Carnacki
Encyclopedia
Thomas Carnacki is a fictional supernatural detective
created by English
fantasy
writer William Hope Hodgson
. Carnacki was the protagonist of a series of six short stories published between 1910 and 1912 in The Idler
magazine and The New Magazine.
These stories were printed together as Carnacki the Ghost-Finder in 1913. A 1948 Arkham House
edition of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder edited by August Derleth
added three stories: "The Haunted Jarvee", published posthumously in The Premier Magazine in 1929; "The Hog", published in Weird Tales
in 1947; and "The Find", a previously unpublished story.
Each of Carnacki's tales tells of an investigation into an unusual haunting, which Carnacki is charged with not only understanding, but also ending. He employs a variety of scientific methods in his investigations, as well as resorting to more traditional folk-lore. He employs technologies such as photography
and his own fictional invention, the electric pentacle
. He is not dogmatic, and 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. This variety makes the stories suspenseful, as the audience is never sure if the ghosts are real or not.
After the tale is complete, Carnacki usually answers a few questions from his guests, but does not discuss the case at great length.
Carnacki uses a fictional ancient text, the Sigsand Manuscript, as a resource to protect himself against supernatural influences. Carnacki refers to Aeiirii and Saiitii manifestations, the latter being more dangerous and capable of overcoming Carnacki's protective devices, and several rituals, including the Saaamaaa Ritual, with its mysterious eight signs and "unknown last line" that is invoked in "The Whistling Room" by a mysterious power.
There are references to even more arcane fictional works, including the Incantation of Raaaee, but no further information is provided in the stories.
and Algernon Blackwood
, both of whom had their own supernatural detective characters (Jules de Grandin
and John Silence respectively).
and Rick Kennett
in their introduction to No. 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories pose the question: "What is it about Thomas Carnacki that fascinates so many people?" According to Kidd and Kennett, the series' enduring attraction comes more from Hodgson's capacity for world-building than any special appeal of Carnacki himself:
The next day, Carnacki takes Mary around the house, snapping photographs to see if any manifestation can be seen on film. In the cellar a horrible neighing is heard, but nothing is seen. One of the developed photographs, however, an enormous hoof can be seen. The night again passes uneventfully. The next morning, though, hoofbeats and neighing can be heard almost immediately, in what seems a direct assault by the invisible horse; Carnacki fires his weapon and Mary's father attacks with his sword. As a light is brought they discover a rejected suitor, Parsket, wearing an enormous costume horse head and hooves. As they interrogate Parsket, hoofbeats are again heard in the house, and this time it is not a trick; Parsket dies of fright. The marriage goes on as planned, and the manifestation is never heard from again. It seems that both the natural and the supernatural were at work.
The opening of the door happens again the following night, and this time while Carnacki is speaking to his mother the two of them hear a door slam twice downstairs. The smell of mildew is powerful as Carnacki investigates the house. More doors are heard slamming in the night, but Carnacki can find nothing. The next day, he consults the landlord, and learns something of the house's mysterious history, which includes a former tenant named Captain Tobias, and rumors of a ghostly woman. Several previous tenants had left upon seeing this apparition. The landlord agrees to spend the night in the house as well. In the dead of night, the two see a ghostly, naked child running through the house. The two have little doubt that it is a supernatural manifestation. The landlord claims to see a woman, apparently searching for the child, although Carnacki cannot see it. All of the seals on the doors are unbroken. As they debate what they have seen, the mildew smell returns, more powerful than ever. The downstairs passages are wet with grotesquely shaped footprints. In his nervousness, the landlord accidentally fires his revolver. No one is hit, but the police arrive to investigate. The physical evidence convinces the officer that an investigation is in order. As they wind up their tour, they find that a second officer has seen the ghostly woman. The men follow the wet footprints and smell into the cellars; on the top step, they find a wriggling maggot. Through their investigation of the third cellar, they find that the prints stop at a disused well, filled with water. They watch the well for the rest of the night, but nothing more happens.
The next evening, the men reconvene in the basement with lamps, a tripwire, and a wire cage to suspend over the well. Carnacki locks and seals the doors. As they keep watch, the ghostly child again manifests, apparently fleeing from an unseen pursuer. All present but Carnacki claim to see a woman, although he does see all the metal objects in the basement shining strangely. While they watch, something is heard to emerge from the well, giving off the horrible smell; Carnacki lowers the cage, and when the men uncover the lanterns they discover that they have caught Captain Tobias, carrying a leg of spoiled mutton. He came in through a secret passage at the bottom of the well. We learn that Captain Tobias is wanted for smuggling, after being released from prison only a few weeks earlier. He is trying to drive out the tenants of his old home so that he can retrieve smuggled goods; the sounds produced when he entered a hidden passage in Carnacki's mother's bedroom. The wooden panels have warped with age, and so make a clicking sound.
As for the ghost, Captain Tobias also reports that he has seen the woman and child. Carnacki believes that "...the Woman and the Child were not only two complete and different entities; but even they were each not in quite the same planes of existence." He thinks the men may have witnessed the ghost of a wayward unborn child that refused to accept birth into the natural world and which was thus pulled back by what Sigsand called "thee Haggs". Carnacki goes on to say "it leaves us with the conception of a child's soul adrift half-way between two lives, and running through Eternity from Something incredible and inconceivable (because not understood) to our senses."
Carnacki performs his standard methods of exhaustively and completely searching the designated area to eliminate obvious physical causes of a haunting.
Finding nothing, Carnacki is left to wait. After four days, whilst performing his usual patrol along the ship's Poop deck
with the Captain, his old friend suddenly points out to him a shadow of some sort on the ocean's surface, speeding towards the ship. He notices similar shadows converging on the ship from all of the cardinal directions. The closer they get to the Jarvee, the harder it is to see them, and eventually they disappear from sight.
Carnacki, the Captain and the rest of the crew retire, and the night goes normally, until about eleven o'clock, when a furious storm bursts upon the ship without a hint of warning. Refusing to send men up above to lower the sails and masts because of previous experiences in which he did just that, and his men were hurled to their death, Captain Thompson forces them to sit out the storm completely unprepared, and the Jarvee suffers tremendous damage.
Observing all this, Carnacki guesses that the phenomenon is caused by vibrations, so when he observes the shadows convering on the ship again the next day, he sets up a device to emit repellent vibrations. The ship is then struck by a furious squall, which tears one of the sails right off of the ropes. It isn't until 2 A.M that the squall passes, followed by an entire week of calm seas, with a furious wind storm every night.
During this week of calm, however, Carnacki is left to experiment with his repellent vibrations, until finally, he is given the distinct impression that his experiments are producing results, and he finally convinces Captain Thompson to allow him to set up his machine to emit the vibrations at full power, without stopping, starting at sunset.
Afraid for their lives, Carnacki orders the crew to stay below decks, padlocking the doors and making the first and eighth signs of the Saaamaaa Ritual, connected with triple lines crossed at every seventh inch. The Captain and the three mates demand to accompany him during the night, and Carnacki reluctantly agrees.
He draws a pentacle with chalk around the machine emitting the vibrations, and around the Captain and his mates. He then erects the Electric Pentacle and turns the vibration machine on.
Soon after, he and the Captain witness the mysterious shadows racing towards the ship.
Strange, purple lightning is then witnessed, but it is not accompanied by thunder. Soon after, the ship undergoes a series of strange "shudderings" before it starts to tip onto its side, sending the Electric Pentacle sliding, and forcing Carnacki, Captain Thompson and his three mates to hold on for dear life. Carnacki is forced to shut his machine off.
Predictably, there is a booming of thunder, and a furious storm starts raging. Towards morning, the storm calms, and soon after, the Jarvee is running before a strong wind — but a leak has been sprung, and two days after, they are forced to abandon ship and take to the boats.
The Jarvee sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
After he finishes his tale, Dodgson, the narrator asks what caused the haunting. Carnacki then explains his theory of "focuses", saying that the Jarvee, for whatever reason, be it the particular mood a builder was in as he hammered a nail home, or the tree that makes up a certain board, was a focal point for "attractive vibrations". He summarizes by saying that it is impossible for him to know fully why the Jarvee was being haunted, and he could only make suppositions.
.
Cast
and Rick Kennett
collects twelve stories written about the further adventures of Carnacki. Four of these stories were originally published as a 32-page booklet of the same title in 1992. The book version was printed in a limited edition of 500 copies.
Many of these stories are inspired by off-hand references to other cases of hauntings that Carnacki makes in his stories, which were never explained further in the original story series. In their introduction to the 1992 booklet the authors describe these stories as pastiche
, in the sense of respectful imitation or homage, as opposed to parody
, which mocks the original (either with respectful humor, or more viciously). The authors suggest that Hodgson, by having Carnacki casually drop references to other cases which he himself did not write about, "invited" his readers to enter the "shared universe" and pick up where he left off. Readers may decide for themselves whether to consider these stories "canon" or a legitimate part of the Carnacki story arc; they closely follow not only the basic framework structure of the Carnacki original stories but also Hodgson's style and vocabulary.
electronic text show this correction. "Matheson's Inheritance" covers both bases by including moving fur and placing the haunting in Noving House in Wales.
Matheson has inherited a baroque mansion. Local legend says the house was once occupied by a dewi (wizard) and his familiar an afanc. One room in the house emanates dread. Carnacki and Matheson can find no natural explanation, and so Carnacki spends the night in the room, inside his protective pentacle
. In the middle of his vigil his candle flames suddenly turn black, and the floor becomes a heaving carpet of fur, as if the pentacle was upon the back of a giant animal. It is clear that the protective barrier has failed utterly. As in "The Whistling Room", a second powerful entity intervenes and the candle flames turn blue; Carnacki is given a moment to escape the room, and does so, although his pantlegs are torn and his legs covered with cuts. In daylight, strange, ancient bones are found under the floorboards of the room; before the room can be demolished, that wing of the mansion burns.
The blue candle flames point Carnacki back to references to the protective powers of colors in the Sigsand manuscript, suggesting the origin of the colored tubes that appear in Hodgson's Carnacki story "The Hog". The afanc is described as having a horse-like head; this description does not match the Welsh myth, and so may be a reference to "The Horse of the Invisible".
Motifs: a legend; a protective pentacle; a supernatural manifestation; protection from one supernatural entity by another, more powerful one; a creature or creatures unknown to science; a vigil.
novella
appeared as one of a series
based upon Doctor Who
. Foreign Devils
featured Carnacki alongside the Second Doctor
as his companion
.
was released, written by Alan Moore
and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill
. It is part of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
series, and is the first release to feature Thomas Carnacki. Carnacki is a member of the 1910s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with Wilhelmina Murray
, Allan Quatermain
, Orlando
, and A. J. Raffles
. The Black Dossier is filled with non-comic pieces, taking the form of prose stories, letters, maps, guidebooks, magazines and even a lost Shakespeare folio. Carnacki features most prominently in a short story "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss" and concerns a visit by Jeeves
and Bertie Wooster
(by P. G. Wodehouse
) to Wooster's Aunt Dahlia
wherein they encounter an Elder Thing
, along with a Mi-go
and a Cthulhu
cult. Carnacki is described as being "an older man...who seemed to be regarded by the others as an expert on the sort of business going on within my aunt's estate." After questioning Wooster closely he performs a ritual banishing of the Elder Thing with the help of his team. In another section of the Black Dossier entitled "The Sincerest Form of Flattery" it is mentioned that Carnacki "had encounters with some form of spirit that allowed him brief, fragmentary visions of the future" regarding an attempt to derail the coronation of King George V
. Due to ill health following his visions of World War I, Carnacki did not participate in the League's battle with Les Hommes Mysterieux, and had by 1937 retired from active duty.
Released in 2009, Part I of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century
entitled "What Keeps Mankind Alive" features Carnacki as a main character. Set in 1910, following his visions of a black cabal, Carnacki brings Mina Harker, Allan Quatermain, Orlando, and A.J. Raffles to an occult club which is populated by a range of fictional occult detectives looking for clues as to the cabal. This leads them to investigate and confront the cabal led by W. Somerset Maugham
's Aleister Crowley
analogue, Oliver Haddo. Carnacki suspects that they are trying to end the world by creating a Moonchild.
has written a number of short stories about the Diogenes Club
, as originally from the Sherlock Holmes
stories of Arthur Conan Doyle
. In Newman's setting, the Club investigates paranormal and occult matters for British intelligence and police agencies. In the stories "The Man Who Got Off The Ghost Train" and "Swellhead", it is mentioned that Carnacki was a member of the Diogenes Club as a special occult investigator; when he retired, his position was taken by Newman's character Richard Jeperson
. Carnacki is also mentioned as having investigated several cases alongside Sherlock Holmes
.
's short story "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" (from Shadows Over Baker Street
) and A. F. Kidd
's short story "The Grantchester Grimoire" (from Gaslight Grimoire
) both also feature Carnacki aiding Sherlock Holmes in an investigation of an occult matter.
; and by the same author, Algunos derivados del alquitrán (Some Coal-tar Derivatives), included in the volume "Sherlock Holmes y lo Outré" -Publisher: Academia de Mitología Creativa Jules Verne de Albacete, 2007-, with Carnacki visiting a retired Sherlock Holmes
in Fulworth.
started serializing Gravel, the ongoing adventures of Warren Ellis
' and Mike Wolfer's combat magician William Gravel (previously told in the Strange Kisses, Stranger Kisses and the Strange Killings series of mini-series
). In the first storyline of the ongoing Gravel comic, Ellis and Wolfer had the Sigsand manuscript, split in parts for each of the Minor Seven, or Britain's occult detectives. In his quest to get back to his former colleagues from ousting him from the power play, Gravel must not only collect each magician's piece of the Sigsand, but spends most of #3 hearing about Thomas Carnacki (which also features an extended homage to "the Whistling room", as well as the particular writing style Hodgson used when writing the Carnacki stories).
Previously, Warren Ellis had included reference to the Sigsand Manuscript in the 13th issue of his ongoing "Planetary" series. It is picked up by Elijah Snow from Sherlock Holmes' book shelf.
's 1988 parody collection The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two
contains a parody of "The Gateway of the Monster", in which the creature manifests not as a human hand, but as another body part entirely.
Rick Kennett
has also written a parody of "The Whistling Room" called "The Sniffling Room", published in The Goblin Muse, April 2000. In this brief story, rather than receiving an invitation and then eagerly attending Carnacki's storytelling evenings, the attending gentlemen are instead kidnapped, dragged to Carnacki's home, and forced to listen against their wills to a tale told by a man they consider to be a raving lunatic. It thus mocks primarily the common framework of the Carnacki stories, rather than Carnacki's actual investigation.
The French writer Gérard Dôle has published a volume of parodies of Carnacki, in which he encounters the likes of Sherlock Holmes
and Sâr Dubnotal
while two other French writers, Fabrice Colin and André-François Ruaud have given to Thomas Carnacki a nephew, William Carnacki, reporting to his uncle the life in a parallel world where most monsters do exist (children book Le Livre des monstres — Chroniques du monde noir, 2008).
Anton LaVey
, founder and High Priest of the Church of Satan
, named his son "Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey".
Occult detective
Occult detective stories combine the tropes of the detective story with those of supernatural horror fiction. Unlike the traditional detective the occult detective is employed in cases involving ghosts, curses, and other supernatural elements...
created by English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
writer William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his...
. Carnacki was the protagonist of a series of six short stories published between 1910 and 1912 in The Idler
The Idler (1892-1911)
The Idler was an illustrated monthly magazine published in Great Britain from 1892 to 1911. It was founded by the author Robert Barr, who brought in the humorist Jerome K. Jerome as co-editor, and its contributors included many of the leading writers and illustrators of the time.-Content:The Idler...
magazine and The New Magazine.
These stories were printed together as Carnacki the Ghost-Finder in 1913. A 1948 Arkham House
Arkham House
Arkham House is a publishing house specializing in weird fiction founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House...
edition of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder edited by August Derleth
August Derleth
August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P...
added three stories: "The Haunted Jarvee", published posthumously in The Premier Magazine in 1929; "The Hog", published in Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
in 1947; and "The Find", a previously unpublished story.
General structure
The stories are presented using a framework story: Carnacki periodically sends notes of invitation to four friends, asking them to come to dinner and hear his latest tale. One of the men, Dodgson, is the actual narrator of the story, which comprises an extremely minimal part of each Carnacki story. Carnacki forbids discussion of the case in question over 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 with not only understanding, but also ending. He employs a variety of scientific methods in his investigations, as well as resorting to more traditional folk-lore. He employs technologies such as photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
and his own fictional invention, the electric pentacle
Electric Pentacle
The "electric pentacle" is a fictional electronic device invented by author William Hope Hodgson and used in several of his short stories about Carnacki the Ghost-Finder....
. He is not dogmatic, and 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. This variety makes the stories suspenseful, as the audience is never sure if the ghosts are real or not.
After the tale is complete, Carnacki usually answers a few questions from his guests, but does not discuss the case at great length.
Inventions
In addition to the trademark electric pentacle, Hodgson invented several rituals and ancient texts that feature in the Carnacki stories.Carnacki uses a fictional ancient text, the Sigsand Manuscript, as a resource to protect himself against supernatural influences. Carnacki refers to Aeiirii and Saiitii manifestations, the latter being more dangerous and capable of overcoming Carnacki's protective devices, and several rituals, including the Saaamaaa Ritual, with its mysterious eight signs and "unknown last line" that is invoked in "The Whistling Room" by a mysterious power.
There are references to even more arcane fictional works, including the Incantation of Raaaee, but no further information is provided in the stories.
Influence
The stories influenced later horror and fantasy writers, notably Seabury QuinnSeabury Quinn
Seabury Grandin Quinn was an American pulp magazine author, most famous for his stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin, published in Weird Tales.-Biography:...
and Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...
, both of whom had their own supernatural detective characters (Jules de Grandin
Jules de Grandin
Jules de Grandin is a fictional occult detective created by Seabury Quinn for Weird Tales. Assisted by Dr. Trowbridge , de Grandin fought ghosts, werewolves, satanists in over ninety stories between 1925 and 1951. Jules de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge lived in Harrisonville, New Jersey...
and John Silence respectively).
Critical opinion
Unlike some of Hodgson's work, the Carnacki stories remain very accessible to a modern audience. A. F. KiddA. F. Kidd
A.F. Kidd is the pen name of Chico Kidd. She is a fiction writer born in 1953 in Nottingham, England.Her first novel was The Printer's Devil. Her short stories have appeared in the collection Summoning Knells, published by Ash Tree Press in 2000. She collaborated with Australian writer Rick Kennett...
and Rick Kennett
Rick Kennett
Rick Kennett is an Australian writer of science fiction, horror and ghost stories. He is the most prolific and widely-published author in Australia after Paul Collins, Terry Dowling and Greg Egan, with stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK.His first...
in their introduction to No. 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories pose the question: "What is it about Thomas Carnacki that fascinates so many people?" According to Kidd and Kennett, the series' enduring attraction comes more from Hodgson's capacity for world-building than any special appeal of Carnacki himself:
It certainly isn't his dynamic personality. Not much character is evident in Hodgson's creation: he is your generic stiff upper-lip Edwardian Englishman ... but the exotic landscapes he inhabits are supernatural... it's his exploits, and the carefully constructed milieu in which they take place, that continue to intrigue. They are quite timeless.
"The Gateway of the Monster"
In an ancient mansion, the bedroom known as the Grey Room was the site of a grisly murder generations ago. Carnacki is summoned to investigate a noisy spirit that tears off the bedclothes and slams the door(s). The manifestation is far more powerful than he expects, and he spends a miserable, terrified night in his electric pentacle while a horrible apparition in the form of a human hand pounds at his defenses. The next day, Carnacki finds the fabled "luck ring", and he brings it with him into the pentacle. This proves unwise, as when night falls the vicious entity pours from the ring itself and Carnacki is inside the pentacle with it. He barely escapes with his life, while the entity is trapped. He ends the haunting by melting down the ring into a lump of slag within his protective barrier."The House Among the Laurels"
A deserted mansion in Ireland displays signs of haunting, including what appears to be blood dripping from the ceiling, and several men have been found dead in the house. Is it a prank or a haunting? Carnacki recruits a group of burly local men to investigate, along with several dogs, and they attempt to stay the night within the mansion. During their ordeal doors slam, the fire goes out, a dog is killed, and the entire group bolts from the house in terror. Upon studying his photograph, Carnacki realizes that he and the men have been played for fools. His photograph shows a wire, too fine to see in the dark, lowered from the ceiling to remove the hook holding the door open. The "blood drip" is colored water, and the "ghosts" are actually a criminal gang living in secret rooms in the mansion and playing a trick on him, taking advantage of the local legends to frighten away interlopers."The Whistling Room"
When a chamber in a mansion manifests a loud, eerie whistling, Detective Carnacki is called to investigate. He makes an exceedingly thorough search of the room, but can find no explanation. He is still not convinced of the supernatural nature of the sound until he climbs a ladder and peers into the room: the floor of the room itself is puckering like a pair of grotesque, blistered lips. He hears Tassoc, the mansion's owner, calling for help, and enters the room via the window. But Tassoc is not in the room—only an extraordinarily dangerous supernatural entity. Carnacki is saved only by the intervention of an unknown, second being, which utters the unknown last line of the Saamaa ritual, temporarily rendering the whistling entity powerless. With that, Carnacki throws himself through the window to escape. He then has the room demolished, and all parts burned in a blast furnace within a protective pentacle, including an ancient inscription in Celtic. According to legend, a court jester was once killed in the room's fireplace, and whistled as he was roasted to death."The Horse of the Invisible"
According to Higgins family tradition, any first-born female will be haunted by a ghostly horse during her courtship. This story has been long considered a legend, but now for the first time in seven generations there is a first-born female, and her fiancee has just suffered a broken arm after an attack by a mysterious assailant. Carnacki is summoned to investigate. He and the woman, Mary, and her fiancee, Beaumont, hear hoofbeats in the night, but no horse is seen.Many people present hear them, but no one can find an explanation; Carnacki sets up the electric pentacle around Mary's bed. The hoofbeats are heard again during the night, but nothing else happens. No marks of hooves can be found around the grounds the next morning. The following evening, hoofbeats and neighing are heard on the grounds, and Mary is heard screaming. Carnacki rushes out with his camera, and snaps a picture, but sees nothing after the blinding flash. Beaumont is struck in the head, but not badly injured; he claims that he has seen an enormous horse's head. The hoofbeats are again heard during the night. The decision is made to accelerate the wedding plans, in the hopes that the haunting will disappear when Mary is no longer courting, but married.The next day, Carnacki takes Mary around the house, snapping photographs to see if any manifestation can be seen on film. In the cellar a horrible neighing is heard, but nothing is seen. One of the developed photographs, however, an enormous hoof can be seen. The night again passes uneventfully. The next morning, though, hoofbeats and neighing can be heard almost immediately, in what seems a direct assault by the invisible horse; Carnacki fires his weapon and Mary's father attacks with his sword. As a light is brought they discover a rejected suitor, Parsket, wearing an enormous costume horse head and hooves. As they interrogate Parsket, hoofbeats are again heard in the house, and this time it is not a trick; Parsket dies of fright. The marriage goes on as planned, and the manifestation is never heard from again. It seems that both the natural and the supernatural were at work.
"The Searcher of the End House"
Carnacki investigates a haunting in his own mother's house. The first indication that something is amiss comes when Carnacki, up late reading, hears his mother knocking, so he thinks, on the banister to tell him to go to his bed. She does not remember doing so the next day, and it happens again the following night. When Carnacki looks in on her, he finds her door open, but she is sound asleep. A strange mildew smell is in the bedroom. Carnacki investigates the house, including the three cellars, but can find no explanation.The opening of the door happens again the following night, and this time while Carnacki is speaking to his mother the two of them hear a door slam twice downstairs. The smell of mildew is powerful as Carnacki investigates the house. More doors are heard slamming in the night, but Carnacki can find nothing. The next day, he consults the landlord, and learns something of the house's mysterious history, which includes a former tenant named Captain Tobias, and rumors of a ghostly woman. Several previous tenants had left upon seeing this apparition. The landlord agrees to spend the night in the house as well. In the dead of night, the two see a ghostly, naked child running through the house. The two have little doubt that it is a supernatural manifestation. The landlord claims to see a woman, apparently searching for the child, although Carnacki cannot see it. All of the seals on the doors are unbroken. As they debate what they have seen, the mildew smell returns, more powerful than ever. The downstairs passages are wet with grotesquely shaped footprints. In his nervousness, the landlord accidentally fires his revolver. No one is hit, but the police arrive to investigate. The physical evidence convinces the officer that an investigation is in order. As they wind up their tour, they find that a second officer has seen the ghostly woman. The men follow the wet footprints and smell into the cellars; on the top step, they find a wriggling maggot. Through their investigation of the third cellar, they find that the prints stop at a disused well, filled with water. They watch the well for the rest of the night, but nothing more happens.
The next evening, the men reconvene in the basement with lamps, a tripwire, and a wire cage to suspend over the well. Carnacki locks and seals the doors. As they keep watch, the ghostly child again manifests, apparently fleeing from an unseen pursuer. All present but Carnacki claim to see a woman, although he does see all the metal objects in the basement shining strangely. While they watch, something is heard to emerge from the well, giving off the horrible smell; Carnacki lowers the cage, and when the men uncover the lanterns they discover that they have caught Captain Tobias, carrying a leg of spoiled mutton. He came in through a secret passage at the bottom of the well. We learn that Captain Tobias is wanted for smuggling, after being released from prison only a few weeks earlier. He is trying to drive out the tenants of his old home so that he can retrieve smuggled goods; the sounds produced when he entered a hidden passage in Carnacki's mother's bedroom. The wooden panels have warped with age, and so make a clicking sound.
As for the ghost, Captain Tobias also reports that he has seen the woman and child. Carnacki believes that "...the Woman and the Child were not only two complete and different entities; but even they were each not in quite the same planes of existence." He thinks the men may have witnessed the ghost of a wayward unborn child that refused to accept birth into the natural world and which was thus pulled back by what Sigsand called "thee Haggs". Carnacki goes on to say "it leaves us with the conception of a child's soul adrift half-way between two lives, and running through Eternity from Something incredible and inconceivable (because not understood) to our senses."
"The Thing Invisible"
A chapel attached to an Edwardian manor house contains an ancient, cursed dagger that has just apparently murdered someone of its own accord, and naturally, Carnacki is called in to investigate. He spends the night in the chapel wearing armor with his camera ready to photograph any mysterious phenomena. All night he hears mysterious noises. As he approaches the altar, the dagger nearly kills him. The photographic evidence settles it, though—there is a rational explanation. The somewhat demented elderly gentleman of the manor house has armed an ancient trap that guards the altar: a spring mechanism designed to fling the dagger when the altar gate is opened. Carnacki uncovers the truth because of a subtle difference between the "before" and "after" photographs of the altar's cast iron metalwork."The Hog"
Carnacki faces perhaps his most powerful adversary: a disturbing hog spirit of giant proportions which is trying to enter our world, manifesting as a series of horrifying nightmares. He is equipped with a new variant on the electric pentacle involving rainbow-colored tubes. When connected to the head of the dreamer these tubes fluctuate in color and light intensity. Carnacki photographs the tubes on a slowly moving strip of paper which he specially develops to create raised images. When the paper is run under the reproducer of a specially modified phonograph the sounds heard by the dreamer are reproduced- in this instance the sounds of evil swine."The Haunted Jarvee"
Carnacki decides to go for a voyage aboard the Jarvee, his old friend Captain Thompson's antique sailing ship, for purposes of rejuvenation, but also to investigate the ambiguous complaints of ghosts his friend had been making for some time.Carnacki performs his standard methods of exhaustively and completely searching the designated area to eliminate obvious physical causes of a haunting.
Finding nothing, Carnacki is left to wait. After four days, whilst performing his usual patrol along the ship's Poop deck
Poop deck
In naval architecture, a poop deck is a deck that forms the roof of a cabin built in the rear, or "aft", part of the superstructure of a ship.The name originates from the French word for stern, la poupe, from Latin puppis...
with the Captain, his old friend suddenly points out to him a shadow of some sort on the ocean's surface, speeding towards the ship. He notices similar shadows converging on the ship from all of the cardinal directions. The closer they get to the Jarvee, the harder it is to see them, and eventually they disappear from sight.
Carnacki, the Captain and the rest of the crew retire, and the night goes normally, until about eleven o'clock, when a furious storm bursts upon the ship without a hint of warning. Refusing to send men up above to lower the sails and masts because of previous experiences in which he did just that, and his men were hurled to their death, Captain Thompson forces them to sit out the storm completely unprepared, and the Jarvee suffers tremendous damage.
Observing all this, Carnacki guesses that the phenomenon is caused by vibrations, so when he observes the shadows convering on the ship again the next day, he sets up a device to emit repellent vibrations. The ship is then struck by a furious squall, which tears one of the sails right off of the ropes. It isn't until 2 A.M that the squall passes, followed by an entire week of calm seas, with a furious wind storm every night.
During this week of calm, however, Carnacki is left to experiment with his repellent vibrations, until finally, he is given the distinct impression that his experiments are producing results, and he finally convinces Captain Thompson to allow him to set up his machine to emit the vibrations at full power, without stopping, starting at sunset.
Afraid for their lives, Carnacki orders the crew to stay below decks, padlocking the doors and making the first and eighth signs of the Saaamaaa Ritual, connected with triple lines crossed at every seventh inch. The Captain and the three mates demand to accompany him during the night, and Carnacki reluctantly agrees.
He draws a pentacle with chalk around the machine emitting the vibrations, and around the Captain and his mates. He then erects the Electric Pentacle and turns the vibration machine on.
Soon after, he and the Captain witness the mysterious shadows racing towards the ship.
Strange, purple lightning is then witnessed, but it is not accompanied by thunder. Soon after, the ship undergoes a series of strange "shudderings" before it starts to tip onto its side, sending the Electric Pentacle sliding, and forcing Carnacki, Captain Thompson and his three mates to hold on for dear life. Carnacki is forced to shut his machine off.
Predictably, there is a booming of thunder, and a furious storm starts raging. Towards morning, the storm calms, and soon after, the Jarvee is running before a strong wind — but a leak has been sprung, and two days after, they are forced to abandon ship and take to the boats.
The Jarvee sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
After he finishes his tale, Dodgson, the narrator asks what caused the haunting. Carnacki then explains his theory of "focuses", saying that the Jarvee, for whatever reason, be it the particular mood a builder was in as he hammered a nail home, or the tree that makes up a certain board, was a focal point for "attractive vibrations". He summarizes by saying that it is impossible for him to know fully why the Jarvee was being haunted, and he could only make suppositions.
"The Find"
Carnacki investigates a seemingly impossible book forgery in the least supernatural of the Carnacki stories.Television
"The Horse of the Invisible" was adapted as an episode of the 1970s British TV series, The Rivals of Sherlock HolmesThe Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (television series)
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a British television series that was co-produced by Thames Television and originally broadcast on the ITV Network...
.
Cast
- Donald PleasenceDonald PleasenceSir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
as Carnacki - Tony SteedmanTony SteedmanTony Steedman was an English character actor, perhaps best known for his role as Socrates in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure....
as Captain Hisgins - Michele DotriceMichele DotriceMichele Dotrice is an English actress best known for her portrayal of Betty, the long-suffering wife of Frank Spencer, played by Michael Crawford, in the BBC sitcom Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em, which ran from 1973 to 1978....
as Mary Hisgins - Michael Johnson as Charles Beaumont
- Geoffrey WhiteheadGeoffrey WhiteheadGeoffrey Whitehead is an English actor. He has appeared in a huge range of television, film and radio roles. In the theatre, he has played at the Shakespeare Globe, St...
as Harry Parsket - Aimée Delamain as Miss Hisgins
- Arthur WhiteArthur White (actor)Arthur White is an English actor of stage and screen, best known for his occasional role as police archivist Ernie Trigg in the crime drama A Touch of Frost, alongside his real life younger brother Sir David Jason. His parents were Arthur R White and Olwen Jones...
as March
472 Cheyne Walk
The book No. 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories by A. F. KiddA. F. Kidd
A.F. Kidd is the pen name of Chico Kidd. She is a fiction writer born in 1953 in Nottingham, England.Her first novel was The Printer's Devil. Her short stories have appeared in the collection Summoning Knells, published by Ash Tree Press in 2000. She collaborated with Australian writer Rick Kennett...
and Rick Kennett
Rick Kennett
Rick Kennett is an Australian writer of science fiction, horror and ghost stories. He is the most prolific and widely-published author in Australia after Paul Collins, Terry Dowling and Greg Egan, with stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK.His first...
collects twelve stories written about the further adventures of Carnacki. Four of these stories were originally published as a 32-page booklet of the same title in 1992. The book version was printed in a limited edition of 500 copies.
Many of these stories are inspired by off-hand references to other cases of hauntings that Carnacki makes in his stories, which were never explained further in the original story series. In their introduction to the 1992 booklet the authors describe these stories as pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, in the sense of respectful imitation or homage, as opposed to parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, which mocks the original (either with respectful humor, or more viciously). The authors suggest that Hodgson, by having Carnacki casually drop references to other cases which he himself did not write about, "invited" his readers to enter the "shared universe" and pick up where he left off. Readers may decide for themselves whether to consider these stories "canon" or a legitimate part of the Carnacki story arc; they closely follow not only the basic framework structure of the Carnacki original stories but also Hodgson's style and vocabulary.
"The Darkness"
In "The Gateway of the Monster" and "The Horse of the Invisible", Carnacki makes passing references to the "Black Veil case", in which a man named Aster died because he did not accept the necessity of staying inside the protective pentacle. In "The Darkness", Aster is a reporter who accompanies Hodgson on his investigation of a haunted room. An apparition of a mysterious woman can be seen in the window and a rotting black veil is found inside a secret compartment in a window-seat. Carnacki burns the veil inside a pentacle in the hopes of ending the haunting. However, as night falls, Aster will not enter the pentacle, believing this to be superstitious nonsense. Both men lose the power of sight as the apparition manifests, and Carnacki must listen helplessly from inside the pentacle as Aster is driven into screaming madness and death. No option remains to end the haunting but to destroy the house itself."Matheson's Inheritance"
In "The Gateway of the Monster" Carnacki makes reference to the "Noving Fur" case. It is unclear if this is a typographical error and Hodgson intended "Moving Fur" instead; the Collected Fiction edition and the Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
electronic text show this correction. "Matheson's Inheritance" covers both bases by including moving fur and placing the haunting in Noving House in Wales.
Matheson has inherited a baroque mansion. Local legend says the house was once occupied by a dewi (wizard) and his familiar an afanc. One room in the house emanates dread. Carnacki and Matheson can find no natural explanation, and so Carnacki spends the night in the room, inside his protective pentacle
Pentacle
A pentacle is an amulet used in magical evocation, generally made of parchment, paper or metal , on which the symbol of a spirit or energy being evoked is drawn. It is often worn around the neck, or placed within the triangle of evocation...
. In the middle of his vigil his candle flames suddenly turn black, and the floor becomes a heaving carpet of fur, as if the pentacle was upon the back of a giant animal. It is clear that the protective barrier has failed utterly. As in "The Whistling Room", a second powerful entity intervenes and the candle flames turn blue; Carnacki is given a moment to escape the room, and does so, although his pantlegs are torn and his legs covered with cuts. In daylight, strange, ancient bones are found under the floorboards of the room; before the room can be demolished, that wing of the mansion burns.
The blue candle flames point Carnacki back to references to the protective powers of colors in the Sigsand manuscript, suggesting the origin of the colored tubes that appear in Hodgson's Carnacki story "The Hog". The afanc is described as having a horse-like head; this description does not match the Welsh myth, and so may be a reference to "The Horse of the Invisible".
Motifs: a legend; a protective pentacle; a supernatural manifestation; protection from one supernatural entity by another, more powerful one; a creature or creatures unknown to science; a vigil.
"Doctor Who: Foreign Devils"
In 2002, an Andrew CartmelAndrew Cartmel
Andrew Cartmel is a British science fiction writer and journalist, and former script editor of Doctor Who. He has also worked as a script editor on other television series, as a magazine editor, a film studies lecturer and as a novelist.-Biography:...
novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
appeared as one of a series
Telos Doctor Who novellas
The Telos Doctor Who novellas were a series of tie-in novellas based on the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, officially licensed by the BBC and published by Telos Publishing Ltd...
based upon Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. Foreign Devils
Foreign Devils
Foreign Devils is an original novella written by Andrew Cartmel and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
featured Carnacki alongside the Second Doctor
Second Doctor
The Second Doctor is the second incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by character actor Patrick Troughton....
as his companion
Companion (Doctor Who)
In the long-running BBC television science fiction programme Doctor Who and related works, the term "companion" refers to a character who travels with, and shares the adventures of the Doctor. In most Doctor Who stories, the primary companion acts as both deuteragonist and audience surrogate...
.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
In 2007 a graphic novel entitled The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black DossierThe League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is an original graphic novel in the comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. It was the last volume of the series to be published by DC Comics. Although the third book to be...
was released, written by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
. It is part of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...
series, and is the first release to feature Thomas Carnacki. Carnacki is a member of the 1910s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with Wilhelmina Murray
Mina Harker
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 horror novel Dracula.- In the novel :She begins the story as Miss Mina Murray, a young school mistress who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and best friends with Lucy Westenra...
, Allan Quatermain
Allan Quatermain
Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its various prequels and sequels. Allan Quatermain was also the title of a book in this sequence.- History :...
, Orlando
Orlando: A Biography
Orlando: A Biography is an influential novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, it is generally considered one of Woolf's most accessible novels...
, and A. J. Raffles
A. J. Raffles
Arthur J. Raffles is a character created in the 1890s by E. W. Hornung, a brother-in-law to Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes — he is a "gentleman thief," living in the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing...
. The Black Dossier is filled with non-comic pieces, taking the form of prose stories, letters, maps, guidebooks, magazines and even a lost Shakespeare folio. Carnacki features most prominently in a short story "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss" and concerns a visit by Jeeves
Jeeves
Reginald Jeeves is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse, being the valet of Bertie Wooster . Created in 1915, Jeeves would continue to appear in Wodehouse's works until his final, completed, novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen in 1974, making him Wodehouse's most famous...
and Bertie Wooster
Bertie Wooster
Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich" and a member of the Drones Club, he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of...
(by P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
) to Wooster's Aunt Dahlia
Aunt Dahlia
Dahlia Travers is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being best known as Bertie Wooster's bonhomous, red-faced Aunt Dahlia. She is much beloved by her nephew, in contrast with her sister, Bertie's Aunt Agatha...
wherein they encounter an Elder Thing
Elder Thing
The Elder Things are fictional extraterrestrials in the Cthulhu Mythos. The beings first appeared, although not named in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Dreams in the Witch-House"...
, along with a Mi-go
Mi-go
The Mi-go are a race of extraterrestrials in the Cthulhu Mythos created by H. P. Lovecraft and others. The name was first applied to the creatures in Lovecraft's short story "The Whisperer in Darkness" , taking up a reference to 'What fungi sprout in Yuggoth' in his sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth...
and a Cthulhu
Cthulhu
Cthulhu is a fictional character that first appeared in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. The character was created by writer H. P...
cult. Carnacki is described as being "an older man...who seemed to be regarded by the others as an expert on the sort of business going on within my aunt's estate." After questioning Wooster closely he performs a ritual banishing of the Elder Thing with the help of his team. In another section of the Black Dossier entitled "The Sincerest Form of Flattery" it is mentioned that Carnacki "had encounters with some form of spirit that allowed him brief, fragmentary visions of the future" regarding an attempt to derail the coronation of King George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
. Due to ill health following his visions of World War I, Carnacki did not participate in the League's battle with Les Hommes Mysterieux, and had by 1937 retired from active duty.
Released in 2009, Part I of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century is the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. Co-published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics in the US and UK respectively, Century will be published in...
entitled "What Keeps Mankind Alive" features Carnacki as a main character. Set in 1910, following his visions of a black cabal, Carnacki brings Mina Harker, Allan Quatermain, Orlando, and A.J. Raffles to an occult club which is populated by a range of fictional occult detectives looking for clues as to the cabal. This leads them to investigate and confront the cabal led by W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
analogue, Oliver Haddo. Carnacki suspects that they are trying to end the world by creating a Moonchild.
The Diogenes Club
Kim NewmanKim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
has written a number of short stories about the Diogenes Club
The Diogenes Club
The Diogenes Club is a fictional gentleman's club created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories, most notably "The Greek Interpreter"...
, as originally from the Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
stories of Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
. In Newman's setting, the Club investigates paranormal and occult matters for British intelligence and police agencies. In the stories "The Man Who Got Off The Ghost Train" and "Swellhead", it is mentioned that Carnacki was a member of the Diogenes Club as a special occult investigator; when he retired, his position was taken by Newman's character Richard Jeperson
Richard Jeperson
Richard Jeperson is a fictional 1970s psychic investigator created by British horror / fantasy author Kim Newman. He appears in many of Newman's short stories as both a central and background character, and is the focal point of a collection of short stories entitled The Man from the Diogenes...
. Carnacki is also mentioned as having investigated several cases alongside Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
.
Carnacki in the Cthulhu Mythos
Barbara HamblyBarbara Hambly
Barbara Hambly is an award-winning and prolific American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction...
's short story "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" (from Shadows Over Baker Street
Shadows Over Baker Street
Shadows Over Baker Street: New Tales of Terror! is an anthology of stories, each by a different author and each concerning an exploit of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes set against the backdrop of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos...
) and A. F. Kidd
A. F. Kidd
A.F. Kidd is the pen name of Chico Kidd. She is a fiction writer born in 1953 in Nottingham, England.Her first novel was The Printer's Devil. Her short stories have appeared in the collection Summoning Knells, published by Ash Tree Press in 2000. She collaborated with Australian writer Rick Kennett...
's short story "The Grantchester Grimoire" (from Gaslight Grimoire
Gaslight Grimoire
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes is an anthology of short fiction combining the character of Sherlock Holmes with elements of fantasy, horror, adventure and supernatural fiction....
) both also feature Carnacki aiding Sherlock Holmes in an investigation of an occult matter.
A Forgotten Caudetan Incident
Spanish author Alberto López Aroca wrote the short story Un olvidado episodio caudetano (A Forgotten Caudetan Incident), included in the book "Los Espectros Conjurados" (ISBN 978-84-607-9866-8), featuring Carnacki in a Spanish village, CaudeteCaudete
Caudete is a municipality in Albacete, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. It has a population of 10.157 and is located at ....
; and by the same author, Algunos derivados del alquitrán (Some Coal-tar Derivatives), included in the volume "Sherlock Holmes y lo Outré" -Publisher: Academia de Mitología Creativa Jules Verne de Albacete, 2007-, with Carnacki visiting a retired Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
in Fulworth.
Gravel
In 2008, the comic publisher AvatarAvatar Press
Avatar Press is an independent American publisher of comic books, founded in 1996 by William A. Christensen, and based in Rantoul, Illinois.Avatar initially published only mini-series; however, they have since begun to branch out...
started serializing Gravel, the ongoing adventures of Warren Ellis
Warren Ellis
Warren Girard Ellis is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well-known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist themes...
' and Mike Wolfer's combat magician William Gravel (previously told in the Strange Kisses, Stranger Kisses and the Strange Killings series of mini-series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
). In the first storyline of the ongoing Gravel comic, Ellis and Wolfer had the Sigsand manuscript, split in parts for each of the Minor Seven, or Britain's occult detectives. In his quest to get back to his former colleagues from ousting him from the power play, Gravel must not only collect each magician's piece of the Sigsand, but spends most of #3 hearing about Thomas Carnacki (which also features an extended homage to "the Whistling room", as well as the particular writing style Hodgson used when writing the Carnacki stories).
Previously, Warren Ellis had included reference to the Sigsand Manuscript in the 13th issue of his ongoing "Planetary" series. It is picked up by Elijah Snow from Sherlock Holmes' book shelf.
Parodies
David LangfordDavid Langford
David Rowland Langford is a British author, editor and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible.-Personal background:...
's 1988 parody collection The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two
He Do the Time Police in Different Voices
He Do the Time Police in Different Voices is a collection of parodies and pastiches of the work of multiple authors of science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction, all written by David Langford between 1976 and 2002 for various publications; the collection was published in 2003 by Wildside...
contains a parody of "The Gateway of the Monster", in which the creature manifests not as a human hand, but as another body part entirely.
Rick Kennett
Rick Kennett
Rick Kennett is an Australian writer of science fiction, horror and ghost stories. He is the most prolific and widely-published author in Australia after Paul Collins, Terry Dowling and Greg Egan, with stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK.His first...
has also written a parody of "The Whistling Room" called "The Sniffling Room", published in The Goblin Muse, April 2000. In this brief story, rather than receiving an invitation and then eagerly attending Carnacki's storytelling evenings, the attending gentlemen are instead kidnapped, dragged to Carnacki's home, and forced to listen against their wills to a tale told by a man they consider to be a raving lunatic. It thus mocks primarily the common framework of the Carnacki stories, rather than Carnacki's actual investigation.
The French writer Gérard Dôle has published a volume of parodies of Carnacki, in which he encounters the likes of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
and Sâr Dubnotal
Sâr Dubnotal
Sâr Dubnotal is a fictional character and pulp hero who starred in 20 pulp magazines published in France in 1909.The Sâr Dubnotal stories were published anonymously...
while two other French writers, Fabrice Colin and André-François Ruaud have given to Thomas Carnacki a nephew, William Carnacki, reporting to his uncle the life in a parallel world where most monsters do exist (children book Le Livre des monstres — Chroniques du monde noir, 2008).
Anton LaVey
Anton LaVey
Anton Szandor LaVey , born Howard Stanton Levey, was the founder of the Church of Satan as well as a writer, occultist, and musician...
, founder and High Priest of the Church of Satan
Church of Satan
The Church of Satan is an organization dedicated to the acceptance of the carnal self, as articulated in The Satanic Bible, written in 1969 by Anton Szandor LaVey.- History :...
, named his son "Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey".
External links
- E-texts of the Carnacki stories
- Illustrated versions of the Carnacki stories
- Free podcast of "The Gateway of the Monster" Part 1 from the Public Domain Podcast
- Free podcast of "The Gateway of the Monster" Part 2 from the Public Domain Podcast
- Free podcast of "The House Among the Laurels" Part 1 from the Public Domain Podcast
- Free podcast of "The House Among the Laurels" Part 2 from the Public Domain Podcast