Product Description

'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. Thomas Carnacki is a ghost finder, an Edwardian psychic detective, investigating a wide range of terrifying hauntings presented in the nine stories in this complete collection of his adventures. Encountering such spine-chilling phenomena as 'The Whistling Room', the life-threatening dangers of the phantom steed in 'The Horse of the Invisible' and the demons from the outside world in 'The Hog', Carnacki is constantly challenged by spiritual forces beyond our knowledge. To complicate matters, he encounters human skullduggery also. Armed with a camera, his Electric Pentacle and various ancient tomes on magic, Carnacki faces the various dangers his supernatural investigations present with great courage. These exciting and frightening stories have long been out of print. Now readers can thrill to them again in this new Wordsworth series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112171 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Part of Wordsworth's Mystery & Supernatural series, featuring classic spine chilling tales, some previously unavailable for many years.

Customer Reviews

The Sherlock Holmes of the supernatural
Thomas Carnacki is a ghost-finder, a supernatural detective who explores so-called hauntings. Sometimes these cases turn out to the machinations of scheming humans, sometimes atmospheric phenomena - and occasionally supernatural forces from beyond. The joy of these stories is that you never know which will be the actual cause. The result is always unexpected, especially in the brilliant story "The Hog". Hodgson's stories are laced with suspense and atmosphere. Carnacki is just as equally at home tackling the supernatural as he is using state-of-the-art technical equipment to expose fake hauntings. This is a rare gem - and anyone seeking pure pulp fiction with great atmosphere will find the Casebook of Thomas Carnacki a truly satisfying read.

Lots of fun
I should point out that I read an older edition of these stories, simply called "Carnacki the Ghost Finder". It's got all the same stories in it though, so I'm not sure what's been edited in this edition. Anyway, the previous reviewer compared Carnacki to both Holmes and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence, which is a fair comparison. While it's true that Holmes has rather more characterisation, I cannot agree with that reviewer over John Silence. The Carnacki stories are far more entertaining and well-written. In contrast, the John Silence stories are rather po-faced, with no characterisation at all, unless Blackwood's almost homoerotic descriptions of Silence's powerful, wise eyes, unusually calm demeanour and ability to radiate confidence count. I also prefer the Carnacki retold first person narrative style, which means his character comes across more through his phrasing. He's clearly an excitable individual, repeatedly leaning forward to ask his enthralled audience "Can you imagine it? Can you?"
I'm not really into "weird" stories, so I found the ghostless stories worked better than the others, but then detective stories are fraught with problems when the "baddie" doesn't follow natural rules which can be systematically followed. My eyes did glaze over with descriptions of pentacles and the accompanying paraphernalia, but you get exactly the same sort of thing with John Silence (maybe I should review those next). Altogether good fun for dark nights. Can you imagine it? Can you?

Overcoming its limitations
The bad things first- the characterisation is poor to non-existent, the language limited and, at their worst, the tales are clunky and unconvincing. However (and this is a big "however") Hodgson is very good at creating the right atmosphere, his power of imagination overcomes his limitations as a writer and he creates genuinely frightening scenes and images. "The Whistling Room" could be ridiculous, but instead it is one of the best stories its kind and deserves wider recongition- the images linger on the mind long after reading. "The Hog" is another tale I will not forget for a long time.
Wordsworth Editions, thank you for Carnacki, but can we have John Silence as well, please?