Guest post by Richard Schmidt, Digitization Coordinator in the Digital Initiatives unit, Special Collections
Warning: Spoilers Ahead, Content Warning
I am about to spoil most of the plot, but you can read this entire issue of Pluck and Luck here before continuing any further. And please note: This dime novel features discussions of self-harm and depictions of race that would not be acceptable for print today.
My Halloweenie journey through the USF Library Special Collections’ spookiest dime novels continues as I accidentally run into the work of the prolific Francis Worcester Doughty once again. Last time, I reviewed his nutty tale, “The Haunted Churchyard,” which you can read about here. And now, having fallen for one of his many pseudonyms, I visit “The Haunted House on the Harlem” from Pluck and Luck issue 1074, dated January 1st, 1919. Was Doughty trying to give young readers a distraction from the aftermath of World War I? Could anyone focus on anything after their minds were ensnared by this chilling tale? Let’s find out.
The story is about Jack Willing, an 18-year-old orphan fresh out of his European boarding school, who has returned to the states at the behest of his family attorney to discuss his inheritance. Things go awry immediately when, at the long-abandoned (and definitely haunted) Willing family mansion, his lawyer enters a room, screams, and then vanishes! Then, the detective investigating the vanishing vanishes. Things get weirder when Jack is called to the very same house by the lovely Edith and her mother, a pair of ladies he met on his carriage ride to New York. Just as he realizes that he has fallen in love with Edith, a bunch of ghosts show up in the room where the vanishing took place. And yes, you guessed it, Edith vanishes too.
Just when things are looking their most bleak, a mysterious witch named Lize gives Jack some advice to go to stand under a bridge at a specified time. He does this and manages to rescue a young man named Walter from drowning. These two become fast friends since they have similar backgrounds. Walter is also an orphan, but instead of being shipped off to boarding school, he was under the care of his cruel millionaire uncle who threw him out when he dared ask about his inheritance. With nowhere else to go, Jack and Walter return to the haunted house where they proceed to investigate the disappearances themselves.
It is here that where the story of The Haunted House on the Harlem goes completely off the rails with mysterious ghost banquets, underground tunnels, secret passages, an underwater pool with a giant crocodile, hypnotic wine, a magical saloon, and at least one half-man, half-bird. The only things I correctly predicted would happen are that Jack and Walter would turn out to be brothers (twins even!), and that a vast fortune awaits them once they are free of the evildoers who’ve concocted this truly unbelievable scheme to cheat the boys.
Once again, all the seemingly supernatural shenanigans are due entirely to something that can be explained away in real world terms. This time, it is good old mesmerism, which the villain is a master of. You see, Jack and Walter’s half-mad grandfather picked up the art while he was visiting Egypt and used it for years to manipulate and cheat people. He also built the underground tunnels and pool for his pet crocodile. Anyone that got in his way would be mesmerized and then kept in check with a wine that makes people captors of his powerful stare.
Those 4 paragraphs are the best I can do to summarize the events of this story without making this blog post 30,000 words. As with all the dime novels I have read, a roughly twenty-page story contains an entire novel’s worth of plot points. There are so many similarities in plot between “The Haunted House on the Harlem” and “The Haunted Churchyard” that Doughty could have found a shady lawyer to represent him while he sued himself for plagiarism and won! But then again, the pen name Doughty chose (or was assigned), Howard Austen, was used by over 10 different authors in at least 4 different dime novel series.[3] So, the case might be too complicated even for the most desperate law firm.
As usual, the scary cover of a dime novel has helped me pick what to write about. This time around, I wouldn’t use the term “scary” to describe this artwork. Instead, I’d call it “vaguely intriguing”. We are treated to a ghostly figure approaching a terrified and possibly Vitamin D-deficient man in a room while his friend sleeps on the floor, oblivious to the ghastly danger afoot. The text describes this supernatural figure as “glittering from a thousand flaming points”, George Bush Sr. style. To me, this spirit looks like a rather relaxed beardo in a Snuggie. I imagine him saying, “Thou darest disturb my chillaxing!” As to why I imagine the ghost talking vaguely Shakespearean is a secret known only to me.
Speaking of strange language, I found a couple of bizarre quotes from the text that still have me reeling. The first occurs very early in the story when the author drops this profound wisdom on the reader: “It was a momentous moment for Jack Willing.” [1] Now that is relatable. I wasn’t sure about this Jack character at first, but I too have experienced numerous momentous moments myself. And I can’t help but share his exchange between Jack and Walter during their ghost hunting which, even within the context of the story, confuses me:
“Walter, this is a most wonderful thing.”
“It beats me, Jack.”
“It knocks me silly. Did I go into that room, or didn’t I?”
“Well, I don’t know what you did, but I declare I did, Jack.”
“And in spite of all that, it’s very evident that neither of us did. It beats me! I give it up!” [2]
So, if a story loaded with near-constant convoluted twists and turns is not your thing, then “The Haunted House on the Harlem” is not for you. Luckily, I found this rollercoaster ride of seemingly endless turnabouts very amusing and certainly surprising. In fact, this is my favorite dime novel I’ve ever read, and the first instance where I felt like the cover did the story very little justice. Usually, the opposite is true! I would pay good money to see this story adapted to film, and the filmmakers would need it because the budget for the CGI to bring Doughty’s imagination to life would be staggering.
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References
[1] Francis Worcester Doughty, “The haunted house on the Harlem, or, The mystery of a missing man”, 1919, 2. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/pluck_and_luck/50/
[2] Francis Worcester Doughty, “The haunted house on the Harlem, or, The mystery of a missing man”, 1919, 15. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/pluck_and_luck/50/
[3] The Edward T. LeBlanc Dime Novel Bibliography – Howard Austin – https://dimenovels.org/Person/1962/Show
The Edward T. LeBlanc Dime Novel Bibliography – Pluck and Luck – https://dimenovels.org/Series/734/Show
The Edward T. LeBlanc Dime Novel Bibliography – Francis Worcester Doughty – https://dimenovels.org/Person/151/Show