Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder VI: The Searcher of the End House | 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 last of the first batch of the stories, which were all published in The Idler in the first five issues of 1910, finds Carnacki himself the victim of a haunting, while living with his mother near the fictional village of Appledorn on the south coast of England. Hodgson shows some innovation here, as the first appearance of the ghost is olfactory, “a faint, peculiar, disagreeable odour”, followed by a rapping on the banister he initially ascribes to his mother. When the smells and sounds continue, Carnacki packs her off to safety and interviews his landlord, who admits that there have been reports of something strange in the house and agrees to keep a nocturnal vigil with him to discover what it is. During this vigil, Carnacki sees the ghost of a child running away from someone and the landlord sees the ghost of a woman searching for someone or something. They decide to involve the police in their next vigil and uncover a natural explanation for their experiences. Where ‘The Whistling Room’ exploited the order of the series, ‘The Searcher of the End House’ falls foul of it, concluding with a solution that is too similar to ‘The Horse of the Invisible’. I’m not sure if the order is the only problem either and I wondered if this wasn’t like Agatha Christie trying to use the same plot device she used in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) twice. In summary, the case has a very promising beginning that ultimately fails to deliver on that promise. Carnacki mentions several other investigations, including “the Three Straw Platters”, “the Dark Light Case”, and “that trouble of Matheson’s”.