Hello.

Out of sheer curiosity ... Does anybody know about horror/weird fiction writers who died in war? As far as I know the four authors mentioned below were killed in action.

Fitz James-O‘Brien (1862, American Civil War)
Saki alias Hector Hugh Munro (1916, World War I.)
William Hope Hodgson (1918, World War I.)
David Wright O´Brien (1944, World War II.)

(The name O´Brien seems to be ominous in this respect ...)

Very interesting, and I knew only of Saki and WHH.

There might be some authors who didn't specialize in those genres but contributed to them, and who died in war.

Well, maybe Ambrose Bierce?

[en.wikipedia.org]

Minicthulhu Wrote:
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> Hello.
>
> Out of sheer curiosity ... Does anybody know about
> horror/weird fiction writers who died in war? As
> far as I know the four authors mentioned below
> were killed in action.
>
> Fitz James-O‘Brien (1862, American Civil War)
> Saki alias Hector Hugh Munro (1916, World War I.)
> William Hope Hodgson (1918, World War I.)
> David Wright O´Brien (1944, World War II.)
>
> (The name O´Brien seems to be ominous in this
> respect ...)

Don't know of others, but Rudyard Kipling's son John was killed in WWI I believe. Yesterday I reread Fitz James O'Brien's classic "What Was It?" in a 1964 digest some will fondly recall, the MAGAZINE OF HORROR AND STRANGE STORIES, edited by Robert A.W. Lowndes. O'Brien was well-published in Ireland before coming to America, according to Lowndes.

jkh

I think this list is likely to be a short one. I cannot think of any names to add to it.

I am tempted for some reason to mention the poet Joyce Kilmer, most famous for his poem "Trees", who died at 31 in the Great War. I do not know that his small output of poetry had anything much to do with the weird in any ordinary sense. But I did enjoy his poem "To A Young Poet Who Killed Himself."

I stole the title of one of Kilmer's poems for a ghostly story -- "The House with Nobody in It."

Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> I stole the title of one of Kilmer's poems for a
> ghostly story -- "The House with Nobody in It."

I read that poem. It comes close to having an aura of weirdness to it. Except that Kilmer explicitly tells us there are no ghosts in it.