LARGELY UNREMEMBERED TODAY, (FANNY) Greye La Spina (1880–1969), née Bragg, was one of the most popular writers in the 1920s and early 1930s for Weird Tales, for which she wrote very creepy short stories and serialized four novels: Invaders from the Dark (1925), The Gargoyle (1925), Fettered (1926), and The Portal to Power (1930–1931).
Born to a Methodist minister in Wakefield, Massachusetts, she married in 1898 and had a daughter two years later; her husband died the following year. She remarried in 1910 to Robert La Spina, Barone di Savuto, who was descended from Russian aristocracy. She became a news photographer (one of the first women in the profession), was a typist for other writers, and became a master weaver, winning prizes for her tapestries and rugs.
Her writing career began early when she produced her own newspaper at the age of ten, publishing her poems and local gossip and selling copies to her neighbors. While still a teenager, she won a literary contest and saw her story published in Connecticut Magazine. Her first story in the supernatural area was a werewolf tale, “Wolf of the Steppes,” which she sent to Popular Magazine, a general interest pulp. When Street & Smith started a new pulp devoted to weird and supernatural fiction, her story was selected as the lead story of the first issue of Thrill Book (March 1, 1919). She wrote several more stories for the short-lived magazine, both under her own name and a pseudonym; her work appeared in the last issue as well. She wrote for many other magazines after that, both as Greye La Spina and Isra Putnam, including the prestigious Black Mask, All-Story, Action Stories, Ten-Story Book, and Weird Tales, where her career flourished. Her only book did not appear until 1960, when Arkham House published a hardcover edition of her werewolf novel, Invaders from the Dark.
“The Dead-Wagon” was originally published in the September 1927 issue of Weird Tales.