The creation of the new sub-genre of Weird Westerns is not a recent thing. The first Western is considered to be Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902). The Horror story dates back to the caves and prehistoric man, so we will begin at the turn of the 20th Century. Novel publishers and the weekly magazines produced countless Western stories with authors like Zane Grey, Max Brand and Clarence Mulford being top-rate authors.
The first Weird Westerns appeared in the same Pulps as the magazines specialized to find new niches. All-Story sculpted the careers of several big writers including Edgar Rice Burroughs (who wrote some ordinary Westerns) and Max Brand, who penned “The Ghost” (All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1919) and “The Werewolf” (Western Story Magazine, December 18, 1926). Weird Tales offered “Satan’s Bondage” by Manly Banister in September 1942. This story has werewolves in the Old West.
Probably the longest running series of Weird Westerns is the Lee Winters stories of Lon Thomas Williams. (1890-1978). Williams’ Deputy Marshall encounters all kinds of strange ghosts and less explained phenomena out in the desert. As a kind of Western ghostbreaker it is his duty to deal with the strangeness whether it’s weeping banshees or ghost robbers. (Unfortunately credits for the artwork are not available.) Stories include:
“King Solomon’s Throne” (Real Western Stories, October 1952)
“Fountain of Youth” (Real Western Stories, December 1952)
“Satan’s Wool-Merchant” (Real Western Stories, February 1953)
“Master of Indecision” (Real Western Stories, April 1953)
“Ghost, Ride With Me!” (Real Western Stories, June 1953)
“A Desert Hippocrates” (Real Western Stories, August 1953)
“The Haunted Town” (Real Western Stories, October 1953)
“Phantom Cargo” (Real Western Stories, December 1953)
“Misfortune’s Darling” (Real Western Stories, February 1954)
“A Portion to Seven” (Real Western Stories, April 1954)
“The Mystery of the Hollow Rock” (Real Western Stories, August 1954)
“Mark of the Wampus Cat” (Real Western Stories, October 1954)
“Golden City” (Real Western Stories, December 1954)
“The Trophy Hunters” (Real Western Stories, February 1955)
“Long Live the King” (Real Western Stories, April 1955)
“The Lantern in the Sky” (Real Western Stories, June 1955)
“The Salt Wagons” (Real Western Stories, August 1955)
“The Honey Jug” (Real Western Stories, October 1955)
“The Trail of Painted Rocks” (Real Western Stories, February 1956)
The Cuckoo’s Nest’ (Real Western Stories, April 1956)
“The Water Carriers” (Real Western Stories, August 1956)
“Suspended Animation” (Real Western Stories, October 1956)
“The Strange Piper” (Real Western Stories, December 1956)
“Men Burning Brush” (Real Western Stories, February 1957)
“The Banshee Singer” (Real Western Stories, April 1957)
“The Kite Flyer” (Real Western Stories, June 1957)
“The Dancing Trees” (Real Western Stories, August 1957)
“The Deadly Slowpoke” (Real Western Stories, October 1957)
“The Three Fates” (Real Western Stories, February 1958)
“The Bee’s Nest” (Real Western Stories, April 1958)
“The Magic Grindstone” (Real Western Stories, October 1958)
Williams appeared in almost every issue between 1952 and 1958 (Real Western was a bi-monthly edited by Robert A. W. Lowdnes.) He got his name on the cover ten times in thirty issues. None of those covers ever hinted at the supernatural. The series was partly collected in The Lon Williams Weird Western Megapack.
Weird Westerns mix never really caught on in the Pulps. Perhaps it was Williams writing as the Pulps were dying that explains that. Or perhaps it was seen as his specialty and no one else wanted in. It would take the comic books of the 1970s to revive the idea with titles like Jonah Hex. The Western superstar, Louis L’Amour, would write one strange book, The Haunted Mesa (1987), a bestseller involving trans-dimensional pathways. This will be familiar to most as Star Gate (1994), a film that stole the idea and replaced the West with Egyptians. Writers like Joe R. Lansdale would revive the sub-genre with The Magic Wagon (1986) and the anthology Razored Saddles (1989) with Pat LoBrutto.
My own love affair with the Horror Western began back in the early 2000s. J. F. Gonzalez and I were trying out collaborating. He gave me the first draft of “The Man Who Had a Death Wish”, a Weird Western that needed something. I added the character of Deputy Sheriff Hope and a good amount of Lovecraftian squidge. The story appeared in Cthulhu Sex Magazine #23 (2006).
I was hooked. I love reading Westerns (especially those of Peter Dawson and Louis L’Amour) and here was a way to stay true to my Horror roots but have a little saddle leather mixed in. I wrote two more stories about Deputy Sheriff Hope, “Heller” and “Laocoon”, continuing that occult detective tradition. I have to admit I got sidetracked into Space Westerns from there. But that’s another piece altogether. Either way, the Weird Western offers so many ways to mix history, folklore, violence and adventure into a terror tale. It boggles my mind that it hasn’t exploded as a new favorite among fiction and film fans. The movie Bone Tomahawk (2015), starring Kurt Russell, is a good example of how gruesome a weird Western can be while remaining a tale of the frontier. The Revenant (2016) isn’t a supernatural tale but often slides into the Horror film category with its violence. There is so much untapped potential to give thrills both Western and Weird left in the sub-genre.
