The House on the Borderland

Is William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland" the creepiest, eeriest story ever written? It is sometimes described that way, although I cannot confirm it because I have yet to read every creepy or eerie story ever written. I have read a fair amount of H.P. Lovecraft, some Robert E. Howard, and many modern mass-market horror novels. Hodgson probably ranks somewhere in between those two regions. Written in the early part of the 20th century, this author's novel is an attempt to blend together horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Unfortunately, Hodgson later died in WWI, forever silencing a splendid talent. Without a doubt, Hodgson influenced later horror and fantasy authors with this jaunt through the spectral reaches of space and time.

The story begins when two men make a fishing expedition into the hinterlands of Ireland. Near a tiny hamlet called Kraighten, the two encounter some of the strange local people who speak an unknown language. Further strangeness ensues when they realize that much of this area does not appear on any map. The two men explore the surrounding area, stumbling over an old garden near a yawning abyss. Then they discover the ruins of a large house on an outcropping of rock. While exploring these remains, one of the men discovers a damaged manuscript in the wreckage. Taking the book with them, the two travelers head back to camp, but not before experiencing some serious reservations about the area. A bubbling lake nearby scares them, as does unsettling sounds coming from somewhere in the vicinity. After hightailing it back to camp, they begin to read this mysterious journal. What follows constitutes the bulk of Hodgson's book, a deeply disturbing tale about an anonymous man who lived in the house and who experienced a series of events unexplainable by any rational means of discourse.

Some years before, this man lived in the house with his loyal dog and his spinster sister. He was a loner, more interested in spending his time reading books or rambling around his large gardens than throwing parties or hanging out with the local population. One night while lounging in his study, the man undergoes a strange out of body experience. He is transported to another dimension, where he finds an exact replica of his own house on a vast plain surrounded by enormous statues of deities, scary creatures who look like pigs, and a luminous mist of unknown origin. While this might be enough to scare any sane person out of his or her wits, our man continues to stay in the house after his astral experience.

More eeriness ensues: the nasty pig creatures crawl out of the abyss forming near the house and attempt to invade the premises. Closely following this horror is an inexplicable episode, which makes up most of the book, where the owner of the house experiences a breakdown of the very fabric of space and time. Hodgson writes about these events in minute detail, outlining every aspect of this fabulous trip beyond the limits of sensory perception. "The House on the Borderland" ends with no fixed answers about the creepy manuscript. Moreover, the author makes sure to have the manuscript trail off in the middle of a horrible event, leaving the reader guessing as to the conclusions of this strange tale.

It is not difficult to see how this story influenced several big names in the horror business. Lovecraft definitely borrowed some of the themes here to create his Cthulhu mythos. The detached method of having the horrors told to us through a strange manuscript also finds expression in several other supernatural tales written well after Hodgson's book. In this respect, "House on the Borderland" is a groundbreaking work worthy of continued reprinting. Any fan of Lovecraft, Blackwood, or any of the other godfathers of horror needs to read this book if for no other reason than to get a glimpse into where their favorite authors cribbed ideas from. This tale is not as scary as certain better known horror stories, but it does occasionally deliver some effective shocks to even the most jaded horror aficionado.

One of the book's failings was the author's attempt to depict the breakdown of time. This section reminded me of H.G. Wells. Moreover, this part of the story seemed to run on forever. I wanted the story to get back to the scariness of otherworldly beings and supernatural horrors.

Hodgson's book is a necessary read. Do not go in expecting straight horror, but acknowledge that you are about to read a great mix of several genres. Without William Hope Hodgson, who knows where the horror novel would be today.

I'm a big fan of HP Lovecraft's. Encouraged by his high opinion of this book and a couple of favorable reviews here, I decided to purchase it. The first couple of chapters are quite promising, and one certain sees the germs of several ideas that are later developed to much better effect by Lovecraft in his stories, particularly evidently in The Lurking Fear and The Rats In The Walls. Unfortunately, the book begins to ramble very early. Several disparate--and, it has to be said, not very interesting--themes are introduced and then just dropped, resulting in the kind of story the guy in the movie Memento might have written if he had been a hack writer trying to support his opium habit, paid by the word by some third rate 30's pulp magazine. As is common in this genre, character development is minimal and the prose style is no better than serviceable with a few interesting archaisms.
It is very rare that I do not finish a book once got past the first couple of chapters, especially one as short as this. However, I found nothing here to hold my interest through to the end. This book is of historical interest only. Fans of Lovecraft with other than a purely academic interest in the writers who influenced him should turn instead to the superb ghost stories in MR James' "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary".

a man in a house starts to be bothered by some strange beings. he must protect his house, and his sister (who sort of goes in and out of the story). he decides to investigate, and finds that there is more to his house than meets the eye. excellent book. great descriptions, especially of the cosmos and the weird landscape. Hodgson have a way of describing how horrible it is to be utterly helpless while your surrondings are or are changing to something really great, weird and horrible. this is more a story about contact with something outerworldly, than a haunted house story. hodgson's masterpiece.

I bought this book due to it being recomended somewhere by H.P. Lovecraft. I was not disappointed. Some of the scenes were just a little too sci-fi for my taste but the parts with the narrator trapped in his monlith house as it is attacked by grotesque beasts were just plain scary. For the time period when this was written it is definitely a revolutionary horror tale. I'm surprised that it was even published for the time. If you like horror and want to see the influences on some of your favorite modern day fright writers I suggest checking this book out.

it's alright, but a little hokey and dated, and i don't know what book most of the other reviewers on this page read. two young men find a manuscript in the ruins of a castle about a guy shooting white pigs out his window. wow. talk about "cosmic dread" and "icy terror". there was nothing spectacular or even slightly memorable about this book, except the beginning. the reason everyone gives such verbose praise to this thoroughly forgettable, antiquated novel is that lovecraft said a few good words about it. but let's remember our friendly neighborhood sheep, he was a man of his times, and i seriously doubt that if he was alive he would have such lavish praise for this novel now. lovecraft's material dated well (except for the racism), so did blackwood's (aside from the pantheism), so did lefanu and bierce's:hodgson's most certainly did not. skip it and read something by arthur machen or thomas ligotti.

When I first read this novel I thought that the author had been heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. Then I looked up the original date of publication (1908), which is several decades before Lovecraft published. I wouldn't hesitate to call this one of the best otherworldly and weird books ever written. It is not graphic blood and guts splatter- Edwardian gentlemen did not write such [stuff]. This is better, besides the psychological terror that builds, you have cosmically mind boggling themes of infinate time and space- and the world beyond this world, of which ours is but a pale inferior shadow.
I often wonder just who William Hope Hodgeson was. He was plainly a man of action, that much is clear from his battle with the pig demons, but he was also something more. I wonder what forgotten corner of the Empire he picked up his knowlege of things cosmic and beyond the veil....

This story is quite reminiscent of Arthur Machen's work, with a similar feeling of weird alienation. It's not as well done as Machen, I think, because Hodgson's style is one of piling on the creepy events with little coherence to the whole. But there are memorable images, and the overall effect is quite unsettling if you take it seriously.

William Hope Hodgson is an author who is pretty much unknown in America and who has been forgotten in his native Britain. This is a shame for as The House on the Borderland demonstrates, Hodgson was a brilliant horror writer. The House on the Borderland is one of the scariest books I have ever read and all horror fans should consider buying it.

If you are looking for a "horror/thriller" ala Stephen King, this is NOT the book for you! If, however, you are looking for a combination of science fiction-fact with a pretty scary moral message relating to good versus evil (and lots of atmosphere to boot) then this book definitely is THE ticket!!
Hodgson wrote this in about 1918, and considering his details about red-giant stars and the probable end of the solar system, the prophetic writing in terms of science-fact is absolutely incredible.
But the real points of this book:
1) Man's struggle alone versus evil (with little or no help from God)
2) The random nature of misfortune and catastrophe over which we have no real control
And in those two statements you discover the disturbing message of this book. Hodgson seems to be saying that there is a place where there is a devil but no God. He also maintains that evil can exist in a "vacuum" where there is no presence of good. Finally, the only "hopeful" message is that we can fight all we like against the perception of evil but our resources in the struggle are severely limited by our human weakness.
Whilst making these points Hodgson raises some interesting (but ultimately unanswerable) questions about our perception of time. For example, time is measured by the rotation of our planet - but surely this is an arbitrary standard in a dimension where the space-time continuum no longer applies, for example in a "worm-hole", black hole or white hole. These were interesting concepts for 1918. The only weakness is that Hodgson was possibly borrowing here from ideas put forward by Wells in the "Time Machine". Putting this reservation to one side, the imagination required to write the "end of the solar system" sequence is not only amazing, but surprisingly in-line with modern cosmological theory.
(I must make a final confession: I originally read this book when I was thirteen years of age and at the Dunn school in Santa Barbara. No doubt the impression that it made on me then has biased my enthusiasm for this book as I read it today! :-)

This book was definitely an interesting one, although I felt as though the middle section of the book strayed drastically far from what he had set up beforehand. My favorite parts of this book are those that deal with the swine beasts of the pit. Those parts are extremely exciting and, in some areas, quite chilling.