ARTHUR J. BURKS: Burks began writing in 1920. After being stationed in the Caribbean and inspired by the native voodoo rituals, Burks began to write stories of the supernatural that he sold to the magazine Weird Tales. In 1928 he resigned from the Marine Corps and began writing full-time. He became one of the "million-word-a-year" men in the pulps by virtue of his tremendous output. He wrote in the neighborhood of 800 stories for the pulps. He was well known for being able to take any household object that someone would suggest to him on a dare, and instantly generate a plot based around it. His byline was commonplace on pulp covers. He wrote primarily in the genres of aviation, detective, adventure and weird menace. Throughout the '60s, he wrote many works on metaphysics and the paranormal. In his later years, he lectured on paranormal activities and gave readings. -- Wikipedia JOHNSTON McCULLEY (1883-1958) was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. Aside from Zorro, McCulley created many other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Spider, The Mongoose, and Thubway Tham. Many of McCulley's characters-The Green Ghost, The Thunderbolt, and The Crimson Clown-were inspirations for the masked heroes that have appeared in popular culture from McCulley's time to the present day. -- from Wikipedia