If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by Strange Detectives by G. W. Thomas. Like Mystery fiction but you also like monsters? Then this collection of seven stories all wrapped in an eighth, is for you. For Victorian fans there is Dr. Drayk who solves a case that strangely began in Canada. Delamare and Bainbridge also solve weird happenings on the estates of rural England. For the Pulp fans, the Athenodorians are a secret group that guard the world from all things occult and nasty. Led by the dapper Baron von Klarnstein, we also meet his sword-swinging and aeroplane flying daughter, Orestia in “The Phantom Legion”.
“Parasite Mansion” (Weird Tales, January 1942) by Mary Elizabeth Counselman is probably her most famous story. Counselman began publishing gentler ghost stories in 1933 for Farnsworth Wright but this story is a later one for Dorothy McIlwraith. MEC is one of a group of brilliant women who penned creepy tales for the Pulps. Counselman describes her work in This Is a Thriller (2004) :
“The Hallowe’en scariness of the bumbling but kindly Wizard of Oz has always appealed to me more than the gruesome, morbid fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and those later authors who were influenced by their doom philosophies. My eerie shades bubble with an irrepressible sense of humour, ready to laugh with (never at) those earth-bound mortals whose fears they once shared.
This wasn’t always true as “The Accursed Isle” proves, but in general, she is not wrong. Today’s story lies about midway, with Gothic Horror but also compassion and knowledge. Parasite Mansion” has plenty of surface scariness, much of it borrowed from Gothic literature but its resolution is not the screaming Shudder Pulpiness of Fritz Leiber’s “Spider Mansion” (Weird Tales, September 1942) of eight months later. Counselman’s tale begins with Marcia Trent driving down a dusty road, trying to get to Birmingham to stop her sister from marrying her beau. Two gunshots smash through the windscreen before she crashes. She is knocked unconscious. A strange figure carries her from the car.
When she wakes she finds herself in an old house that was once quite posh but has since become dirty and rundown. The man who carried her from the car is Victor Mason, who tends her scalp injury and her twisted ankle. Trapped in her bed, Marcia is helpless as she meets Victor then Gran, the oldest person in the house. Trent learns that Victor’s younger brother, Renfield or Renny, shot at her on the road. The boy tries to strangle her, crying that she won’t take Lollie. This proves to be the last inhabitant, Renny’s younger sister.
Marcia tries to bribe some help from Gran with money, but the old witch has already stolen it from her car and her purse. The bitter old woman recoils when Marcia calls her a Mason, the family that was once quite rich and influential. Gran married into the family, admitting she bewitched old Audrey Mason against his sisters’ wishes. Gran leaves, threatening to send Renny to kill her with a knife.
The invalid next meets Lollie, who is a frightened and timid girl. Marcia gives her a shiny brooch but the jewelry flies out of her hand and strikes the wall. Lollie’s arm begins bleeding suddenly. Gran enters to laugh then steal the brooch for herself. Marcia Trent has now seen the thing that haunts this family.
Victor learns that Lollie has visited her. Marcia, who is a psychology professor at a college, explains to Victor that abnormal psychology is at play. Victor admits he is familiar with much of what she says, having been a medical student at one time. He does not agree with her that the cause is psychological. To prove this, he takes Marcia downstairs for supper. She gets to sit while the family, including Renny, eat. There is a plate for the invisible guest too. Lollie takes a slice of a peach that is placed on a plate for the unseen ghost. Objects begin to fly around and at the young girl while Gran laughs. Gran explains that the ghost wanted the whole peach. Lollie flees, her arms bleeding again, and the meal is over.
Marcia is told that she must return to her room, and that Victor might even have to kill her. He can see no other way out of the situation. He can’t let Marcia go because she will tell. People will come and take Lollie away, like they did her great aunt and mother. All the Mason women were tormented by the ghost, then ended up in an asylum. Once “cured” they returned to be tormented again. This was why Renny was shooting at the car. He thought Marcia had come to take Lollie.
Marcia, not ready to give up, declares that she will lay the ghost. She has solved the riddle. She and Victor have another conversation, this time about stigmata, the bleeding wounds on Lollie’s body, and poltergeists. Victor admits he had brought a ghostbreaker to the house but he failed to stop the attacks. (Sorry, Jules!) Back in her room, Renny comes with a knife to kill her. He can’t do it, even when Gran comes to force him (Bok’s illustration). Marcia declares that there is no poltergeist in the house but that it is Gran who causes the objects to fly. Gran admits it is true, that she has been tormenting the women of the Mason house out of spite for being rejected. She dies of heart failure. Victor and his family are now free of the shadow that has hung over their family for three generations.
There’s a lot to unpack her. First, Counselman begins with a Pulp cliche, the car that breaks down outside a creepy house famously lampooned in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). The woman trapped in a creepy house with villainous people goes back to 1765 and The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel. Like the novels of Ann Radcliffe and many paperbacks to follow, this is a tried-and-true formula, with a handsome hero that saves her in the end. Marcia has no Sebastian to save her. She must save herself. And she does this using Science.
Marcia explains that there was never any ghosts but that Gran had the power to move objects with her mind. She explains this using the Science of parapsychology. Like some of the fiction of Algernon Blackwood, the presence of actual ghost researchers’ terminology adds structure to a ghostly tale, it also sucks much of the fun out of it. Once something terrible is made quantifiable, it loses much of its terror. Shirley Jackson knew this and never really explained what was going on in The Haunting of Hill House (1959). Counselman, perhaps excited by research in this field, makes Blackwood’s mistake.
The other spark this tale gave off for me is the ripples in the work of Stephen King. The telekinetic villain, Gran with her flying knives, is certainly represented in Carrie (1974), along with the poor, sheltered girl character tormented by her crazy mother. Also the scenario of crashing then waking up in a creepy house would appear in Misery (1987) though King explores fandom issues there. Annie Wilkes may be descended from these characters though. Now, I can’t say King ever read the story, or more likely saw the TV show, but these elements do come up. Perhaps he was inspired by some other Gothic piece that was similar? He certainly was aware of Thriller of which he wrote in Danse Macabre (1981): “Probably the best horror series ever put on TV was Thriller, which ran on NBC from September of 1960 until the summer of 1962—really only two seasons plus reruns…”
Let’s turn to the adaptation now. It appeared on Thriller, April 25, 1961. The screenplay was by Donald S. Sanford and was pretty accurate. (There is a throwaway bit in the story about a spider and a rat in the hallway. The rat makes it into the show!) The show was directed by Herschel Daugherty, director of Mildred Pierce (1945) and other films as well as many TV episodes. Marcia is played by Pippa Scott, a veteran actor of film and TV but it is Jeanette Nolan who steals the show as Gran. Only fifty when she filmed this episode, she looks old and creepy and crazy as hell. The rest of the cast are alright with an eighteen year old Beverly Washburn playing the much younger Lollie. Six years later she would play Lieutenant Arlene Galway on Star Trek.
The plot remains pretty much intact except for small changes that Sanford must have done to make the story work better for television. First off, he changes the name ‘Mason’ to ‘Harrod’. Why? Perhaps he thought Harrod sounded richer, because the family was once very affluent. (Harrod’s, the luxury department store in the UK?) Or maybe he wanted it to sound like ‘Herod’ the biblical king, who was a villain too. It is a minor change, no matter.
Next Sanford adds a room to the house, placing Lollie’s room atop a hidden staircase. This plays on the Gothic literature riff of secret doors that haunted houses are famous for. (Much of the shots in Marcia’s room use strong lighting so that long shadows appear around the actors, making it look a little like German Expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). It also allows Marcia to go to Lollie rather than the other way around. Sanford loses the sprained ankle so Marcia can try running away and getting shot at again by Renny. This Marcia Trent (who is actually renamed Hunter and made only a teacher) is a more mobile character.
The biggest change comes in the finale. Rather than Gran simply dying of heart failure (whch would have been pretty dull), she drops a lamp and catches on fire. She runs from the house and burns to death off camera. She also uses her power to make the knife attack Marcia, but grabs the weapon out of the air for the final attack. This is a special effects problem. Knives on strings look pretty back in 1961. (Carrie (1976) would do it much better.) The attacking objects are fairly minor, with Lollie being beaten on the head with a cup in the kitchen scene. Later film poltergeists are much more robust.
Conclusion
Mary Elizabeth Counselman was the first woman writer from Weird Tales to get a television adaptation. “The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk” by Margaret St. Clair (Thriller, December 18, 1961) will be the next. “The Dead Departed” by Alice-Mary Schnirring on Night Gallery (December 1, 1971) will be the only other one. No Greye La Spina, no Dorothy Quick, Everil Worrell or Eli Colter, despite all of them producing some great stories. This should not be too surprising when you look at the table-of-contents of most issues. The women writers were often those contributing poetry like Leah Bodine Drake. The Pulps (outside the Romance genre) were often a man’s game. I don’t think Hollywood producers particularly cared who wrote the original stories. They wanted good thrills, something filmable (preferably on the cheap). But since most of the writers were men, most of the stories that got adapted were by men. We should be glad that “Parasite Mansion” stood out. This story and the work of Mary Elizabeth Counselman deserve more attention.
Next time…Mr. George and Stephen Grendon
Mythos Horror at RAGE m a c h i n e
I was a tyke during the heyday of the great TV horror shows, and for years thought the title PARASITE MANSION had belonged to an OUTER LIMITS episode. When STARLOG magazine published an OL episode guide I found that episode to have been titled THE GUESTS — but I still knew SOMETHING that had frightened me as a kid was titled PARASITE MANSION, I just didn’t know WHAT.
It was several more years before I found out.