Swine feature prominently as villains and motifs in Hodgson. Sometimes they are antagonists outright, othertimes they are instruments of the plot, or used to describe the attributes of Hodgson’s horrors (more simply put, they are either monsters, victims of monsters, or used to describe monsters). This is most prominently featured in “The House on the Borderland,” where a lonely man is besieged by porcine demons, his house accidentally having been built on a soft spot in the

Perhaps using a touch of M. R. James (cf. “Count Magnus,” “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book”), Hodgson riffs off of the legend that Solomon was given a series of rings by God with which he could control demons. The “Monster” of the story, therefore, is implied to be a djinn once in Solomon’s service, recovered by a Crusader, and unleashed by hubris and negligence. Amongst Carnacki’s steampunk warbag are several now famous weapons which we read about for the first time here. Among t

Unquestionably, “The Voice in the Night” is Hodgson’s most famous story. It is also his most filmed story: only three of Carnacki’s tales were filmed (for television), and this – his only other adapted story – was converted to the screen twice: once as a moody, 1958 made-for-television anthology piece, and – more famously – adapted to the silver screen in the Japanese horror film “Matango.” Although it is a loose adaptation, “Matango” has been celebrated by Hodgson fans for i

“A Tropical Horror” was the second horror story Hodgson ever wrote, and the first maritime story. While it has been met with mixed criticism, it remains one of his most popular stories, is frequently anthologized, and has been adapted for radio and comic books. The story’s weakness is in its believability: even in an unfrequented and isolated stretch of sea it is hard to envision a ship being held hostage by a sea serpent for three days, but it is even harder to believe that

Aside from “Carnacki the Ghost-Finder,” Hodgson is probably most famous for what has been referred to as his Sargasso Sea Mythos – a series of horror stories set in the still body of water which he viewed as the ultimate setting to illustrate the heartless cruelty of Nature: a slimy, weedy, primordial quagmire rotating grimly like a great, deadly clock in the heart of the North Atlantic. The world’s only sea without a coastline, the Sargasso is 700 miles wide and 2,000 miles

One of his few stories to have attracted critical attention outside of the horror world, “The ‘Shamraken’ Homeward-Bounder” takes a place alongside the works of S. T. Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe which feature preternaturally aged sailors navigating an ancient boat across a hostile sea with decades between them and their last contact to humanity. The original story – the one that inspired all three writers – was that of the Flying Dutchman. The legend says that an arrogant a

Although it was not until later in his career that H. P. Lovecraft stumbled upon the treasure trove of William Hope Hodgson’s fiction, it is undeniable that once he did, he had found a kindred spirit. Lovecraft was probably indirectly influenced by Hodgson regardless of the relative lateness of his discovery: they were influenced by the same authors – primarily Poe, with elements of Bierce and Blackwood – and Hodgson’s writings were influential to writers whom Lovecraft disco