“Ghost River” (Northwest Romances, Winter 1950-1951) by Tom O’Neill is a classic creepy Northern. O’Neill was a prolific Pulpster, who also wrote as E. L. Dyer. He who wrote for all kinds of magazines including sports, adventure and aviation Pulps.
The story opens with a village along the Powistic River where the Chippewayan are attacked by a weird spirit bear, a massive grizzly that makes a weird yip-yip-yip sound. The natives cower inside their log cabins. Only a young boy named Tanissi is brave enough to look at the creature. It attacks him at the window.
After the monster leaves, the chief decides someone must brave the river to get the Redcoats to take care of the bear. Tanissi is elected by everyone, because he saw the beast. The boy scampers into a canoe and paddles frantically away. As he leaves, a white man and an Indian watch him go. The white man knows he is headed for the R. C. M. P. depot. He laugh. Now he can square things with the local commander, Sargent Carnes.
Carnes is procrastinating about writing a report for HQ. When the huskies begin barking he sends his underling, Constable Burke, to investigate. Burke brings Tanissi inside, telling him to explain his story to the commander.
The two Mounties take to their canoe, bringing along the boy. They encounter Vance and Tarneau on the water. These are the two men who Tanissi did not see at the village. Taking their guns, the cops tell them to be out of the country on the next day. The Mounties know the duo from previous scams up North, when they had trapped in a restricted area after scaring off the locals.
Carnes suspects Vance is watching them the trees so they sneak off, heading for the village. On the way there, the Mounties see the beast and track it to its cave. Using their pistols and rifles, they shoot the creature. Entering the cave slowly, they find it is not a bear but Vance dressed up in a costume. The criminal has been shot dead. They take the costume to show the villagers. Once again, the Mounties have got their man and proven logic and reason is more powerful than superstition.
O’Neill writes like a horror writer in the opening sequence with the Chippewa cowering in their cabins, but drops most of the props of that kind of story when he writes about the Mounties. The reader has no real hope that the bear will prove to be a monster, not even a monstrous bear. The inevitable and easy victory for the RCMP ruins any frisson of horror created earlier in the story. As soon the Mounties enter the story, the narrative is an adventure story only. O’Neill wasn’t trying to write for Weird Tales.
O’Neill is not the first to use the idea of a fake monster terrorizing the local natives. Victor Rousseau used it in “Frozen Hell” (North-West Romances, Fall 1941). Keith Edgar also employed it in “The Mountie and the Sorcerer” (Short Stories, October 25, 1946). Like the jungle stories of Edgar Wallace, the story hinges on the idea that indigenous people are childish and easily fooled by superstition. The white hero always wins out in their interest, though in a condescending way.
