02414cam a22003973u 4500 76539 UtSlPG 20260610134754.0 m cr n 260607r20251937utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d UtSlPG en iso639-1 PS Ward, Harold, 1879-1950 The life-eater Salt Lake City, UT : Project Gutenberg, 2025 1 online resource : multiple file formats text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Produced from Weird Tales June 1937. Release date is 2025-07-21 Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net "The life-eater by Harold Ward" is a pulp horror short story written in the early 20th century. Set in a Louisiana swamp village, it centers on a mysterious, vitality-sucking wraith and the occult struggle to banish it. In the village of La Foubelle, people die at night, their bodies shriveled as if drained of life. Doctor Hugo Lamontaine, a hard-drinking physician with deep occult knowledge, deduces that a malignant elemental has been conjured into the world through a human medium. Suspicion falls on the sinister Aaron Kronk, whose hypnotic power and stealthy visits coincide with fresh deaths. To save schoolmaster Noel Pelletier’s beloved Evelyn, Lamontaine uses the ailing dominie as bait, wards the room with iron, and battles the wraith with an iron pentagon, dispersing it at last. Kronk attacks and flees into the swamp, and Lamontaine later uncovers his motive: to terrorize the townsfolk into abandoning their homes so he can profit from draining the swamp. With the entity dispersed and the plot exposed, Evelyn is spared and the plague ends. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Originally published: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Co, 1937 Short stories Horror tales Louisiana -- Fiction Swamps -- Fiction Brundage, Margaret, 1900-1976 Napoli, Vincent, 1907-1981 Produced from Weird Tales June 1937. https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV29N06193706 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76539 117264 117264