Carnacki: The Lost Cases

Carnacki #2

by Sam Gafford (Editor), A. Kidd (Contributor), John Howard (Contributor)

Even Carnacki, the great ‘Ghost-Finder’, himself has cases that he will not speak about. In these 12 tales, we learn the details of those ‘Lost Cases’ that Carnacki talked about only in hushed whispers. Learn the truth behind “The Steeple Monster Case”, the horror of “The Grunting Man”, the creeping terror of “The Grey Dog” and so much more. When you have learned the truth behind these cases, you may find yourself haunted as well!

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Occult Detective, Anthologies, Mystery, Ghosts

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 24, 2016

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine. Most weren’t very memorable, and the few that changed the format of Carnacki’s stories were downright annoying. William Meikle’s story, as always, was one of the best.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining Carnacki listening ✨😎

This kindle novella is from my Kindle Unlimited account

I enjoy Carnacki stories and this book was very enjoyable.

I would recommend this novella and various authors to fans of Carnacki. 2024

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carnacki, the ghost-finder, has been receiving considerable attention off late.
While Occult Detectives and Paranormal Investigators, from basic Holmesian types to the more cowboy-like Dresdenesque ones, keep treading the grounds, reducing it to a slush, the century old gent treating his friends with food, sherry, and his ‘tales’, has truly caught our imagination.
It’s in that tradition that this collection of Carnacki’s supposedly ‘lost’ cases has come forth, containing stories penned by some of the finest practitioners of such craft. Let me share my feelings about those stories, herein.

1. “The Meeting” by John Linwood Grant: A sharp, smart piece that sets up the collection nicely, but ends too soon.
2. “The Darkness” by A.F. Kidd: One of the finest pastiches dealing with Carnacki, this story is also a terrific example of Jamesian horror, a vein richly mined by the author in her campanological tales as well.
3. “The Silent Garden” by Jason C. Eckhardt: A taut, suspenseful story that I enjoyed immensely.
4. “The Shadow Suns” by John Howard: Rather mellowed, gentle, and soft, this story belonged to a different bracket altogether, but was enjoyable nevertheless.
5. “The Steeple Monster Case” by Charles R. Rutledge: A brilliant, action-packed, terrifying story, that literally left me gasping for more!
6. “The Moving Fur Case” by Paul R. McNamee: Welsh backdrop, a primitive hunting theme, and typical claustrophobic confines of a lodge combined with animalistic horror reminiscent of ‘The Hog’ in this story, to make it sharply effective.
7. “The Delphic Bee” by Josh Reynolds: Although not an adventure of the Royal Occultist per se, Carnacki had an adventure here that smelt very-very strongly of death & honey. Enjoyed it.
8. “A Hideous Communion” by James Gracey: Pain, sorrow, loneliness, horror, and an abomination from beyond combine to make this story truly frightening.
9. “The Dark Trade” by John Linwood Grant: Atmospheric, grim, dark, and moving. This story shows how human misery & pain constitute the backbone of our fear, rather than relying on ab-natural manifestations.
10. “The Grunting Man” by William Meikle: With the right combination of dry humour and dark horror, this story stood out as an exception even amongst several outstanding tales in this book.
11. “The Dark Light” by Robert M. Price: A bad joke played on hapless readers. I would steer away from works of this author.
12. “The Yellow Finger Experiments” by James Bojaciuk: Too experimental for my taste. Didn’t like the story, the characters, the structure, or Carnacki as drawn by the author in this case.
13. “The Grey Dog” by John Linwood Grant: After two brilliant forays into the world of Carnacki so far, why the author decided to close everything on such a damp & maudlin note, would remain quite a mystery for me.

Therefore, even after taking the last three squeaks into count, this book produces quite a sweet & eerie tune overall, that all admirers of Carnacki might appreciate.
Recommended, definitely.

[Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really 3.5 stars
I read the original Hodgson umpteen years ago and always regretted there were so few stories by him about Carnacki.
Recently there have been several writers taking on the mantle and some of the books have been enjoyable and excellent. This book is more of a mixed bag with stories by many authors. About half of them are quite good and some not so good. I especially didn't like a few stories that deviate from the basic formula of Hodgson's original tales which take place in Carnacki's home after a good dinner as he recounts his adventure among friends.

One general comment. One of the feature of the original book by Hodgson, "Carnacki the Ghost Finder" was that some of the stories he told his friends were about hauntings that hoaxes. Of course some of the other stories were real and some quite vivid in their hauntings. I'm not sure I have read any stories from other authors where the haunting is a hoax.

[Glen · Rating 2 out of 5]

C0llection of short stories featuring Carnacki. Some of them were pretty good, but too many of them completely missed the mark.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

New tales of the Ghost-Finder!

Thomas Carnacki, the Ghost Finder, was the creation of William Hope Hodgson. The original stories were published in 1913! The version most people are familiar with was published in 1947, and include three stories that were not in the original book.

The stories are written to a specific formula. Carnacki invites four friends to his home at 472 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. These men are only known by their last names: Arkright, Jessop, Taylor, and Dodgson (obviously Hodgson in disguise!) who writes up the stories. They have a meal during which the guests must not ask questions. After eating, they retire to what Dodgson calls “their usual chairs and nooks” while Carnacki settles into his great chair and begins to recount an adventure.

Carnacki works cases of the outré. Sometimes the strange cases are actual haunting or supernatural occurrences. Sometimes they are from some human agency counterfeiting the haunting. Carnacki is prepared for both. His wards and electric pentacle, the various manuscripts such as the "Sigsand Manuscript" and the "Saaamaaa Ritual" that has an unknown last line that saves Carnacki in “The Whistling Room.”

I will give a SPOILER alert but try not to give too much away.

These are the new stories:
• In “The Darkness” by AF Kidd, a suffocating silence and deep darkness are causing trouble for one of Carnacki’s clients…
• In “The Silent Garden” by Jason C Eckhardt, Carnacki takes a case for a man whose maiden aunt has a garden where no sound can be heard and birds will not fly over…
• In “The Shadow Suns” by John Howard, Carnacki is called to a rural retreat with spooky problems and strange woven straw plates suspended in the front windows…
• “The Steeple Monster Case” by Charles R Rutledge finds Carnacki facing something in the bell tower of a church… This one breaks the story format, but the tale redeems itself!
• In “The Moving Fur Case” by Paul R McNamee, Carnacki goes to Wales to examine a haunt that revolves around howling noises and an old grey animal pelt…
• “The Delphic Bee” by Josh Reynolds brings Carnacki face to face with haunted beehives… This one is worst in book—it breaks the story format and the creepy events ring a bit hollow…
• In “A Hideous Communication” by James Gracey, Carnacki deals with an apparent ghost in a graveyard and a grieving father…
• “The Dark Trade” by John Linwood Grant is about a horrible room that smells of the sea and unwashed human bodies… This one takes Best in Book! Encore!
• In “The Grunting Man” by William Meikle, the landlady of a small inn or guesthouse is having problems with her best room…
• “The Dark Light” by Robert M Price deals with a blind man who disappears…
• “The Yellow Finger Experiments” by James Bojaciuk, is perhaps the strangest tale in the book…
• “The Grey Dog” by John Linwood Grant is a first-person Carnacki story, but not as told to his four friends…

I am glad to see Carnacki the Ghost Finder in these new cases! I give the book four out of five stars…

Quoth the Raven…

[Michael Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carnacki is an exorcist. The original book was written in 1913. This book is written by ten different authors so the quality of stories vary though most keep up the annoying repetitive ritual of the original book, where Carnacki invites four friends to dinner and afterwards tells them of his latest case before they leave again.

In the last story, Carnacki admits to sometimes lying to them, as he did in that story, and that he is now tired of "the ritual". In the story THE DARK LIGHT, three of them walk out as they consider his story ridiculous, while he tells his tale in full to the fourth, who wished he had walked out too.

The stories are about hauntings, spirits, etc and Carnacki has a collection of spells, of charms and such that he uses against them, which do not always work. The stories are usually creepy rather than monsters, though THE STEEPLE MONSTER CASE featured such a fiend.

[Sem · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the original Carnacki stories and I expected to enjoy this collection but, by the time I was half way through, the accumulated weight of tedious, formulaic pastiches was more than I could bear. It was almost a relief when, in the final story, Carnacki showed himself to be as tired of it all as I was. Any plans I had to read more of the same have been scrapped. I don't want to hear about the inevitable failure of the electric pentacle ever again.

ETA: Now that I've slept, and woken at the moment when the psychotic killer realised I was hiding in the loft (but I know that dream loft well and it's labyrinthine) I feel I should emphasise that each story was quite good (if formulaic) but Carnacki with his faulty paraphernalia doesn't hold the reader's interest from story to story to story.

[The Smoog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike most anthologies, there isn’t a bad story here, although not everyone will be fond of the few which don’t follow the narrative structure of Carnacki stories established by William Hope Hodgson. Overall, a solid effort, and the final story offers a very poignant take on Carnacki's existence.

[LayDownYourSoul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of stories, enjoyed them to different degrees. Really enjoyed the story of the garden with something strange in/under it. Cool Lovecraftian vibes and references in some of the stories.

[Arant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Anthology!

Though all authors in this wonderful anthology write in their own voice and style they manage to channel 'Dodgson's Spirit' through their stories.

[Hal Bodner · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those readers who are unfamiliar with William Hope Hodgson's work, a wonderful serendipity awaits. Written in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, they are already in the public domain and available for download, gratis, at Project Gutenberg. Thomas Carnacki is a ghost hunter, a Victorian version of the Scooby Gang. Like Scooby-Doo and his friends, Carnacki is equally as likely to discover a supernatural cause for the various manifestations he investigates as he is to uncover deliberate supernatural trappings overlaid onto a mundane plot by nefarious evil-doers.

The Carnacki stories are great fun to read. One suspects Hodgson of grinning to himself as he created the various elements of pseudo-science mixed with supposedly arcane lore that Carnacki uses to tame his ghostly foes. Sadly, there are less than a dozen of these stories extant and so, I was delighted to discover that editor Sam Gafford had put together an anthology of twelve supposedly "lost" Carnacki cases. Most of the pieces faithfully follow Hodgson's standard plot mechanism; Carnacki summons several friends to a lavish dinner, after which he regales them, over the required cigars and brandy, with exploits from his latest "case."

All of the stories are lovingly faithful to the original material. All of them are excellent. And all of them follow a charming, pun-ish introductory piece by John Linwood Grant that clearly signals that some of these horror tales may have been written, at least in part, with tongue straining toward the authors' cheeks.

There are several outstanding pieces that warrant specific mention. In "The Silent Garden, Jason C. Eckhardt pulls out the stops with his own version of Carnacki's traditional use of pseudo-science to defeat an other worldy presence which may be set on invading our reality in order to destroy it. Charles R. Rutledge wrote what is perhaps my favorite piece in the book, "The Steeple Monster Case" which, of all the stories, is the one which I felt most accurately pays homage to Hodgson at his best. And Paul R. McNamee brings a particularly Carnacki-esque twist to traditional lycanthopy tales in his "The Moving Fur Case." Lest the reader be mistaken that all of the stories should be taken lightly, there are some real chills here, particularly in the deeply disturbing, "The Dark Trade" by John Linwood Grant.

The final two offerings of this anthology are perhaps the most interesting in that both stories depart from the traditional Hodgson formula while still managing to retain the essence of his work. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure that I cared for James Bojaciuk's "The Yellow Finger Experiments". It lacks a certain light-heartedness that one usually finds in even the most dire of the Carnacki stories and, to be honest, due to its stylistic conceits, I found it a little difficult to follow.

However, the final selection, "The Grey Dog", also John Linwood Grant, was just wonderful. Though Hodgson's stories are told from the third person perspective of one of Carnacki's dinner guests repeating tales told by Carnacki himself in the first person, this is the first time I've read a true first person Carnacki tale. Not only does it succeed brilliantly but, for the first time, I got a sense of Carnacki himself as a fully developed character whereas, in most of Hodgson's work, he is used mostly as a mechanism for the story to proceed.

I recommend that you read the source material first, if only to clue you in on some of the inside jokes within this anthology. Then, get yourself a copy of CARNACKI: THE LOST CASES, settle in with your own brandy and cigar, and prepare to enjoy a marvelous read!