Forged in war, The Phantom Detective wages a one-man battle on crime! Solving impossible mysteries and delivering his own justice, he is the underworld’s masked nightmare!

The Phantom pits mind and muscle against a powerful gang of masked despots who are the perpetrators of a violent campaign of terror and crime!

Even though directly inspired by The Shadow, not just character wise but simply because he was created to compete with Street and Smith’s powerhouse, The Phantom Detective stood out from his mysterious predecessor in significant ways. Richard Curtis Van Loan was a man with a history, much like Lamont Cranston, but Van Loan’s was much more straightforward. A veteran of the Great War, Van Loan found himself without a sense of purpose and stumbled, in a way, into being The Phantom Detective due to that. None of the mystery or assumed mysticism that filled Cranston’s confusing history is found in the Phantom Detective’s background. Also, The Phantom Detective had his assistants in many ways, just as The Shadow did, but the sense of why the supporting characters helped him out was more pure, more straightforward. Unlike The Shadow who often utilized agents that owed him something or felt indebted to him, The Phantom Detective’s cast simply helped because they believed in his mission. Frank Havens, the publisher of The Clarion, is in fact the reason The Phantom Detective ever came into existence at all, within the canon of the stories. Seeing his friend Van Loan at loose ends after the war, Havens suggests that he take on an apparently unsolvable crime. When he proves successful, Van Loan decides he should take a more active hand in crimefighting and the Phantom, as he’s known in the actual stories, is born.

Empire Of Terror was originally published in the October 1936 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Killers In Black

Chapter 2: Red Warning

Chapter 3: Special Corpse

Chapter 4: Dread Snatch

Chapter 5: Hooded Kill

Chapter 6: Torture Death

Chapter 7: Destination Darkness

Chapter 8: Lannigan’s Trick

Chapter 9: Find the Imperator!

Chapter 10: Horror Cave

Chapter 11: On Top

Chapter 12: Fast Flight

Chapter 13: Killer Kline

Chapter 14: Behind That Door

Chapter 15: The Voice

Chapter 16: Hell’s Goal

Chapter 17: The Phantom Fades