Hope Hodgson and the Haunted Ear

Extend your lobes and indulge yourself, dearest listener, for today we return to that classic weird fiction author, William Hope Hodgson, and the world of audio, with a host of clickable links. Yes, The Voice of Horror returns! Many moons ago, we covered some of the recordings of WHH’s work, but that post is rather out of date now. So we thought we’d head there afresh, and at the same time include a short tribute to Hope Hodgson kindly provided by writer S L Edwards, thus extending the range of pieces which we published during last year’s centennial of WHH’s death.

demons of the sea, by the fantastic sebastian cabrol

Whilst we’re updating on WHH matters, we can add that the British Library will soon be publishing a collection of Hope Hodgson’s fiction, edited by Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University and a founder member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. He tells us that the collection is intended as a ‘best of’ intro for new readers who may never have heard of Hodgson. We hope to interview Xavier later this year in order to discuss Hope Hodgson, Gothic fiction and supernatural literature in general.


art by john coulthart

A related audio experience we must mention as well today is this album by Jon Mueller, originally released on CD as accompaniment to the book The House on the Borderland by Hope Hodgson, published by Swan River Press, Dublin, 2018. The album can be purchased as a digital download here:

https://rhythmplex.bandcamp.com/album/the-house-on-the-borderland

And at time of writing, it looks like there are a few copies left of that printing of The House on the Borderland. This was published in an edition of 300 signed copies and 50 unsigned, which contains:

  • “Fear of a Porous Border: William Hope Hodgson’s Liminal Masterpiece” by Alan Moore
  • “The House on the Borderland” by William Hope Hodgson
  • “An Aberrant Afterword: Blowing Dust in the House of Incest” by Iain Sinclair

Swan River Press productions are always excellent, so grab them while you can.

swan river press

http://swanriverpress.ie/title_borderland.html



THE VOICE OF HORROR

Here we go with some links to audio recordings currently available, with the hope that the links work in most regions across the globe. It’s a varied pick, with very varied voices, and we’ve indicated the general origin of the narrator in each case.

We commence with an unusual one, which we haven’t heard recorded before. This is ‘The Seahorses’, from Hope Hodgson’s collection Men of the Deep Waters, (British/Irish narrator)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVI0OdQyyl8

To go to the other extreme, why not spend a week driving yourself mad by listening to the entire The Night Land, with all its fantastical imagery and all its dubious archaisms. This is a straight reading of The Night Land from Audiobooks Unleashed, some eighteen hours worth! (US narrator)

Ballantyne (1971)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4eNRcXbYpk


Holding & Hardingham (1914)

Less time-consuming, we can suggest some more shorter pieces, such as those recorded by HorrorBabble, in association with Rue Morgue, which include a series of Carnacki the Ghost Finder tales, narrated by Ian Gordon (British narrator):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP9_W6Xtyp4

And one of Hope Hodgson’s better known non-Carnacki tales, ‘The Voice in the Night’, from the same people (British narrator):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASIfPcyTAH0

Or you could go for ‘A Tropical Horror’, from By the Fireside (British narrator with regional accent)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVxpr3GlpX8

m wayne miller
m wayner miller – the grey boats, dark renaissance books (2015)

‘Captain Dan Danblasten’, not horror, is a Tales from the Potts House podcast (also has a podcast of ‘The Voice in the Night’):

http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/hodgecast/Captain%20Dan%20Danblasten.mp3

You can hear the short story ‘Inhabitants of the Middle Islet’… but not in English, only in French, as far as we can determine. We quite enjoyed it, but then we only understood about half of it. Fluent French speakers may be able to report back to greydogtales on its quality.

http://www.litteratureaudio.org/mp3/William_Hope_Hodgson_-_Les_Habitants_de_l_ile_du_milieu.mp3


Of the more substantial works (though none so substantial as The Night Land), there are some nice audio versions. Jim Norton’s House on the Borderland, in four parts, is excellent (British narrator):

Panther (1972) Miller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frg7ZLFVMQM&t=3s

The Boats of the Glen Carrig (British narrator with regional accent):

Hyperion Press (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6rg7SO-84g

And Librivox’s The Ghost Pirates (US narrator):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qey9YfCjxBU


Returning to Carnacki the Ghost Finder, these classic occult detective stories have, as you might expect, been recorded often. In addition to the HorrorBabble versions mentioned above, the most impressive arrival since we last visited is the magnificent Big Finish production of six Carnacki tales. If you are a fan of the Ghost Finder, this production is an absolute must-have, with British actor Dan Starkey proving a superb, definitive voice for our hero. Outstanding.

audio from big finish

https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/carnacki—the-ghost-finder-1416

We interviewed Scott Handcock, the producer, here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/carnacki-lives/

And we talked to the talented Dan Starkey himself here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/doctor-who-and-the-detective-its-the-starkey-stratagem/


The Big Finish set did not, alas, cover Hope Hodgson’s longest Carnacki tale, one which take the Ghost Finder deep into the realm of weird fiction, ‘The Hog’. However, Otis Jiry’s recording of ‘The Hog’ (US Narrator) can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ipm8bv-fCM&list=PLSKVMK38zV9hu8Zx6OMR2GKSccYjdszOW

Carnacki is still very much alive in fiction, kept sleuthing through the stories of authors such as Willie Meikle, Brandon Barrows, Joshua M Reynolds, Chico Kidd and a number of others – and through certain entries in John Linwood Grant’s own series Tales of the Last Edwardian.

Morgan Scorpion’s recording of ‘The Hellfire Mirror’, a new Carnacki adventure by Willie Meikle, from his collection Carnacki: Heaven and Hell (British narrator) is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9co2iqJDTO0

ulthar press

And Tales to Terrify recorded ‘The Horse of the Invisible’ paired with Meikle’s ‘Treason and Plot’. The host is the late Larry Santoro, who gives a detailed introduction to Hodgson (before you ask, the WHH death details given are corrected on the site) and the narration is by Robert Neufeld (US narrator)

http://talestoterrify.com/tales-to-terrify-show-no-47-william-hope-hodgson-and-william-meikle/

sebastian cabrol

Finally for our audio sampling, one for our Spanish and South American friends – a Spanish language version of The House on the Borderland:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_JS4wxWRc8


Foremost amongst those individuals and presses who have not only kept WHH in the limelight, but championed the Hodgsonian Revival, are, of course, Sam Gafford and his Ulthar Press.

ulthar’s latest publication

We will be saying more about Ulthar’s expanding range of publications soon. We had the pleasure of interviewing Sam on Hope Hodgson last year, as well as hosting his poignant story about WHH’s last days, ‘The Land of Lonesomeness’, which no Hodgsonian should miss:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-land-of-lonesomeness/

You can find more out about Ulthar here:

https://ultharpress.com/

From one veteran and well-established Sam to an up-and-coming one, to end today’s feast, here’s that short tribute to WHH we promised – yes, it should have gone up in 2018, but Time whipped us into the New Year before we could get it done…

Voices in the Night and Other Stray Songs

by S. L. Edwards

Like many other readers, I came to Hodgson by way of Lovecraft. This isn’t entirely fair to Mr. Hodgson, who wrote earlier than Lovecraft and by all accounts established his own style and thoughts regarding weird fiction independent of his peers. Like many writers, Hodgson put himself into his characters. Unlike Blackwood or Machen, the characters in Hodgson’s fiction are kinetic doers. They pack meaningful punches, interacting with their world as adventurers and victims alike.

I have no doubt there is plenty to be said of Carnacki. Carnacki is unquestionably Hogdson’s most widely known contribution to weird fiction, no doubt a part of the spiritualist zeitgeist that also bred Dr. John Silence. The House on the Borderlands likewise sets Hodgson apart. Like Blackwood and Machen, the story revolves around a revelation, and what begins seeming as a haunted house story becomes cracked wide open. For me, the most terrifying moment of Borderlands comes as time passes on, as the narrator is made to watch the world freeze and is unable to do more than sit back and passively fade to darkness. I can think of no more terrible immortality. The story stands out as the most in dialog with other weird fiction writers, notably catching the attention of Lovecraft and no doubt influencing his own depictions of otherworldly horrors.

However, the story which stands out to me is ‘The Voice in the Night.’ Here we get a view of autobiography, no doubt informed by Hodgson’s background as a sailor. Through the fog of a sea-salt night, a voice explains to sailors that though he needs help, he cannot come aboard their ship. For those of you who haven’t read the story, I won’t go any further, but I will say that it reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith and other American weird authors dealing with the concept of plague. The characters regret their inability to help the voice, and again we see that these are so-called “men of action,” men who want to reach out and help the world much like Hodgson himself.

Hodgson, while a writer, was no man of letters. He was a fighter, a sailor and (if I understand correctly) even provided boxing lessons at one point in his life. Perhaps this why he could not stand by as WWI spread on, and why in turn died at 40 as the war began reaching an unsustainable status quo. Like too many of his peers, he died younger and sooner than expected, and we can only speculate the sort of way that his final experiences in the war would have shaped his fiction. Would he have maintained a presence in “Weird Fiction,” or would he follow other veterans-turned-writers such as Vasily Grossman and Hemingway, turning to more philosophic and literary themes mostly devoid of the supernatural? I would like to think some amalgam of both, that he could have been content writing ghost and war stories in the sort of safety provided be a glass window to an English garden. But knowing Hodgson, the man of action, such an end seems just as unlikely as a ghostly hog.

As a voice in the night.


S L Edwards is an American weird fiction writer whose first collection Whiskey and other Unusual Ghosts is due out Summer 2019 from Gehenna and Hinnom. You can read the original Hope Hodgson story ‘The Voice in the Night’ in a number of places, such as here:

The Voice in the Night

END-NOTE: Some might call Hope Hodgson a minority interest, so we were surprised that one of our most popular articles last year was our reprint of an unusual find – a long magazine piece on WHH from 1977, by veteran author and historian Peter Berresford Ellis (aka Peter Tremayne), reproduced with his permission. Which was nice. http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-essex-born-master-horror/

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