Carl Jacobi 13 min read

Resplendent in the October moonlight stand Mr. Maudsley in the cornfield and Mr. Trask across the road, their foil and pie-tin catching the light, the two scarecrows young Jimmy so lovingly tends.

Carl Jacobi's 1954 story is an eerie fantasy-horror tale by a Weird Tales veteran. Atmospheric, creeping, superbly told. Read it for a quietly unnerving story where a boy's affection for two homely scarecrows shades, by degrees, into something genuinely dangerous under the autumn moon.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

13 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).