| Title | : | Carnacki, the Ghost Finder |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1406905747 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781406905748 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1913 |
'The Thing Invisible.'
'The Gateway of the Monster.'
'The House Among the Laurels.'
'The Whistling Room.'
'The Searcher of the End House.'
'The Horse of the Invisible.'
'The Haunted Jarvee.'
'The Find.'
'The Hog.'
'Vibrations in a Vacuum—Carnacki: An Afterword', by Iain Sinclair, author of White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings.
Carnacki, the Ghost Finder Reviews
-
Not as good as his House on the Borderlands, but enjoyable and worthwhile nonetheless. These stories improve in quality as the book progresses, beginning with the hackneyed gothic claptrap of "The Thing Invisible" and ending with stories of true cosmic terror.
Carnacki himself is an interesting transitional figure, an eccentric bachelor in the Holmesian mode, who--although relying on his intellect and expertise--yet seems, at bottom, lonely and filled with self-doubt in the wake of his uncanny experiences. A professional ghost hunter who possesses his own tools--revolver, camera, elaborate electrical devices--he relies on them desperately, only half-believing in their efficacy.
If the stories have a noticeable flaw, it is that Carnacki talks continually to his captive audience of dinner guests about the detailed workings of his technology and the precise gradations of color and texture produced by the alteration of the psychic atmosphere, repeating every few paragraphs the phrase "Do you understand?" Although I found this to be irritating at first, I came to realize that these narrative conventions are an expression of Carnacki's isolation and desperation. He is, after all, a 19th century style ghost hunter trying to survive and understand an increasingly chaotic 20th century world--a world whose strangeness is reflected in the best of these tales--which are very good indeed--such as "The Whistling Room" and "The Hog." -
Altogether, between 1910-1914, Edwardian author of weird and speculative fiction William Hope Hodgson wrote nine stories featuring his "ghost finder" series character, Thomas Carnacki. The first six were collected in the first edition of this book, published in 1913. But the other three were written later, and all nine weren't collected until the Arkham House complete edition in 1947. I read it in the Wordsworth Editions reprinting of the latter, which has a helpful Introduction by David Stuart Davies. Because the 1913 edition is in the public domain, it appears to be the one that the free e-book versions currently available reproduce. However, if you can obtain a copy of the complete edition, I'd absolutely recommend reading it instead; it's worth it to have all of the stories, and Davies' comments are well worth reading as well.
These stories are an early example of the "occult detective" literary tradition, which owes its rise, in the late 1890s, to the popularity of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. The concept of a smart, capable hero who engaged in multiple adventures explaining mysteries and thwarting sinister forces appealed to readers. But in his Holmes stories, Doyle steered clear of the actually supernatural. The "occult detective" (the term was coined by Algernon Blackwood) extends the concept into the realm of supernatural fiction, and thereby opens up quite an array of new adventurous --and agreeably scary!-- possibilities. Hodgson wasn't the first pioneer to explore this territory; that honor goes to the mother-son writing team of Kate and Hesketh Prichard (who subsequently changed his last name to Hesketh-Prichard) with their Flaxman Low stories, collected in Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low. Blackwood's occult detective character, Dr. John Silence (The Complete John Silence Stories), also debuted in the pulp magazines of that day before Carnacki did. But Carnacki proved to be one of the most popular and enduring examples of the type.
Readers of this review will probably notice that my shelving of this book spans several genres. In keeping with their roots in the mystery tradition, some of the stories turn out to explain their hauntings wholly or partly by natural premises, which may be cloaks for criminal activity. (One story doesn't even have a pseudo-supernatural premise; it's just a straightforward mystery surrounding the provenance and genuineness of an alleged copy of an old book.) The "Ghost Finder" sobriquet certainly suggests supernatural fiction, and I'd say that at least one of the stories is supernatural fiction in the strict sense. To a large extent, though, where Carnacki is up against genuinely paranormal phenomena, they don't as often prove to be "ghosts" as such (revenants of deceased humans) as ...something else; the concept of Outer Monstrosities, very shadowy and unknown (but "natural") malevolent forces from beyond the world, but capable at times of intruding into it, is invoked several times. Rather than supernatural fiction as such, this is more the stuff of science fiction with a "natural" explanation --albeit a realm of "nature" that our science as yet doesn't know much about.
The collection isn't without its flaws. In two of the stories (including "The Whistling Room," the only one which I'd read previously, as a kid), the crucial deliverance from jeopardy --okay, that's not a spoiler; Carnacki's the protagonist of all the stories; he can't return for further adventures if he get killed in one of them! :-) --is accomplished by means of a deus ex machina intervention into the plot, which is a device I don't particularly like. Another story has a logical slip, and readers should be warned that there are a couple of instances of animal cruelty (as an ardent cat lover, my mom would have thrown this book in a bonfire if she'd had one handy!). When Carnacki attempts to speculate about possible scientific "explanations," the "science" is strictly pseudo-science, and not very conducive to suspending disbelief. Carnacki himself is not really a strongly-drawn or dynamic character, and neither are his four friends to whom he relates the stories in first person (within a first-person frame provided by one of the four); the origin of his paranormal investigating career is unclear, he lives alone and isn't depicted interacting with others save in the context of his work or telling about it, and he doesn't come to life outside that context.
But there are definite strong points here as well! One thing that I'm thinking has materially helped the Carnacki stories to succeed and endure as well as they have, for over a century now, is that Hodgson is very good at creating and sustaining a tense mood of sinister expectation and dread; and he conveys it with a real "you are there" quality. At least in my experience, there aren't very many writers in the genre that really do that (though Peter Straub also does in Ghost Story), but Hodgson definitely does! His premises are very original and varied, and he brings his settings to life effectively. Hodgson became a ship's cabin boy in 1891, when he was about 14, and served as a sailor for many of his early years, eventually earning his mate's certificate. This nautical background is an influence in "The Haunted Jarvee," where it helps to make the depiction of the ship and life on it realistic (and that's true of his other sea stories as well, at least those I've read). While his diction is Edwardian, it's conversational, as befits after-dinner tales told to friends, rather than stilted, and very readable; I personally found the collection a quick read.
If Hodgson's writing career had continued longer, it's very likely that he would have enriched the Carnacki canon with more stories. But that wasn't to be; at the outbreak of World War I he joined the British army, and sadly was killed at Ypres in 1918, at the age of 40. :-( The existing tales, though, exerted an influence on later writers. H. P. Lovecraft wrote disparaging comments about the Carnacki stories (and he didn't like the occult detective tradition in general) --but that proves that he'd read them. Also a writer of SF that reads like horrific supernatural fiction, but with firmly naturalistic premises, many elements of HPL's work are similar. The Elder Gods/Great Old Ones, like the Outer Monstrosities, are malevolent entities from beyond the Earth who can communicate through dreams; the Necronomicon and the "Sigsand Manuscript" are both (fictitious) ancient documents that supposedly unlock arcane horrors from Outside, etc. Some critics have discerned a definite influence of Hodgson's The House on the Borderland on the later writer; given that this novel also (in Davies' estimation; I haven't read it yet myself) is thematically directly akin to "The Hog," it seems quite likely that both the novel and the Carnacki story were formative influences for the Cthulhu Mythos. Davies also points to similarities in these stories and later writings by British supernatural fiction author Dennis Wheatley (whose work I haven't read, but probably should check out!) -
"... we four - Jessop, Arkright, Taylor and myself - had received the usual summons to drop in at No. 472 and hear Carnacki’s story of his latest case. What talks they were! Stories of all kinds and true in every word, yet full of weird and extraordinary incidents that held one silent and awed until he had finished."
So begins each tale of Carnacki, ghost hunter extraordinaire. With four companions attentively listening to the account of each adventure, the stoic Carnacki recounts both natural and supernatural cases which he has investigated. Combining mystery, inventive gadgets, deduction and some genuine scares, the stories entertain with a mix of tension, delightfully outdated language and Outer Monstrosities. I enjoyed some narratives more than others, particularly the "The Hog," which harkens to The House on the Borderland in its cosmic darkness. All of the stories provide a generous touch of pure delight regarding the style of the times in which the tales were written. There will surely be more William Hope Hodgson in my reading future. And finally, in the parting words of Carnacki himself, out you go. -
Carnacki, the Ghost Finder is a collection of six short stories by the fantasy and horror writer William Hope Hodgson, dating from 1910 and 1912. They all feature Thomas Carnacki, a fictional Edwardian “detective of the occult”, who owes a lot to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, the consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. Thomas Carnacki too lives in a bachelor flat in London, this time in No 472 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea; and investigates only the cases which particularly interest him.
The stories all begin by Carnacki inviting four friends, Jessop, Arkwright, Taylor and Dodgson, to dinner to hear his latest tale, forbidding any mention of the case over dinner. Afterwards, Carnacki lights his pipe, ensures everyone is settled into their favourite chair, and proceeds to tell his tale without interruption.
One of this “strictly limited circle of friends” Dodgson (a name perhaps deliberately similar to “Hodgson”), like Dr Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, acts as an amanuensis. He is the narrator of each tale, reporting back about “these happy little times”, within the enclosing familiar framework.
By now, William Hope Hodgson’s three novels had all received critical acclaim. The first was later further developed into the “Sargasso Sea” cycle of stories and “The House on the Borderland” was especially admired by H.P. Lovecraft, who called it “one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written”. However William Hope Hodgson was still comparatively poor.
The Carnacki stories were written in an attempt to boost sales. He had published numerous short stories, in both American as well as British magazines, but decided that what was needed was a recurring character. He thus invented Thomas Carnacki, the “detective of the occult”, and Captain Gault, a “scrupulous smuggler and ladies’ man”, who recounted stories from his private log.
Many of William Hope Hodgsons’s stories have a nautical bent. Perhaps his sea-faring horror stories derive from his own misery at sea. He was born near Braintree, in Essex but his family moved every couple of years throughout his childhood. William Hope Hodgson ran away to sea at the age of 13, from his boarding school, although he was returned to his family. His father, a vicar, relented and gave his permission for William to be apprenticed as a cabin boy, and for many years, he worked as a sailor.
However William Hope Hodgson, a small, sensitive, beautiful young man was bullied at sea. He dealt with this by becoming an expert in body-building, but one has to wonder what emotional trauma this sensitive young lad must have gone through. Later, although keen to enlist at the beginning of World War I, he refused to have anything to do with the sea, despite his experience and qualifications. Instead, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. He incorporated his experience of the war into his stories just as he had incorporated his experience at sea. He was killed at Ypres in April 1918, leading a group of NCOs to safety under heavy fire, just seven months before the war ended.
In the stories, Carnacki has been asked to investigate, and put an end to, unusual hauntings. He uses a variety of scientific methods, including photography, plus his own invention to protect the investigator, the “Electric Pentacle”. He also sometimes uses various rituals and ancient texts.
The stories are:
No. 1 — The Gateway of the Monster
This first story gets the collection off to a strong start. The writing is very accessible and easy to read, even having slang from an earlier era. We get a sense of Dodgson as a well to do young man, with his clipped tones and habit of using elisions.
The story revolves around a bedroom called “the Grey Room”, which is believed to be haunted. Carnacki learned from the owner of the old house, that the room had a history extending back over a hundred and fifty years. Three people had been strangled in it—an ancestor of his, and also his wife and child.
Both the owner and his butler are so petrified, that Carnacki himself finds he is frightened to sleep in the room. He does however, after making elaborate precautions sealing the room and constructing various protective defences according to the Sigsand Manuscript, written in the 14th century, and spends a miserable, terrified night in his electric pentacle
The story ends with the words Carnacki always says to his guests:
“Out you go!” he said, genially.
This long story is very powerful, and one of the best, in my opinion. The complicated preparations are meticulously described, and these parts remind me very much of Dennis Wheatley’s stories. The tension mounts steadily, and the revelation of the entity is truly grotesque and horrifying.
No. 2 — The House Among The Laurels
This story takes place in a deserted mansion in Ireland, called “Landru Castle”. Over the last few years two tramps have been found dead in the house, and stories have spread among the local people, about how blood drips from the ceiling, to presage a terrible death. The owner will have none of this, and gathers about 40 brave men to spend a night in the house. However,
This is another longish story, which is again very frightening, and a little reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. Part of it, involving animal cruelty, carried out with “calculated remorselessness … and cold determination” I disliked intensely.
No. 3 — The Whistling Room
This is another Irish experience for Carnacki, this time in “Iastrae Castle”, about twenty miles northeast of Galway. The haunting is more subtle, on the lines of M.R. James’s stories, as it is apparently just the sound of a whistle, but only happens in one room, and for no reason.
Some readers consider this a weak story, but I did enjoy the more abstract idea, and the Celtic connections. However the descriptions were perhaps a little too grotesque and over written for my taste.
No. 4 — The Horse of the Invisible
This story is slightly different, and set in East Lancashire. There is a family tradition, in the Hisgins family, that any first-born female will be haunted by a ghostly horse during her courtship. For seven generations the Hisgins family have had male first-borns, and it came to be regarded as a myth.
Interestingly, the sole story, “The Horse of the Invisible” was dramatised as part of the 1971 TV series “Rivals of Sherlock Holmes”. The part of Carnacki was played by Donald Pleasence.
No. 5 — The Searcher of the End House
This story is closer to home, as Carnacki is investigating a haunting in his own mother’s house. A knocking comes from one of the bedrooms, and there is a strange smell of mildew. What follows is a complicated tale,
This is a particularly atmospheric and well-written story, I think; probably my favourite of the six. William Hope Hodgson was the second of 12 children, three of whom died in infancy. The death of a child is a theme in several of his stories, and this one is very effective, and never really resolved.
No. 6 — The Thing Invisible
This supernatural tale is at the other end of the spectrum. Carnacki is investigating an ancient, cursed dagger, in a chapel attached to an Edwardian manor house. The dagger apparently attempts to murder someone of its own accord. Naturally Carnacki is there with his camera .
This tale had a different feel, with none of the menace, and build-up of sheer terror. The explanation was satisfying, but in a way, I did not consider this story a good fit with the others.
William Carnacki was also the protagonist of three more stories, all published posthumously. They are “The Haunted Jarvee” (1929) “The Find” (1947) and “The Hog”(1947).
The inspiration for Carnacki can be traced to two earlier fictional characters. The first is Sheridan Le Fanu’s supernaturally inclined scientist, Dr. Hesselius, who appeared in some of his short stories, including the vampire story “Carmilla”. The second is the character of John Silence, created by Algernon Blackwood.
William Hope Hodgson effectively conveys a sense of an invisible boundary between our normal world, and another strange, inexplicable and terrible reality. When this boundary is breached, what we experience terrifies and destroys us. I like these unnerving stories very much, even though parts are overwritten, and the imagery sometimes feels laboured. They are not great literature, but they are entertaining and atmospheric to read, often sending a shiver down your spine. There is gothic suspense, a feel of antiquity, mystery and menace. Carnacki too, the Edwardian gentleman, is most engaging, freely admitting that he acts partly by instinct.
I enjoy the puzzles the author sets us, in that we are never quite sure whether the ghosts are real, or a hoax. The Carnacki stories have a variety of explanations. Some feature authentic paranormal activity, others merely appear supernatural; a pretence to disguise nefarious human activity, or have no supernatural component. However the most intriguing to me, are those which contain an actual haunting, which runs parallel with a hoax.
I like the creation of ancient texts and rituals: the “Sigsand Manuscript”, to protect himself against supernatural influences, and the “Saaamaaa Ritual”, with its mysterious eight signs and unknown last line. The author intrigues us, referring to an even more arcane fictional work, the “Incantation of Raaaee”. Plus, there are two kinds of manifestations, “Aeiirii” and “Saiitii”: the latter being much more dangerous, and perhaps capable of overcoming Carnacki’s defences.
There is always a little bit more to tempt us. An unfinished ritual. An unknown text. A more deadly power. A mention of other previous (unwritten) cases, such as those mentioned and “The Steeple Monster Case”, “The Grunting Man Case” and “The Case of the Black Veil”. William Hope Hodgson knew how to keep his audience intrigued and ready for the next story to appear in a magazine. He wrote so many stories and novels; it is a shame he is not better known now. Many years ago a friend enthused about Carnacki the ghost hunter, but I was taken up with Dennis Wheatley at the time. If I had known then just how enjoyably frightening his writing was, setting nerves tingling, I would have certainly have searched out his novels and stories far earlier. -
Voto totale: 3,5
Il Portale del Mostro: 4 stelle
Una casa isolata.
Una Stanza Grigia in cui un'intera famiglia è morta strangolata.
Una porta chiusa che sbatte nel cuore della notte.
La mano assassina di un fantasma.
L'antologia inizia col botto con una gran bella storiella di orrore gotico.
Da brividi!
La Casa tra i Lauri: 3 stelle
Un castello infestato nell'Irlanda dell'Ovest.
Porte che si spalancano da sole.
Un soffitto che gronda sangue nella notte.
Ottimo l'incipit ed il twist finale, ma l'autore alla fine ha lasciato un po' troppe cose inspiegate secondo me.
Carino.
La Camera che Fischiava: 5 stelle
Un altro maniero infestato in Irlanda, il Castello di Iastrae.
Un fischiettare diabolico che risuona nella notte.
Ecco l'Inferno!
Questa volta Carnacki, il Cacciatore di Fantasmi, rischia davvero di morire in uno dei casi di infestazione o manifestazione demoniaca più difficili che abbia mai affrontato.
E la spiegazione finale sull'origine del fischio inumano, mi ha fatto venire gli incubi la scorsa notte.
Una delle migliori storie dell'antologia.
Il Cavallo dell'Invisibile: 4 stelle
Una antica maledizione di famiglia.
Figlie primogenite che di generazione in generazione fanno una fine orribile poco prima del matrimonio.
Un destriero infernale dagli zoccoli omicidi che galoppa nella notte.
Una gran bella storia ed il doppio finale è stato geniale ed inaspettato, ma alla fine ridevo come un idiota perché il tutto mi ricordava troppo alcuni vecchi episodi di "Scooby Doo"! Non un male, anzi, ma tensione ed atmosfera erano ormai rovinati XD
Il Cercatore dell'Ultima Casa: 3 stelle e mezzo/4 stelle stiracchiate
Una casa vicino al cimitero.
Porte che sbattono nella notte ed odori nauseabondi che compaiono dal nulla.
Una coppia di spettri che si manifestano al crescere della paura.
Una avventura del giovane Carnacki, ai tempi in cui viveva con la madre ed era ancora privo della sua competenza riguardo al soprannaturale e del suo iconico "Pentacolo Elettrico", che spezza in parte la ripetitività dei racconti.
Ottima e terrificante la prima parte della storia (il fantasma del bambino fa davvero paura), ma a partire dall'arrivo dei poliziotti in poi, l'effetto "Scooby Doo" si fa sentire ancora di più che nel racconto precedente...
La Cosa Invisibile (Versione originale del 1912): 3 stelle
Una cappella infestata da uno spettro.
Un pugnale maledetto che colpisce mosso da una mano invisibile.
Un caso piuttosto "tranquillo" per il nostro indagatore del soprannaturale, e a volte le cose più strane sono proprio quelle reali.
Il Maiale: 4 stelle e mezzo
Incubi agghiaccianti fin troppo reali.
Un labirinto infernale ed un grufolare di maiali mostruosi che inseguono la loro vittima oltre il muro del sonno.
Portali verso altre dimensioni.
Il racconto più lungo di questa raccolta è anche uno dei più spaventosi ed angoscianti.
E le mostruosità del Cerchio Esterno ed i terribili misteri delle Porte Psichiche di Hodgson hanno influenzato non poco Grandi Antichi, Dei Esterni, e tutto il ciclo letterario dei Miti di Cthulhu di Lovecraft ed epigoni vari.
Lettura fondamentale per appassionati del genere come me.
Lo Jarvee Stregato: 3 stelle
Un antico veliero.
Un'ombra che segue minacciosa la nave.
Membri dell'equipaggio che muoiono in preda al terrore.
Dopo tutta una lunga serie di infestazioni soprannaturali, o simulate da loschi figuri, in castelli, manieri, cappelle e magioni, l'ambientazione marinaresca di questo racconto a base di navi fantasma e maledette è quasi una boccata d'aria fresca.
Purtroppo il finale mi è parso a dir poco affrettato e la storia aveva davvero bisogno di qualche pagina in più per svilupparsi comesi deve.
La Scoperta: 2 stelle
Un libro unico.
Una seconda copia che spunta fuori all'improvviso.
L'ultimo racconto del libro è decisamente quella che mi è piaciuta di meno.
Carnacki ed il suo circolo di amici a cui racconta ogni caso già avevano molti punti in comune con il più famoso investigatore di Baker Street: il narratore Dogdson è un alter ego letterario di Hodgson ma anche una sorta di dr. Watson e Carnacki è una specie di Holmes acchiappa-fantasmi pieno di dubbi e armato di macchina fotografica e congegni elettrici.
Quello che l'indagatore del soprannaturale (che qui latita) chiama "un caso molto semplice" è un classico mistery a dir poco banale senza alcuno degli elementi fantastici e caratteristici presenti nelle storie precedenti: non serve aver letto sir Conan Doyle o altri autori simili, la soluzione del caso era davvero alla portata di chiunque... lo avrebbero risolto persino l'ispettore Lestrade o lo Sherlock Holmes pasticcione, ubriacone e donnaiolo, magistralmente interpretato da Michael Caine nel divertentissimo film "Senza Indizio" del 1988.
In definitiva una bella antologia se siete fan di cacciatori di fantasmi, indagatori dell'incubo e affini, e misteri stile "Scooby Doo", ma decisamente inferiore a La Casa sull'Abisso dello stesso autore.
Non male ed un paio di storie sono delle vere gemme. Peccato per quella brutta copia di racconto alla Sherlock Holmes finale che stona davvero parecchio con tutti gli altri. -
Carnacki was the spiritual grandfather of Mulder & Scully... and whoever your current favorite supernatural sleuth of choice might be. Half the time he finds humans faking frauds and half the time it's a real supernatural evil, and a lot of the fun is trying to figure it out with the clues he discovers before it's all revealed. The format is that Carnacki, a brusque and impatient man, hosts a dinner and relates his latest case to his guests, so that you know he has survived the encounter, but part of the fun is also figuring out how, before the solution is provided. The stories were written well over a hundred years ago (Hodgson died in World War I), so some readers will have to adapt to the narrative style which does get a bit antiquated in places, but I thought it was well worth it. Hodgson will probably always be best remembered for his classic The Night Land and The House on the Borderland and his many haunting terror-on-the-seas tales, but Carnacki is another one well worth reading.
-
"Can you chaps understand?"
No, Carnacki, in all honesty I can't really say I do.
I haven't read anything else written by Hodgson (I know he didn't write only short stories but also novels), but let me tell you, the Carnacki stories are terribly written. Sometimes in my reviews I refer to what I personally like to call 'the Martin effect' (after George R. R. Martin), to describe the experience of reading an author that everyone seems to like just fine but whom I have an incredible difficulty connecting with. Usually, when I say that an author has triggered for me the Martin effect, I mean that he or she writes in a way that I find extremely difficult to follow: even though I try to be as receptive and alert as possible, I continuously find myself not having a clue as to what is going on, what the characters are doing (or, often, who the heck they even are), and why they do what they are doing. I have trouble visualizing the characters, the space the characters move in, the action they are performing, and just about everything else. And, well. Hodgson has caused me, without a doubt, the severest case of Martin effect I've gone through as of late.
Normally, when this happens, I put the case to rest with an accommodating 'it's not you, it's me,' and go on reading something else, because, as I said, the Martin effect makes me feel like the author's style and I simply don't resonate without the former necessarily standing out as bad in any particular way. But this time, I believe Hodgson is at least partly to blame. I found him incapable of describing spaces, actions, and situations and also incapable of building narrative tension, as shown for example by the last story in the collection (at least in my edition), "The Hog," in which he uses up no less than twenty pages to describe the apparition of a spectral hog. I mean. Dude. It became boring after page two, and that destroyed even that tiny pinch of fear I might have felt.
Secondly, and believe me, I wish there was a gentler way to say this, Carnacki is such a ridiculous character. Out of all the cases collected in the book, he is properly able to 'solve'--as in, get rid of the supernatural force responsible for the haunting--only one of them... or maybe two? I'm already forgetting. He is terrified all the time (in at least one instance he literally runs away screaming), which might be refreshing at the beginning, but quickly grows boring and also genuinely puzzling: is he or isn't he a detective of the occult, after all? Speaking of which, half of his cases turn out to have perfectly mundane explanations, which would not be a negative thing in itself were it not for the fact that Carnacki avows to feel the presence of Super Malignant Forces even throughout those tales which end up having nothing to do with the supernatural. This is all the more ludicrous as he tells all these cases in retrospective, relating his adventures to a group of friends. At least don't make a fool of yourself maybe? Also, one tale, "The Find," has absolutely no reason to be included in this collection, as I see it, since it literally has nothing to do with the supernatural and is sorely out of place among these tales of ghosts and hauntings, real or alleged.
All in all, I found the collection interesting by comparison to other examples of occult detective fiction which I've read recently, and for the way it participates in the trend, which I think is very much visible and specific to these fictions, of commenting upon what you might call "the concreteness of thought," or their propensity to use their fantastic frame to turn human thoughts and passions into flesh-and-blood monsters. This is why I'm rating this two stars rather than just one.
Finally, to conclude in true Carnackian fashion: "Out you go! I want a sleep." -
Carnacki can be described as the Sherlock of the occult world. This collection of 9 stories brings us tales of weird supernatural phenomena, some of which are genuinely perplexing while the rest are a result of devious human enterprise. All these stories were published in The Idler Magazine between 1910-1912.
The stories are decently engrossing, though a little repetitive in style. You will find quite an odd assortment of tools being used by Carnacki to detect/fight the ghostly phenomena: pentacles, chalk and garlic circles, human hair barriers, vacuum tubes, cameras,... Some arcane references he makes include vowel-intensive names such as Aeiirii, Saiitii, and the Saaamaaa Ritual. These make the reading experience quite different from modern horror stories. The combination of supposedly traditional rituals along with modern scientific methods is quite unique considering the time period in which these stories were published.
The stories follow a preset format.
- Carnacki sends notes of invitation to four friends, asking them to come to dinner.
- After dinner, Carnacki lights his pipe, everyone settles into their favourite chairs, and he tells the tale without interruption.
- Each of Carnacki's tales tells of an investigation into an unusual haunting, which Carnacki is charged to identify and to end.
- He always uses evidence to draw his final conclusions, so that in some stories he decides the haunting is real, while in others it is staged or faked by an adversary for various reasons. So you won't know till the end if the haunting was genuine or man-made or sometimes, a combination.
- After the tale is complete, Carnacki answers a few questions from his guests and then dismisses them with the phrase, "Out you go!"
Every story is written in first person. One of the four invited friends, Dodgson, serves the actual narrator of the story, though his role is quite minimal as Carnacki soon takes centre-stage and begins his own narration. You might equate this with Watson's recounting of Sherlock's adventures but there are two crucial differences.
1. Watson was a part of Sherlock's adventures. Dogdson merely narrates what Carnacki recounted and has no direct role to play in the paranormal adventures.
2. Unlike in Sherlock where Watson is the narrator and Sherlock the 3rd party, here Carnacki himself recounts his adventures. So the stories have more of a personal touch but sometimes sound pompous and abrupt.
If this were written in the modern era, I might have rated it a 3 because of the repetitive tropes and the simplistic writing. But keeping in mind that this would have been a trendsetter a century ago, and that I can't use modern sensibilities to judge old fiction, I'll go with a 3.5 star rating. Do give it a try if you want to try out a really different kind of horror anthology.
Trigger warnings: brutal animal cruelty in a couple of the tales. 😢
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Another paranormal investigator in the tradition of Van Helsing, Dr. Hesselius, and John Silence, I was curious to see what Hodgson would do with the idea, especially after reading his
House on the Borderland and finding it to be refreshingly uncanny. Unfortunately, the Carnacki stories are so flat and formulaic that they add very little to the subgenre.
Every case follows the same pattern: a group of men gather at Carnacki's house and sit around for a bit before he suddenly launches into his story: he's called out to investigate some occurrence, he describes some incident as giving him the 'creep', he refers to a number of other cases 'which you fellows certainly remember' (but which are never, themselves, described), he piles on a lot of colloquialisms, follows this with some goofy made-up terms ('Second Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual'), mentions someone 'lacking pluck', describes a vague feeling and insists 'we must know what he means', eventually blinds himself with a camera flash, sets up his 'electric pentacle', then explains the whole matter (barring a few mysterious details), and sends his friends out into the night.
Sometimes, the cases are supernatural, while other times we get a full 'gothic explique' that tries to account for the apparently supernatural elements as mere tricks. So, there is some variation in the subject matter, but not very much, especially when compared to the John Silence tales.
Worse than that is the fact that Carnacki himself is a very flat character, somewhat unflappable and matter-of-fact, but otherwise entirely unremarkable and without much sense of interior personality, despite all his friendly colloquial expressions. In Silence, for example, we get a figure who actually seems affected by the cases in which he takes part, who has an investment in the people involved, and in what those cases suggest about the reality of the world. Silence has a perspective, a sort of bias which makes him feel like an actual person caught up in a lot of strangeness.
Carnacki, on the other hand, is so matter-of-fact about everything that there is very little unique about his approach. He's not a figure who must deal with the implications of the supernatural, of the long-term effects they have on a human mind, but an implacable force that solves whatever is before him. Certainly, sometimes he has a fright, but the horror in these tales is all of a very physical variety.
There is always some menacing thing, some murderous force which is acting upon him, which must be fought and overcome. The force is never dangerous to the mind, or the perception of the world, only to the physical body. As such, the Carnacki stories form a prototype of the jump-scare movies which are popular today: there are always half seen things in the shadow of the corner of the room, lurking around every corner, malicious and violent and only held off by Carnacki's magic circles.
I do have to say that I find the idea of his 'electric pentacle', a vacuum tube ring which protects him from supernatural forces to be terribly amusing. Again, it somewhat negates from the supernatural aspect, turning the thing into a physical scientific investigation, but its such a wacky, Ghostbusters idea--I only wish he'd been able to do more with it, that the stories had been odd enough and psychologically intriguing enough to make of the pentacle more than a mere plot object.
There's also an odd continuation of the pig-based horror that Hodgson explored in House on the Borderland, which illustrates just how lucky Lovecraft was to base supernatural monsters on his intense distaste for seafood, since kosher law seems not to translate as well into the disturbing and horrific. -
I listened to this audio book late yesterday and this morning. It was okay. I do love the style in which the story is told and the narrator was pretty good. Overall, I'm not really impressed, but I look forward to reading more of Hodgson's work in the future.
Read 7.13.21-7.14.21 (Removed reading dates so this does not count towards my yearly challenge.* -
Starting off strong, I was struck by the effectiveness of Hodgson's writing. He tells a good ghost story, if not as subtle and gradual a build up as M.R. James, they are more tense and frightening, the supernatural forces (indeed, when they were supernatural) more malignant.
But after a while the foibles of his writing began to grate a little. For instance the tendency of Carnacki to constantly ask his listeners/reader "Do you follow?", "Can you possibly understand what I am trying to convey?", etc. Initially it was fun trying to guess whether there would be supernatural forces underlying the phenomenon under investigation or not but when Hodgson starts conflating the causes, when it happened that by coincidence a real haunting begins at the same time as someone started faking it, it stretches credence a little too far, particularly when that happens for the second time. And then there's the noises and apparitions that seem to be thrown in for effect in the build up of the story that are not always explained away satisfactorily at the end, often dismissed as merely an overactive imagination on the part of the protagonist.
Those criticisms aside, there is still some good stories worth reading here although I would suggest not reading them all in one go, but rather just dipping into this collection every now and again. I suspect that is the best way to enjoy these stories. -
William Hope Hodgson's stories were apparently published during the boom of detective fiction that followed the popularity of Sherlock Holmes, and Hodgson more or less follows Doyle's formula: each Carnacki story involves Carnacki going to investigate some unusual occurrence and using detective work to figure out what's going on. The difference is that Carnacki uses occult techniques as well as "scientific" instruments such as the "Electric Pentacle," and some of his cases actually turn out to be supernatural in origin.
Instead of a Watson, Carnacki relates his cases after the fact to four friends, including the narrator, "Dodgson," who are a passive audience for Carnacki's stories. So there is no buddy dynamic here. The stories are somewhat formulaic as well — mostly haunted houses, haunted rooms, and in one case, a haunted ship.
They are interesting in that you never know until the climax whether the "ghost" or other supernatural phenomenon will turn out to be an actual haunting, or some human perpetrator acting out a Scooby Doo plot, trying to scare people off with wires and trapdoors and luminescent paint for some nefarious reason.
When the case does genuinely involve supernatural entities, though, it's not just phantoms drifting around. Hodgson was possibly an inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft, and his horrors are inhuman, malevolent, and alien. Even the mere "ghosts" are pretty dark, causing not just chills but "supernatural miasmas" of fear (or "funk" as Carnacki keeps calling it, in I presume the idiom of the day). In some cases, Carnacki encounters creatures that could properly be called demons:
"I saw something terrible rising up through the middle of the 'defence'. It rose with a steady movement. I saw it pale and huge through the whirling funnel of cloud - a monstrous pallid snout rising out of that unknowable abyss. It rose higher and higher. Through a thinning of the cloud I saw one small eye... a pig's eye with a sort of vile understanding shining at the back of it."
This book, collecting all of Hodgson's Carnacki stories, was an interesting read given where Hodgson sits historically and literarily, between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft. His prose style was florid and stilted, and while the stories are imaginative, with Carnacki's "Electric Pentacle" and colored "defenses" and "Sigsand Manuscript" and other references to Hodgson's invented arcana, and when the monsters show up they are genuinely dreadful, after a few of them you can see they're just repeating the same ideas over and over. Had Hodgson written more, perhaps he'd have eventually expanded Carnacki's world. -
This is a fun, quirky collection of tales featuring the supernatural detective Thomas Carnacki. Part Sherlock Holmes part Scooby-Doo, I'm not sure this is really for everyone, but if you like the sound of that combination you will almost certainly enjoy it.
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I've read five of the Carnacki stories, but the edition I read, edited by Jeremy Lassen, mentions that they were reworked before being collected in this Eveleigh Nash volume, so perhaps I'll have a look and see how significant the differences are.
"Thing Invisible"
"Gateway of the Monster"
"House Among the Laurels"
"Whistling Room"
Searcher of the End House"
They are 50/50 supernatural vs human agency. -
I really enjoyed listening to this audiobook and loved the backing music that occasionally crept into the story. This really added to the atmosphere of this chilling tale.
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British author William Hope Hodgson's "Carnacki the Ghost-Finder" first saw the light of day in 1913. Consisting of six short stories, drawn from the pages of "The Idler" and "The New Magazine," the collection was ultimately expanded to include nine stories, these last three being discovered after Hodgson's early death, at age 40, in April 1918. In this fascinating group of tales, we meet Thomas Carnacki, a sort of occult investigator in Edwardian London. Just as Carnacki seems to be patterned on a similar fictional psychic investigator of the time, Algernon Blackwood's John Silence, a casual reading of the Carnacki stories will reveal the influence that Hodgson's Sistrand Manuscript, Outer Monstrosities and "electric pentacle" defense had on later authors such as H.P. Lovecraft (an admitted fan of this book, although he much preferred Hodgson's novels) and Dennis Wheatley. These nine tales all have a similar framing device: Carnacki calls four friends--Arkright, Taylor, Jessop (could this be the same able-bodied seaman Jessop who was the only survivor of the Mortzestus sinking in Hodgson's 1909 novel "The Ghost Pirates"?!?!) and our narrator, Dodgson--to dinner and afterwards regales them with the details of his latest case. The reader will soon realize that not all the cases are supernatural in nature, although they all seem to be so on the surface, and I suppose half the fun in reading these tales comes from trying to figure out which stories involve actual hauntings or spirit manifestations, and which are hoaxes. To make the game even tougher, some of the tales involve both sham AND actual supernatural events. This reader always gets more of a kick from the 100% unearthly, but nonetheless, every tale here is just brimming with suspense and atmosphere. (Those readers who want to stick with the 100% paranormal should go with the John Silence stories mentioned above.)
In the first Carnacki tale, "The Gateway of the Monster" (which first appeared in "The Idler" in January 1910), our hero investigates a haunting near London and is compelled to seek defense within his electric pentacle (indeed, an excellent name for a rock band!) from a ghostly, murderous hand. Dennis Wheatley's similar pentacle defense, in his 1934 masterpiece "The Devil Rides Out," is clearly patterned after Carnacki's night from hell here. "The House Among the Laurels" (from "The Idler," February 1910) finds Carnacki investigating another haunted house, this one in western Ireland, the same eerie locale that figured so prominently in Hodgson's 1908 classic "The House on the Borderland." In "The Whistling Room" ("The Idler," March 1910), Carnacki is back in western Ireland, investigating the strange sounds that have been proceeding from a certain room in Iastrae Castle. This, I must say, is one of the freakiest tales of the bunch. In "The Horse of the Invisible" ("The Idler," April 1910), Carnacki encounters a very unusual spirit indeed: a ghostly horse that afflicts the first-born females of a certain well-to-do family in East Lancashire. Not exactly the kind of critter you'd want to feed sugar cubes to, to put it mildly! In "The Searcher of the End House" ("The Idler," May 1910), Carnacki tells of an investigation that he was forced to make at his own mother's home, very early in his career. Strange sounds had been heard, the ghostly image of a running child had been seen, a maggot had appeared from out of nowhere, and a horrible stench had pervaded the house. Who ya gonna call, indeed! In "The Thing Invisible" ("New Magazine," January 1912), Carnacki spends a night in a creepy old chapel that contains a mysterious dagger; a dagger that has, on its own, attacked the family butler. Even the suit of armor that our hero wears for protection in this tale is barely enough to save him from this terrible weapon.
Thus run the original six Carnacki tales. The first of the posthumous stories, "The Haunted Jarvee" ("Premier Magazine," March 1929), finds Carnacki on the high seas (a milieu that Hodgson knew so well), investigating the eerie manifestations that had recently been witnessed on the sailing ship Jarvee. If only the crew of the doomed Mortzestus had had access to Carnacki's scientific equipment! Actually, this story goes a good way toward explaining the unfathomable events that transpire in "The Ghost Pirates." In "The Hog" ("Weird Tales," January 1947), Carnacki faces one of his most fearsome opponents: a soul-sucking swine creature, one of the so-called Outer Monstrosities, and his minions. Yes, these ARE very similar to the loathsome beasts that so memorably tormented the old hermit in "The House on the Borderland," and again, this tale throws some light on that earlier mysterious novel. A great story indeed, and featuring Carnacki's improvement on the electric pentacle: his multicolored vacuum tubes. The ninth and final Carnacki tale, "The Find," first appeared in the complete "Carnacki the Ghost-Finder" of 1947. The only nonsupernatural story of any description in the bunch, it tells of Carnacki's investigation into a possible antiquarian book forgery. This short tale demonstrates that our hero was not just an occult sleuth, but a pretty fine regular detective and ratiocinator as well. Taken along with the others, we have a most impressive gathering of short stories indeed. This collection, by the way, was chosen for inclusion in Jones & Newman's excellent overview volume "Horror: Another 100 Best Books," and I have no problem at all with that decision. My bet is that you'll be wishing that Hodgson's short life hadn't precluded the penning of many more of these engrossing Carnacki tales.... -
I wandered into this and a few more of its ilk via recs from the afterword of The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, which is among other things a pastiche of the period. That had an amusing bit featuring a club, the members of which are all assorted heroes of this then-popular genre. The edition of Carnacki I read was one of the, I believe, Project Gutenberg versions distributed for free on Amazon, and was well formatted and proofread.
It's done in a tales-told form, with the eponymous Carnacki yarning about his assorted supernatural adventures to his regular dinner companions. Very much a period piece in every way, and interesting therefore.
Ta, L. -
'Complaints continue to reach us from all parts of the country to the effect that Mr. W. HOPE HODGSON's "Carnacki" stories are producing a widespread epidemic of Nervous Prostration! So far from being able to reassure or calm our nervous readers, we are compelled to warn them that "The Whistling Room", which we publish this month, is worse than ever. Our advertising manager had to go to bed for two days after reading the advance sheets; a proof reader has sent in his resignation; and, worst of all, our smartest office boy --- But this is no place to bewail or seek for sympathy. Yet another of those stories will appear in April!'
It's hard for us, accustomed as we are to the far more visceral scares of cinematic horror, to relate to the plight of the nervous readers mentioned by the editor of The Idler in this notice included with that magazine's March 1910 issue.
Reading the story in question, however, might make their complaints easier to commiserate with. A premise that seems far from menacing at first - a room that whistles - is turned into a vector for some very weird and horrific images and one of the more gruesome backstories in these stories.
Other highlights of the series are THE SEARCHER OF THE END HOUSE, a story inspired by Hodgson's own stay, with his mother, in a supposedly haunted house, THE HAUNTED JARVEE, a most chilling tale of horror at sea, and the mini-epic of porcine terror, THE HOG.
Carnacki is a mix of detective and industrial-age shaman, cracking quite a few cases of fake hauntings - sometimes alongside very real hauntings as in THE HORSE OF THE INVISIBLE - and at least one case with no supernatural elements, THE FIND, is given a very clever solution, one that Holmes or Dupin would have been proud of. In most of the other stories, he draws on the ancient lore contained in the 'Sigsand manuscript' to construct such cyberpunkish devices to fight supernatural forces as the electric pentacle and a strange device that uses coloured lights to both draw and repel spirits. His devices, and the fiendishness of the horrors he faces were growing from story to story. Had Hodgson's career not been untimely curtailed (he died in the first world war) one senses that this series that would have grown to greater strengths.
Which is not to say they're easy stories to read; Hodgson's prose is passable at best, frequently dense and hard to follow, marred with intrusive conversational turns of phrase (Carnacki is narrating these stories to a group of friends, a framing device that counts for little purpose, it seems, other than to give Carnacki anudiene to whom he can expound a bit on his supernatural theories in the last few stories). His esoteric nomenclature is risible at times ('Saaitii', for instance) and the cod-archaic quotations from the Sigsand manuscript can grate as well.
Despite all this, Hodgson's imagination is truly original and macabre, and if you take the time to read these stories - as I did after an initial discomfort with Hodgson's prose - they have many dark delights to offer the horror fan. Here as a sample is some very effective imagery from THE SEARCHER OF THE END HOUSE:
"From then, until two o'clock, nothing happened; but a little after two, as I found by holding my watch near to the faint glow of the closed lanterns, I had a time of quite extraordinary nervousness; and I bent towards the landlord, and whispered to him that I had a queer feeling that something was about to happen, and to be ready with his lantern; at the same time I reached out towards mine. In the very instant I made this movement, the darkness which filled the passage seemed to become suddenly of a dull violet colour; not, as if a light had been shone; but as if the natural blackness of the night had changed colour. And then, coming through this violet night, through this violet-coloured gloom, came a little naked Child, running. In an extraordinary way, the Child seemed not to be distinct from the surrounding gloom; but almost as if it were a concentration of that extraordinary atmosphere; as if that gloomy colour which had changed the night, came from the child. It seems impossible to make clear to you; but try to understand it.
"The Child went past me, running, with the natural movement of the legs of a chubby human child, but in an absolute and inconceivable silence. It was a very small Child, and must have passed under the table; but I saw the Child through the table, as if it had been only a slightly darker shadow than the coloured gloom. In the same instant, I saw that a fluctuating shimmer of violet light outlined the metal of the gun-barrels and the blade of the sword-bayonet, making them seem like faint shapes of glimmering light, floating unsupported where the table-top should have shown solid. -
Mettiamo subito in chiaro le cose, Carnacki mi piace, si inizia sempre con una bella cenetta fra amici e poi ci si accomoda in tutta tranquillità ad ascoltare un racconto avvincente (a quanto pare è quando si fa buio e arriva l’ora di andarsene che la tranquillità viene meno :P).
L’unico vero difetto che ho riscontrato è il non essere discorsivo: tra il rituale di Saaamaaa, il manoscritto di Sigsand, cerchi, pentacoli, marchingegni elettrici e quant’altro con cui si arrabatta… punti in cui sono andato sistematicamente in confusione in ogni singolo racconto e su cui l’autore si prodiga, ahimè, in modo minuzioso e reiterato ^^’ Proprio per questo quando finisco una storia dell’antologia mi sento pienamente soddisfatto, ma non ho alcuna voglia di mettermi subito a leggerne un’altra, ci vuole un ragionevole lasso di tempo d’intermezzo per potersi gustare questi apprezzabili lavori.
In merito al resto nulla da eccepire, le storie presenti ci regalano dei bei brividi, nel complesso perdono alcuni punti dal lato horrorifico (ma neanche tanto) quando c’è dietro qualche manigoldo, però aumentano l’imprevedibilità sul ‘come andrà a finire’, a beneficio del mystery. Questo cacciatore di fantasmi rientra a pieno titolo nella categoria dei ‘detective dell’insolito’ che mi ha fatto tanto piacere conoscere, grazie ad un’antologia dove sono raccolte opere valide (non c’è gran discrepanza di qualità dall’una all’altra, sono bene o male tutte sullo stesso livello, e questa è un’altra cosa parecchio gradita). Peccato solo che un volume così, con diversi racconti brevi, sia sprovvisto di indice.
Buffo paradosso: “Il Maiale” si può definire il racconto che mi è piaciuto meno, tanto lungo rispetto agli altri perché il nostro Carnacki non lesina certo su quelle contromosse difensive a cui accennavo prima, però è per me anche un pezzo memorabile, grazie allo stupendo avversario di turno. E non sto scherzando, Hodgson è riuscito a dargli una resa davvero magnifica!
“Nel Sigsand il fenomeno era descritto più o meno così: Dio soltanto è più potente del Maiale. Se nel sonno o nell’ora del pericolo udite la voce del Maiale, arretrate. Perché il Maiale è una delle Mostruosità Esterne che nessun umano può avvicinare ne può continuare a vivere dopo averne udito il verso. Perché il Maiale aveva potere nella nostra vita primordiale e tornerà ad averlo nella vostra ultima ora. Essendo stato potente sulla Terra una volta, con ardore brama di tornarvi. E la vostra anima conoscerà un dolore atroce se non eviterete la bestia ma lascerete che si avvicini. E a tutti voi dico, se avete attirato sopra di voi questo terribile pericolo, ricordatevi della croce, perché è di quel simbolo che il Maiale ha orrore.”
E ancora:
“Quando i rumori cessarono, vidi qualcosa emergere dal centro della difesa. Si sollevava con un movimento lento e costante. Lo vidi, enorme e pallido, attraverso il vortice di nubi: un grugno mostruoso che risaliva dall’ignoto degli abissi… un’enorme massa pallida. Dove la coltre di nubi si assottigliava riuscii a vedere un piccolo occhio… non guarderò mai più l’occhio di un maiale senza rivivere le sensazioni che provai allora. L’occhio di un maiale e una specie di luce infernale che risplendeva dietro di esso.”
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The old masters of horror writing have always excelled in creating the atmosphere which slowly creeps upon the reader. If as a reader, I were to imagine being trapped in a haunted house this is how such an author would have written it (in lay-prose perhaps) :
When I woke up in a cold sweat past two in the morning, I wasn't really sure what awakened me. The rain was still falling heavily outside and it drowned out all sounds. Well, not all of them for that was when I realized what awakened me was an incessant rapping at my bedroom door. I tried turning on the light but to no avail, the storm might have wreaked havoc with the power lines. Where was the darned candle when you needed it ? The rapping at my door never stopped but kept on going every ten seconds or so.
Why was I scared ? For the simple reason that I was sleeping in a second floor bedroom and I stayed alone in this house, the front door of which I had firmly locked before I went to bed four hours ago ! Picking up all the courage that I had and my path illuminated by stray lightning from outside the window, I found my way to the door. My hand on the door knob, I thought again : did I want to open this or not ? And then...
The feeling of mounting dread, of the hair at the back of your neck slowly rising in response to the ambiance, a chill moving down your spine are all things that William Hope Hodgson is excellent in dishing out in his stories. His protagonist, Thomas Carnacki is an occult detective who specializes in haunted houses and how to get rid of the problem that plagues the owners of the said house. He is part Sherlock and part John Constantine for he uses skills of deduction and reasoning along with an innate understanding of occult magic to crack his cases. Somehow all these descriptions would fill your mind with a rough-and-tumble ghostbuster like Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing but Carnacki is no alpha-male.He is a quiet and silent and very British gentleman who would not hesitate at the slightest to run screaming from the room should he come face to face with a malevolent entity that proves too much for him. Some of the stories here feature monstrosities that are unrelenting in their pursuit for blood and violence and competent as he may be, Carnacki knows when to run and when to fight. The stories are told as post-dinner conversations between Carnacki and his friends where they try to dissect the tales for all they are worth.
Of late, I have begun to like horror stories of old where the atomosphere is of more importance than the cause of the horror itself. This would mean that I would eventually have to return to the master - Lovecraft himself.
Carnacki himself can close this review with this :
I am not given to either believing or disblieving things 'on principle', as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more, some of them are not ashamed to boast of the insane fact. I view all reported 'hauntings' as unproven until I have examined into them, and I am bound to admit that ninety-nine cases in a hundred turn out to be sheer bosh and fancy. But the hundredth ! Well, if it were not for the hundredth, I should have few stories to tell you -eh ? -
Not exactly notable compared to Hodgson's cosmic masterpiece The House on the Borderland or the flawed classic The Night Land, and they lack the intellectual substance of Blackwood's John Silence tales, but I find them to be a whole lot of good silly fun.
I particularly like how terrified Carnacki gets when finally encountering traces of the supernatural, despite his fastidious preparation. -
If I am not mistaken this is the 3'rd story I read/heard about Carnacki and his friends after dinner, where he tells them another of his queer, weird cases.
I give this one 4.9 Stars only.
It was a great story overall, even though I can not forgive Hodgson .
If you want to read or hear this story here are two links.
For your ears ->
The Gateway of the Monster @ Youtube
For your eyes ->
The Gateway of the Monster -
W.H. Hodgson es conocido sobre todo por ser el mejor escritor de relatos de terror ambientados en el mar que ha habido. Pero en su obra también hay sitio para otro tipo de cuentos de terror. Dentro del género de lo fantástico y lo sobrenatural, existe un apartado bastante curioso, el dedicado a los investigadores de lo oculto. A todos nos vienen a la cabeza los nombres de Mulder y Scully, pero este curioso subgénero empezó mucho antes, con el Doctor Hesselius creado por el gran Sheridan Le Fanu. Posteriormente, aparecieron otros nombres que ya están dentro de la historia del género, como el Van Helsing de Bram Stoker, y el John Silence de Algernon Blackwood. Y a estos nombres hay que añadir, irremediablemente, el de Thomas Carnacki.
Carnacki, residente en Chelsea, es un detective de lo oculto y anormal, al que le son solicitados sus peculiares servicios por clientes en cuyas viviendas acaecen extraños sucesos. Todos los relatos tienen en común su comienzo, ya que tras alguna de sus aventuras, Carnacki manda una postal a cuatro de sus amigos invitándoles a cenar. Y tras la cena, Jessop, Arkright, Taylor y Hodgson, el narrador, asisten a la explicación por parte del investigador, pipa en mano, de su último caso. Estos casos consisten en mansiones, castillos o iglesias, donde en alguna de sus habitaciones suceden hechos terroríficos. Carnacki se sirve en su lucha contra el mal de pentáculos, antiguos libros sobre médiums y magia, cámaras fotográficas y, por si acaso, una pistola.
Lo que más me ha gustado de estos cuentos ha sido cómo los plantea Hodgson, como si de misterios policíacos se tratase, utilizando perfectamente a su personaje para ir desvelándonos la solución. Es un libro que gustará más a aquellos aficionados al género detectivesco, con un toque de terror sobrenatural.
Estos son los nueve relatos incluidos en esta antología, que fueron los únicos que lleg�� a escribir el maestro Hodgson con Carnacki como protagonista:
- La Cosa Invisible (The Thing Invisible). Un castillo tiene una capilla adosada, en la que hay un refectorio con un arma que acosa a todo el que se acerca a ella, sólo de noche.
- La puerta del monstruo (The Gateway of the Monster). En una casa se suceden continuos portazos, provenientes de la llamada Habitación Gris. El bueno de Carnacki deberá pasar la noche en ella para averiguar su misterio.
- La casa entre los laureles (The House among the Laurels). Cuando Wentworth tomó posesión de Gannington Manor, no sabía que había adquirido una casa encantada, en la que nadie quiere trabajar. El salón sobre todo parece ocultar algo sobrenatural.
- La habitación que silbaba (The Whistling Room). En el castillo de Iastrae nadie duerme tranquilo. Parece haber un fantasma en la casa, en cierta habitación, que silba y chirría toda la noche. Uno de los mejores relatos del libro.
- El investigador de la última casa (The Searcher of the End House). Cuando Carnacki vivía con su madre, tuvo que enfrentarse a un misterio en su propia casa. Portazos, ruidos que parecen llamadas, y sobre todo un olor nauseabundo pondrán a prueba al investigador.
- El caballo invisible (The Horse of the Invisible). Cuenta la leyenda que si en la familia Hisgins hubiera una primogénita mujer, esta sería acosado por una caballo invisible. Cada vez que se ha dado esta circunstancia, nunca ha acabado bien. Ahora de ha dado de nuevo, justo cuando la señorita Hisgins va a casarse con el oficial de marina Beaumont. Y ambos ya han sufrido el ataque del maligno caballo. Impresionante relato, de lo mejor de la antología.
- El encantamiento del Jarvee (The Haunted Jarvee). El capitán Thompson requiere la ayuda de su amigo Carnacki para que le ayude con el problema que tiene con su barco, el Jarvee. Ya han muerto varios hombres y nadie quiere embarcarse. Por supuesto, tratándose de Hodgson, no podía faltar en el libro un cuento de terror en el mar.
- El hallazgo (The Find). Cuando se creía que sólo existía un único ejemplar del libro 'Dumpley's Acrostics', que se encuentra en el museo Caylen, aparece un personaje diciendo que posee un segundo ejemplar, que además, tras varias pruebas, parece verdadero. Será la perspicacia de Carnacki la que deberá solucionar el misterio.
- El cerdo (The Hog). El doctor Witton le remite uno de sus pacientes a Carnacki. El paciente, llamado Bains, sufre constantes pesadillas que no le dejan conciliar el sueño. En ellas, Bains sufre el acoso de gruñidos y de algo que quiere capturarlo. Posiblemente se trate del mejor cuento del libro, donde entran en juego las fuerzas Exteriores. -
10-01 - GdL Agenzia investigativa Pinkerton
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Thoroughly enjoyable series of Sherlock Holmes-meets-H.P. Lovecraft stories, written in the last years before WW1. An entirely disposable narrator re-relates the after-dinner stories of the eponymous Carnacki, an Edwardian flâneur who goes on holiday with his mother and has invented, in ingenious cod-occult detail, such essential ghost-hunting kit as the Electric Pentacle.
It is distinguished by three things. First is Carnacki’s insistence on relating the precise physiological symptoms of his own fear throughout all his adventures, punctuated by insistent button-holing addresses to the reader/listener/whoever – “Can you understand?”, “Can you imagine how I felt?”, “Does it interest you?”. This is an interesting effect, but quite annoying.
Second, the sheer quality of the supernatural back-story: although billed as a ghost-hunter, Carnacki is clearly working various kinds of magic, with the aid of the splendidly conceived Electric Pentacle, the highly useful Sigsand manuscript and even the Unknown Last Line of the Saaamaaa Ritual. There’s even a hint at the existence of an inscrutable Protective Force and talk of Ab-human Priests. All very satisfying.
The third and best thing is to do with the monsters Carnacki strives against, which are sometimes bestial avatars of the Outer Monstrosities (horse- or pig-shaped), sometimes strange sensory distortions, and sometimes – magnificently – gangs of smugglers or other rogue humans pretending to be ghosts, in true Scooby Doo style. And you don’t know at the outset what kind of story each is going to turn out to be. -
This is a collection of stories told by the ghost finder of the title, Thomas Carnacki, to his four friends - Dodgson, Arkwright, Jessop and Taylor. Carnacki would invite them over for dinner and afterwards they would settle down and he would relate to them his latest adventure investigating a haunting of some kind. There are echoes of Sherlock Holmes in these tales. Some of them seem to have naturalistic explanations, others more supernatural. Carnacki is open to either - whatever the evidence leads to. Some of them are quite eerie, indeed scary - perhaps the scariest is the last and longest one, "The Hog". Unfortunately, Hodgson was killed in action in 1918 at Ypres in World War I at the age of 40, so he never wrote any more Carnacki stories (or anything else). But his writings were influential, being influences on the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and the circle of pulp writers associated with "Weird Tales" magazine in the 1930s.
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I enjoyed this a lot, and at the end have the kind of feeling I would have had if I'd got to the end of 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' and discovered there were no more stories.
True, some of the stories are hokey (particularly those where the hauntings are man-made, very Scooby Doo) and the character of Carnacki doesn't have much character at all.
However good horror runs through these stories, and the descriptions of the supernatural incidents are as spinetingling as any out there.
Recommended. -
“I’ve heard it. A sort of swinish clamouring melody that grunts and roars and shrieks in chunks of grunting sounds, all tied together with squealings and shot through with pig howls. I’ve sometimes thought there was a definite beat in it; for every now and again there comes a gargantuan GRUNT, breaking through the million pig-voiced roaring—a stupendous GRUNT that comes in with a beat. Can you understand me?”
Ο Γ.Χ. Χόντγκσον γνωστός και με εξαιρετέος στο Ελληνικό αναγνωστικό κοινό, λόγω της cult νουβέλας "House on the Borderland" με τις τρεις μεταφράσεις του (εκδόσεις Ωρόρα, Locus 7 και Πορτοκάλι) καθώς επίσης και με άλλα μεταφρασμένα βιβλία, εδώ παρουσιάζει τον ντετέκτιβ Τόμας Καρνάκι, που ειδικεύεται σε υποθέσεις μεταφυσικού.
Γραμμένες στις αρχές του προηγούμενου αιώνα οι ιστορίες μπορεί να μην προσφέρουν την καταιγιστική δράση και την κινηματογραφική δομή των σύγχρονων βιβλίων τρόμου αλλά έχουν μια νοσηρή αυθεντική ατμόσφαιρα που δύσκολα μπορεί να αναπαραχθεί. Υπάρχει μια εξήγηση σε αυτό: ο Χόντγκσον ουσιαστικά προσπαθεί να αντιγράψει τις επιρροές του (Ντόϋλ, Μπλάγκγουντ) προσφέροντας μια απενεχοποιημένη pulp απόλαυση χωρίς πολλά-πολλά., το οποίο σημαίνει ότι κάθε ιστορία έχει παρόμοια δομή και διαφέρει μόνο το τελικό twist.
Πράγματι υπάρχει μια πατέντα από την οποία σπάνια ξεφέυγει ο Χόντγκσον: ένα στοιχειωμένο σπίτι, οι έρευνες του Καρνάκι, η χρήση των τεχνολογικών/μεταφυσικών μεθόδων του (το "ηλεκτρικό πεντάγραμμο" κ.α.), η επαφή με το μεταφυσικό και φυσικά η τελική έκβαση. Η ανάπτυξη των χαρακτήρων είναι μηδενική αλλά αυτό δεν έχει καμία σημασία: τον πρώτο λόγο έχουν οι νοσηρές, σχεδόν εφιαλτικές περιγραφές των μεταφυσικών γεγονότων, στις οποίες ο Χοντγκσόν ξεδιπλώνει την εκλεπτυσμένη πρόζα του.
Τα διηγήματα είναι ιδιαίτερα τρομακτικά και ατμοσφαιρικά ενώ η σύνδεση με τις μετέπειτα ιστορίες του Λάβκραφτ είναι εμφανής. Είναι δε άξιο απορίας πως ο Λάβκραφτ δεν εισήγαγε αυτούσιες τις ιδέες του Χόντγκσον στα έργα του. Κρίμα που η συγγραφική καριέρα του Χοντγκσον τελείωσε νωρίς καθώς οι ιδέες που εμφανίζονται εκεί θα μπορούσαν να αναπτυχθούν σε μεγάλο βαθμό. Αξίζει να διαβαστεί πάντως από όλους τους φίλους της καλής λογοτεχνίας τρόμου. -
Although he had his predecessors, Sherlock Holmes’ appearance in the 1880’s set the pattern for the scientific investigation of crime. It did not take long for an occult element to be added to the genre. Algernon Blackwood anthologized his John Silence stories in 1908. In 1913, William Hope Hodgson collected his tales of Carnacki, the Ghost Finder.
Hodgson relates his stories in fine Edwardian style. An unnamed narrator is part of a group of gentlemen who assemble when summoned to the London home of their friend Carnacki. After a fine dinner with excellent wine, they retire to the smoking room for cigars, port, and Carnacki’s latest adventure. He has a reputation as an investigator of supernatural phenomena. In the stories collected here, he often finds the events to be hoaxes, cover-ups of criminal activities, or the actions of a spurned suitor. But then there are those incidents of the unmistakably supernatural. “The Whistling Room” is one of the great horror stories of the early twentieth century. Other incidents involve phantom horses, floating daggers, and a very unpleasant hog. Carnacki approaches his investigations with the combined forces of modern science and occult knowledge. He uses cameras and recording devices, but also draws pentagrams and when things get really dicey he assembles the “electric pentacle.” He has also trained himself in esoteric practices. In naming these sources, Hodgson eschews the jumble of unpronounceable consonants favored by Lovecraft and company for the uncanniness of extended vowels. Carnacki is a devotee of the rituals of Saaamaaa. He is also never without a pistol.
For fans of Edwardian ghost fiction, these tales are a real find. Others may find them a bit creaky. But Carnacki’s heirs live on in television programming as various as The X Files and Ghosthunters International, not to mention the ongoing Paranormal Activity franchise. This is a genre that never loses its appeal.
