Finally we have Daniel Craig, known as the Bystander. . .

    He could see himself, young Daniel Craig, then a humble clerk, walking proudly to the marriage-license bureau with the lovely girl who had consented to be his bride. They had been strolling past a bank when the hold-up gang had barged out with their loot, guns blazing a thoughtless swathe. Craig and his fiancee had been what the newspapers called “innocent bystanders.” Craig had only been wounded, but the slug that hit the girl had ripped the life from her; she had died in Craig’s arms.

    Daniel Craig had left all vestige of humble, happy youth in the hospital; he’d come out like tempered steel. In a month he’d hunted down that bank-gang, and killed the man whose thoughtless slugs had slain his fiancee. After that, giving up clerking, Craig had opened this office—into which he now strode—as a private detective. But rarely did a case come whose storm-signals he had not seen beforehand; for as the Bystander, no longer an innocent one, he roamed the streets looking for crime.

Oppenheim’s Bystander appeared in three issues of Dime Mystery Magazine often confronted with weird menaces.

Beauty Treatments for Corpses
July 1940

In his first appearance, the Bystander’s eye is caught by a girl reminiscent of one from his past that leads him to a rotting corpse that had been very much alive moments before. The girl’s own sister tries to hire Craig to investigate why her own body seems to be rotting away until her husband phones and tells her not to. That’s like waving a bone in front of a dog and Craig can’t help but investigate this bizarre series of deaths! From the July 1940 issue of Dime Mystery Magazine it’s Ralph Oppenheim’s Bystander in “Beauty Treatments for Corpses!”

(P.S.—This story contains what must be one of the longest scene of a villain boasting about the details of his fiendish plan ever. I get the feeling Oppenheim had more story than he had room to tell it in and had to resort to the exposition to flesh out the story so to speak. No pun intended.)

On four slabs in the morgue lay the girls who had fallen victim to the mad master of rotting flesh. But to Daniel Craig they marked only the beginning of a murder plague which was to bring him within the very jaws of hell!

• Download “Beauty Treatments for Corpses” (July 1940, Dime Mystery Magazine)

The Bystander—self-sworn enemy of crime since the day his bride became the innocent victim of gunmen’s lead—appeared in two more bizarre tales of weird crime resulting in hideous corpses in the pages of Dime Mystery Magazine:

Thieves Without Faces
September 1940

When the Bystander started out to clear lovely Anne Ferris of a shop-lifting charge, he could not guess what was waiting for him. In all his long years of fighting crime, the Bystander had never seen anything like those vastly, distorted corpses—or that he was putting himself into the power of a monstrous murder syndicate whose victims died with the flesh decaying on their bodies! The Bystander found himself trapped and helpless—while they prepared for their last, most fiendish act of all!

Death Stalks in Purple
February 1941

At first the Bystander refused to help the police find the maker of those hideous, purple corpses. But then people began taking pot shots at him from dark corners, and he realized that Ahmed Bey and company had no real interest in his further health. And the Bystander was never the man to turn down a dare—especially from Death! For the death-loaded touch of an invisible finger was turning lovely young girls into rigid corpses—hideously purple!

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Haunted Tanker
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, December 1949)

Last year we featured the first seven installments of Blakeslee’s Adventures Into The Unknown. That was just the first half of the series. This October we’ll be presenting the remaining seven installments. First up, Mr. Blakeslee relates a story of an innocent man cursing the very ground over his grave—stating before being hung, that in proof of his innocence no grass would grow on his grave for a generation! And sure enough, no grass would grow over his grave for one hundred and twenty years! From the October 1949 issue of Dime Mystery Magazine it’s “Adventures Into The Unknown: Death Above and Below!”

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: Death Above and Below
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, October 1949)

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Talking Men
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, August 1949)

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Haunted Trianon
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, June 1949)

You can read more about The Haunted Trianon at PhantomsandMonsters.com, and come back Monday when Blakeslee will focus on mystery of the disembodied voices known as “The Talking Men!”

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Devil Walks at Night
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, April 1949)

Come back Wednesday when Blakeslee will focus on The Haunted Trianon!

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Evil Ghosts of Borley
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, February 1949)

You can read a more in depth account of the odd goings on at the Borley Rectory at the Haunted Museum. And come back next Monday when Blakeslee looks into possible evidence of the Devil appearing on a cold snowy night in 1855 in Exmouth!

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Spectre Hound in Man
by Frederick Blakeslee (Dime Mystery Magazine, December 1948)

Come back next Monday when Blakeslee will focus on the evil ghosts of Borley!

This month we’re going to present an illustrated feature Blakeslee ran in the pages of New Publications’ weird mystery magazine SHOCK.This was “Adventures Into The Unknown”. “Adventures Into The Unknown” was a two page illustrated feature that explored weird and eerie mysteries and tales.

Unfortunately, SHOCK only ran three issues, and Blakeslee’s feature only in the first two, but it moved to the pages of Popular’s long running Dime Mystery Magazine with the December 1948 issue. It stayed with the title even when it changed it’s name to 15 Mystery Stories in 1950.

From the pages of the premiere issue of SHOCK, Frederick Blakeslee looks into the mystery surrounding Glamis Castle—long thought to have hidden a monster deep within a secret room! From March 1948 it’s “Adventures Into The Unknown: The Secret of Glamis Castle!”

ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN: The Secret of Glamis Castle
by Frederick Blakeslee (SHOCK, March 1948)

Smithsonian has a more detailed article on the mystery if you care to read more about it!