Pulp Fantasy Library: The Graveyard Rats

The so-called Golden Age of the pulps is today remembered primarily for the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. That’s understandable. Together, the three formed a kind of triumvirate within Weird Tales and beyond, shaping much of what readers still think of when they imagine “pulp fantasy” or “weird fiction.” Their influence looms large not only over their own era but over nearly a century of horror and fantasy writing since.

Still, this focus has a downside. Many other pulp authors, while less visionary or distinctive, nonetheless produced work that remains both entertaining and effective. Their stories remind us that the pulps were not just breeding grounds for a few singular talents but entire ecosystems of imagination that, while crowded and uneven, was undeniably fertile. Among these lesser-remembered figures stands Henry Kuttner, a writer whose early solo work deserves far more attention than it now generally receives.

Today, Kuttner is probably remembered – if he’s remembered at all – in connection with his more famous wife and collaborator, C.L. Moore. Together, the two wrote numerous tales of science fiction and fantasy under various pseudonyms. Yet, before that partnership, Kuttner had already made a name for himself in Weird Tales, contributing stories in a grimmer, more immediate vein than the cosmic mythologizing of Lovecraft. His early horror fiction was leaner, less ornate, and more preoccupied with human frailty than with the vast indifference of the universe.

A prime example is “The Graveyard Rats,” which appeared in the March 1936 issue of Weird Tales. Barely a few pages long, the story has nevertheless become one of Kuttner’s most reprinted works, appearing in anthologies for nearly ninety years. Its endurance is no accident. “The Graveyard Rats” distills horror to its most basic elements of darkness, confinement, corruption, and fear without pretense or embellishment.

The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, where Old Masson, the caretaker of a cemetery, has discovered that fresh corpses are being disturbed by unnaturally large rats. These creatures, clever and relentless, drag the dead into their tunnels beneath the graveyard. Masson is less horrified than enraged, not out of respect for the dead but because the rats are stealing valuables he considers his by right. He’s long supplemented his meager income by rifling through the pockets of the newly buried and he resents the competition. Determined to reclaim his spoils, he descends into the tunnels after the vermin – and into a nightmare.

What follows is a relentless sequence of claustrophobic terror. Kuttner’s prose is stripped down but effective, evoking the choking darkness and shifting earth with dreadful precision. As Masson crawls deeper underground, his greed and fear fuse into panic until, finally, he becomes trapped in a tomb, unable to move forward or back, as the rats swarm closer. The ending is swift and merciless, a perfect punchline of pulp horror. I first encountered the tale in an old anthology called The Graveyard Reader, which I remember for its bizarre cover art and, even more, for the shock this short story delivered.

“The Graveyard Rats” is almost a model of what Weird Tales specialized in: concise, lurid, and designed to deliver a visceral jolt. It lacks Lovecraft’s cosmic scope and Smith’s luxuriant prose, but that simplicity is its strength. The story’s imagery touches on primal fears of the dark, the grave, the sensation of the earth closing in around you. It’s a morality play as well, reminding readers that greed and desecration invite their own form of damnation. Its lesson is as blunt as its prose, suggesting that there are worse fates than poverty and some appetites lead only to hell, if only metaphorically.

That bluntness is also what has kept "The Graveyard Rats" alive. Unlike many pulp horror stories, it doesn’t drown in adjectives or rely on elaborate mythologies. It is immediate, physical, and timeless. The same anxieties that drove readers in 1936 still have power today. Kuttner would go on to write more sophisticated stories, especially after joining forces with Moore, but “The Graveyard Rats” endures as a near-perfect exemplar of the pulp ethos. It’s a reminder that the pulps, for all their excesses, sometimes captured something essential about horror, namely, we are afraid of the dark and always will be.