they are quite tame by contemporary standards.
Topper is an older man who finds his life compli-
cated by the presence of the ghosts of the Kerbys,
tragically killed in an accident. He is the only per-
son who can see or hear them, and Mrs. Kerby’s
tendency to wear transparent or even invisible
clothing proves to be a considerable trial for him.
He returns in Topper Takes a Trip(1932), retired
and moved to the country for some peace and
quiet, which he fails to achieve because the Kerbys
follow him there and bring along a number of their
ghostly friends to boot.
Most of Smith’s other novels contain some el-
ement of fantasy as well. In The Stray Lamb(1929)
the protagonist is turned into a succession of dif-
ferent animals by the intercession of a minor god.
A husband and wife exchange identities and bod-
ies in Turnabout(1931) for a series of farcical ad-
ventures before they both discover that they were
happier the way they were to start with. Smith’s
least successful novel is The Night Life of the Gods
(1931), wherein a man discovers the power to
bring statues to life and soon finds himself hosting
a rather ribald party attended by the Greek gods
and goddesses. His last completed fantasy novel is
The Glorious Pool (1934), which substitutes a
swimming pool for the fountain of youth. A set of
older people find their youth restored with not en-
tirely happy results, and they are forced to deal
with an animated statue as well.
Rain in the Doorway(1933) and Skin and Bones
(1933) also contain some fantasy elements, but
they are all rationalized in some fashion. Smith left
an incomplete manuscript at his death, which was
completed by Norman Matson as The Passionate
Witch(1941), to which Matson later added a se-
quel, Bats in the Belfry(1942). The first novel was
the basis for a movie, as was Turnabout. Topper
spawned a movie and a television series.
“Smoke Ghost”Fritz Leiber(1941)
Fritz LEIBERwas an extremely accomplished writer
who proved his ability to write in a number of gen-
res and voices, from science fiction to heroic fan-
tasy to contemporary horror. His horror fiction is
often difficult to characterize, however, because he
generally avoided the genre’s clichés, believing
that moldering castles, wailing ghosts, and blood-
sucking vampires were horrors for an older genera-
tion. If the supernatural exists, he suggested, then
it is a response to the minds of the current genera-
tion, and those manifestations would take a very
different form in a modern urban environment. His
work reflects this philosophy, with witches using
their powers as part of campus politics in Conjure
Wife(1953), for example, and a haunted revolver
in “The Automatic Pistol” (1940).
Perhaps the best example of this is “Smoke
Ghost,” in which Catesby Wran, a businessman,
discovers a ghostly creature whose image is a re-
flection of his time. He spots the specter during
the daylight from the window of his commuter
train lying like an abandoned sack on a distant
rooftop, somehow conveying over that distance a
sense of disquiet and filth. As the days pass he no-
tices that the form is moving closer, one roof at a
time, and he becomes convinced that it is being at-
tracted to him personally and that it is somehow a
source of menace. At the same time he becomes
acutely aware of dust and dirt in his immediate en-
vironment, uncertain whether it has recently in-
creased or whether he has just become more
sensitized to it.
Wran, we discover, was trained by his rather
dotty mother as a medium and even demonstrated
some rudimentary psychic powers when examined
by a delegation of university researchers as a child,
although he has long since abandoned that activity
and has only a shadowy memory of it. It is this,
perhaps, that has made him sensitive to the smoke
ghost. He wonders about its motivation and comes
to dread the sight of it more with each passing day,
although he is confident that it cannot physically
harm him, at least not directly.
Although he is right, he underestimates the
danger. The smoke ghost invades the mind of his
secretary, effectively possessing her and threaten-
ing his life, which he saves only by promising to
worship the creature. Satisfied, it lets him live and
restores the secretary to her right mind. Just as
Leiber’s modern ghost has taken on a different
form, it also has a different nature. Rather than the
spirit of a dead individual, it is an amalgamation of
mass emotions, despair, ambition, fear, and anxiety.
Other writers have similarly attempted to update330 “Smoke Ghost”