The House on the Borderland

The House on the Borderland

William Hope Hodgson

The House on the Borderland (1908) is a supernatural horror novel by British fantasist William Hope Hodgson. The novel is a hallucinatory account of a recluse's stay at a remote house, and his experiences of supernatural creatures and otherworldly dimensions.

American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft listed The House on the Borderland and other works by Hodgson among his greatest influences, and Terry Pratchett has called the novel "the Big Bang in my private universe as a science fiction and fantasy reader and, later, writer."

Tonnison and Berreggnog make a fishing holiday to the remote village of Kraighten in rural Ireland. On the third day of their stay, they stumble upon the ruins of a strangely shaped house on a large lake. They discover the mouldering journal of the Recluse, an unidentified man who recorded his last days in the house before its destruction.

The Recluse begins his journal with descriptions of how he acquired the house, along with his daily life with his sister and his faithful dog, Pepper. He started the diary to record the strange experiences and horrors occurring in and around the house. The Recluse relates a vision in which he travels to a remote and vast arena, "the Plain of Silence," surrounded by mountains with representations of mythological beast-gods, demons, and other "bestial horrors" on their slopes. In the center of the plain stands a house almost identical to his own, save that the house in the arena is much larger and appears to be made of a green jade-like substance. Along the way, he sees a huge, menacing humanoid with swine-like features.