William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki Stories Listed by Case Order

William Hope Hodgson (1877 – 1918) wrote nine stories featuring his occult detective Thomas Carnacki. All of them are available to read free of charge on this site. Each one is a standalone story. There is no need to read them in a certain order, but, if you want to read the stories in the order they were published, this page will help you to do so.

Hodgson published his first six Carnacki stories between 1910 and 1912, in The Idler and The New Magazine. In 1923, all six stories were reprinted in the anthology Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder. No more Carnacki stories were published during Hodgson’s lifetime. However, three more Carnaki stories were published posthumously. “The Haunted Jarvee” was included in the March 1929 issue of The Premier Magazine. Then, in 1947, The Hog was published alongside another unpublished Carnacki story, “The Find”, in an extended version of Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder. “The Haunted Jarvee” featured alongside them. This was the first time all nine stories appeared together. The Hog was also published in the January 1947 issue of Weird Tales magazine. It’s unclear whether this was before or after the anthology appearance, but it seems likely Weird Tales published it first.

In the case of the three stories that were published after Hodgson’s death, The Hog must have been written after “The Haunted Jarvee” because Carnacki mentions the Jarvee case. As for “The Find”, it’s a straight detective story, where Carnacki takes on a case involving the suspected forgery of a rare and valuable book. It’s the only Carnacki story that does not feature elements that are, or are suspected to be, supernatural.

I provide the list below for the convenience of site visitors who plan to read all the stories, and wish to do so following the most likely case order. I have based it on the order in which the stories appear in the expanded version of Carnacki The Ghost-Finder (published in 1947 by Mycroft & Moran), and my research into the publication dates of the stories. Mycroft and Moran mostly got it right. However, I have made one alteration. The anthology places The Searcher of the End House before The Horse of the Invisible. This is wrong. The Horse of the Invisible was first published in the June 1910 issue of The Idler. The Searcher of the End House was published two months before it, in the  April issue of the same magazine. I have modified the list accordingly.

It’s also worth noting Carnacki The Ghost Finder has been republished many times, by a variety of publishers, at least one of which has just collected the stories without any attempt to place them in order. In 2003, Wildside Press was the first publisher to produce an anthology with all the stories placed correctly in order of publication. However, it was a condensed version. The final three Carnacki stories were omitted.

CASE 1 — The Thing Invisible: Carnacki investigates an incident involving the “Waeful Dagger” of the Jarnock Family, who invite him down to their home in Kent after the dagger—a family heirloom—propels itself through the air, nearly taking the life of the butler. But was it the work of the family ghost, or is there more to the case than initially meets the eye? [Read the Story]

CASE 2 — “The Gateway of the Monster”: Carnacki investigates a haunting in an old mansion. The spectral activity appears to be limited to The Grey Room, where the door keeps slamming, seemingly of its own accord. After some initial investigations, Carnacki decides to spend a night in the room, and observe what happens from the safety of his electric pentacle. [Read the Story]

CASE 3 — “The House Among the Laurels“: Another case, and another haunted building, this one a deserted manor house in Ireland. The building has all the signs of being haunted, and even drips blood from the ceiling. If there is an entity in residence, it’s a dangerous one because several men who spent the night inside the building didn’t survive the experience. However, although the occult detective and his allies have a dreadful experience when they spend the night at the manor house, and end up fleeing for their lives, Carnacki is not one to take things on face value, so he returns to the house and discovers what’s really going on. [Read the Story]

CASE 4 — “The Whistling Room”: This is another story set in Ireland, where Carnacki is tasked with investigating a haunted castle. It’s an unusual case, because instead of having to contend with banging doors and similar regular signs of paranormal activity, the detective has to find out the secret of a whistling room. Initially, he suspects the whistling from the room may some form of prank, but later has to save the castle owner from a dangerous supernatural entity. [Read the Story]

CASE 5 — The Horse of the Invisible: Set in Lancashire, this Carnacki story finds the detective visiting the Hisgins, and investigating events that appear to relate to an old, family legend that involves an invisible horse. According to the legend, if the first child of the family is a girl, she will be haunted by the horse during the courtship leading up to her marriage. For several generations, the firstborn in the family were males. This is no longer the case, Captain Hisgins’ eldest child is a girl, she’s soon to be married, and the family is having all manner of problems with the invisible horse. [Read the Story]

CASE 6 — The Searcher of the End House: Although The Searcher of the End House is far from being the first Carnacki story as far as the timeline goes, it relates to the occult detective’s first ever case. Sitting with his friends after lunch, in his normal fashion Carnacki shares one of his adventures. Although, the tales he tells at these get-togethers are normally about a recent case, this time he shares a story from his youth, when he was still living with his mother, in a cottage on the south coast of England. [Read the Story]

CASE 7 — “The Haunted Jarvee”: At the request of his friend Captain Thompson, Carnacki accompanies him on a voyage in his ship, The Jarvee. Strange things have happened onboard during previous voyages, that have made it difficult for the captain to maintain a crew. The captain is very cagey about revealing the nature of the problem, preferring Carnacki experience things for himself. It turns out to be a very unusual trip, one in which the occult detective uses his electric pentacle for the first time while afloat. [Read the Story]

CASE 8— The Hog: Carnacki comes to the aid of a man experiencing frightening nightmares, which seem very real, and are hard to escape from. Taking his client into his experimenting rooms, Carnacki attempts to use his equipment to record the dreams. This results in the unplanned opening of a portal that threatens to release a dangerous, evil entity into the world. [Read the Story]

CASE 9 — “The Find”: In this story, instead of ghost-hunting techniques, Carnacki employs simple mental analysis to discover if a seemingly rare book is a forgery. With no supernatural elements at all, and none suspected, “The Find” has more in common with Sherlock Holmes cases than the other Carnacki stories. [Read the Story]

The page that lists all the public domain stories available on this site also contains links to all the stories above. However, the page contains additional William Hope Hodgson stories, all of which are grouped together and listed alphabetically, by title. Visitors to this site who are specifically interested in finding and reading Carnacki stories in order, will be better off accessing them via this page instead.