Carnacki explains the idea behind the devise: … After that I came across Professor Gardner’s ‘Experiments with a Medium’. The first of these is the Electric Pentacle, with its battery powered vacuum tubes.

Two inventions of Carnacki’s own making are called for in special cases when camera and nerve fail. All of these had evidently been taken with some definite aim that did not have for its first purpose the picturing of the girl, but obviously of her surroundings and they made me very curious, as you can imagine. The bulk of the photographs were of interiors of different rooms and passages and in every one the girl might be seen, either full length in the distance or closer, with perhaps little more than a hand or arm or portion of the head or dress included in the photograph. Dodgson (the thinly veiled Hodgson) examines some of Carnacki’s photos but finds them mysterious: Much of his work is supported by his trusty camera. The traditional pentacle and garlic, a revolver in his pocket and an open mind, Carnacki is ready for most phantoms or prankster alike.

He has studied the mysterious Sigsand Manuscript (a precursor and partial source for Lovecraft’s Necronomicon) which tells of the hideous Saaamaaaa Ritual (with its “Unknown Last Line”), the inspiration of many of Carnacki’s experimental pseudo-scientific discoveries.īeing a professional ghost-breaker, Carnacki has many weapons in his arsenal against evil. We find out very little about the man himself, except that he had lived with his widowed mother in Appledore on the South Coast when he was younger.Įven though we do not get a formal introduction to Carnacki’s past, we can tell he’s been at the ghost-finding business awhile. The man who solves these mysteries then relates them to his friends is largely a mystery himself.

Carnacki the ghost finder