The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places (The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Vol. 2)

This second volume in Night Shade Books' excellent Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson contains The House on the Borderland, all of the "Carnacki, the Ghost Finder" tales, and some miscellaneous short stories. While the book begins on a very strong note, it loses steam towards the end

While I prefer The Night Land and Boats of the Glen Carrig, The House on the Borderland is an incredibly atmospheric work of weird horror. It chronicles the bizarre events experienced by a so-called "Recluse" living in an isolated home in Ireland. While there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason behind the supernatural incidents he experiences, they remain engrossing and filled with tension. Hodgson must have had a fear of pigs, as the "swine-things" that terrorize the Recluse are very effectively (and disturbingly!) rendered.

The "Carnacki, the Ghost Finder" stories are a much more conventional form of horror, but still fascinating. They take the form of what the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction editor John Clute calls a "club story." Basically Carnacki, an Edwardian gentlemen, invites his (probably tweedy and pipe-smoking) friends over to his house to tell them of his encounters with ghosts and psychic phenomena. All of the stories share this framing device, but it didn't become monotonous.

The Carnacki stories were an interesting mix of traditional ghost stories with something closer to the type of otherworldly horror that Lovecraft would later popularize. While they're referred to as "ghosts", these hauntings tend towards psychic phantasms and poltergeists more than conventional apparitions. Hodgson's terrifying swine make another welcome appearance in the delightfully creepy story "The Hog." I liked that Hodgson mixed a few hoax stories in with the "authentic" haunts. Another reviewer said those stories had "Scooby Doo endings," but I think that's a little too dismissive. The fakes were just as interesting as the supernatural stories

Unfortunately, the last portion of the book is fairly weak. The remaining stories don't have any particular theme to tie them together, and even the tales of the sea--Hodgson's specialty--included here are pretty unexceptional. The stories included in the first collected volume were all pretty great, perhaps some of those should have been reserved for this second book.

Weak conclusion aside, this book is still worthy of a place on weird fiction fans' bookshelves. Hopefully Night Shade Books will continue to champion overlooked classics like this.