Fans,
Here's a note about an August Derleth story from 1951... I wonder if it was one of the ones that the DS writers had on their note cards (Sam Hall mentioned in a couple of interviews that they all read a great many horror tales and had notes about them as sources for plots on the show).
August Derleth - A Knocking in the Wall: (Weird Tales, July 1951). No one could be inside the wall, yet the knocking came from there ... polite, diffident, but determined. Hobart Maclain, 50, corporate lawyer and world's least imaginative man, is forced to concede that the house he recently moved into is haunted. Maclain learns via automatic writing that the ghost is that of Mrs. Elizabeth Hopper, drugged and walled-up alive by want-away husband Kilvert in May 1933. The killer has since relocated to Canada. The persistent knocking gets on top of the lawyer but fortunately for him Julia Bennet, his faithful secretary, takes command of the situation. Miss Bennet unearths Mrs. Hopper's bones and frees her vengeful spirit to do what it must. (Note from the pen of fan author Kev Dimant on the Vault of Evil web forum.)
cheers, G.
