"The Damp Man" Trilogy

Remembering Allison V. Harding's strange masterpiece

Look, let’s be honest and earnest. This Substack, and indeed the entirety of the empire known as the Bizarchives, would not exist without H.P. Lovecraft. Yes, we are all also huge fans of Robert E. Howard and his thrilling sword and sorcery tales, but our take on weird fiction is almost exclusively beholden to the template first laid down by Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s creations adorn our merch, inspire our writers, and animate our worldview. You, yes, you, are probably only following our work because you are an eldritch Lovecraftian.

This is a double-edge sword, however. All the popular interest in Lovecraft rarely gets channeled towards the other greats of the Weird Tales epoch. Geniuses like Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Manly Wade Wellman, and Donald Wandrei remain the almost exclusive purview of a small coterie of weird fiction and cosmic horror fans. And what about the even lesser-known lights who regularly published in Weird Tales and related magazines? Who here has read the immaculate fiction of David H. Keller? How many reading this right now can say that they are familiar with the works of Henry S. Whitehead or pulp legend Arthur Leo Zagat? How about this one: many consider a 1939 tale entitled “Far Below” to be the best story ever published by “The Unique Magazine.” It’s author, Robert Barbour Johnson, penned exquisite terror tales during his decades-long career, and yet who among us can say that they’ve ever heard his name?

Author Allison V. Harding is another name long lost and forgotten by supposed Weird Tales afficionados. Harding wrote exclusively for the magazine during the 1940s and 1950s, and during that time she published strange and absorbing stories that often blurred the line between horror and science fiction. “Allison V. Harding” was not a real person, mind you, but rather a pen name. Who actually wielded that pen remains a mystery. The most likely candidate, Jean Milligan, was the wife of Charles L. Buchanan, the assistant (or associate) editor of Weird Tales at the time. Then again, there is no conclusive proof that Milligan was Harding, and some have speculated that Buchanan himself wrote the stories. The truth may never be known.

The crowning achievement of Harding’s brief run as the “Queen of Horror” for Weird Tales was a series of stories published between July 1947 and May 1949. The so-called “Damp Man Trilogy” concerns the bizarre adventures of a journalist named George Pelgrim and the beautiful swimming phenom Linda Mallory. The first tale begins at a swimming meet, where the champion Mallory confides in Pelgrim that a man has been following her for some time. The man is silent, heavy-set, and always seems to be wet. This ominous figure follows Pelgrim and Mallory all across New York City, into Upstate New York, and eventually into Canada. At first, the Damp Man seems to be an obsessive suitor—he admits to Pelgrim that he wants Mallory to be his wife. But, as the second tale shows, the Damp Man is no Romeo seeking a Juliet. The Damp Man is in actually the wealthy Lother Remsdorf, Jr. The son of a celebrated scientist who died mysteriously in the 1920s, Remsdorf himself proves to be the result of an outré experiment. He is always damp, with cold, clammy skin and watery clothing, because his veins are filled with an experimental fluid rather than blood. Remsdorf is a water-filled Frankenstein’s monster, and his lust for Linda Mallory is based on her swimming talents rather than her good looks. Remsdorf wants to create a new, more vigorous race of humans who can swim like Mallory and be impervious to pain like himself. Aquatic Übermensch, if you will.

The first two Damp Man stories proved popular enough that the final tale in the trilogy, “The Damp Man Again,” appeared nearly two full years after the publication of the debut story. In this one, Remsdorf sets his sights on a new flame—a local harlot who meets an unfortunate end when she uses stumblebum gangsters to rob Remsdorf. In the end, Pelgrim and Mallory are made as lovers, but lovers forever on the run from the indestructible Damp Man. He is always watching, you know.

“The Damp Man” stories are another reminder of why Weird Tales was such a vital publication. Where else could this unusual blend of science fiction, horror, crime, and romance be published but in the same magazine that gave the world the Cthulhu Mythos and the first blooding of Conan the Barbarian? The Damp Man Trilogy has both fantastic writing and the eternal spirit of the American Fantastique. The Damp Man is an electric age phantom—a moribund wraith animated by a twisted type of race science tasked with perfecting the human animal. And unlike Frankenstein’s monster, Remsdorf’s desire for a mate does nothing to humanize him. Indeed, the Tsathoggua-faced monstrosity remains hideous up until the final sentence of “The Damp Man Again.”

Harding’s trilogy has everything that makes pulp great—loads of action, disquieting horror, a large and isolated mansion equipped with a mad scientist’s laboratory, unforgettable characters—and yet it has long been neglected. It’s well past time to revisit not only the Damp Man, but also all the other unsung maestros of Weird Tales who toiled for a penny-a-word. These writers played a role in creating modern American speculative fiction too, and for that alone they deserve to be remembered.