author

Mary Elizabeth Counselman

1911–1995

A Southern writer with a gift for eerie, elegant storytelling, she published widely in both pulp and mainstream magazines. She is especially remembered for her horror and fantasy tales in Weird Tales, where her spooky ideas often came with wit and polish.

2 Audiobooks

The Conquistadors Come

The Conquistadors Come

by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Witch-Burning

Witch-Burning

by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

About the author

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1911, she started writing very young and was publishing as a child. She later studied at Alabama College and the University of Alabama, and built a career as a writer of short stories and poetry.

Her work appeared in magazines including Weird Tales, Good Housekeeping, Collier's, and The Saturday Evening Post. She is best known for roughly 30 horror and fantasy stories in Weird Tales, and the Encyclopedia of Alabama notes that her famous story "The Three Marked Pennies" was written when she was only 15.

Her fiction also reached television, with credits connected to The Unforeseen and Thriller. She died in 1995, and she remains a memorable voice in American weird fiction—less gory than many pulp contemporaries, but rich in suspense, folklore, and atmosphere.