Unseen – Unfeared

Unseen — Unfeared is a science fiction horror short story by American author Francis Stevens.

A creepy tale of a spectator to a strange museum exhibit that imparts him with the ability to see horrifying creatures everywhere he turns.

“When our poor, faultily sensitive vision can perceive a thing, we say that it is visible. When the nerves of touch can feel it, we say that it is tangible.

Yet I tell you there are beings intangible to our physical sense, yet whose presence is felt by the spirit, and invisible to our eyes merely because those organs are not attuned to the light as reflected from their bodies. 

But light passed through the screen, which we are about to use has a wavelength novel to the scientific world, and by it you shall see with the eyes of the flesh that which has been invisible since life began. Have no fear!”

(Quote by Francis Stevens) 

Unseen — Unfeared was first published in People's Favorite Magazine Feb. 10, 1919.

Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883–1948) was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States, publishing her stories under the pseudonym Francis Stevens. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called «the woman who invented dark fantasy«.

Her most famous books include Claimed! (which Augustus T. Swift, in a letter to The Argosy called “One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read”) and the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear.

Bennett has been credited as having “the best claim at creating the new genre of dark fantasy”. It has been said that Bennett's writings influenced both H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt, both of whom “emulated Bennett's earlier style and themes”.