Uncanny Tales

UNCANNY TALES was a home-grown Canadian pulp that flourished during World War II, when Canadian import restrictions made it difficult for American pulps to enter the country. Its first four issues were printed in digest size, saddle-stapled, with a black artwork border framing a table of contents overlaid with a spot color. The following seventeen were in standard pulp format—about seven by ten inches in size, with full-color covers, side-stapling, and cheap pulp paper. It is generally believed that most of the stories in the first two or three issues of UNCANNY TALES were written by Canadian author Thomas P. Kelley (1905-82), under his own name and numerous pseudonyms. For later issues the publishers bought stories from many other Canadian authors, and also obtained reprint rights for stories originally published in some small-circulation American pulps run by Donald Wollheim, circa 1940-42.

It's really hard to find copies of UNCANNY TALES. These cover images are scanned from the collection of Dennis Lien, author of a history of the magazine. Hartmuth Freihoff restored the pictorial covers to better than new, using Photoshop and a lot of hard work!

We've written a profile, and publishing history of this magazine, with detailed contents listings and much information about the illustrators, based on data supplied by Dennis Lien and others.