The best of the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes: Luna Bartendale

kerruish2Bartendale, Luna. Luna Bartendale was created by Jessie Douglas Kerruish and appeared in The Undying Monster (1936). Luna Bartendale is a Superhuman Occult Detective. She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, “creamy” skin and a slight build. Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”). She uses a Divining Rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her large, intelligent dog Roska for help.

You are all, I assume, familiar with the figure of the Occult Detective–the Dr. Silences and Thomas Carnackis of popular culture, the consulting detective (sometimes private detective) who takes on occult and psychic cases, sometimes armed with occult and psychic powers and/or paraphernalia, sometimes armed with only a good right hook and six rounds of lead. You’ve got a modern version of one appearing on tv now: Constantine. Well, the Golden Age of the Occult Detective was the pulp era, and Luna Bartendale was the only female Occult Detective of the pulp era. (That I’ve found, at any rate, and believe me, I’ve looked).

You can read The Undying Monster online.

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