Feeling paranoid? Want to muse over the nature of weird fiction and the philosophies of its creators? Then here’s one of our occasional guest posts by writer and journalist Paul StJohn Mackintosh, exploring  the views of Conrad, Lovecraft, Yeats and Borges, human nature, reality and occultism. Paul’s article ‘On Lovecraft’s Legacy’ was one of our most widely read pieces last Autumn, and whilst this level of thinking sometimes hurts our brains, we’re always pleased to offer interesting opinion pieces from others in the field. So here you go…

USUAL DISCLAIMER: All the views expressed below belong to the author of the article, who knows some quite long words.

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THE WEIRD, HORROR, SUPERNATURAL AND THE OCCULT

Paul StJohn Mackintosh

 

I used the quote from Joseph Conrad (later below) that kicks off this essay once before, in the preface to Blood Rust, my suspense thriller about contemporary Scandinavian neo-fascism. Why that quote, there, and why here? Because Conrad was writing a story on the borderline between the supernatural and the merely strange, and wanted to explain why he preferred the latter. And because my novel was all about fanatics who believed the most ludicrous occult and supernatural mystical doctrines, sincerely enough to massacre for them. And because that novel is a thin gloss on what is going on for real, right now. This essay is about occultism and the supernatural as the gateway drug for anti-rationalism and neo-fascism.

This topic was also prompted by the development of my work. When I published my first collection, Black Propaganda (a.k.a. Blowback on Kindle), it contained 13 stories, and I didn’t need long to work out that only 4 of those stories had remotely supernatural content. If many of the rest passed muster as science fiction, they did so only marginally, as soft SF of the loosest kind. Yet all, I reckoned, were utterly weird tales, and all but one, horror stories, that nonetheless went (almost) nowhere near slasher fiction. Some of the other stories that I’ve been proudest of are very weird tales that hardly depart from mundane realities at all.

Conrad wrote in his author’s note to the 1920 second edition of The Shadow Line as follows:

“This story, which I admit to be in its brevity a fairly complex piece of work, was not intended to touch on the supernatural. Yet more than one critic has been inclined to take it in that way, seeing in it an attempt on my part to give the fullest scope to my imagination by taking it beyond the confines of the world of the living, suffering humanity. But as a matter of fact my imagination is not made of stuff so elastic as all that. I believe that if I attempted to put the strain of the Supernatural on it, it would fail deplorably and exhibit an unlovely gap. But I could never have attempted such a thing, because all my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

“Whatever my native modesty may be, it will never condescend so low as to seek help for my imagination within those vain imaginings common to all ages and that in themselves are enough to fill all lovers of mankind with unutterable sadness. As to the effect of a mental or moral shock on a common mind, that is quite a legitimate subject for study and description. Mr. Burns’ moral being receives a severe shock in his relations with his late captain, and this in his diseased state turns into a mere superstitious fancy compounded of fear and animosity. This fact is one of the elements of the story, but there is nothing supernatural in it, nothing so to speak from beyond the confines of this world, which in all conscience holds enough mystery and terror in itself.”

Citing this passage in an interview in the Paris Review, Jorge Luis Borges said: “Conrad thought that when one wrote, even in a realistic way, about the world, one was writing a fantastic story, because the world itself is fantastic and unfathomable and mysterious.” He then quoted Adolfo Bioy Casares declaring: “I think Conrad is right. Really, nobody knows whether the world is realistic or fantastic, that is to say, whether the world is a natural process or whether it is a kind of dream, a dream that we may or may not share with others.”

I wouldn’t go that far, and above all, I wouldn’t bring dream into the waking world. Conrad specifically declares that the “marvels and mysteries” of “an enchanted state” are explicitly part of “the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part.” Reflect on the enormous imaginative richness and variety of his fiction, and you see very clearly that his creative power needed no help from the invisible and intangible.

My personal take on horror and/or weird fiction is that it essentially concerns disturbances of the normal expected order. It doesn’t concern the unexpected and completely different order of an entire imagined fantasy, future, or alternative world, because obviously there’s no shock of disturbance there. Those disturbances can include the supernatural. They can also include the visceral revelation that human beings are bags of gore that can be spilt and shed, or that the human personality comprehends incomprehensible obscenities. Or that life comes round in fateful circles. Or simply that one day we all die. None of this requires any supernatural explanation at all, never mind any fully worked-out occult system.

Lovecraft

The weird fiction community won’t need reminding that H.P. Lovecraft begins “Supernatural Horror in Literature” by asserting that “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” The “oldest and strongest” in that statement may be open to dispute, but it should be obvious that literature which probes the limits, and especially the break points, of our comprehension of our condition will have enduring power and value. (Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller” could be considered as two attempts to do just that, from completely different directions.) As Lovecraft says, this probing of the outer limits “must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.” But unknown does not necessarily mean unknowable or occult; weirdly horrible does not have to mean other-worldly or supernatural. Tzvetan Todorov defines fantastic literature as narratives that “hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the events described.” The power of fantastic literature derives precisely from that hesitation, which never actually has to be resolved, and which can remain in doubt all the way through the story. The hesitation and irresolution can add even more power as it mimes the doubt and confusion we face at the limit conditions of our comprehension and being. Does anything explicitly supernatural happen in “The Fall of the House of Usher” or “The Tell-Tale Heart”? If not, does this mean that Poe wrote these tales in a completely different genre to “The Masque of the Red Death”? A writer can resolve that hesitation with either a natural or a supernatural explanation, and Lovecraft goes into immense detail on the instances and consequences of authors resolving those hesitations one way or the other. Vernon Lee, in her “Faustus and Helena,” devotes an entire essay to the proposition that the true supernatural is inherently hostile to any concrete artistic representation, never mind explanation, at all. Some writers, though, will go beyond a supernatural explanation to an explicitly occult one. Those writers, and their reasons, are what concerns me.

One such writer was W.B. Yeats, in his plays, and in the occult system of A Vision, which George Orwell dissected elegantly in his 1943 essay on the poet: “As soon as we begin to read about the so-called system we are in the middle of a hocus-pocus of Great Wheels, gyres, cycles of the moon, reincarnation, disembodied spirits, astrology and what not. Yeats hedges as to the literalness with which he believed in all this, but he certainly dabbled in spiritualism and astrology, and in earlier life had made experiments in alchemy.” And Orwell continues:

“Yeats’s tendency is Fascist. Throughout most of his life, and long before Fascism was ever heard of, he had had the outlook of those who reach Fascism by the aristocratic route. He is a great hater of democracy, of the modern world, science, machinery, the concept of progress – above all, of the idea of human equality. Much of the imagery of his work is feudal, and it is clear that he was not altogether free from ordinary snobbishness. Later these tendencies took clearer shape and led him to ‘the exultant acceptance of authoritarianism as the only solution. Even violence and tyranny are not necessarily evil because the people, knowing not evil and good, would become perfectly acquiescent to tyranny. . . . Everything must come from the top. Nothing can come from the masses’.”

The same essay goes on to outline the occult obsessions of fascists, already obvious in the French far-right press of the pre-war period, and of course, far more blatant in the post-war post-mortems of Nazism. “It is not clear at first glance why hatred of democracy and a tendency to believe in crystal-gazing should go together,” says Orwell, then explains: “the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of initiates. But the same idea is integral to Fascism. Those who dread the prospect of universal suffrage, popular education, freedom of thought, emancipation of women, will start off with a predilection towards secret cults.”

Actually, there is a pretty obvious reason why hatred of democracy and a tendency to believe in crystal-gazing should go together. Occultism implies rejection of rationalism, which itself holds that the universe’s secrets are accessible to rational inquiry, and potentially to all rational beings, who are at least potentially equal; as per the Church-Turing thesis which holds that any real-world computing device can in principle manage the computing functions of any other such device, given enough time and resources. Rationality establishes an almost mathematical basis for human equality. Rational principles don’t require any elaborate hierarchy of initiation and personal growth to access them; they are as transparent and universally accessible as a mathematical formula. Consequently, anyone starting from a hatred of equality, from fear and disdain of the unwashed horde, will be driven to reject reason too. And they will likely do so by retreating to a system of deliberate obscurantism and exclusion.

Borges

Borges shared Yeats’s snobbish disdain for the masses, and loathed Peronism, and this pushed him even further than Yeats into active support of real fascism, when he served as window-dressing for the murderous Videla regime. “For a long time I believed in democracy. Now I don’t believe in it; at least not in my own country,” Borges declared in Chile in 1976. “Democracy [is] an abuse of statistics . . . No one supposes that a majority of people can have valid opinions about literature or about mathematics, but it is believed that everyone can have valid opinions about politics, which is more delicate than the other disciplines . . . Yes, it seems that to destroy liberty is bad. But liberty lends itself to so many abuses. There are certain liberties which constitute a form of impertinence.” Borges may have had a personal grudge thanks to his experience under the heel of Peronist demagogy, but notwithstanding, Yeats’s social and intellectual snobbery looms large in him as well. His literary scholasticism, and Mallarme’s attempts “to purify the dialect of the tribe,” may represent some of the closest attempts to push aesthetic refinement and the cultivation of connoisseurship to the edge of the occult. Other writers didn’t hesitate to take the plunge.

One such was Robert Aickman, who implicitly in his fiction, and explicitly in his introductions to his anthology work in the Fontana Books of Great Ghost Stories, eulogized “the submerged nine-tenths” of unconscious mental experience, and declaring that the ghost story “need offer neither logic nor moral,” and that “everything that matters is indefinable.” Aickman was apparently a persistent and convinced ghost hunter and spiritualist, though as with Yeats, how far he really believed in this, as opposed to wanting to believe, is open to question. He certainly went through all the motions. And again as with Yeats, hatred and disdain of rationalism, equality and the masses, all of which have “destroyed all hope of quality in living,” are there in full force in Aickman’s work. When he warns that “the one-tenth, the intellect, is not looking after us,” he is doing so in a very different vein to Nietzsche warning that “your bad impulses also thirst for freedom. Your wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit endeavours to open all prison doors.”

What kind of literature are such personalities likely to produce? Psychology contributes some insights that occultists and fascists have done nothing to contradict. Occultism itself attempts to graft meaning and structure onto the world to satisfy inner impulses and subdue existential fears, without reference to external reality. This resembles apophenia, defined by German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad, in a study on the early stages of schizophrenia, as an “unmotivated seeing of connections [with] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness.” August Strindberg’s Occult Diary is riddled with instances, apophanies, that are now used as examples by psychologists researching the phenomenon. Apophanies have been described as “entirely self-referential, solipsistic, and paranoid,” which also sounds like a pretty good thumbnail description of the fascist mentality. And in genre fiction, you couldn’t wish for a more obvious example than The Lord of the Rings, which China Miéville has characterized as the “neurotic, self-contained, paranoid creation of a secondary world… an impossible world which believes in itself.” No wonder Tolkien’s work has so often been cited as crypto-fascist.

One of the key symptoms of paranoia is attribution bias, a cognitive defect that integrates observed behaviour into a personal, often self-focused worldview. This often correlates with abandonment of consensus social norms and ideologies, frequently by way of corrosive scepticism and nihilism. All of this helps explain why Lovecraft, the self-professed materialist, embraced eugenic theories with an extremely selective bias against competing scientific analyses, in blithe indifference to the actual processes of scientific enquiry. Paranoia is also strongly correlated with social marginality, exclusion, and low self-esteem, often compensated for by conspiracy theories – all of them characteristic of the founding fathers of fascism. Look at what happens to even a moderately independent mind like David Hume, when he recounts his personal experience as a thinker in society in his conclusion to Book 1 of A Treatise of Human Nature: “I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart.”

Paranoia and Fake News

Paranoid social cognition is linked to perceived social distinctiveness, perceived social scrutiny, and social insecurity (again, Lovecraft, anyone?). All of these may correlate with nihilism, and with the insecure, wounded self underlying narcissism. It shouldn’t be hard to see how already fragile personalities falling within this spectrum develop self-reinforcing, validating personal philosophies, opposed to communal norms and perceived domestic or external threats, especially when social and even economic factors can help trigger their personal pathologies. Some readers may object that this reduces philosophies to symptoms: I’d answer that this is not reductionism, but simply accounts for the ground that such creeds grow from, and which can bias their growth. You certainly don’t need to look much further to account for the proliferation of Julius Evola fans, and enthusiasts of other neo-fascist credos in certain byways of genre fandom, including bulletin boards, where cognitive bias runs rampant enough to satisfy any alt-right peddler of fake news.

Amid the glut of analysis on the 2016 US presidential elections, one strand that has emerged very clearly is the paranoid appeal of fake news to the same underlying drives and uncertainties that bolster both fascism and occultism. Confirmation bias is one factor. So is the allure of being part of the inner coterie of truthsayers who know the great hidden secret. So is social exclusion: the factors that trigger paranoia, including low self-esteem, compensatory narcissism, and lack of purpose, figure large among the audience for conspiracy theories.

Umberto Eco made an especially cutting critique of an earlier and very successful instalment of fake news and conspiracy theory, the “silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code. It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true.” On its relation to the occult in general, he said: “The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret ‘container’ with his or her own fears and hopes. As a child of the Enlightenment, and a believer in the Enlightenment values of truth, open inquiry, and freedom, I am depressed by that tendency. This is not just because of the association between the occult and fascism and Nazism – although that association was very strong. Himmler and many of Hitler’s henchmen were devotees of the most infantile occult fantasies. The same was true of some of the fascist gurus in Italy – Julius Evola is one example – who continue to fascinate the neo-fascists in my country. And today, if you browse the shelves of any bookshop specialising in the occult, you will find not only the usual tomes on the Templars, Rosicrucians, pseudo-Kabbalists, and of course The Da Vinci Code, but also anti-semitic tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” New Age rejection of reason, and the appeal to paranoid self-referential solipsism, are a far more important common theme on the shelves of those bookshops than any single ideology or shared, consistent creed.

What of the likes of Alan Moore or Grant Morrison, counter-culture far-left writers and practising occultists? Obviously, they don’t fall into the neo-fascist camp. Self-referential solipsism, though? Check. Narcissism? Check. Felt social exclusion? Check. Conspiracy theories and elaborate paranoid schemata? Check. The elan of being part of the inner circle of masters of reality who see through the grand conspiracies of the Establishment? Check. At least Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson had their tongues firmly wedged in cheek when they whipped up the Illuminatus! Trilogy. Remember that they were inspired by their stints at Playboy magazine fielding conspiracy rants from correspondents, to create a metafiction on the premise that “all these nuts are right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists”. Fnord knows, there’s now enough members of the public who believe the Illuminatus! Trilogy is literally true. And enough past literary radicals on the far left have bled over into the far right, from anarchism to fascist nihilism, socialism to National Socialism. Have we got to spend our time wondering whether Alan Moore believes in his occult systems? Neo-fascist Odinists in Scandinavia and elsewhere apparently do believe in theirs, and use them to guide and justify their actions, and that’s only one example.

Personally, I’m going to continue writing supernatural fiction, and enjoy doing so. But I’ll continue to regard my supernatural stories as far more contiguous with my SF, fantasy, slasher fic, thrillers, historical dramas, dark erotica, and just plain weird or disturbing tales, than they are with any actual occultism. All of them activate the imagination, rather than levering credulity. They invite a suspension of disbelief, rather than demanding belief. They probe the borders of our condition without presuming to project beyond it. Others clearly haven’t been so careful.

As all this suggests, I don’t find prosaic, mundane reality anywhere near as limiting, or as lacking in romance and imaginative inspiration, as some supernatural fiction writers and occultists claim to. Obviously, it didn’t hamper Umberto Eco any, even if there may now be an alarming number of readers who believe that The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum are literally true. And reality offers what occultists can’t – openness, fresh air, light. Hume again: “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. Here then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determined to live, and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life.”

c. Paul StJohn Mackintosh, 2018

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Paul StJohn Mackintosh is a Scottish poet, writer of weird fiction, translator and journalist. Born in 1961, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, has lived and worked in Asia and Central Europe, and currently divides his time between Hungary and other locations.

His previous greydogtales article can be found here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/paul-stjohn-mackintosh-on-lovecrafts-legacy/

And his latest work, a short novel entitled The Three Books, is out now from Black Shuck Books, available on Amazon.

“Tragedy, urban legend, Gothic romance, warped fairy tale of New York: it’s all there. And of course, most important of all is the seductive allure of writing and of books – and what that can lead some people to do. You may not like my answer to the mystery of the third book. But I hope you stay to find out.”

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/1Cg4Og9

Amazon US http://a.co/e5WVk7A

An ‘exclusive’ today, listeners, as we’re privileged to have some powerful fiction for you. Following our recent, very popular interview with author Sam Gafford, discussing William Hope Hodgson, we present Sam’s fictionalized account of Hope Hodgson’s last days, ‘The Land of Lonesomeness’. Although this story appears in his collection The Dreamer in Fire, we believe this is its first outing on the web. The story is a moving evocation of those times, and a reflection on Hope Hodgson’s fictional creations, one that you shouldn’t miss…

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The Land of Lonesomeness

By Sam Gafford

 

April 16, 1918

It had rained for most of the night before and, when the sun finally rose, the clouds were still heavy with impending downpours. Slowly, a hole opened in the clouds and a single shaft of golden sunlight broke through and brought the battlefield into sharper relief. No one moved. It was possible, from my position, to see the dead lying between the lines. Most lay where they had fallen with limbs and heads and bodies making a grim seascape along the fields. I could see in their hills and valleys the oceans of my youth, turning dull and grey before a coming storm or hurricane. If you looked long enough, you could swear that they made waves that peaked and dived with the wind.

I sat in the mud and tried vainly to get some sleep. The German artillery had increased in velocity and there was not a man among us who did not feel that they were bracing for an onslaught on our lines. No one said it but we all felt it coming. We had held Mont Kemmel on the French line for weeks now but I had long ago given up trying to understand why the British Army had felt this mound of earth was so important. The Great War, begun among cheers and vainglorious boasting, had become a massacre over inches of useless, blood engorged dirt.

The men of the 84^th Battery of the Royal Field Artillery all wore the same look of hopeless resignation. We could keep going until we were told to stop or else just fell over dead at our posts. Whether death came by way of sniper bullet, artillery shell or sheer hopelessness made little difference.

Only one face showed any type of life and that was Lt. Arthur Worth. For that reason alone, no one else ever even spoke to Worth. His spirit was more than any of us could bear. It seemed unlikely but I was probably the same as Worth four years ago when my wife, Bessie, and I made the mad escape from France back to England at the outbreak of war. I sent her to live with my mother and sister in Borth even though I knew that there was no affection between them. My decision had been made and, even at my advanced age of 36, I was determined to join the British Army and do my part.

With my second mate’s certificate, I could have joined the navy but I had vowed to never again serve upon a ship in any capacity. Even the channel crossings put me in a foul mood as I watched the crew run back and forth on deck. Every second at sea brought back the memories of that decade of my life and I would call no man “captain” again so long as I lived.

I had no idea where Worth had come from. He vaguely mentioned a youth in Cornwall and a childhood around ships but, when seeing that I would not hear a word about the sea, never spoke about it again. Worth had joined the 84^th a little over a week ago while I was briefly laid up in the hospital unit. An enemy shell had exploded near me and, while I was not seriously injured, it had knocked me briefly unconscious and delirious. When I awoke, I was told that, in my stupor, I had begun shouting that the Great Redoubt was being attacked by the Watchers and that I had to get back to my observation post in the upper levels or else humanity was doomed.

It took some time to convince the doctors that my remarks were nothing more than a brief memory of my old novel, THE NIGHT LAND, and that I was in full possession of my faculties. They showed nearly as much interest in the plot of the novel that readers had back in 1912 when it was published. Its commercial failure was essentially ended my serious imaginative writing. Although unsatisfying to write, bland adventure tales sold far more easily and I had a new wife and hopefully a family to provide for in the future.

When I returned to the 84^th, Worth made me welcome and often sat with me during the long night watches. Although young and clueless, he loved to hear me tell my stories. I would recite them late into the night for I had rarely forgotten a word I’d ever written despite the nearly fatal head concussion I had suffered back in 1916 while training new RFA recruits on Salisbury Plain. Even when I was interrupted, Worth would remember exactly where I had left off.

As I spoke, I recalled the events behind every tale and their inspiration. The days and nights, so far away now, spent working away at my typewriter as I tried to capture my imagination on paper. The endless rejections as my work came back over and over again until the day when the dam finally burst and first one and then another and then another story sold. The hopes which rose with the publication of each of my four novels which would be eventually dashed as the low sales figures would slowly trickle back to the publishers. In a way, the war had come at an opportune time for me and I abandoned my writing career for that of a soldier.

Except, there were times when my stories refused to let me go.

I have seen them. Out there, on the fields, rising from the dead bodies. Those ‘Ghost Pirates’ of mine walk amongst the corpses. I don’t know what it is they are looking for but they search endlessly for something that hides from them. Occasionally a low moan floats over the ground but I cannot tell if it is them or the dead that is calling. Several times I have caught them staring at me. Across the dead, we glare at each other, daring the other to make a move. I have sat this way for hours, feeling their fingers reach across and tug at my mind. Once, I caught myself bringing my revolver up close to my head. Unaware, I was about to fire when my senses returned. Since that point, I keep my ammunition in a separate pocket.

Once, these fields were green and alive with flowers and birds. Now only corpses are planted here and the only singing comes from the mortar shells as they descend upon us. Their high pitched screeches echoed across the fields in an unnatural mechanic choir punctuated by the explosions. The sounds of our artillery were different and with a lower timbre so the shelling would become a strange symphony of fighting voices.

Worth had stopped over to see me and brought a warning. He had seen the units preparing the guns for movement. We were either preparing for a push or a defense. There seemed to be little difference between the two. I walked to the rear where the draft horses were quartered but each step I took was like sinking into a soft sponge which took almost all of my strength to step through.

“It’s just like the ship in your story, Hope,” Worth said to me with a smile on his face as he ran off again. In truth, he was right. Once I had written a story where a ship had become lost in sea and, through the mixture of chemicals in its hold and the centuries of elements upon it, had become alive. The seamen who found the ship were attacked by it like an invading germ. Their boots were ripped off by the soft mass that was the ship’s flesh. Only a few escaped alive. This death ground had become the same as that ship’s deck. The parallels were disturbing.

Around midday, the Germans attacked with a sudden ferocity. Their guns began with a devastating barrage on our front line making our soldiers retreat quickly while their fellows were blasted to bits. The order came to withdraw and I led our men onto our horses as we pulled the guns back to the pullback position. The horses strained as the guns sank in the mud and I had to order several foot soldiers to push the wheels forward. The German army ran up quickly when their shelling subsided and pushed their line forward.

In a matter of minutes, the ground that we had found and died to defend for most of 1918 fell back to the Hun.

We had to move the guns quickly into position and the artillery teams were there waiting. There was barely any time to take the measurements before they fired their barrages into the German troops. The shelling slowed their advance but did not stop it. That task fell to the British Army who, after retreating, set up a new line further in back of Mont Kemmel.

For hours, the air was filled with the high pitched screeches of the shells and the screams of the men and machines exploding. The men enforced their positions and we moved the horses further back. I spent as much time as I could with my own horse, Monarch, cleaning and feeding him. This was my third horse since being in France. Most could only take so much of the sounds of the shells and the screams and the dying. I could look them in the eye and see when they were about to break. It’s one of the skills which had made me effective as a Lt in the RFA. My lifetime with horses had come into good use but, lately, I had seen the same looks in the eyes of the soldiers around me. So much so that there were only a few men who did not have that look and Worth was one of them.

I sought him out during dinner and found him, once again, alone and not eating.

I admonished him for not eating and keeping up his strength. More than anyone, I knew the importance of eating to one’s overall fitness. Without another word, I set to and quickly ate my own dinner as he stared at me in disbelief.

“How can you eat such food?” He asked. “It’s disgusting.”

I laughed and told him that this food was a luxury compared to what I had eaten in my youth at sea. I’d dined on slabs of hard tack that crawled with maggots and flies. Often the officers would bet on which of the starving seamen would break down first and eat from the open barrel. With pride, I remembered striding defiantly to the barrel, breaking off a large piece of tack and biting down to the cheers of the cabin boys and sneers of the officers. The vomiting and bowel distress after had been worth it.

That night, I told Worth the tales of my own hunting ground, the Sargasso Sea. I told him of the ships caught helplessly in the grip of the seaweed choked sea and the monstrous creatures that lived there. The story of the survivors of the Homebird, which had been one of my early successes, touched him deeply. “Did they ever escape?” he asked hopefully.

I looked in his eyes and saw the real meaning of his question. Instead of the truth I told him that their escape was a story that I had simply not written yet but would someday. But, in truth, there was no escape from the Sargasso. The rescue I had written in my novel about the ‘boats of the Glen Carrig’ had a fake ending. One tacked on because my editor had requested an uplifting end that would please readers. It hadn’t seemed to make any difference in the sales.

Like those helpless, doomed characters, so were we marching towards an inevitable end. I knew in my heart that those fictional characters on my stranded ships would eventually succumb to the sea monsters around them or starvation. That was why I never wrote the final chapter. It was too much to deal with characters who, no matter their efforts or their enthusiasm or hopes, would never escape.

There were Watchers out there, in the dark, just waiting beyond the firing line.

Later that day, the Commanding Officer gathered us all together. We were a rag-tag group, standing in the mud and the blood, patched together with bandages and grit. The line would be retreating in the night, he said, but that we needed to set up a Forward Observation Post on the base of Mont Kemmel. He could barely look us in the eye because he knew what he was asking of us. Volunteers were needed, he explained, he would not order any man to take the risk. It would surely mean death for any who stayed.

I volunteered immediately although I had no idea why.

The C.O. nodded gratefully at me and paused. Finally Northrup also volunteered and we set out to prepare. I’d known little of Northrup and spoken to him less. He was a strong, strapping lad when he joined the 84^th. Now he had shrunken and his clothes hung on him like a child’s doll. His eyes were dull and, though he would follow any order you gave him, the rest of his mind had walked away in the hopes of coming out again someday when the sun shined again and there were birds singing in the air instead of bombs.

April 18^th

The 84^th has retreated further back from the line. We watched them leave with a sense of stern resignation. Under darkness, we moved forward and set up our post. Northrup said nothing and I lost interest in speaking to him. I put him in charge of sending our messages back to the company and tried to get some sleep.

When I awoke, a grey dawn had already broken and I was surprised to find Worth sitting by my side. “You didn’t think I’d leave you here with that great sausage, did you? That’d be a fate worse than death!”

I laughed and he asked me to tell him one of my Carnacki stories. I’d always enjoyed writing them and still couldn’t understand why they didn’t sell better. It would be a long, painful day so I told him the story of the hideous ‘Hog’ from the outer spheres which I always considered to be the best Carnacki yarn even if I couldn’t sell it anywhere.

As I told him of the battle between Carnacki and the ‘Hog’, I described the oppressive atmosphere that bore down upon the Ghost-Finder and the way it tried to influence him to create his own undoing. Worth asked if it was the same atmosphere as the one we felt there, dug into Mont Kemmel like ticks on a dog. I replied simply that it was the same atmosphere as I have felt all my life whether in Ireland, on the deck of a ship sailing around the Horn, on a stage in Blackburn as I faced down the greatest escape-artist of all time, at a typewriter wrestling with my inability to express in words what I dreamed in my mind or here, on a battlefield that had lost all meaning. I carried it with me always.

The Germans made another advance with a volley of artillery later that day. The rest of the night was spent hiding low from the bursts and the singing bombs. We sent back several messages that alert the 84^th with no idea if they were ever received. Through the night, we tried to sleep as much as possible but little rest was claimed.

I feel old and that is not something I have ever felt. I look at Northrup and I feel our lives draining away from us. Only Worth remains upbeat. Sometimes his nature keeps me going but, other times, I swear I could kill him.

April 19^th

The barrage has been endless. I do not know how we have not been killed already. By the afternoon, a haze falls over the battlefield and all we can see are vague shapes moving back and forth. Northrup has been busy sending messages back to the 84^th and I find myself praying that we will receive withdrawal orders soon but the C.O. has been silent.

I have no more words. Worth asks for more but I have none to give him.

My sight is riveted to the grey shapes coming closer in the mist and haze. The Ghost Pirates are there, running back and forth, stopping, running, crouching and crawling. Their eyes penetrate me. I cannot tell if they are stalking me or beckoning me to join them.

Then, in the dim background, behind the grey shapes and booming crashes, I see it moving forward like a mountain walking. I have seen it before in my mind and in my dreams but now it stumbles towards me.

I see the Watching Thing of the North-West from my land of future night eclipsing the dull circle of the sun. It strides forward. The sounds of the exploding bombs echo his footsteps. I try to tell Northrup but he sees nothing.

I cry out for Worth to bear witness and then Northrup finally speaks. There is no Worth, he says, who am I talking to? But Worth is there beside him, smiling. I point at him but, again, Northrup sees nothing. “You’ve gone mad again,” Northrup says, “you’ve been this way since you took that blow to your head. Talking to yourself. Telling tales. I tell you there is nothing there!”

I look back at the battlefield and see the Watcher even closer this time. So close that I can see its huge maw opening and closing to the sounds of battle. “It’s coming!” I scream and Worth moves away, apologizing. He had only come for the stories, you see, and didn’t want to see the end. Suddenly, as if he had moved behind a curtain, Worth is gone and Northrup is pulling on my sleeve.

We have to leave, he says, withdrawal or not. It’s too dangerous as the German shelling comes ever closer and closer. I begin gathering up our gear when I hear the Watcher’s voice speaking to me. It comes in a high pitched shriek. I look back in a terrified peace as I see the great mouth screeching at me. The sound of the bombs comes closer. I stand still, arms outstretched. Northrup grabs at me but I do not move. The Watcher speaks me out of existence.

(On April 19^th, 1918, William Hope Hodgson and another officer sustained a direct hit from German artillery. They were blown to pieces.)

THE LAND OF LONESOMENESS: Copyright Sam Gafford 2013/greydogtales 2018

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The interview referred to at the start of this post can be found here:

ROOTS OF THE WEIRD: WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON DISCUSSED

Sam Gafford’ s The Dreamer in Fire, from Hippocampus Press is available now:

UK http://amzn.eu/dAMsDBT

US http://a.co/82l4wTc

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Coming up – something light; something heavy. We’ll probably rummage through some recent books we’ve explored, and Paul St.John Mackintosh joins us with an essay on writing, politics and psychology in ‘The Weird, Horror, Supernatural and the Occult’. Plus more William Hope Hodgson related material to come… and those lurchers will return!

Interested in the origins of weird fiction? Want to get the real lowdown on William Hope Hodgson? Then join us as we talk to author, editor and scholar Sam Gafford, in an interview which is already being described as sharper than a spinning diskos. The Night Land, Carnacki, WHH’s life, influences, and women – all come under scrutiny. Our Hope Hodgson centenary articles continue today with…

SAM GAFFORD ON WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON

greydog: Hi, Sam. It’s an odd celebration, because we feel a mixture of sadness – after all, Hope Hodgson was twenty years younger than greydog when he was killed – and wonder, in that we are still discussing him and his work. You’re one of the foremost WHH scholars around, so we’ll risk a very broad starter question. Basically, why are we still talking about him? What was so different about his work that he stands out even now?

Sam: I’d venture to say that Hodgson is more popular today than he has ever been. His works are constantly being reprinted, much of his fiction is available free online and scholarly interest is at an all-time high. I think that a lot of the reason for this popularity is due to the vivid imagination evident in his writing. Some may come to Hodgson out of historical interest now that he is considered an early pioneer of science fiction and horror but stay because of his stories.

Another thing that might be helping is the fact that, except for THE NIGHT LAND, most of his fiction is written in a vibrant style that is more modern than some of his contemporaries like Wells, Blackwood or Lovecraft. His short stories, in particular, are very powerful and sparsely written similar, in some ways, to a Hemingway. “A Tropical Horror” is a classic example of this as the action begins practically immediately as a giant sea monster attacks a lone ship and its crew. Hodgson gets great acclaim for his novels and deservedly so, but I feel that it’s in many of his short stories that his talent as a writer really shines.

greydog: Hope Hodgson died late in the Great War , of course, as a result of a mortar bombardment. Given the number of war poets and correspondents, is he himself known to have written anything during his military service years?

sam: Hodgson wrote a couple of ‘articles’ regarding some WWI topics such as “How the French Fought the War” and these were widely circulated during his time. He joined up in the opening months of the war in 1914 but was then wounded in 1916 while he was training others in the movement and handling of big guns at Salisbury Plain. He was sent home and spent about a year recovering during which time I believe he wrote those ‘articles’ as well as several other items. Carnacki had been finished years before but the Captain Gault stories show a definite influence of WWI with the abundance of German spies and what was then more modern ships and weapons. There is, of course, always the possibility that he might have been working on more projects that were left unfinished due to his tragic death but we will likely never know about this.

greydog: Sadly not. Letters to, from or about WHH are scarce; occasional ‘lost’ poems have surfaced over the years. We can be pretty sure that no major works have been lost, but speculate for us. Is there much more, in a tangible form, that is likely to be found now, either of his writings or in biographical terms?

sam: As we’ve discussed many times, the lack of primary sources is our greatest hurdle to developing a more rounded idea of Hodgson the man and the writer. We’ve very few letters to consult. I believe that there may be groups of letters that are being held in private collections but, until the owners (or descendants) make them public, we’ll never know.

When faced with such ‘dead-ends’ in research, we have to then look to other sources such as third party memoirs or letters. Sadly, few of these have come to light but I remain hopeful that somewhere there may be a batch of letters or a memoir written by someone who knew Hodgson and mention him in their works. That’s why it’s so important for as many people as possible to be alert and vigilant in finding such obscure references. I still hope that there may be some things yet to come. I feel confident, however, in stating that there are no major lost works of Hodgson’s floating around out there. Any stories that might come to light now are likely to be minor.

greydog: The Night Land and House on the Borderland have few if any parallels in the period when he was writing, and few obvious antecedents. His family were not literary, not did he seem to move socially in such circles. Are there any clear influences on him in these weirder works?

sam: Again, our lack of primary sources stymies us here. Outside of a few reviews that Hodgson wrote of other people’s work, we really have no clue as to what his influences were or what impelled him to write in the first place. Hodgson’s parents were both educated and literate people so it is likely that they encouraged this trait in their children. In his biographical essays about Hodgson, R. Alain Everts states that Hodgson’s siblings remembered him as always reading.

Hodgson was intelligent and had a curious mind which is evident in his writing. His first published items were articles about ‘physical culture’ which appeared in SANDOW’S MAGAZINE which was the equivalent of a modern ‘bodybuilding’ magazine today. Again, Everts essays have Hodgson’s siblings recounting how he loved to regale them with stories which, no doubt, became even more fantastic when he came home during his off months at sea.

When I was asked at a convention, “What do you think inspired Hodgson to write?” My answer was “Poverty.” Although a bit flippant, there is much truth in this. When Hodgson returned from the sea and after the failure of his ‘School of Physical Culture’, he was the primary means of support for his mother and sister. He had to make money and, after enjoying some success with his exercise articles, must have concluded that this was a quick and enjoyable way to pay the bills. I think that he was also very eager to be accepted by the ‘writing’ world but never quite got there despite his books often getting very eager reviews.

greydog: How do you feel about attempts to make The Night Land, a long novel which does have its problems of style and language in places, more ‘accessible’?

sam: Although I understand the desire to make THE NIGHT LAND a bit less intimidating to new readers, I don’t particular agree with doing this. As difficult as the style Hodgson choose for this book is, and it is undeniably difficult, by editing or, even worse, rewriting the story, I think we do Hodgson a disservice. I have always championed the concept that the author’s vision, good or bad, should be respected and preserved which is why I also disapprove of Lin Carter’s ‘editing’ of the novel when it was reprinted as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. Who are we to say that we know better what the story needs than the author? The book, short story or any written work should stand, of fall, on its own merits.

The only time I would agree with changing the text is when it is adapted for a different medium like radio, television, movies or graphic novels. Certainly, anyone doing a graphic novel interpretation of THE NIGHT LAND should not be required to put everything from the novel into their vision. Otherwise, leave it alone and enjoy it the way that Hodgson meant it to be enjoyed.

greydog: We’re sometimes struck by the male physicality of much his work – men DOING, or failing to do. Is anything known of his views on women?

sam: Ironically, I’ve written on this topic before in my article “Hodgson and Women”. It’s a very interesting thing to consider. Once again, the lack of primary sources means we don’t know how Hodgson felt about women so we have to infer things from his writings.

We know that Hodgson’s life was primarily dominated by women. He left home at 13 and, during his time at sea, his father dies. He returns home to live with his mother and sister and takes the role as family provider and, in keeping with the societal norms of the day, likely the family protector as well.

He does not marry until 1913 when he is 35 years old which is, in and of itself, odd for the people at that time. There are rumours of an earlier romance which ended poorly but we have no details on this.

If we look over the progression of Hodgson’s writing from the novels and short stories through to the Captain Gault stories, we see a change in attitude towards women. In the early stories, women are something to be loved and, above all else, protected from the harsh realities of the world. We see this ‘damsel in distress’ theme often in his early work which was also a popular trope at the time.

But, by the time we reach some of the Captain Gault stories, this opinion towards women changes. No longer are women thought of as objects of romantic love and adoration but instead as crafty, insidious creatures that are, above all else, untrustworthy. Gault outsmarts several women because he simply cannot bring himself to believe or trust a woman.

It is a remarkable change and one that we can only speculate upon. Did his ruined love affair create a distrust towards all women which resulted in him remaining unmarried for so long? Or did something occur during his marriage that also changed his views? We will never know for sure.

greydog: As we’ve said on greydogtales before, Carnacki the Ghostfinder is probably second only to Sherlock Holmes in the number of pastiches and re-imaginings of a single-author detective from that period. How do you feel about the original Carnacki stories, which H P Lovecraft thought were Hope Hodgson’s weakest pieces (though HPL had not read the longest tale, ‘The Hog’)?

sam: I have never understood Lovecraft’s dislike of the Carnacki stories. As a youthful admirer of Holmes, you would think that Lovecraft would be delighted with this character that approaches supernatural mysteries in a logical, scientific manner. Instead, Lovecraft (much as other writers including Ellery Queen) berates Hodgson for trying to create such an unnatural blending of genres.

For myself, I find Carnacki to be Hodgson’s greatest creation and his enduring popularity shows that I am not alone. To me, they are great stories that masterfully combine mystery and horror (as did some of Poe’s finest stories) and endlessly enjoyable to read. It is amazing to consider that Carnacki has become so popular when Hodgson himself only wrote 9 stories with the character and, of those, only 6 were printed in his lifetime. A true testament to the brilliance of the concept!

greydog: Absolutely – a landmark in the development of the occult detective as a concept. Presumably, since you’ve published two volumes of Carnacki stories by contemporary authors, you still get some satisfaction from good pastiches and re-workings of the Ghost Finder? Are there approaches to the canonical material for which you don’t particularly care?

sam: I haven’t ever come across anything that I positively hated although there have been some that I just think didn’t work. Some writers, like William Meikle, understand the Carnacki concept implicitly and write at such a level that they could easily compete with Hodgson’s own stories. Much like Lovecraft’s Mythos stories, I think it’s a wonderful sandbox to play in and I would hope that Hodgson would agree. I think that perhaps the one rendition I cared the least for was Alan Moore’s interpretation of Carnacki in his LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN graphic novel series. Carnacki is portrayed as a bit of neurotic mess rather than the strong, albeit often frightened character he needs to be.

greydog: We are hugely fond of the Ghost Finder ourselves, as is obvious. Now, if someone said they had never read any WHH, where would you suggest they start?

sam: It may come as some surprise but I’d probably not suggest starting with the novels. I think that reading the short stories like “A Voice in the Night”, “A Tropical Horror” and the Sargasso Sea stories give a much stronger impression of his writing. If pressed to recommend a novel, I’d likely pick THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND as it is a work that is completely without equal anywhere. Definitely leave THE NIGHT LAND for last. If someone were to try that novel first, they would likely come away from it with a bad impression of Hodgson’s writing despite the imaginative power it displays.

greydog: On a personal note, we did ask you ages ago if you felt Hope Hodgson’s work had influenced your own work, but you’ve been writing and been published quite a bit since then. Is he still more of a background mist than an imminent fog-bank when you write?

sam: I’ve yet to write a ‘Hodgsonian’ story in the same way that I’ve written many Lovecraftian type tales. Or, at least, a story that on the surface would be something I could point to and say, “That’s Hodgson right there”. Rather, I take away from Hodgson the same thing I take from Lovecraft which is feeling of ‘cosmic horror’ that is so prevalent in both writer’s works. That concept that there is something out there that is so horrible and so amazingly indifferent to humanity is, at its heart, the foundation of all of my own writing and I do feel that I got a great bit of that concept from Hodgson.

greydog: Much the reason why we often refer to Hope Hodgson as at least the ‘uncle’ of weird fiction. So, finally, no plans to follow up on your H P Lovecraft graphic book ‘Some Notes on a Non-Entity’ with a Hope Hodgson version?

sam: That is unlikely for two reasons:

1. We don’t have enough biographical information to do a comprehensive graphic novel and,
2. My collaborator, Jason Eckhardt, would likely kill me if I even suggested this with the amount of research and drawing detail that would be involved.

greydog: Both very fair points. Sam, many thanks for joining us.

sam: Thanks for having me!

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APART FROM his critical work on Hope Hodgson, Sam Gafford has had four recent publications (of his own writing) which should be of interest – a novel, a whole collection of his short stories, an excellent and strange period novel concerning Arthur Machen and the Whitechapel Murders, and a graphic book on H P Lovecraft’s life. You can see them below, with links.

UK http://amzn.eu/gjLSwhu

US http://a.co/h2zK0wE

UK http://amzn.eu/dAMsDBT

US http://a.co/82l4wTc

UK http://amzn.eu/hoFGBN5

US http://a.co/0yFcCUJ

UK http://amzn.eu/9pwepgd

US http://a.co/2X79YO8

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We’ll be back in two or three days with something entirely different – as usual….

The world is made of sand. And rocks. And the North Sea. Here you can observe many fascinating species of wildlife, and omigod, there are two terrible, long-legged creatures charging out of the fog! Baring great white fangs, salivating and heading straight for us…

Woof.

Oh, it’s you lot. What have you been up to?

DJANGO: I peed on many stuffs. Salty stuffs.

CHILLI: Had a drink. This water still tastes icky.

Our recent trip to my home territory on the Yorkshire coast involved a lot of the North Sea. Much of it was hanging in the sky, as we spent four days in fogbanks, mists, sea-frets and other suspended wetnesses. It felt very much like November. Which made no difference to the lurchers. So we braved the mists and icy winds, never quite sure what was around the next headland – or where the other person was.

Occasionally other brave souls would loom from the grey curtain, muttering “Now then,” which is a greeting of wild and ecstatic companionship in East Yorkshire. And one fellow walker paused to explain out she hadn’t brought her dog’s ball. “Pointless,” she said. “Neither I nor the dog can see where the hell it goes.” It really was that dense at times.

The wild coast always has an effect on the little donkeys. Energy levels go up, especially with the older dog, Chilli, who only usually agrees to one walk a day (one and half if she’s feeling generous). Take her near the sea, and suddenly she is booming about in huge circles on the sands. She loves it. Django sees more opportunities to bumble about, and goes into his normal sniffing and peeing routine with added enthusiasm. Why stay at home peeing on daffodils when you can come here and pee on a dead lobster?

(Our previous lurcher, Jade, took a very different view of the coast. Being a very neurotic rescue, poor soul, she would mostly stand in the middle of the flat sands and bark, distinctly unsure about all this wettery. Small rivers and streams she liked; a whole sea was far too much, thank you.)

During the times when we could see anything, I played ‘fetch’. It was great. I would throw a stick or a piece of kelp, the mighty lurchers would chase it, and then… I would go and fetch it. As usual, Django and Chilli viewed my persistence with interest. They were all for having a run, but once a stick stopped moving, it was on its own. Seeing that I looked disappointed, Chilli did bite some of the kelp in half, but then wandered off again. So no change there.

Of course, we went once more to the village of Auburn, because it isn’t there any more. The sea took it, long ago. But there is a wonderful stretch of sands there, mile upon mile.

Between Auburn Beck and the The Earl’s Dyke, there is little but sand and the low crumbling cliffs, not chalk but muddy clay. Ideal for a lurcher who wants to do some rock-climbing without having to carry ropes and pitons.

And this time we did see seals what had got sick of them surging waves and did want a kip. Full of concern about stranded marine mammals and so on, we went closer and were greeted with a lot of sharp teeth and growling barks of “Can’t a chap have a lie down on his own beach these days?” A Marine Rescue guy had been called out already by some previous walker, and we stood on a long, deserted beach as he demonstrated responsiveness in young seals. He waved a piece of cloth near one, and it bit it. Hard. “Put you in hospital, that would,” he said cheerfully. “Blood poisoning in a day.”

Most curiously (and to our relief), our lurchers had no interest whatsoever in the seal. Chilli had run off up a beck to see if she could find drinkable water, and Django was busy peeing on stuff. Water in; water out. And the fog rolled over all of us.

There is only one drawback to these visits. The sofa at the place where we stay is small, as are the armchairs. Every evening consists of major battle manoeuvres to get on the sofa first, and then the Oppression of the Hierarchy. Or in other words, Chilli is the Boss.

If she gets on first and claims it, Django paces around the house, moaning, until he abandons hope and lies down on the rug with a dissatisfied Whumppfle.

If he gets on first, Chilli pokes me with a sharp set of claws a few times to see if I’m going to do anything about it, and then hops on next to him, shoving him to one side. His eyes roll, and he squishes into the corner of the sofa, trying to find somewhere to put his sixteen legs.

DJANGO: I is oppressed.

CHILLI: I is comfy. Ha ha.

It’s a cruel world by the North Sea.