Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) was a prolific New England novelist and short story writer, whose works ranged from children's tales to uncanny and dark literature. Her writing espoused her feminist beliefs and the rejection of traditional domestic roles for women. In 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mike Ashley is an author, anthologist and editor with a specialism for seeking out rare strange stories from the periodicals and magazines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is an expert in the fields of weird fiction and classic mystery stories, and a leading authority on the history and development of the occult detection tale.