Title Carnacki, the Ghost Finder Series --- Author William Hope Hodgson Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing 1912 Category Mystery Warnings None Main Characters Carnacki Main Elements Ghosts, demons

Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder is a collection of supernatural detective short stories by author William Hope Hodgson. It was first published in 1913 by the English publisher Eveleigh Nash. In 1947, a new edition of 3,050 copies was published by Mycroft & Moran and included three additional stories. The Mycroft & Moran version is listed as No. 52 in Queen's Quorum: A History of the Detective-Crime Short Story As Revealed by the 100 Most Important Books Published in this Field Since 1845 by Ellery Queen.

• The Gateway of the Monster
• The House Among the Laurels
• The Whistling Room
• The Horse of the Invisible
• The Searcher of the End House
• The Thing Invisible
• The Hog
• The Haunted Jarvee
• The Find

Free to download at Project Gutenberg

Last year I downloaded a randome selection of gothic lit, basically I started with the Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood since it was referenced in a book I was reading and it led me to many others including this one.

I think this was one of my favorites, mainly because it wasn't so dark. I know that sounds funny, after all I was downloading gothic lit so I must have wanted dark, but after reading a bunch of them this one was a relief.

Some of the tales were actually eerie, but Carnacki tended to keep such calm, or at least told the stories to his friends with calm that they aren't very scary. A few stories resolved with no supernatural aspects at all, but others would leave the characters, and the readers, wondering.

Always Carnacki had a sense of humour, even when a giant hog's head was rising up through the floor, or a ghostly hoof appears out of the ceiling, or a pair of giant lips on the floor are whistling. There's some "mumbo-jumbo" stuff about the books he read on the topics and where he learned to protect himself from the various spirits he runs up against, but it wasn't so much silly as it matched the tone of the stories and the characters.

I think if you like Sherlock Holmes you might enjoy Carnacki too.