In Mars, Pennsylvania — home to PulpFest 2026 — there is a chill in the air. Is it a ghost?
When pulp fans look back 100 years, Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories — the first specialized science fiction magazine — comes readily to mind. It debuted in the spring of 1926 and was certainly an important milestone. But it wasn’t alone.
Clayton’s Clues and The Danger Trail also debuted in 1926. So did Dell’s War Stories, Doubleday’s West, and Fiction House’s Love Romances. Then there’s Ghost Stories.
Bernarr Macfadden was the originator of the confession story magazine. In 1919, he introduced True Story, an oversized slick, bedsheet magazine that “purported to print real-life examples of how fallible people — mostly women — learned from their own tragic mistakes and eventually found happiness.”
An instant success, Macfadden went on to mimic his formula with True Romances, True Detective Stories, Dream World, True Experiences, and, in 1926, Ghost Stories.
Another bedsheet magazine, Ghost Stories, was filled with first-person encounters with the supernatural, generally recounted by the very person who had the horrific experience. The confessor then “told” their story to one of Macfadden’s seasoned writers. It also featured quite a few fictional yarns, including classics by Algernon Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, and others, as well as contemporary yarns by Hugh B. Cave, Jack D’Arcy, Nictzin Dyalhis, Paul Ernst, Walter B. Gibson, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Stuart Palmer, Victor Rousseau, and other pulp writers.
We’ll be saluting the centennial of Ghost Stories at PulpFest 2026. Watch for our post about the magazine, scheduled for May 22, 2026, the 100th anniversary of its debut.
We hope you’ll join us from July 30 – August 2 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry in Mars, Pennsylvania, for our celebration of 100 years of Ghost Stories and more at PulpFest 2026.
And no, we haven’t forgotten the centennial of Amazing Stories. Ever hear of the Shaver Mystery?
From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us . . . to PulpFest 2026!
Happy Halloween!!!
For more on Ghost Stories, please visit our YouTube Channel for Craig McDonald’s video on Bernarr Macfadden’s “haunted” magazine.
And if you’ve not done so already, join the nearly 1,000 pulp fans who’ve already subscribed to the PulpFest YouTube Channel.
Our featured image is excerpted from W. Stuart Leech’s cover for the December 1931/January 1932 issue of Ghost Stories, published by Harold Hersey. Little is known about the artist other than the many covers he composed for The Golden Book Magazine, a reprint magazine, primarily of older material, around the same period. Leech also contributed cover art for Hersey’s The Dance Magazine and may have also painted a cover for the US edition of Thrilling Tales in 1927.
Our lead image is the November 1927 issue of Ghost Stories, with cover art by an unknown artist.
A fan of horror and fantasy fiction, Jeanne Harding attended her first PulpFest in 2023, helping to celebrate the centennial of Weird Tales. You can read more of Jeanne’s contributions to pulpfest.com — including her looks at the shudder pulps and Ed Emshwiller — by clicking here.
