Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The House on the Borderland
    The House on the Borderland
    The House on the Borderland
    Ebook194 pages3 hours

    The House on the Borderland

    By William Hope Hodgson

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “A classic of the first water.” —H. P. Lovecraft

    In rural Ireland, two travelers stumble upon the ruins of a lakeside home. Inside, they discover a diary detailing the terrible final days of a man known only as the Recluse. A scholar who bought the house for its isolation, the Recluse is plagued by strange sounds and terrible hallucinations soon after he moves in. He dreams of an eerie “Plain of Silence,” where a jade-green version of the house is surrounded by ominous mountains populated with mythical beasts and gargantuan monsters. Exploring a nearby ravine known locally as the Pit, the Recluse and his loyal dog, Pepper, are attacked by a creature that appears to be half human and half swine. A fantasy reunion with his long-lost lover proves that the house has powers beyond the Recluse’s comprehension. And just when he thinks that the horror is finally over, the real nightmare begins.

    Dripping with tension and atmosphere, The House on the Borderland is a landmark of supernatural horror and one of the scariest stories ever told.
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781453264928
    Author

    William Hope Hodgson

    William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was a British author and poet best known for his works of macabre fiction. Early experience as a sailor gave resonance to his novels of the supernatural at sea, The Ghost Pirates and The Boats of the Glen-Carrig, but The House on the Borderland and The Night Land are often singled out for their powerful depiction of eerie, otherworldly horror. The author was a man of many parts, a public speaker, photographer and early advocate of bodybuilding. He was killed in action during the Battle of the Lys in the First World War.

    Read more from William Hope Hodgson

    Related to The House on the Borderland

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Thomas Ligotti’s Horror Doesn’t Give You an Easy Out

      Sep 26, 2018

      “It’s peculiar to me… that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying,” Gloria Beatty says in the third chapter of Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? “Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Quiet Boy

      Jan 28, 2019

      The Quiet Boy
      29 min read

    • Article

      Scary Shorts And Super Creeps

      Mar 3, 2022

      Scary Shorts And Super Creeps
      6 min read

    • Article

      Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels

      Jun 19, 2019

      A list of books so scary you definitely won't keep them on your nightstand. The post Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Home

      Dec 27, 2018

      Home
      3 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      All I Want For Christmas

      Dec 16, 2020

      IT was more than an icicle. More like an icy boulder, oversized and murkily white, faceted like a cartoon jewel and, shortly, dripping. It had lurked beneath a low stone bridge at the bottom of the wood, where sycamore thickets bald for winter gave w

      18 min read

    • Article

      Peace Comes With A Smile

      Nov 11, 2019

      Peace Comes With A Smile
      8 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2019

      “My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Corse I Can

      Dec 17, 2020

      Corse I Can
      9 min read

    • Article

      Writers’ Places

      Dec 17, 2019

      Writers’ Places
      14 min read

    • Article

      Twists And Turns

      Aug 19, 2019

      Twists And Turns
      2 min read

    • Article

      All In The Family

      Oct 19, 2019

      All In The Family
      6 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Feb 22, 2024

      It Happened to Me…
      9 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Eternal Adventure

      Jun 29, 2021

      The Eternal Adventure
      4 min read

    • Article

      Forever Wild

      Oct 1, 2018

      When I think of the Scarborough house, I remember the wind whipping through my salt-hardened curls and my little-girl feet bare and crusted with sand as I run through its heavy wooden doors. I was four and wild as the landscape itself. My grandparent

      3 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home: An Artist Reconnects to the Whispers of Her Past

      Apr 7, 2023

      Estimated reading time: 13 minutes — I would be remiss in telling you how two suburbanites found home at our farm, ‘Oakhaven’, without first sharing our motives. There were a few. We had been watching the steady decline of the small towns we love fo

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The House on the Borderland

    4/5

    23 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      The House on the Borderland is weird to read. In about the first half of it, things are happening: an attack by supernatural "Swine-things", which the narrator has to repel. However, the frame story is about two men on a holiday discovering the narrative written by this unnamed man, and surprisingly little is made of that. Nothing supernatural happens to them, really, and for all they know, it's simply a fantastical story made up by someone with a weird imagination, or someone who is somehow deluded. That makes their part of the story dead and unexciting, and although they have little to do with it -- their frame story seems only there to give the old man's narrative a kind of vague authenticity, in the same way that Bram Stoker's Dracula is meant to be a collection of authentic letters -- it has a rather anticlimactic effect, especially at the end.

      The unnamed narrator of the main part of the story is a relatively uninteresting character himself, and the best moments of the story are when he's fighting the creatures and, close to the end, when he struggles with himself against a compulsion to open the door. There's a wonderfully real feeling of horror when he notices the faint, luminescent scratch, as well. However, at least a third of the story is taken up with weird journeys through the cosmos, to little purpose or revelation. Some of the description is wonderful, but very little happens that's worth feeling anything about.

      One thing that did strike a note of pathos was the dog, Pepper, who I was fond of, and who deserved better.

      It's a weird story -- again, part fantasy, part horror, part speculative fiction, perhaps even more of a blend of those genres than The Boats of the Glen Carrig. Interesting, and weird, but not exactly emotionally engaging.
    • 3/5
      This book is actually both a two-star book and a four star book. There is a decent framing device (two friends on a fishing trip find a manuscript in a setting that for no reason they find unsettling). The manuscript is a partial diary of an unknown individual recording the ominous and other-worldly experiences in his house. The first events are deliciously creepy, with some unreliable narration thrown in, reminiscent of Turn of the Screw. Then there is the middle section, which is an odd, disjointed, vision/journey reuniting the narrator with the soul of a lost love followed by a bizarre pseudo-scientific vision/journey through space and time. And then we are thrown back into the sequence of occurrences with which the diary started. So, although this is a quite a short book, I strongly recommend making it even shorter by skipping the middle section.
    • 4/5
      This book confused me at first. I'd heard that it was similar to a Dying Earth novel, yet at first glance, it is much more similar to Lovecraft. It's not until the last portion where the plot suddenly changes that similarities appear.

      The first 2/3 of the book is the threat of a giant looming pit and eldritch lurking pig-like monsters. The last 1/3 of the book covers a dream-like journey through time where the Earth falls into the sun, the sun burns out and falls into the center of the universe, and the universe consists of a giant looming star and eldritch lurking god-like nebulas. Very weird, creepy and disquieting - especially in the last 1/3. And VERY Lovecraftian, where the best solution is to hold your breath and hope you're never noticed because you're just that insignificant.

      Looking at the blurb (which I only read after finishing) this book was actually a huge influence on Lovecraft which makes perfect sense now that I've read it. And, yes, he did use the word "eldritch."
    • 4/5
      The House on the Borderland starts like a conventional horror story. Two men take a fishing trip to a remote region of western Ireland. They enter an area that the locals avoid. There they come upon a vast pit in the ground into which an underground river appears to flow. On the edge of the pit are the crumbled ruins of a building of some sort. Among the debris they find a manuscript. It is damaged but mostly readable. They retire to their tent and spend the entire night reading an incredible tale.The manuscript is the work of a Recluse who built an estate in this wild and forbidding region to which he might retire with his spinster sister. The Recluse first tells of a strange vision in which he is taken on a journey to the stars. Then he begins to live the events of his vision, only in much greater and more frightening detail. What begins as an earthly battle against a horde of terrifying creatures eventually turns into a cosmic journey to the very end of time and space itself.What are we to make of all of this? What is the connection between the creatures that swarm up from the pit and the Recluse’s ultimate vision of the deaths of worlds? There may be a deeper meaning to all this, or it may be just mind-stretching entertainment.
    • 4/5
      Two friends embark on a fishing trip to an isolated part of Ireland. In the ruins of an ancient stone house they find the diary of an elderly man who lived alone with his sister and their pets. The fascinating tale that unravels in the diary is about battles with pig/human like monsters, some cryptic lost love of an unknown form, and the extraordinary acceleration of time and the end of the world. This was certainly a departure from anything I have been reading. I enjoyed how some parts of the story I would be reading at face value, but then little doubts would start to creep in and I would have to question what was happening to the narrator or how he was writing such a tale. The language describing the end of the world was phenomenal and some of the battles with the pig creatures had me on the edge of my seat. I’m not rating this higher because some parts of the story dragged on. The narration was also very choppy with several parts of the story not relating to or being useful to the overall plot (assuming there was supposed to be a plot).
    • 4/5
      When I downloaded House on the Borderland (1908) I was expecting a gothic horror tale, and at first it did fit into that kind of gothic horror mold, but then it changed, and became something quite strange! Basically its a tale about an old manuscript discovered in an old house, kind of a journal which describes the character's adventures in and around the house. There is a strange pit in the garden which also leads to the house's cellar. There are strange 'swine faced beasts' and a journey into space! I'm not quite sure where this story fits genre wise but it was quite entertaining! Think Edgar Allan Poe meets the Time Machine meets the stargate sequence in 2001 A space Odyssey! Odd but fun!
    • 3/5
      If you couldn't make it through The Night Land, never fear. The House on the Borderland is much shorter, much faster paced, and in places quite exciting. The framing device, so common to stories a century ago, is fairly quickly told. The meat is the tale told in a found volume, written by the Recluse who lives in the titular house, with a sister who makes so few appearances that for chapters at a time it's not clear if she still lives. Two primary sequences dominate: the siege of the house by swine-people, and an extended visionary voyage to the far far future and the eventual death of the solar system. Interestingly, a third sequence is referred to, involving a reunion with a long-lost love. This sequence though is part of the "lost" pages manuscript. Why Hodgson chose to do this is not clear, but from the painful to read remnants that are presented, these are pages well lost. Virtually nothing is explained. Once, it didn't seem to matter to authors that things remained beyond our ken. The over-written prose still manages to evoke a sense of fear, in the first half, and amazement in the second.
    • 3/5
      'The House on the Borderland' is widely acknowledged as a turning-point in gothic fiction, influencing later writers including perhaps Lovecraft himself. For this reason alone it is worth reading, and the language is not nearly as difficult for a modern reader as other works from that era, so there's not much to lose. However, if it were not for the historical place that this work holds, I doubt that it would attract the attention that it does.As several reviewers have noted here, the story does not form a coherent and satisfying whole. Several disparate plot elements are introduced and either insufficiently explored or seemingly abandoned. And one element in particular (the lover) is developed too late in the narrative to justify the significance that it is then given. The reader will not only be left with many unanswered questions, but a sneaking suspicion that they are not so-much "questions" as "holes in the plot". Nevertheless, most parts of the work are either conceptually interesting or genuinely creepy. The second half of the story is particularly interesting for its astronomical scope, something that fans of Lovecraft will recognise and enjoy.
    • 3/5
      This 1908 was recommended in the A Reader's Guide to Fantasy on the "Seven-League Shelf" list of the cream of the fantasy genre. It's even on the "1001 Books to Read Before You Die" list of significant literary fiction. So, definitely a book that has classic status, and if you believe the Wiki, a "milestone" in the transition from traditional Gothic to "cosmic horror" that influenced Lovecraft. It's framed as the first person account of a gentleman on a fishing holiday with his friend in Ireland. They come upon a crumbling ruin and his friend finds a partly damaged manuscript, which forms the bulk of the story. Parts are definitely creepy but several things thwarted my involvement in the story. The narrator, known only by an editorial footnote as "the recluse" is a misanthrope. He lives in an ancient pile with his sister Mary--who doesn't get one line of dialogue--and we learn he's suffered a bereavement--it's his lost love that gets the 3 or so lines of the only dialogue in the book. It makes it really hard to care about him--in fact, I'd say by far the most appealing, heart-tugging character in the book is the narrator's dog Pepper--unfortunately, there's not enough of him, or Tip the cat, to redeem the novel. And there's far, far, far too much of a vision of the heat death of the universe that takes up a third of the novel.Perhaps if I were a literary scholar of Gothic and Horror literature, I'd better appreciate how this work is seminal. As a reader, it mostly left me cold.
    • 3/5
      The House on the Borderland (1908) is a landmark in horror fiction. An obvious inspiration to Lovecraft and a bunch of his Weird Tales cronies. It broke away from the old Gothic horrors and introduced cosmic terror.A couple of guys on a sporting holiday in secluded Northern Ireland stumble across the ruins of an old structure on the edge of a large pit. In the wreckage they find a tattered and damaged diary which makes up the rest of the narrative.The ruins used to be a large, oddly designed house and the diary belonged to its owner, an unnamed narrator who lived there with his spinster sister. They got the manor cheap as it has a reputation for being haunted. We follow the narrator and his strange experiences both inside the house and in a large and growing pit in his back garden.I enjoyed Hodgson's writing. The language is a little antiquated, but it isn't that purposely archaic and baroque H.P. Lovecraft stuff that grates after a while. He did a very good job creating an uncomfortable atmosphere. His word choice creates a general sense of eeriness that really worked, even when nothing outright 'scary' is happening. There is some very strong work where our narrator encounters visitors from the pit. At this point, the book was rockin'.But then we fall in to an extended scene where our narrator stares out the window as the house reveals the future of the universe. I know that this may count as a spoiler, but it has to be part of the review as this section is the weight around the book's neck. It is page after page of repetitive description that (ironically considering what the book is describing) drags on and on. Reading through this section really made me want to give up on the book. I have very little patience for stories where the disembodied hero floats along describing weird goings-on. It's like the StarGate section of the film 2001 but stretched out beyond my ability to care. That's also why I don't like Lovecraft's 'dream' stories.The last twenty pages of the book were back on track and it did have a strong finish.The book has a few quirks that should be pointed out: Hodgson is an atmospheric writer as I mentioned. But, I've noticed, the author, William Hope Hodgson, has a love affair, with the comma, that makes me want to break out a red pencil, as I read it. The commas were often unnecessary and out of place, and I found myself reading the booking in the rhythm it was written in, pausing at each comma. It could become... hypnotic after a while.Also, I know the unnamed narrator was a gimmick of a lot of early twentieth century horror, but it made it very hard to connect with the character. Hodgson would also throw in major plot twists from out of nowhere, which made it feel like he was making up the tale as he went along.If anyone is considering reading the book, but is unsure, I'd recommend it. Just understand that my rec is based more on its short length and its place in horror history than its quality of writing, characterization or story telling.
    • 4/5
      This is a strong page-turner that I'm still processing. A mix of psychological suspense and horror, the book combines eery situations and beautiful images to create an atmosphere that's enthralling. What seems fairly nondescript at first is a plot and set of situations that quickly become engrossing, drawing you along even when you can't quite tell why you're so fascinated by what's going on in front of you. Structurally, Hodgson formed this perfectly to keep readers both attached and believing in what's going on, despite themselves. If you're looking for a creepy read that you may well finish in one eery sitting, I highly recommend this. For the depth and beauty of language and reading, I'll be revisiting it in the future.
    • 1/5
      Okay. So these 2 chums go on a fishing expedition in a strange little town. They find a creepy old brokedown house and an old journal and take it back to the tent. The next 90% of the book is the legible contents of the journal.The journal relates a tale of woe by the former occupant of the house. He runs into a bunch of scary monsters and has some adventures with them. Then he embarks on a journey through time and space where he catches a glimpse of the heretofore unmentioned love of this guy's life. And we're back to the fishing buddies who wonder briefly if the writer is nuts, but then decide ohhh, no, OF COURSE it was real. Uhh, yeah. This is supposed to be a "classic tale of fantasy and horror". I dunno. I have to say I truly enjoyed the parts where the scary dudes were storming the castle - I thought "wow, this book doesn't suck after all." But, then the scary dudes went away and the time warp part of the story started. How unfortunate that reading about time moving very very quickly can make my own time move very very slowly. Every agonizing detail - and it was the same every day - was eked out, over and over and over again. The sun rose. It flashed across the sky. It disappeared in the west. The moon rose. It flashed across the sky. It disappeared again. The sun rose. Yadda yadda yadda, ad infinitum. Oh man it was tedious. Every few pages he'd make an interesting discovery (like formerly live things turning to dust), but otherwise he just stood at the window for a bunch of centuries and watched. I just don't get it. This book has been given a whole boatload of 4 and 5 star ratings by readers who clearly have a lot more patience than I do. The story as a whole is interesting, true, but the drudgery of getting through it for me was unbearable. I'm going to give it one point for having some good ideas. This is a true 1/2-pointer for me, but I'll give up the other 1/2 just because it's supposed to be a "classic."
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting story, best thought of as two short stories. The first half deals with an old house under seige from otherworldly creatures and makes an entertaining read. The second half, which goes off the deep end of pre-Lovecraftian "fear of insignificance" themes, is too dense to be enjoyed, but worth reading nonetheless.

    Book preview

    The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson

     ^book_preview_excerpt.html}[Mƕ+v#u\'V"" (Luef*`H,хW#_ӫ~xƻy{?^=7wy9;Y.uNM%桹'LqfOz.-q'4!5/)˅ǧs3OwXh״7KK%c\wł׋f0Q .6rR>a8[kpOk3Ш) 30 NaƯ_+ޚ<>rwx$>дzw &] [?!n qk^7ip}c|:!7Ǖ M*[l:#5VB{y:l .] /WzU?H#I&2>+u} vg?'[:6s!'.$O`|{OAߗ8_tnJh>43R[/T"_dg{7`/]S_>@Hl-/>q],tOk>Nx8HŏȽY5͞2΂o~ab7gȈ05{A2/4[5+}:]fy!r^^;u'bg'kB$Ϟ kg==0})kQ-OZ{^;y^fgDq"7sYz)risonqk>eaڥ xH`8bhL9-܈;&:Œw1=7nf;_o޽yx]ۆ~槇?Fwo?6~KN]}RRZ6a=;%)λGЉI;70: 951as\Rq*6NK> - J}Z| 8 w- w Wpdej˃@7xTxVg$E5˫뭪9 )㎽FBsJ]n o1WRuIa^j/3\lH][BậTaH%dj.?4~\=n6x}X,h"Q?(GoāBhAP䑊LxLFOpFs"(f4IyŠ3_y^CՂ+͚ `B W\x3e[?3A)yoB-.m%8#-^KyP#a\nm)fƨcZPgߙ] +,r6#Fr^( ,0K,Sh3e#sl;cǃm9p̃D5rCt}$(=č/90ҧJWgDVhC.=|E&d +_E i&V1\^[Bّi'@.T'Sgb$!XF|#Aw`)K|GJ>dSl['k1X&v~l}W#+ e?cVBٯYC.^3;z"#A] v/~ČD2_$?.)r[/A"Kru4kTQ+ȃ@;=}4doׂX0M̹0d#l&Q=s\io ۯQK/_J7Dҙ:fůl|55%~ N ec 莓`q" o/ 1W_TZFK:a%$ 6N._;sZnEM|)G1t"w>{Rlƛ6uy- 1d!R e+(jDfnɋ:Byc,/ޓU|oKu1 avRlEHUӊ" j7[u ڋ8V͙-d)s?ƫM(֋f*j>|Ww<ڄ#aWa0K78 vG!ekI1) $%QR r\D0pOj͚͑Vd9v@[Wg2N?O #1}`纼n51 SFZ-_ŏnvkKB1n3Yȋ(I7]ܘ<5&@pL'3Tv%PVҔ)V 'E~ki>,M}bg``SJ^ATo MoA5wcI-K6⎁HL (_5(P"e`Ѱ`L%L+yhYϡM LS.{(1\lyʡ2*{)]VWc%^-sXscxߺO(IdV:thյ AC[! .헜o1hIV UC.9׸ ]*^mphJk|2hփl7"V=6`lNm0r NYu n!^g$LXTĴXĩw},uʤvwHM4pc,V*$ǴOtg }+P;GR$ARmelnLQm:2ҊfN).r/A~&`2^FwERd$")XHP^6A2_/]1f#U97q_4{<9".ZxM[$ mssФVVȠA,jt݆jH0d5c59*)F?TޜE bf/;1hi nmYi3G&ECM{W1SM 6~4U2!,C$\*}7)°ҋKF[MGuG$Rl4͈!L]f?3LYlEJ&pN#嘢uN 3?Avl$jޥP Ml+%/oV;.e$sPi;8Nj3Bv:Xf剧t:`"OpIql!8`$$3΅][}!Oa_t~%Xdf*υ*~]w7R\E>{[\k*tB!t +{[H~)'B ĝLRf`[I@݀ őյ1HEp7|,p. x2Yz }H& XN]SsY#hr6x)*M}*% C1Ĉ3:wTࡄ<{&USmtPG2膌 m85.i ^:(Eմ3os! @bޔ*Yf=a@}|&a$~ZRMݺ3i<.sPFv٠I\8ߚɃ͇nIqȍW#$>iaij4n<`50jW{U~).H_UVLguMYvF!h:Sd)t[9\z2mT}f_әCA!V$t~K>G*4IjTi7+"8 #|]zvLgSA!o RQj6Uڅͧݛz k7 fn()bؕ`{1IV]6|$86٩rɉ5xg %^HT˽6Xyȃ]Y"+᱇)aZ/L[#Y)K8%:c+c`seHSw5}lH`܎Ja/8zQmE*%G*D_9#cOKf~_Q||)lnmw͏۵+<ݎ+o%/  ]֑/uQ#_ /r{^m20KS=eܮ&#ApnIxHƣ_H^Y% tWPVml?OQ>E+lamަ:~\C=~7vKFaz%c=:| %i&ݑCK)i,iݚuI7v@#߂[]_?|~Asӻ67qv5rI7/4@fd *XDFgF2Gfj}Ĩ9ڲ2JC6ta}MCVRʸI9éT~;!3O@43}wQC|yzYvװ/;Z|ΨHB8یʭp]%<W4.4fͳo8>&ַDm.\E,^*;;R&v
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1