Abraham Grace Merritt, wrote under the name of A. Merritt, born in New Jersey moved as a child to Philadelphia, Pa. in 1894, began studying law and than switched to journalism. Later a very popular writer starting in 1919 of the teens, twenties and thirties, horror and fantasy genres. King of the purple prose, most famous The Moon Pool, a south seas lost island civilization, hidden underground and The Ship of Ishtar, an Arabian Nights type fable, and six other novels and short stories collections (he had written at first, just for fun). Nobody could do that variety better, sold millions of books in his career. The bright man, became editor of the most successful magazine during the Depression, The American Weekly , with a fabulous $100,000 in salary. A great traveler, in search of unusual items he collected. His private library of 5,000 volumes had many of the occult macabre kind. Yet this talented author is now largely been forgotten.
Having conquered the field of fantasy (with such classics as "The Moon Pool," "The Ship of Ishtar" and "Dwellers in the Mirage") as well as the field of the bizarre yet hardboiled crime thriller (with his wonderful "Seven Footprints to Satan"), Abraham Merritt went on, in 1932, to prove that he could master the field of supernatural horror, as well. That he succeeded brilliantly should come as no surprise to readers of those earlier works. His first foray in the occult, "Burn, Witch, Burn" first appeared in the pages of "Argosy" magazine in 1932, and was then expanded into book form the following year.
In it, we meet Dr. Lowell, an eminent neurologist who becomes curious when a series of mysterious deaths comes to his attention. Men and women in the NYC area have been dying of no apparent cause, but with horrible grimaces on their faces and with very rapid onsets of rigor mortis. Lowell is aided in his investigation by Ricori, a mobster chieftain, as well as by Ricori's very efficient gang. The trail of bizarre deaths leads to one Madame Mandilip and her doll shop, and before long the reader is immersed in a world of supernaturalism and escalating tension. Lowell, hardheaded man of the 20th century, is hard put to explain the unfolding creepy events by the lights of his mundane science. Merritt writes simply in this book; one would never recognize him as the author of "The Moon Pool" and "The Metal Monster," with those books' lush, purple-prose passages. All of our questions regarding the strange events in "Burn, Witch, Burn" are not answered by the tale's end, and this only seems to make what has transpired seem all the more mysterious. This is the type of book that a reader may feel compelled to gulp down in one sitting, and with its short, 160-page length, that could easily be accomplished. This tale was loosely adapted for the screen as "The Devil-Doll" (1935), but this film has little to do with its source novel. (Incidentally, the movie "Burn, Witch, Burn" (1962), also known as "Night of the Eagle," has absolutely nothing to do with Merritt's book, but is rather based on Fritz Leiber's novel "Conjure Wife," another tale of modern-day witchcraft that I highly recommend to amazon readers.)
Good as Merritt's "Burn, Witch, Burn" is, however, its successor, "Creep, Shadow, Creep," is even better. "Creep, Shadow, Creep" also saw the first light of day in the pages of "Argosy" magazine, in 1934, and was released in book form later that year. This novel is a direct sequel to "Burn, Witch, Burn," and is longer, more detailed, more stylishly written and scarier than the earlier work. Readers will delight to find Lowell and Ricori back to fight the supernatural once again, but this time, these characters play only subsidiary roles. The action mantle in "Creep, Shadow, Creep" falls mainly on a young ethnologist named Alan Caranac, who becomes involved in the investigation of the apparent suicides of a number of wealthy NYC men, one of whom was Caranac's old friend. He is soon drawn into the schemes of one Dr. Keradel and his daughter Dahut, who are attempting to conjure into existence one of the elder gods; a god that was worshipped in the legendary city of Ys. In "Creep, Shadow, Creep," Merritt's last completed novel, the author revisits several of his old favorite themes. As in "The Moon Pool" and "Dwellers in the Mirage," we have two women--one good and virginal, the other evil and lustful--fighting over the book's protagonist. As in "Dwellers," the hero is subject to atavistic memories that tend to submerge his present-day personality, while at the same time aiding him in conjuring up a monstrous entity from beyond. And as in "The Moon Pool," "The Metal Monster," "The Face in the Abyss," "The Ship of Ishtar" and "Dwellers," in this novel we are given a glimpse of a vanished, lost civilization (in this case, Ys, in ancient Brittany) and see that, in many real ways, it survives in the present day. "Creep, Shadow, Creep" is not for the squeamish reader, containing as it does some truly horrible passages of pagan sacrifice and torture. It also contains some surprisingly risque sections, in which Dahut and Caranac's girlfriend, Helen, appear mother-naked. Risque for 2004, how these passages must have impressed 70 years ago! Despite the truly frightening goings-on in this book--the shadow people, the Gatherer in the Cairn, the atavistic memories, the visions and so on--Merritt insists on offering rational/mundane explanations for all this...but the reader, as well as Caranac by the tale's end, knows better. "Creep, Shadow, Creep" is a wonderful tale, a perfect sequel, and one of Merritt's finest accomplishments. Despite Merritt's occasional inability to adequately describe geography so that it is clear to the reader (this reader, at least), and despite one or two minor glitches (such as when he describes Dahut's eyes as being green, after having long established that they are violet), the book succeeds on many levels. Taken together, the two books make for one thrilling little series. I heartily recommend them both to all readers.
braham Merritt (1884-1943) was one of the highest paid writers of his day. Although many of his novels remain in print, much of what he has written is unread. Merritt wrote in a verbose form, not at all popular today with our short attention spans. I tried reading The Metal Monster years ago and never made it past the first few chapters. He was a great inspiration to many of the pulp writers. Burn Witch Burn starts out sudden, but slow. Dr. Lowell is a distinguished physician working in New York City who suddenly has a new patient dumped on him. The patient, a confident of gangster Julian Ricori, is brought to him for treatment. The man, named Thomas Peters, is in a cataleptic state brought on by what appears to be fright. The man has been scared so bad he's in shock. The gangster chief offers any help, any sum of money to find out what caused this to happen. Puzzled, Dr. Lowell attempts to diagnosis the man's condition by standard medical procedure. But he can't figure out what has brought on the state. When Peters does die, all he can find is a tiny puncture wound, but no sign of poison. Eventually, the trail leads back to a doll shop not far from Dr. Lowell's hospital. After searching the records, he finds a number of similar deaths have occurred over the past few months which all lead back to the shop. Soon he finds the owner of the doll shop, Madame Mandilip, to be making very realistic dolls. And some of them resemble the murder victims. The book starts to really take-off when Dr. Lowell realizes he may be dealing with something evil that is outside his experience or training. Although he continually brings up the concept of hypnosis (a popular excuse for many things before WW2), events occur in the novel which have no basis in normal reality. To Dr. Lowell's credit, he understands there may be a set of laws at work outside his knowledge base. Burn Witch becomes seriously creepy in it's depiction of the animated dolls. Each one is unleashed to carry out an assassination, although we never know why the "witch" of the title is up to. We even see them "punished" for not carrying out the witch's orders. I dare anyone to read this book and look at a doll store again the same way.
Stephen King recommended Burn, Witch, Burn in Chapter 3 of Berkley's 1983 paperback edition of Danse Macabre..
Both novels were suspenseful and compelling reads. Great plots and interesting characters. My only complaint is with my annoyance with the lead charactters' refusal to acknowledge that the supernatural was involved when the evidence was plainly staring them in the face. Both novels were like that... how frustrating! lol
The cool title grabbed my attention first. When I started reading, I checked the date on the publisher page to give me a reference as to about when it was written (I always do this. It helps me get the feel for the times the story is set in.) The date said 1996. Okay, then. Never having heard of A. Merritt, I dug right in. The first thing I found odd was the flowery prose. The second thing I found odd was the bizarre use of the word 'gay'. Also, there was no mention of any modern gadgets that you and I take for granted on an everyday basis. It had to be an old book. I rechecked the publisher page and, sure enough, in my haste to read, I missed the next two date-years mentioned below the 1996. They were 1933 and 1943. This book is divided into two short novels of roughly two hundred words give or take. The first one, Burn, Witch Burn! was written a decade before the second, Creep, Shadow, Creep!. The are closely related stories that read somewhat like a mystery (especially the first one), but the stories do not share the same protagonist, such as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot books. Both short novels share the same theme, however, that being the theme of death by the supernatural, brought on by witchcraft. Apparently, A Merritt was one of the top writers of his time (I've learned since.) He wrote horror as well as science fiction. His prose is not so flowery as Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe, but the influence of these famous American writers can be found in these stories--A. Merrit uses the word 'nameless' as a description of evil, an invention of Lovecraft, and he uses the term 'never more' several times in the second story, a possible nod to Poe. The stories were very enjoyable, and at points I felt I must have been reading ideas and passages that have trickled through decades of pop culture to exist still today.