Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder V: The Horse of the Invisible | review by Rafe McGregor

The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson

Wordsworth Editions, paperback, £4.99, July 2006, ISBN 9781840225297

The ‘cover story’ of the Wordsworth Editions edition, which is a good choice in being one of Carnacki’s best adventures and a poor one for an illustration as the horse is, mostly anyway, invisible. There is another small variation on the familiar formula here as the narrative begins with Carnacki showing Dodgson a series of photographs before dinner and before the arrival of his other guests. The haunting is of a house somewhere in East Lancashire, but Carnacki quickly establishes that the ghost is tied to a person rather than a place. There is a legend that if the first-born child of a Hisgins generation is a girl, she will be persecuted by a huge horse from the time she reaches womanhood to the day of her marriage and this family curse has already put paid to five young women in a variety of ways. The tale is fast-paced, the ghost appearing before Carnacki is even briefed, and, unlike its predecessors, written in the style of a thriller rather than a mystery. Hodgson demonstrates his expertise as an author by alternating foreshadowing with gripping action set pieces. What also emerges here is that while Carnacki is a typically reticent English gentleman, he is very candid and very eloquent in describing the fear that he experiences during his investigations and Hodgson’s representation of fear across the Carnacki series is one of their literary strengths. ‘The Horse of the Invisible’ is capped with an ingenious conclusion in which Hodgson subverts the expectations he has created in the first three cases by presenting a solution that is both natural and supernatural. The “Black Veil” investigation is mentioned again as well as a potential competitor or rival of Carnacki’s, “Harford”.