Arthur J. Burks' weird fiction was highly popular in the earliest years of both Weird Tales and Strange Tales, and certainly three of his tales were among the best macabre stories published in Weird Tales during the first decade of that unique magazine— The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee, Bells of Oceana, and Vale of the Corbies—while When the Graves 'were Opened, attracted much acclaim on its initial publication.

All these are here, and more—a selection of the series, Strange Tales from Santo Domingo—and such stories as Faces, Three Coffins, Luisma's Return, Thus Spake the Prophetess, and the novella, Guatemozin the Visitant-all of which demonstrate Arthur J. Burks' mastery of a particular vein in the literature of the fantastic which few writers before or since have successfully mined.

These stories in Arthur J. Burks' first collection of macabre tales draw upon uncommon lore and legendry and add up to a book that is off-trail even in the comparatively off-trail domain to which they belong.