Anton M. Oliver

Anton M. Oliver is best known in the surviving fiction record for “The Living Nightmare,” printed in the April 1923 issue of Weird Tales. The magazine places his byline directly beneath the title and calls the tale “A Night in a House of Death.” The story follows MacMillen’s account of keeping watch in the Mitchell house; that fictional episode is the clearest link between Oliver’s name and the magazine’s early supernatural fiction.

A specialist biographical survey has traced a wider career beyond that single story. It identifies Oliver as Anton Mareček Oliver, born in Budapest in 1888, and records that he studied in Vienna before arriving in the United States before the First World War. In Ohio he worked as a mechanical engineer and also played violin with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. The same research follows later work in technical trade journals, publishing and advertising, including a long period at McGraw-Hill. Those details come from records assembled by the researcher; the magazine itself establishes only the story and byline. Oliver’s death is dated uncertainly in that survey, so this page does not state a settled year.