Post by by Richard Schmidt, Coordinator for Digitization, Digital Initiatives, USF Libraries.
Once again, I am celebrating spooky season by reviewing another (hopefully) frightening dime novel. I stumbled upon some ghostly activity in the massive collection of the wildly popular stories of detective Nick Carter (Wikipedia, 2026). As soon as I beheld the cover of Secrets of a Haunted House; or, Nick Carter’s Fight with Ghosts from way back from October 26th, 1907, I knew this was going to be a good one to cover.
I did suspect that, once again, the supernatural would be explained away by some very human trickery, but look at that cover art! It’s not often that you see the ghost of a pterodactyl alongside a devil skeleton. I also love how it appears that the victim of the haunting is trying to disguise himself as a ghost, but it’s just not working! But just what is the story behind this magnificent artwork?
Please note: The following paragraphs contain spoilers for Secrets of a Haunted House, so if you want to read it first, you can do so in USF Libraries’ Digital Collections. If you’re not sure that you want to read this story, let me just say this: the phrase “By jingo!” is used three times in the first two pages of the issue.
The story begins mid-conversation with Nick Carter talking to a potential client, and boyhood friend, named Roger Sturtevant. Roger tells Nick about how he recently purchased an old mansion called “The Poplars” from a nouveau riche pal. The problem with the place is that it’s a very haunted house where all kinds of supernatural phenomenon have occurred, such as cold and clammy hands patting him on the face in the night and someone (or something) tying the frightened, catatonic servants to their beds. After trying to live there for four weeks, Roger and his valet, Morris, had had enough and jumped out a window to get away from the place. This was after he shot the ghosts with three different guns, and they just laughed at him.
After hearing all of this -Roger’s story takes up half of this dime novel- Nick decides to take his friend’s case and gives him some very expensive instructions as to how they are going to solve it. With a handsomely paid foreman and a small cadre of workmen, they enter the mansion for one more night of spooks and specters. While the ghosts work their dastardly magic to scare off the workmen, Nick and the foreman start pumping tear gas into the walls, which causes all kinds of chaos. For you see, there were never any ghosts behind the walls, just the greedy con artists who sold Roger the house in the first place trying to frighten him off so that they could resell the place. The perpetrators are captured and Roger gets to live in the house he paid way too much for.
The word I would use to describe Nick Carter is smug. He smirks through most of his rich friend’s story and I get the sense that he’s quite pleased with himself having solved the mystery somewhere around page three of this dime novel. In his defense, his pal Roger is as stupid as he is wealthy, so I suppose it’s nice of Nick to be so patient throughout the guy’s ridiculous tale. My favorite part is that Roger throws the equivalent of 9 million dollars at the conman in a deal so transparently shady that I actually laughed out loud at it. A fool and his millions are soon parted!
As for the supernatural content of this dime novel, I must award it high marks because I found what Roger and his valet Morris go through while stubbornly trying to live in a haunted house quite frightening. At one point, the ghosts tied Morris to the bed with a rope around his neck that constricted his breathing when he tried to sit up. Then they wait until he faints from fear, and re-tie him up in a sitting position so that when he awakens, he will be staring right at a human skull perched at the end of his bed. These malevolent spirits are also prone to sticking their victims with pins and leaving a dead cat on their pillow. To all of these things I say, “No, thank you!”
Of all the dime novels I’ve read for this series, I believe that Secrets of the Haunted House is easily my favorite. It’s the first one I can remember where I didn’t sigh when I looked at how much of the story I had left to read. The pacing is lightning fast, the story engaging, and I couldn’t help but smile at the writer’s palpable delight at spinning his tale. Does this spine-tingling issue of New Nick Carter Weekly provide enough of the Halloween season vibe that I am looking for? Absolutely.
The credited author here is Chickering Carter, the pseudonym of at least three people. However, the bewilderingly prolific author, Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey, who is said to have written over one thousand Nick Carter dime novels and approximately forty million words’ worth of stories (Dey, 1920), is the most likely suspect. Sadly, Dey took his own life at the age of 61 (“Creator of Nick Carter…”, 1922). Hopefully, his spirit is out there happily haunting an old mansion and knows that people are still enjoying his lively stories.
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References
- Wikipedia. (2026). Nick Carter (Character). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Carter_(character)
- Dey, Frederick Van Rensselaer. (1920). “How I Wrote a Thousand ‘Nick Carter’ Novels.” The American Magazine Feb 1920: 19, 159-163.
- (1922). “Creator of ‘Nick Carter’ Kills Himself; Penniless After Writing 40,000,000 Words”. New York Times. April 27, 1922.