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Carnacki, the Ghost Finder

William Hope Hodgson

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May 16, 2020 Werner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

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 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!) ...more

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