Top Ten Monsters of William Hope Hodgson

The Top Ten Monsters of William Hope Hodgson are of particular interest to any fan of H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos. Much  of the squidgy, oozy and nautical nature of Cthulhu and his buddies comes from WHH. The author wrote for about ten years, approximately 1904-1914 before joining the Royal Artillery in World War I. During that decade he penned some of the best stories and novels of weird horror to be found in supernatural literature. Hodgson died on April 19, 1918 when a shell struck him directly during the Fourth Battle of Ypres. His work inspired writers like Lovecraft but fell into obscurity until the 1970s when he was rediscovered by editors like Lin Carter and the Ballantine Fantasy Series.

Hodgson’s monsters fall into two categories: the monstrous but natural and the supernatural or what he would call “the ab-normal”. The first category is familiar to us from writers like H. G. Wells with his killer squids and intelligent ants. These could include squid, rats, dogs, octopi or fungus. The second variety were Hodgson’s own version of demons with strange names like the Saatii Manifestations.

#10 The Ocean Leech

“The Tropical Horror” (The Grand Magazine, June 1905) Reprinted in Weird Tales, Summer 1973.

“… Rising above the bulwarks, seen plainly in the bright moonlight, is a vast slobbering mouth a fathom across.  From the huge dripping lips hang great tentacles … There are no eyes visible; only that fearful slobbering mouth set on the tremendous trunk-like neck … then those lips open, displaying four huge fangs … From the mouth of the thing there flashes forth a long, broad blade of glistening white, set with fierce teeth …”

This creature is amphibious and lives at great depths in the ocean. It has immense patience and some intelligence. Its strategy is to besiege a ship, forcing the inhabitants to try to escape once their food and water run out. The thing possesses four tentacles around its eye-less head. It will search in crevisses and hiding places with these barbed appendages.

This squidgie seems to be related to the devilfish though not of any recognizable genus of sea creature. Writers like Frank Belknap Long borrowed this slimy visitor for stories in Weird Tales. The film Deep Rising uses a similar bottleneck type plot. Hodgson loved them and wrote several.

#9 The Devil Fish

The Boats of ‘Glen Carrig’ (1907) and reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, June 1945.

 “With this, he went down so far as seemed safe, and prodded the creature in one of its tentacles–the weapon entering easily, at which I was surprised, for I had understood that these monsters were near to invulnerable in all parts save their eyes. At receiving this stab, the great fish appeared to feel no hurt for it showed no signs of pain, and, at that, the bo’sun was further emboldened to go nearer, so that he might deliver a more deadly wound; yet scarce had he taken two steps before the hideous thing was upon him, and, but for an agility wonderful in so great a man, he had been destroyed…” The Boats of ‘Glen Carrig’ (1907)

The devilfish or giant squid is well known from Jules Verne and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1872) but Hodgson’s version is even more aggressive. Frank Aubry, another writer of lost places and strange creatures, used the squid as well in Canadian waters.

#8 The Evil Trees

“… at the glass of the unbroken window, a reddish mass, which plunged up against it, sucking upon it, as it were … thus I saw that it had the appearance of a many-flapped thing shaped as it might be, out of raw beef … I could not withdraw my gaze from the tree; but scanned it the more intently; and suddenly, I saw a brown, human face peering at us from between the wrapped branches … and I saw that one of the great cabbage-like things pursued him upon its stem, even as an evil serpent …”

The Boats of ‘Glen Carrig’ features the evil trees, which are actually giant land anemones that eat anything they can catch. Because they have no real intelligence they are relentless and will hold cornered prey captive for hours.

#7 The Weed Men

“… Thus we each of us stared down upon a most unearthly sight; for the valley all beneath us was a-swarm with moving creatures, white and unwholesome in the moonlight, and their movements were somewhat like the movements of monstrous slugs; thogh the things themselves had no resemblance to such in their contours; but minded me of naked humans, very fleshy and crawling upon their stomachs; yet their movements lacked not a surprising rapidity … for these things below us had each two short and stumpy arms, but the ends appeared divided into hateful and wriggling masses of small tentacles … for the great eyes, so big as crown pieces, the bill like to an inverted parrot’s, and the slug-like undulating of its white and slimy body …”

The last of The Boats of Glen Carrig monsters is The Weed Men, who dwell in subterranean burrows with large pit-like openings. They live in large numbers and occasional will immigrate in a devastating route. Philip Fisher, a latter day Hodgson borrows the Weed Men for “Fungus Isle” (Argosy All‑Story Weekly, October 27, 1923).

#6 Giant Crabs

“More New From the Homebird” (Blue Book, August 1907)

“In a little while, we left the wrecked saloon and cabins, and made our way forrard to the pigsty; for I was anxious to see whether the carcass of the pig had been touched. As we came round the corner of the sty, I uttered a great cry; for there, lying upon the deck, on its back, was a gigantic crab, so vast in size that I had not conceived so huge a monster existed. Brown it was in colour, save for the belly part, which was of a light yellow.

“One of its pincer-claws, or mandibles, had been torn off in the fight in which it must have been slain (for it was all disembowelled). And this one claw weighed so heavy that I had some to-do to lift it from the deck; and by this you may have some idea of the size and formidableness of the creature itself.

A sequel to “From the Tideless Sea”, the poor folks trapped in the Sargasso send messages about the weird creatures that stalk them. This one proves to be giant crabs. Ray Harryhausen loved the giant crabs so much he moved them to Captain Nemo’s Mysterious Island (1961).

#5 Infectious Mold

“A Voice in the Night” (Blue Book, November 1907)  was reprinted in The Avon Fantasy Reader #1 (1947) and “The Derelict” (The Red Magazine, December 1, 1912) was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1943.

“Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branch-like arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses, and coming towards me.  The head of the thing — a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction.” (“A Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson)

“But he never finished; for a tremendous, hoarse scream cut off his words. They hove themselves round, and looked. I could see without turning. The man who had run from us, was standing in the waist of the ship, about a fathom from the starboard bulwarks. He was swaying from side to side, and screaming in a dreadful fashion. He appeared to be trying to lift his feet, and the light from his swaying lantern showed an almost incredible sight. All about him, the mould was in active movement. His feet had sunk out of sight. The stuff appeared to be lapping at his legs; and abruptly his bare flesh showed. The hideous stuff had rent his trouserlegs away, as if they were paper. He gave out a simply sickening scream, and, with a vast effort, wrenched one leg free. It was partly destroyed. The next instant he pitched face downward, and the stuff heaped itself upon him, as if it were actually alive, with a dreadful savage life. It was simply infernal. The man had gone from sight. Where he had fallen was now a writhing, elongated mound, in constant and horrible increase, as the mould appeared to move towards it in strange ripples from all sides.(The Derelict)

“A Voice in the Night” is the grand-daddy of killer mold stories. It has yet to be surpassed. Philip Fisher tried and failed in “Fungus Isle” (Argosy All‑Story Weekly, October 27, 1923) as did Carl Jacobi in “Moss Island” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1932). The story was made into the 1968 Japanese film, Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People), with its fascinatingly bad soundtrack.

#4 The Swinefolk

The House on the Borderland (1908)

“‘A pig, by Jove!’ I said, and rose to my feet. Thus, I saw the thing more completely; but it was no pig—God alone knows what it was. It reminded me, vaguely, of the hideous Thing that had haunted the great arena. It had a grotesquely human mouth and jaw; but with no chin of which to speak. The nose was prolonged into a snout; thus it was that with the little eyes and queer ears, gave it such an extraordinarily swinelike appearance. Of forehead there was little, and the whole face was of an unwholesome white color.”

The Swinefolk are related to the Ab-humans in “The Hog” and The Nightland. Once they perceive the narrator they surround and try to kill him. The Wellsian stuff in the second half of this book is pretty dull but the first half where the man and his sister are trapped in the house, surrounded by the swinefolk is one of the greatest “bottleneck” stories ever written. Only Hodgson’s Great Redoubt in The Nightland can claim to come close. Hodgson obviously had a thing about pigs because he used them in “The Hog” as well.

#3 Sea Phantoms

The Ghost Pirates (1909)

“Jesus Christ–!” shrieked a man’s voice, cut short, and my glance dropped from aloft, to find two of the men who had come out from the fo’cas’le with me, rolling upon the deck. They were two indistinguishable masses that writhed here and there across the planks. The brutes fairly covered them. From them, came muffled little shrieks and gasps; and there I stood, and with me were the other two men. A man darted past us into the fo’cas’le, with two grey men on his back, and I heard them kill him. The two men by me, ran suddenly across the fore hatch, and up the starboard ladder on to the fo’cas’le head. Yet, almost in the same instant, I saw several of the grey men disappear up the other ladder. From the fo’cas’le head above, I heard the two men commence to shout, and this died away into a loud scuffling. At that, I turned to see whether I could get away. I stared round, hopelessly; and then with two jumps, I was on the pigsty, and from there upon the top of the deckhouse. I threw myself flat, and waited, breathlessly…”

The Ghost Pirates appear like dark smudges that form and disappear. Lovecraft says of the book: “The Ghost Pirates (1909), regarded by Mr. Hodgson as rounding out a trilogy with the two previously mentioned works, is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils (of quasi-human aspect, and perhaps the spirits of bygone buccaneers) that besiege it and finally drag it down to an unknown fate….” (“The Supernatural Horror in Literature” by H. P. Lovecraft) The operative word here is FINALLY! Lovecraft claimed the story was the longest sustained horror tale. Some might disagree.

#2 The Nightland Monsters

The Night Land (1912) features a plethora of weird beings, all considered “Abhuman” monsters that invaded the world in its last days. Stephen Fabian did a great job of illustrating the most important of these. They include:

Beyond these, South and West of them, was the enormous bulk of the South-West Watcher, and from the ground rose what we named the Eye…

Beam—a single ray of grey light, which came up out of the ground, and lit the right eye of the monster. And because of this light, that eye had been mightily examined through unknown thousands of years; and some held that the eye looked through the light steadfastly at the Pyramid; but others set out that the light blinded it, and was the work of those Other Powers which were abroad to do combat with the Evil Forces. But however this may be, as I stood there in the embrasure, and looked at the thing through the spy-glass, it seemed to my soul that the Brute looked straightly at me, unwinking and steadfast, and fully of a knowledge that I spied upon it. And this is how I felt.

To the North of this, in the direction of the West, I saw The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill; and this was so named, because there, maybe ten thousand years gone, certain humans adventuring from the Pyramid, came off the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk, and into that place, and were immediately destroyed. And this was told by one who escaped; though he died also very quickly, for his heart was frozen. And this I cannot explain; but so it was set out in the Records.

Far away beyond The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill, in the very mouth of the Western Night was the Place of the Ab-humans, where was lost the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk, in a dull green, luminous mist. And of this place nothing was known; though much it held the thoughts and attentions of our thinkers and imaginers; for some said that there was a Place Of Safety, differing from the Redoubt (as we of this day suppose Heaven to differ from the Earth), and that the Road led thence; but was barred by the Ab-humans. And this I can only set down here; but with no thought to justify or uphold it.

#1 The Hog

“The Hog” (Weird Tales, January 1947)

“The floor felt solid enough under me; but I seemed to be walking on nothing above a black void, like an inverted starless night, with the face of the approaching Hog rising up from far down under my feet – a silent, incredible thing out of the abyss – a pallid, floating swine-face, framed in enormous blackness…”

The Hog is one of the major Saatii Manifestations. Carnacki protects himself from its cloudy but powerful form by using the Electric Pentacle. The Hog was terrorizing a man whose psychic defenses were weak.

“The Hog” is the best of the Carnacki stories with its long battle using the Colour Barriers. Hodgson has a similar device protecting the Redoubt in The Nightland. A. R. Tilburne is not usually one of my favorite Weird Tales illustrators but his cover for January 1947 is quite effective. This is not an easy story to illustrate but Lee Brown Coye had no problem.

Conclusion

You may or may not agree with my choices but we can all agree that William Hope Hodgson was a master monster creator, equaled only by H. G. Wells. Both men knew how to take a natural (if repulsive) creature and make it a menace and a nightmare. They both flirted with the supernatural but were more comfortable in the biological realm.

These are only the Top Ten William Hope Hodgson creatures. Good news! He wrote of many, many more in his stories. He also inspired so many more. Hodgson’s vision of the end of the world inspired Clark Ashton Smith, who in turn inspired Jack Vance. In this way we got The Nightland, Zothique and The Dying Earth, all masterpieces on their own merit. Olaf Stapledon, Dennis Wheatley, Henry S. Whitehead were also influenced in their work as are many more modern writers like Simon Clark and Brian Keene. The comic book creators of “The Derelict Fleet” certainly were familiar with Hodgson.