SOURCE: The Door of the Unreal (1919) by Gerald Biss

DESCRIPTION: "And then . . . yes, I had been right in my bizarre theory, no fantasy, after all, of an ill-balanced mind . . . out of this black fissure issued a great grey male wolf with the low swinging stride of his species, clearly visible in the brightness of the moonlight. I dropped on one knee and covered the ill-omened brute with my rifle. And then . . . I felt a constriction in my throat, and the veins on my temples knotted, as instinctively I wondered how poor old Burgess must be feeling . . . after the great grey male followed a smaller grey female wolf: and I knew that our worst fears were realities, and that the last crowning touch of hell's spite had been put to this piece of devil's work."

PLOT: The Door of the Unreal is a lengthy mystery that hovers around the people who are investigating deaths at Brichton Road. About midway the book reveals that the mysterious deaths are the work of werewolves, a Professor Lycurgus Wolff. The professor has a young ward named Dorothy who he is trying to seduce into the werewolf fold. The brave investigators kill Wolff and his housekeeper Anna (another werewolf) and rescue the girl Dorothy.

WEREWOLF FACTS: Biss's werewolves are wolves, not wolfmen, perhaps some of the last before Hollywood changed them forever. Very little of the transformation is shown but we do see how the werewolves appear while in human form. They give off a bestial presence despite being human. The transformation of Dorothy (which is only successful at the end and reversible) is complicated, taking many weeks, strange herbs like Wolfsbane and rites.

INTERESTING FACTS: The Door of the Unreal was inspired by Dracula. It features the same plot structure, a group of brave men trying to save a beautiful woman from the clutches of evil monsters. H. P. Lovecraft wrote of it in his essay 'The Superntural Horror in Literature' : "Dracula evoked many similar novels of supernatural horror, among which the best are perhaps The Beetle, by Richard Marsh, Brood of the Witch-Queen, by "Sax Rohmer" (Arthur Sarsfield Ward), and The Door of the Unreal, by Gerald Bliss. The latter handles quite dexterously the standard werewolf superstition." (Lovecraft gets the name wrong, Biss not Bliss.)

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