eBook Carnacki the Ghost Finder ePub

First, some housekeeping. There are innumerable Kindle, hardback, and paperback editions of "...Ghost Finder" available. If you are a collector of rarities you already know this. If you have just run across references to Carnacki from time to time, or if you like the work of the author, William Hope Hodgson, (as I do), and you want to see what the fuss is about, then the Kindle freebies seem the best way to go. I read the Kindle freebie. It was well formatted, perfectly readable, free of typos or errors, and downloaded without a problem. My version had six of the Carnacki stories, and I was fine by that.

These are oldies, but remarkably clever and satisfying. Carnacki is a bit curt and a touch condescending as he tells his stories to his dinner companions, but he is a no-nonsense sort who lays out the details and events of his various adventures with economy and clarity. There is enough atmosphere and detail and careful buildup to make a cracking good story, but the tales are still very streamlined.

All of the tales turn on haunted or possessed houses, and some of the hauntings are legit, some are shams, and some fall somewhere in the "who knows?" category. Because Carnacki is thorough and business-like in his investigations the tales aren't overly dramatic or embroidered. You get a sort of "Dragnet" just-the-facts-ma'am kind of feeling, and a very modern sense of narrative style.

So, if you like haunted house tales you should sample Hodgson, and if you like Hodgson you should sample some Carnacki. These are fun and free, and at a minimum you will learn exactly how properly to set up a protective pentacle.

A ghost of a chance.

Well most of the stories were well reasoned and thought out. Did feel that two of them could have used a bit more work. I'm not a fan of stories that end without either a distinct ending or some resol
ution.

This collection is like many others that tell stories in form of narrative. Asimov with the black widows and azazel is a good parallel. It's a good one to try, and move on to his other work..

Very engaging character - well-written stories with perfect atmosphere and creeps. Can't believe I never read this writer before. Highly recommend for horror buffs!

Carnacki the Ghost FInder is probably the best Occult Dective out there, and the one most others are patterned on.

Carnacki, the Ghost Finder was originally published back in 1913 and bears some similarities to the works of HP Lovecraft. Since Lovecraft didn't start publishing until 1917 that mean Hodgson predates him by a few years. I also get a similar vibe to the Alone in the Dark video game series which was inspired by the stories of Lovecraft. I'm impressed by Hodgson's writing but he has nowhere's near the poetic talents of Lovecraft which is why one author is a household name and the other is fairly obscure. That's not to denigrate Hodgson as he carves out his own niche which is a more lightweight version of the horror genre.

Usually in stories like these the ghost hunter either always finds actual ghosts or always finds fakes (as in Scooby Doo). In this case sometimes the spooks are real and sometimes not. I've never seen another ghost hunter type series like this. Carnacki’s three main weapons are his flashlight, his camera and his pistol. Well, also his chalk which he uses to draw pentagrams around himself in the same way DC Comics John Constantine would do to protect against menacing spirits. This works great when the ghosts are real. Not so well with the fakes. I also like Carnacki's policy that if he feels the urge to flee from a situation he does so. This is one of the common tropes in horror movies that people stick around in the face of mortal danger. Not so with Carnacki and it's not really a result of cowardice. He simply has accepted that if he feels that flight is warranted out the front door he will run.

The stories aren't particularly scary which is a side effect of having a continuing character who relays the stories in first person narrative. It pretty much guarantees nothing bad will happen. My bigger issue is that Hodgson creates mysteries but never gives the reader the opportunity to play along. There are no clues as to whether or not it’s a true ghost. If there is a human agent behind the haunting readers get nothing pointing them towards the culprit. This leaves the endings generally unsatisfying. In several stories it seems obvious that there must be a supernatural force but it turns out a human staged it despite the fact that it seems like an impossible act to fake. In two stories it turns out there are both fakers AND real ghosts working independently. There were some moments of tension in particular “The Searcher of the End House” but overall the stories weren’t overly memorable.

I read the Kindle version and for some reason it didn’t have “The Hog” and “The Haunted Jarvee” which are listed among the stories in Carnacki, The Ghost Finder so I’m not sure why they were omitted. These are good but not great stories.

Just a sweet little collection of old ghost stories, some of which are proven to be true, and some of which are debunked by this Edwardian-era ghost hunter.

A series of "ripping yarns" as they'd say in a book such as, well, a book such as this. The tales of a valiant late 19th Century gentleman of leisure, Carnacki, investigating unexplained occurrences about the British Isles.
The stories are told in a format similar to that of the Sherlock Holmes tales, in that the narrator is passing on the stories as told by Carnacki.
In some cases, the phenomena have a purely logical explanation, while others are supernatural. This keeps the reader intrigued, never knowing if the ghost is, in fact, a ghost, or merely "Old Man Smithers" and he'd gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you pesky ghost hunters...
The writing may throw some modern readers, using out-of-fashion terms and phrasings, but I feel that contributes to their charm. Of course, if you are reading them in the Kindle app/device, you can make use of the built-in dictionaries and search functions to figure out an odd word.