Rivals of Carnacki
As described in the on creative.nets pages --- WHH was only one of many millions who lost their lives in the senseless horror that was the First World War. Ironically he had survived the majority of the fighting only to die in the final desperate German attack of 1918.
The surges of interest in WHH are best described on another site bit
it would be fair to say that critical reaction to the Carnacki stories
has tended to be negative. In the shadow of his really classic
such as Boats
of the "Glen Carrig" and Other...(sometimes referred to collectively
as the 'Sargasso Sea Mythos', or 'Patrick O'Brian with Tentacles' 
)and novels such as The
House on the Borderland and The
Night Land the Carnacki stories appear somewhat lightweight. As HP
Lovecraft himself notes in SUPERNATURAL
HORROR IN LITERATURE.
"Mr. Hodgson's later volume, Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder, consists of several longish short stories published many years before in magazines. In quality it falls conspicuously below the level of the other books. We here find a more or less conventional stock figure of the "infallible detective" type -- the progeny of M. Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, and the close kin of Algernon Blackwood's John Silence -- moving through scenes and events badly marred by an atmosphere of professional "occultism." A few of the episodes, however, are of undeniable power, and afford glimpses of the peculiar genius characteristic of the author. "
The initially published six stories appeared little better than failed experiments in cross-genre pollination. The discovery of the final stories gave the character a little more weight.
Of course poor Carnacki also stands in the darkness of an even greater
shadow - that of Sherlock
Holmes himself. 
Ironically
it would seem Carnacki is regarded more as a superior imitation of the
Great Detective than in the world of weird fiction that WHH really made
his own.
The Carnacki content of Sir Hugh Greens classic anthology The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. is generally regarded as one of the highlights and similarly the Carnacki story most fondly remembered from the 1970's TV adaptation of the anthology.
To be regarded as even a notable imitator of such an iconic, immortal character as Sherlock Holmes is no mean feat and WHH deserves recognition just for that. To do it with a character so obviously part of his own world is doubly impressive.
Of course Carnacki is only one of many "psychic detectives" and in a scene from Kim Newmans classic alternative Victorian history, Anno-Dracula , Carnacki shares a room with some of them -
<an appropriate quote from Anno Dracula will appear here when my copy re-appears!>
Dr
John Silence. , 
the creation of Algernon Blackwood, is perhaps the most famous of Carnacki's
comtemporarys and is featured in some of the genre's classic tales of
horror such as 'Ancient Sorceries'. Though generally regarded as superior
to the Carnacki tales they overdo the atmosphere for me and I find Silence
less of a character and more an excuse to explore rather than the centre
of the tale itself.
Other notables of the time are Dr Hessalius found in In
a Glass Darkly (The Collected Works... by Carmilla
writer Sheridan La Fanu and Seabury Quinns Jules de Grandin stories -
which were in their time more popular than the HP Lovecraft tales which
shared the pages of pulp mags like Wierd Tales.
Brian
Lumleys Titus
Crow character is less a ghosthunter and more of a 1930s pulp adversary
for the familar horrors of HP Lovecraft (and is every bit as good as that
sounds)
In all honesty the later examples of this character are probably inspired by the real life activities of Harry Price and the Society for Psychical research at Most Haunted House in England', Borley Rectory. Price spent ten years investigating the various spooky nuns and strange noises and his methods and detail were used as blueprints for many of the later psychic detectives.
James Herberts psychic detective, David Ash, really exists to be merely
a victim of 
events
in Haunted
& The
Ghosts of Sleath. Haunted was originally drafted by James Herbert
as a BBC miniseries and Aiden Quinn got the part of Ash in 1995s impressive
movie
given an effective period 1930s setting putting it firmly in Harry Price
territory.
Faced
with the blunt graphic heriocs of Van Helsing type characters in Hammer
films of the 1960's depiction of the psychic investigator turned inward.
Shirley Jacksons The
Haunting of Hill House (filmed as THE HAUNTING twice
in
1963 and 1999
- avoid the remake) has a team of doomed investigators psychologically
tortured by their surroundings. Richard Matheson semi-sequel Hell
House has the survivors of a team of doomed investigators returning
with the Carnarcki-esque super science of the 1960s. Unfortunatley the
Belasco House, the 'Mount Everest of 
Haunted Houses', is a property not so much spooky as downright lethal.
(Legend
of Hell House, the film adaptation, is a personal favourite film of
this type)
In the 1970s, in the wake of The Omen and The Exorcist psychic investigators had the devil of all types and cultures to contend with. Graham Mastertons character Harry Erskine, is more luckless fake psychic than dedicated detective. The hopeless spiritualist and self confessed fake appears in The Djinn and Mastertons excellent Indian trilogy (The Manitou, , Revenge of the Manitou and Burial) was played by Tony Curtis in the passable movie version.
Fans (like me!) of Joss Whedons Buffy
The Vampire Slayer. may like to include the character of Giles on
this list as the most currently well-known example of a Carnacki type
character. Giles's comical britishness (carefully played by Anthony Stewart
Head) hides a familiar dark 
secret
and perhaps more appropriate comparison would be a character that seems
to have been his inspiration. Laconic cockney demon chaser John Constantine
was created as a supporting character for acclaimed comic Swamp
Thing by Alan Moore and later fleshed out in his own title, Hellblazer
by equally excellent writing from Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis.
John Constantine exists in a horribly down beat Clive Barkeresque world
more SE7EN and perhaps CALLAN than any of his contempories - like Giles
he is haunted by a disastrous ritual in his past which took many of his
friends and pushed him into his chosen career. Perhaps the most influential
current embodiment of the Carnacki archetype JC is soon to appear in his
own movie played by Keanu Reeves (!)
Few of the above mix science and sorcery as well as the Carnacki stories
and it wasn't until the arrival of Ghostbusters
before Mad Science was fully employed in professional ghost busting
as a public service. It could be said that the semi-comical aspects of
Laurels and Searcher are exploited to the full here and though the classic
characters of Venkman, Stantz and Dan Akroyd are purely Saturday Night
Live creations the cosmic demon (Gozer), often 
described as Lovecraftian, could just as easily be described as Hodgsonesque.
Both Ghostbusters movies have aged extremely well - their then-contemporary 80's setting has changed from being just downright naff to look two decades later as clever satire on the 80's entreprenurial spirit(s). The light, fresh and accessible tone of Ghostbusters, mixed with its seamless blending of mad science and sorcery make it still probably the best cinematic equivalent of the Carnacki stories.
Why the stories have not been adapted for the screen more often seems difficult to say. Rather than just moan about it ten years ago I tried my own adaptation of Gateway of the Monster but the difficulty of handling a single main character led even a harden fan such as myself to introduce the dreaded expositionary extra character. Written in 1994 I had then just plain Ian Mackellan in mind for the Carnacki part - proving that if I couldn't write scripts I might have at least made it in Hollywood as a talent scout.
Aside from the contiuation of the Carnacki stories provided by No. 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki the Untold Stories. the most thorough work on Carnacki is part of a role-playing games project. Marcus Rowlands Forgotten Futures is an exhaustive attempt to drag together all available information on several Victorian literary characters to make then available as background in a 'steam punk' setting.
For those uninitiated 'steam punk' followed hard upon the 'cyber punk' sf movement, postulating high-science in a Victorian backgrounds somewhat reminiscent of Verne and Welles but with contemporary plots. Notable steam punk novels include The Difference Engineby William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (in which Babbages calculating engine is built in the 1850's - creating an IT revolution in the 1880s) and Morlock Night and Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy by KW Jeter.
More
recent 'steam punk' has gone further by supposed that all the fictional
characters of the time, from Holmes to Dracula and beyond, all exist in
parallel and interact with each other. Kim Newmans ANNO DRACULA has the
collected characters of Victorian fiction react to the ascendance of Count
Dracula to the 
British
throne as 'consort' to Queen Victoria. Carnacki himself is alluded to
in this scene described at the top of this page. At the moment steam 
punk is exemplified by Alan Moore's latest comic project The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and now a movie
)
Forgotten Futures is an attempt to replicate steam punk as a game and the latest addition to the project - The Carnacki Cylinders - is a serious piece of work. With the dedicated eye for detail of the gamer the collected background material for role-playing games are often the most exhaustive and detailed sources of information available and this is the case here.
Friends assure me that my best fictional work was actually a role-playing game 'scenario' for the Ghostbusters role-playing game - included here for completeness...
