to school in Germany where he mistakenly thought he had killed another student in a duel. Fleeing the police, he went to Southeast Asia. He worked in the jungles of Burma, China, Tibet and elsewhere, collecting orchid specimens. This experience supplied his many stories with vibrant and accurate jungle locales. In 1921, he joined the Mulford Expedition to South America. He wrote a book about the experience, White Waters and Black (1926). In 1927, he and his wife went on an expedition to find the Ark of the Covenant. (No, there were no Nazis, Egyptian pyramids or rolling boulders.) He served as a pilot in World War I and in special services in WWII. If there ever was a guy who was qualified to write adventure Pulp, it was Gordon MacCreagh.
Oddly, he brings none of this to a series about an exorcist in America. This isn’t quite true. Like Talbot Mundy, who also spent time in the East, MacCreagh was obviously familiar with Spiritualism and Theosophical ideas. Muncing warns of the dangers of foolish party-goers playing with the dread spirits of the afterworld.
Dr. Muncing
The man who lives at the semi-detached, respectable house with the brass sign that says: “Dr. Muncing, Exorcist” looks something like this:
The man who gazed reflectively out the window…was like his brass sign, vaguely suggestive, too, of something queer; of having the capacity to do something that the other sober citizens, doctor, lawyers, did not.
He was of little more than middle height, broad with strong, capable-looking hands; his face was square-cut, finely criss-crossed with weatherbeaten lines, tanned from much travel in faraway lands; a strong nose hung over a thin, wide mouth that closed with an extraordinary determination.
The face of a normal man of strong character. It was the eyes that conveyed that vague impression of something unusual. Deep set, they were, of an indeterminate color, hidden behind a frown of reflective brows; brooding eyes, suggestive of a knowledge of things that other sober citizens did not know.
Every good ghostbreaker Sherlock needs his Watson, and Muncing has that in a big muscular fellow “every mark of having devoted more of his years at college at football than medicine”. Dr. James Terry is a good-natured medical man, ready for the rough stuff as much as any Watson.
Enter the Client
“Dr. Muncing, Exorcist” begins when the ghost detective meets Mr. Jarrett. His family home has been invaded by some formless terror. With some exploring, Muncing quickly determines that the presence is an elemental, a semi-intelligent force from beyond the curtain. This particular elemental was brought over when the family, led by Mrs. Jarrett, played with Spiritualism.
Muncing re-enacts the seance that brought the thing over, making sure that the sickly brother is present. Muncing knows that elementals must steal their energy from human victims, usually those too weak to defend themselves. The brother is the logical choice. Muncing also knows that cold iron is the best defense against the other world.
Setting the Trap
The doctor sets a trap and forces the elemental to flee outside the house. The best scene is when Muncing and Terry, armed with an iron blackjack, fight the ghostly being and it escapes by becoming a ten-foot tall man with long arms and legs. It literally steps over the fences.
They chase it about the dark street but it ultimately escapes when the sick man opens his window for some fresh air. This causes his death but Muncing takes no blame for he demanded the family follow his instructions. The occultist will meet this enemy again!
Sequel and Revenge
“The Case of the Sinister Shape” does not feature Dr. Terry but another Watson, an oddly nameless detective. Muncing is drawn to Ocean City and the Bathurst Hotel, a flophouse for people who were are in show business. A man has been found dead there. When Muncing tells the cop that he is a doctor the detective drags him along. The dead man has died horribly, every bone in his body crushed.
It doesn’t take Muncing long to turn the detective around to his way of thinking. The woman at the counter describes a tall, dark shape she saw near the dead man. Muncing’s hints of an outre explanation make the cop explode but Muncing reveals he too is a detective… a ghost detective. Muncing explains the elemental feeds on the sick and it hides in darkness.
In the Dark Attic
The two men go to the attic above the hotel. Venturing into the darkness, traipsing along thin boards, they corner the thing. Unfortunately their flashlights begin to weaken and they are forced to jump through the ceiling into the room below. The light there saves them.
The detective no longer doubts Muncing’s occult explanations. The doctor tells the cop that they must starve the elemental. The duo trap the monster in its attic domain by laying iron all over the hotel, in corners and in mouse holes. This plan fails when a hotel worker is mind-controlled and removes the iron. Another victim dies horribly.
Mind-Control and Ghosts
Muncing learns something very important at this point. One of the victims had a hypnotist act. When the elemental devoured his energy, it gained the ability to do mind-control. This was how Muncing had been lured to the Bathurst in the first place. He also knows that this is the same elemental from “Dr. Muncing, Exorcist”. The thing has a history with Muncing and has planned revenge.
Muncing knows he can never trap the elemental with all the mind-controlled workers in the hotel. He sets a different kind of trap. He finds a sick man named Jarrett in the hotel. Surrounding the room with iron, except for one opening, he and the detective wait in the dark. When the monster comes, Muncing closes the gap, trapping the thing inside the room. He turns on a bright flood light. We get a good look at the thing at last:
Crouching in sudden afright the sinister shape loomed enormous in all its exaggerated deformity; menacing in spite of its startled surprise. But it was to the face of the thing that the eyes of both men were attracted: a faceless face , a smudge, a smear of mouldy doughy substance, shapeless, shrunken, incredibly evil. Yet there were eyes; dead, slaty gray with darker diagonal slits of irises; and a frothy gash of a mouth; a formless face of fear and unbelievable fury.
The thing smashes Muncing’s light but the doctor has another which he uses to dissolve the creature into nothing. The saga of the sinister elemental ends in victory.
Ghost-Teller
The two Muncing stories form a single arch with the monster defeated in the second act. MacCreagh’s talents as a horror writer are not many. The story feels more like an adventure than a terror tale. He suffers a little from the Algernon Blackwood fault of too much supernatural jargon. That being said, he does provide at least one good scary scene in a dark place in both tales. It would have been nice to see more adventures that didn’t feature an elemental for comparison.
The Third Adventure
The final issue of Strange Tales (January 1933) did give the up-coming highlights for the next issue. “The Valley of the Lost” by Robert E. Howard remained unpublished for thirty-three years, finally appearing in The Magazine of Horror (Summer 1966) as “King of the Forgotten People”. Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Seed from the Sepulcher” did not have long to wait, appearing the same year in Weird Tales (October 1933). “The Case of the Crusader’s Hand” was MacCreagh’s next Muncing offering but sadly it did not appear.
That third Muncing tale did not disappear exactly. It re-appeared in the January 1951 issue of Weird Tales, under the title of “The Hand of Saint Ury”, with Muncing written out. A man named Joe Doak goes into an antique shop and finds the severed hand of a saint. The thing gets loose and is seen as a white spider with five legs. The story ends with a dumb joke with “Oke-Doak”. Dr. Muncing might have been a welcome addition but the Weird Tales of 1951 was short on occult detectives. Jules de Grandin’s final story would appear that same year. Clearly part of the severed hand monster trope that began long before with Guy de Maupassant and other Victorians, this tale adds nothing new.
Conclusion
Dr. Muncing, Exorcist did not prove to be the long-running character Jules de Grandin was. (Jules had ninety-tree adventures.) He had the potential to enjoy many more but with the folding of Strange Tales, it was unlikely any other Pulp would want the character. He certainly would not have been welcome at Weird Tales, where too many occult detectives would be a problem for other writers. With no real market available, MacCreagh left the ghost story Pulps for more adventure. He didn’t quite walk away from tales of monsters altogether. His excellent “Zimwi Crater” (Argosy, August 11, 1934) and “Matto Grasso Fury” (Jungle Tales, Summer 1950) also feature supernatural creatures.
‘Joe Doaks’ was a name for an average schmuck, like the modern ‘Joe Blow.’ A character with that name appeared in a film short. Which means it wasn’t even original.