Elliott O'Donnell

Elliott O'Donnell (1872-1965) was an English writer who spent more than five decades chronicling ghosts and the supernatural for a popular readership. Before settling into full-time writing he worked as a schoolmaster, an actor, and a soldier in the First World War, experiences that fed into the persona of a seasoned ghost-hunter he cultivated in print, on the lecture circuit, and in radio broadcasts in Britain and the United States. He published more than fifty books alongside magazine pieces for outlets such as Weird Tales and Pearson's Magazine, blending reported case histories with outright invention. His debut, For Satan's Sake, appeared in 1904, followed by the occult novel The Sorcery Club, the collection Scottish Ghost Stories, and later books including The Dead Riders, which kept his name tied to British ghost lore into the mid-twentieth century.