Preface
As a warning, some of the early stories are going to be brief and lacking in description because they weren’t written with much more description than what I am stating here.
1897 (date not confirmed): The Noble Eavesdropper (nonextant)
1897: The Little Glass Bottle
- Synopsis:
- Some sailors find an abandoned boat with a message in a bottle about a sinking ship that has treasures in Indian ocean off the coast of Australia. The sailors take the trip there, and when they get their they send down divers who bring up another bottle with a message that basically says “Nothing is here, lmao get pranked, but here’s $25 to cover the cost of traveling here” more kind than most modern prank channels. The story ends with the captain saying he’s never going to listen to any mysterious message again.
- Thoughts:
- Well there was a mystery here and the truth wasn’t what they expected. But obviously, this wasnt a very good story but he was literally 7 years old when he wrote it. But at least you can see his early interest in mystery and the deep sea.
1898 - The Secret Cave or John Lees Adventure
- Synopsis:
- Two parents tell their two children not to get into trouble, who proceed to get into trouble the second their parents leave. They go and play with the random stuff in their cellar to accidentally knock down a wall and expose a secret passageway. In it they discover a box, and upon picking it up, set off a booby trap that floods the passage with water. Unfortunately, the daughter drowned, but the little boy managed to escape with the box and her body. After they had a funeral for the boy’s sister he opens up the box and finds $10,000 worth of gold (a lot for back then), which is remarked that its enough to pay for anything but the death of his sister. Aww
- Thoughts:
- A story penned at 8 years old. Again, a secret mystery and hidden passageway.
1898 The Mystery of the Grave-Yard
- Synopsis:
- A story of a man named Burn who died, saying to drop a gold ball on a spot marked A before he is buried. Mr Dobson who does this suddenly disappears. A mysterious man approaches the Dobson family, demanding a ransom for knowledge of his area. So they get a famous detective on the case. Turns out that the A mark was a switch for a mechanism that swept Mr. Dobson away, and the detective catches the ransomer and holds him to trial, during which Mr. Dobson dramatically makes an entrance. Mr Dobson reveals how he managed to escape though the same trap door and how the dea Mr Burn and the ransomer were out to get him for years. Both ransomer and the dead Mr Burns (?) were sentenced to prison for life.
- Thoughts:
- Another story written when he was 8, This story is made up of 12 “chapters”, though each chapter is just 1 paragraph. Clearly written by a child in its inconsistencies and a bunch of “and also” like how the last sentence mentions Mr. Dobson’s daughter also married into a wealthy family. But still there is mystery and real resolution. Still a creative piece for a kid
1898/1902 (between): The Haunted House (nonextant)
1898/1902 (between): The Secret of the Grave (nonextant)
1898/1902 (between): John, the Detective (nonextant)
1902: The Mysterious Ship
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Synopsis
- One day, a mysterious brig with no name arrives at a port town, and one citizen named John vanishes a day before the ship leaves. A US NAvy frigate came into battle with the Brig and another man went missing. Ths sip went to Madagascar and then a native went missing. The ship supposedly crash landed in the Floriday keys, and a submarine went to salvage its remains. The submarine and a man named John went missing during this, but the submarine later popped up with a discovery that under the north pole is actually a volcanic continent called “No-Man’s Land”. Within this no man’s land were all of the missing individuals chained to the ground, everyone besides John. Eventually the submarine turned back up somehow with John and a bunch of pirates to which the pirates were met with a lot of bullets.
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Thoughts:
- Clear first mark of a “unknown unexplored area” inhabited by pirates in this case though. He was 12 when he wrote this. There are two versions of this that survived. A short version and a ‘long’ version that’s like one paragraph longer
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1905, April 21: The Beast in the Cave
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Synopsis:
- Adventurer stuck in a cave labyrinth, who accepted he would probably starve to death. He cries out for help from his team, whom he had strayed away from, but what he heard back was not human, as he heard four feet coming his way, not the two of a man. It was too dark to make out what the creature was, but eventually the man was able to drive it off by throwing sharp rocks at it to make it back off so he could escape back to his party. The party went back and found the downed beast, which appeared to be a white ape-like creature with long claws. Something unlike any known animal. They pulled out a gun and finished it off, to which it let out a horrific screech. And that’s when they learned that this creature had once been a human.
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Thoughts:
- Wrote when he was 15. “Unearthly whiteness”. This reads like a classic Lovecraft story, and you can tell just how much he took this teenage style of creature mystery and adventure and developed it as he aged. And you can see a lot of his earliest classic phrases, “unearthly”.
1907: The Picture (nonextant)