W. H. HODGSON “The Thing Invisible.” First published in The New Magazine, January 1912. Reprinted in Carnacki, The Ghost Finder (Eveleigh Nash, UK, hardcover, 1913; Mycroft & Moran, US, hardcover, 1947).

   W. H. Hodgson’s Edwardian occult detective story, “The Thing Invisible” may well be considered, at least by contemporary aesthetic and literary standards, a rather quaint foray into the realm of supernatural investigations.

   Written in an engaging narrative style, this story is one of Hodgson’s Carnacki detective tales featuring the eponymous sleuth tasked with investigating the arcane and the bizarre. Carnacki, as a investigator of the paranormal, is all too human and more than willing to admit that he’s far from a fearless protagonist. Indeed, what makes Carnacki such an engaging personality is that he’s more than willing to admit that the unknown is capable of frightening him.

   In “The Thing Invisible,” Carnacki recounts a case in which he faced down a mysterious dagger that seemed to act on its own accord, a death tool that nearly murdered a family’s butler. As a method of sleuthing, Carnacki makes use of early photography, going so far as to take surreptitious photos which he then uses to solve the puzzle of how a dagger could seemingly float mid-air and attack a man.

   Although Hodgson’s writing doesn’t invoke the cosmic dread quite to the same degree that Algernon Blackwood’s work does so effectively, it nevertheless does impress upon the reader a sense of creeping otherworldliness and subtle terror. Even more so, given that in this story at least [SPOILER ALERT], the seemingly impossible events have a mechanical, rational explanation.