URANN THAYER APPEARS TO be as much of a ghost as the disappearing character in this story. The byline is almost certainly a pseudonym, very possibly for William Rollins, Jr. (1897–1950), who also wrote for Ghost Stories magazine under the pseudonym O’Connor Stacy. The deduction that leads to Rollins as the true author is that his full name was William Stacy Uran Rollins, which seems a pretty strong clue, as Uran or Urann are extremely uncommon names. Rollins wrote for several mystery magazines, most notably Black Mask, for which he wrote twenty-one stories. He also wrote several novels under his own name, including Midnight Treasure (1929), The Wall of Men (1938), and The Ring and the Lamp (1947), as well as one mystery novel as Stacy, Murder at Cypress Hall (1933), along with short stories for such pulps as Clues and Mystery Stories. There were three stories by Stacy in Ghost Stories and four by Urann Thayer, the only four stories known under this name.
Much of this information—and speculation—is the result of research by the outstanding scholar of supernatural fiction, Mike Ashley.
“A Soul with Two Bodies” was originally published in the February and March 1928 issues of Ghost Stories.