Much Needed Praise for Thorp McClusky

The Arbo Files

Thorp McClusky (1906-1975) spent his life writing for the pulps. Like a lot of his contemporaries, McClusky wrote for money. His eighteen short stories in Weird Tales and other outlets gave him the supplementary income to keep going, plus McClusky penned entire books on health, including the bestselling Your Health and Chiropractic. During World War II, McClusky’s typewriter stayed busy by penning manuals for the U.S. Army and their new military vehicles. The man was simply born to write, and he did a lot of it during his short time on this planet.

Sadly, despite all of his hard work, McClusky is not widely remembered, even by aficionados of weird fiction. There are multiple reasons for this: McClusky did not create or innovate new cosmologies like Lovecraft; he did not design unforgettable characters like Howard; and, unlike Clark Ashton Smith, he did not experiment with genres across different mediums. McClusky came from an unfashionable place (Arkansas), held a steady day job, and mostly stuck to well-worn tropes like ghost stories and occult detectives. Still, within these limitations, McClusky penned tales worth celebrating. Being overlooked is his curse, and hopefully this little article reverses said curse by diving into some of McClusky’s neglected highlights.

“The Considerate Hosts” appeared in the December 1939 edition of Weird Tales, and, years later, the legendary editor Bennett Cerf included it in his volume, Famous Ghost Stories. “The Considerate Hosts” is a simple tale of ghosts, revenge, and a chance encounter on a rainy night outside of Little Rock. The main character, Marvin, has to take a dark detour because of a washed out bridge. He eventually ends up at a farmhouse, which is suspiciously well-lit despite even after midnight. Marvin finds a strange couple inside, who rudely ask their guest to leave. Then things change when they decide to explain to Marvin why he must leave. You see, the couple are ghosts and they are waiting for one specific person — the Lieutenant Governor. Prior to becoming the state’s second-in-command, the Lieutenant Governor was a corrupt prosecutor who put an innocent man on death row. That man is the home’s owner, and he wants to scare his former tormentor to death as revenge. Marvin talks the ghost couple out of their plans, and yet the Lieutenant Governor dies anyway.

Three years earlier, McClusky published “The Crawling Horror.” A big hit with the readers of Weird Tales, “The Crawling Horror” concerns Doctor Kurt and a strange patient tucked away at an isolated farmhouse. The patient, Hans Brubaker, confides in Doctor Kurt that something horrible has been happening at his farmhouse. Hans says that a vicious ooze or goo has invaded his home and turned everything into a monstrosity. Doctor Kurt does not believe such nonsense…until…a female runaway from another farm appears and winds up covered in the slime. In good pulp fashion, the woman is naked. One gets the sense that “The Crawling Horror” influenced The Blob, and it is also likely that McClusky himself was influenced by Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.”

“The Red God Laughed” may be McClusky’s most unique tale, and it debuted in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales. Set after the complete annihilation of humanity, “The Red God Laughed” is a reflection made by a successor race overviewing the awful aftermath following what appears to be a global gas attack administered by either China or Japan. “The Red God Laughed” is weird apocalyptic fiction done well. In many ways it is plotless and nothing but a prolonged description of the alien conquest of devastated Earth. The prose is so good and so purple, and almost makes one angry that poor Thorp never saw a single collection of his work published during his lifetime.

The Loot of the Vampire (serialized in 1936) was one of McClusky’s first forays into the novel sphere, plus it introduces the characters of Police Commissioner Charles Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters. The pair would later go on many occult adventures together, but The Loot of the Vampire was their first foray. The brief novella concerns a murder and jewelry heist that gets connected back to a strange hypnotist named Count Woerz. As the title indicates, Count Woerz is no mere mortal, and his designs for the stolen loot are decidedly bizarre.

McClusky would continue to contribute to Weird Tales throughout the 1940s, publishing such gems as “The Music From Infinity” (1941). The war did not slow McClusky down, but it did put a stop to his pulp writing. McClusky’s output in the pulps would decline along with the medium until the good man from the Ozarks expired in the 1970s. Sure, nothing McClusky wrote is on par with the greats of Weird Tales. And yet, so few writers or creators can actually reach the same heights as a Lovecraft or a Robert E. Howard. Most can and should strive for “good,” such as writing good short stories or authoring good poetry. McClusky was a good writer who wrote a lot of good stuff. For that alone he deserves more readers — readers like you who might be inspired enough to write their own good and small tale.