The Red Curse of the Mummy

I’ve posted the next story in my Supernatural Writings of Stuart Palmer project. In The Red Curse of the Mummy, Ted Orchards joins a family friend, Professor Beames, on an expedition to the Valley of the Kings. The object: to unearth the tomb of the Pharoah Amenophis. But something out there seems to have other ideas…. Unlike the previous stories that I’ve posted, this one is ostensibly authored directly by “Theodore Orchards.” However, James Seiger’s 1973 Ghost Stories index identifies Orchards as a probable pseudonym for Stuart Palmer. Sieger writes that “[Editor Harold] Hersey spilled [the] beans in Apr. 1931 editorial.” We’ll see Orchards again, later in this project. As for the story itself, there’s less mummy than you would think, from the title. This is really more of a “pharoah’s curse” tale. Egyptology was a rather popular subject in the late 19th and early 20th century; and in 1922, a few years before this story appeared, an expedition led by Lord Carnavon uncovered the tomb…