EnCrypted Episode 8: 'The Voice in the Night' by William Hope Hodgson
Some writers live vicariously through their stories, others lead lives every bit as adventurous as the ones they write about. William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) definitely falls into the latter camp.
Having run away from boarding school aged thirteen to become a sailor, he later took on an apprenticeship as a cabin boy. This son of an Anglican priest trained with weights and learned self-defence to hold his own against rough seamen who thought him fair game. He would go on to open a School of Physical Culture that offered regimes for personal training and, among other endeavours, made the local newspapers with a precarious bicycle stunt and national news for handcuffing Harry Houdini so securely he had trouble escaping.
It is for his prolific literary output, of course, that he is chiefly remembered. The creator of the occult detective Thomas Carnaki and pre-Lovecraftian "cosmic" stories like The House on the Borderland, much of Hodgson's work drew on his experiences at sea. The Voice in the Night, one of his best known short stories, is such a tale.
It tells of two fishermen who, one night on the Pacific Ocean, encounter a mysterious stranger in need of charity. But how has this lonely figure found himself stranded at sea, and why will he not come into the light?
Hodgson's story is a genuinely disturbing horror story. I first discovered it in the Robert Aickman-edited Fontana Book of Ghost Stories. It is not a ghost story, however. It is nothing less than Cronenberg-esque body horror, Edwardian-style - whether knowingly or otherwise, an inspiration for such visceral shockers as The Fly, Alien, The Thing, and any horror fiction fixated on the invasion and degradation of the human body.
I hope you enjoy this reading of Voice in the Night. If you do, please consider supporting me and my work using the various links on this page. I'd love to hear from you.
Yours fungally,
Jasper
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https://linktr.ee/encryptedpodAbout the episode:
"The Voice in the Night" is a short story by William Hope Hodgson, first published in the November 1907 edition of Blue Book Magazine. Source text online.
Theme music: The Black Waltz by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Incidental music:
The House of Leaves by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4496-the-house-of-leaves
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Mary Celeste by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4024-mary-celeste
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
La Mer - 1 - De l'aube a midi sur la mer by Claude Debussy
Link: https://musopen.org/music/14381-la-mer/
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
Kevin MacLeod is a fantastic composer who has created royalty-free music in almost every conceivable style to match every conceivable mood. Check out his work!
Sound effect attributions:
https://freesound.org/people/Soundholder/sounds/425513/*
https://freesound.org/people/julius_galla/sounds/434892/*
https://freesound.org/people/hazure/sounds/23705/*
https://freesound.org/people/jimsim/sounds/411087/*
https://freesound.org/people/byjoshberry/sounds/435668/*
*All used under the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Other public domain sound effects sourced at: https://freesound.org/
The recording was created using Audacity and distributed via Anchor.
"I hope you enjoyed this episode of the EnCrypted Classic Horror Podcast. Being a creator can feel pretty lonely...especially when you're just starting out. If you enjoyed the show please comment/like/subscribe. Numbers don't tell a whole story - it would make a world of difference to know someone is listening to this voice in the night."
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