Paul Crumpler, M. D.

Paul Crumpler, M.D., signed ‘A Photographic Phantasm’ in the April 1923 issue of Weird Tales. Local and specialist records identify him as a physician who worked in Sampson County, North Carolina, and as a county coroner. A 1931 directory of the North Carolina Medical Society lists Crumpler in the Sampson County group and records his medical training at the University of Tennessee. A state estate index places a Paul Crumpler’s file in 1966, while a local cemetery transcription gives 1965; the available records therefore leave the year of death uncertain.

His story uses the period’s interest in photography and spiritualism to test what a witness can trust. The medical title in the byline is a documented part of the publication, but the plot is fiction and should not be read as a report from his practice. Research on North Carolina medicine also places Crumpler among physicians who served rural communities during the early twentieth century. His literary record is much smaller than his professional one: the surviving Weird Tales credit gives a specific title, issue and date, while local directories and medical records supply the firmer outline of his working life.