William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the macabre and horror genres. Among his best-known stories are the powerful precognition tale “August Heat” (1910), and “The Beast with Five Fingers” (adapted for film in 1946 with Peter Lorre). In World War I he initially joined the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, but later served as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and received the Albert Medal for Lifesaving. He received lung damage during a rescue operation, damage which troubled him for the rest of his life. He wrote his memoir, We Were Seven, in 1936. From the late 1920s to the early 1930s he lived in Switzerland with his wife, but nostalgia for his home country caused his return to England, dying in Letchworth in 1937 at the age of 52.