The Voice in the Night

by William Hope Hodgson

"The Voice in the Night" is an uncanny story about a ship becalmed in fog in the middle of the Pacific. In the night, the watch hears a voice hailing the ship. It would seem to be a lone man in a rowing boat, but the individual does not wish to be seen. He is starving and urgently wants them to give him food - but despite this, he will not approach the ship and vehemently rejects the idea of being rescued. Instead they have to float some provisions out to him in a crate, which he takes off to a nearby island where his fiancée is dying of hunger. A few hours later he returns and tells a horrifying and incredible tale.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Classics, Fantasy, Mystery

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. Hodgson served with the British Army durng World War One. He died, at age 40, at Ypres, killed by German artillery fire.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely great and eerie story set upon the ocean. In the night two men of a schooner hear a voice alongside their ship requesting for food. A stranger tells them that he and his fiance survived the sink of their vessesl a couple of months ago. It was the Albatross. They survived by finding a ghostly ship providing them with necessities and a small island they could live upon. But why does the stranger shun the light aboard of the schooner? Why doesn't he go onboard? On his second trip to the schooner he's telling Will and the narrator their horrible story. It has something to do with a terrible fungus growing uncontrolled infesting everything in its surrounding. What did that fungus to the two survivors and how did it spread? This story will run shivers down your spine, guaranteed. Hodgson creates an uncanny atmosphere at its very best. Stunning and highly recommended!

[Eloy Cryptkeeper · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Era un noche oscura y sin estrellas. La falta de viento nos tenía detenidos en el Pacífico Norte. No sé cuál era nuestra posición exacta, pues durante un semana fatigosa y jadeante el sol había permanecido oculto detrás de un tenue neblina que parecía flotar sobre nosotros, aunque a veces descendía para envolver el mar que nos rodeaba(...)
Una voz curiosamente gutural e inhumana nos llamaba desde alguna parte del mar tenebroso, por el lado de babor"

Las historias y leyendas marítimas son tan antiguas como la primer embarcación, probablemente anteriores. Y esta en particular, sale un poco fuera de ciertos parámetros y arquetipos; mas aun siendo de 1907, pero a su vez manteniéndose muy vigente.

[Latasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE this story! it's great, creepy, haunting. all of it! Bravo Mr. Hodgson! you did a great job. the story is about some sailors that one night, hear a voice in the darkness calling for help. this story is in the public domain so it's free and isn't very long. you should read it!

sept 2024-
Listened to an audio version on YouTube. Love this story!

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading this story it made me wonder if it inspired H.P. Lovecraft and Big Steve.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fans of Japanese horror may know this story better as "Matango," the loose Toho film adaptation from the 1960s. But the original 1907 masterpiece by literature's most buff poet, William Hope Hodgson, should be experienced by everyone.

Because it is so short, I can't reveal much about the plot. Let's just say that this is top notch weird fiction, an A-grade in mystery and in all-around eldritch creepiness.

Fun fact, Hodgson could be a real hard ass. During a bet that he could shackle Harry Houdini so that even the famous escape artist could not wriggle free, Hodgson personally restrained him during a public spectacle in multiple cuffs with tampered locks, and wouldn't even release him after doctors announced that Houdini's hands had turned blue due to lost circulation. Houdini still managed to get free, but by almost degloving himself. Jesus, these guys were METAL!

But whatever you think of Hodgson the man, he was a brilliant writer, and this dark tale of the Pacific is a great way to whet your appetite for the kind of mind-blowing fantasies that came from his haunted pen.

SCORE: 5 disembodied voices out of 5

[Kansas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un cuento que me ha gustado sobre todo por lo atmosférico y ese terror que puede sobrevenir de ese algo desconocido en la noche. Me gusta más esa primera mitad del cuento donde todo son sensaciones y esa especie de anticipación del terror que viene de la voz desconocida que se esconde en la noche que toda esa parte final con expliaciones, pero ya digo que es un cuento estupendo por el terror que se mantiene vivo sobre todo en la mente del lector.

[Jerry Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic and immersive horror story with elements of survival, body and science fiction. Story opens with a fishing vessel in the 'blessed' Pacific being approached by a small rowboat, by the middle of night, for help. With the pace and composition of his prose, Hodgson made me feel like one of the listener up the deck.

I couldn't help but see this as a spooky origin story for Swamp Thing or a less weird version of Blackwood's Willows. Its also hard to unsee the influence this story might have had on the genres that followed, whether its literature, movies, games or comics; from Triffids to Aliens to Obscure to Venom.

Recommend.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narration listened to on 'Abyss' on YouTube.

For any horror aficionado, these classics should be compulsory listening. I'd never heard of this, but after hearing it, I believe I can accurately pick a plethora of writers AND film makers who have been influenced by stories like this one. Beautiful, heartbreaking, and quietly gruesome. I'll be going back for more W.H.H.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice, creepy gem, and hugely influential. No twists, just dread as the inevitable slinks into sight. Huge recommendation, reads modern enough not to put you off despite the age.

[King Crusoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting for this story to be a reflective recounting the way that it was, but I absolutely loved the subtle unravelling of the horrific nature of the story. It begins making you think one way about the voice - a bit confused, skeptical, unsure - but eventually makes you come around to a state of surprising sympathy, horror, and honestly, just depression.

That was great.

[Klowey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think fans of weird horror will like this. Hodgson's prose flows and keeps the reader engaged. The story is fairly standard for the genre. Some weird fiction focuses on mood and atmosphere with an ambiguous ending. This one was a bit more concrete in describing events, causes, outcomes with the supernatural playing a major role.

I'm open to reading more Hodgson. He was an interesting person.

[NekroRider · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5
Read in Voices From the Radium Age. In the realm of weird horror, about a strange nighttime encounter on the waters of the pacific. Was a cool read.

[Aracne Mileto · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5

[Jasher Drake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short and simple but I'm kinda taken back by how gripping and terrifying this story is.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the story, a small boat approaches a schooner at night and a mysterious voice asks the sailors for food. Although clearly desperate, the Voice refuses to come closer into the light. Suspicion quickly turns into sympathy for the schooner's captain when the Voice reveals that he has a starving female companion waiting on a nearby island. A few hours after gratefully departing with the provisions, the Voice returns to tell his story about the horrifying fate of a shipwrecked couple stranded on a strange island.

[Etain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first part of that but once the old man's testimony began it got rather boring.

[Per · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Vo...

[Goran Lowie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun little fungal monster story. It’s a clear precursor to many current-day stories, though this one never feels like real “horror”- it’s more of a travelogue-esque description of an encounter.

3.5, rounded down to a 3.

Read as part of the "Voices from the Radium Age" anthology.

[Joop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leuk die oude korte verhaaltjes.

[xenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colonial anxiety—to be invaded and consumed by nature itself, its seeming passivity irrupting into a teeming mass of lifeforms too small and dispersed to see, let alone defend against. Reverse colonisation leading not to a nationalist cry of triumphant resistance (Campbell, Heinlein), but degradation, resignation, and self-cannibalism (Wells, Ballard, Disch). The fall of empire, bequeathed from the soil itself.

—

More thoughts on reverse colonisation in the third paragraph here. An addendum to that review: War of the Worlds also deals with the theme of reverse colonisation, however, it posits entropy and the decimation of an ecosystem's carrying capacity as the impetus for colonisation, naturalising an otherwise historically-specific economic system (capitalism). Despite the alien horror of Wells' aliens, they operates under human logics, but logics that have been generalised and naturalised across intelligent life. Hodgson posits the nonhuman (fungi) against the human, and while he uses ecology to disrupt human logics, he doesn't generalise the specifics of it, even though consumption and reproduction are general principles of life. Disch, finally, disrupts human logics by historicising them. Reverse colonisation is distinctly tied to the creation of an alien colony, whose purpose is to generate profit. The dehumanisation of its original human inhabitants is driven by the alienating need for productivity, a move that distinctly ties alienation to capitalism. Themes the new weird develops on, especially in the works of VanderMeer and Mieville.

[Richie Kercenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being both creepy and intense, The Voice in the Night is an excellent horror tale. Although short and with no considerable twist to its plot, the story is rich and can be read from multiple perspectives.
One plausible interpretation of its events alludes to the ever increasing alienation which had marred the early years of the 20th century like a crawling monster that poisoned with its venom all it had touched.

The couple, at the heart of the story, had been abandoned by the crew of their ship when the latter was sinking in a symbolic representation of the state of England by the turn of the century. The bonds of compassion and harmony held no more when the former regime collapsed. Morality and religion gave way, and human beings became estranged from one another to the extent of abandoning their fellow creatures with neither hesitation nor remorse.

The fungus that plagued the pair with its parasitic growth wherever they turned alludes to the corruption that reigned the English society and even the world's population at the time. The intense temptation which governed the couple and made them partake, against their will and inclination, of such a dreadful repast is equally symbolic of the wave of hostility which swept the people shortly before the war. As it was, people were thrown into a hostile atmosphere from which they could not break free, and which had ultimately culminated in the First World War.

[J_BlueFlower · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very fine short story. Said to be Hodgson's most creepy. I read it many years ago ans recently thought of it and wanted to reread it. It was quite hard to find from just a vague memory about the plot. Still a fine story eventhough I knew the end. I think maybe both H.P. Lovecraft: The Colour Out of Space and Stephen King: Weeds have borrow a bit here.

[Finn (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trevor Henderson made a wonderful illustration of this short story, which led me to read it. You can read The Voice in the Night here!

[Tanu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring and archaic, told in that typical recount/dialogue style instead of in medias res.

[David Segovia · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Hope Hodgson - Una voz en la noche

El misterio y el terror desarrollado en altamar cobra fuerza con un relato corto de W. H. Hodgson. En medio del mar, en una noche más oscura que de costumbre, William y George escuchan una voz gutural que súplica por ayuda.

El personaje ignoto a los ojos de los marinos, impregnado con un horror profundo a la luz, poco a poco va revelando su historia de martirio debido a un encuentro fatídico con un ente viscoso en un barco abandonado.

Los senderos de supuesta salvación, que son relatados por el ser, se van llenado de una sustancia gris que albergan formas inhumanas, viejos recuerdos de seres que fueron hombre y doncella, un par de pobres almas proscritas..

En conclusión, es un buen cuento corto, en donde se describe un entorno de eterno castigo, en donde el escape es imposible.

[Guillermo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sad that it took me this long to discover the writing of William Hope Hodgson. I happened upon this story after Amazon suggested an anthology inspired by his writings. I'm going make an effort to read more of his longer works.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brushed up my knowledge regarding this all-time classic today. It was an n-th read probably. But the pathos, suspense and horror remained fresh even today!
If you haven't read it yet, please rectify the mistake ASAP.

[Jo Berry ☀️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting short story. It really held my attention all the way through. I think it falls comfortably into the category of Weird Fiction, but also Horror and Sci-fi.

[Marc D. ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 estrellas.

Primera lectura del 2023 y fue esta maravilla.
No dejó de parecerme siniestro todo el tema del barco y lo fungi. Cada parte encajó a la perfección.

Lo recomiendo mucho.

[Creolecat]

Matango (1963)