Over at my new favorite arena, GeekyDomain, I got the chance to dive deep into one of the great literary mysteries in fandom, the Shaver Mystery stories published in postwar Amazing Stories magazine. At first, it seems like the tale of a harmless nut who happened to be able to turn his hallucinations into a good story. But it grows into something baffling and just a little bit unsettling. Lemuria isn’t the only place with monsters roaming the landscape, it turns out, but the demons in our collective consciousness might be the scariest of all!
Click through for bonus content:
A Shaver fan on Reddit collected every issue in which Shaver first published, now available at the Internet Archive, and listed them all here.
Monster Talk podcast has a two-parter episode on the Shaver Mystery phenomenon. Part 1 here; Part 2 here.
Author Fred Nadis in an extended interview on his book The Man From Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey, viewing the Shaver Mystery saga from the editor’s point of view.
A sharp-eyed blogger also noticed the similarities between Shaver’s ravings and the “influencing machine” phenomenon in schizophrenic delusions, and also picked up a couple other wrinkles I totally missed.
