He employs a variety of scientific methods in his work, including up-to-date technologies such as photography and his own fictional invention, the Electric Pentacle; he also has a wide knowledge of folklore and the occult.

Never presumptuous, Carnacki is careful to gather solid evidence before drawing a conclusion regarding the authenticity of a haunting; unlike many other occult detectives, several of his cases turn out to be only human fakery.

According to Kidd and Kennett, the series' enduring attraction comes more from Hodgson's capacity for world-building than any special appeal of Carnacki himself: It certainly isn't his dynamic personality.

Not much character is evident in Hodgson's creation: he is your generic stiff upper-lip Edwardian Englishman ... but the exotic landscapes he inhabits are supernatural... it's his exploits, and the carefully constructed milieu in which they take place, that continue to intrigue.

[3] In an article about supernatural fiction, William Rose Benét stated "I remember delighting in the stories in "Carnacki, the Ghost Finder," recommended to me by Elinor Wylie, though I see that Howard P. Lovecraft rates this book below Hodgson's others.

The manifestation is far more powerful than he expects, and he spends a miserable, terrified night in his electric pentacle while a horrible apparition in the form of a giant human hand pounds at his defences.

A deserted mansion in Ireland displays signs of haunting, including what appears to be blood dripping from the ceiling, and several men have been found dead in the house.

The "blood drip" is coloured water, and the "ghosts" are actually a criminal gang living in secret rooms in the mansion and playing a trick on him, taking advantage of the local legends to frighten away interlopers.

This story has been long considered a legend, but now for the first time in seven generations there is a first-born female, and her fiancée has just suffered a broken arm after an attack by a mysterious assailant.

The next morning, though, hoofbeats and neighing can be heard almost immediately, in what seems a direct assault by the invisible horse; Carnacki fires his weapon and Mary's father attacks with his sword.

The next day, he consults the landlord, and learns something of the house's mysterious history, which includes a former tenant named Captain Tobias, and rumours of a ghostly woman.

While they watch, something is heard to emerge from the well, giving off the horrible smell; Carnacki lowers the cage, and when the men uncover the lanterns they discover that they have caught Captain Tobias, carrying a leg of spoiled mutton.

He thinks the men may have witnessed the ghost of a wayward unborn child that refused to accept birth into the natural world and which was thus pulled back by what Sigsand called "thee Haggs".

A chapel attached to an Edwardian manor house contains an ancient, cursed dagger that has just apparently almost murdered someone of its own accord, and naturally, Carnacki is called in to investigate.

Carnacki faces perhaps his most powerful adversary: a disturbing hog spirit of giant proportions which is trying to enter our world, manifesting as a series of horrifying nightmares.

Afraid for their lives, Carnacki orders the crew to stay below decks, padlocking the doors and making the first and eighth signs of the Saaamaaa Ritual, connected with triple lines crossed at every seventh inch.

Soon after, the ship undergoes a series of strange "shudderings" before it starts to tip onto its side, sending the Electric Pentacle sliding, and forcing Carnacki, Captain Thompson and his three mates to hold on for dear life.

Carnacki then explains his theory of "focuses", saying that the Jarvee, for whatever reason, be it the particular mood a builder was in as he hammered a nail home, or the tree that makes up a certain board, was a focal point for "attractive vibrations".

The authors suggest that Hodgson, by having Carnacki casually drop references to other cases which he himself did not write about, "invited" his readers to enter the "shared universe" and pick up where he left off.

In "The Gateway of the Monster" and "The Horse of the Invisible", Carnacki makes passing references to the "Black Veil case", in which a man named Aster died because he did not accept the necessity of staying inside the protective pentacle.

Both men lose the power of sight as the apparition manifests, and Carnacki must listen helplessly from inside the pentacle as Aster is driven into screaming madness and death.

It is unclear if this is a typographical error and Hodgson intended "Moving Fur" instead; the Collected Fiction edition and the Project Gutenberg electronic text show this correction.

In the middle of his vigil his candle flames suddenly turn black, and the floor becomes a heaving carpet of fur, as if the pentacle was upon the back of a giant animal.

The Black Dossier is filled with non-comic pieces, taking the form of prose stories, letters, maps, guidebooks, magazines and even a lost Shakespeare folio.

In another section of the Black Dossier entitled "The Sincerest Form of Flattery" it is mentioned that Carnacki "had encounters with some form of spirit that allowed him brief, fragmentary visions of the future" regarding an attempt to derail the coronation of King George V. Due to ill health following his visions of World War I, Carnacki did not participate in the League's battle with Les Hommes Mysterieux, and had by 1937 retired from active duty.

Released in 2009, Part I of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century entitled "What Keeps Mankind Alive" features Carnacki as a main character.

In the stories "The Man Who Got Off The Ghost Train" and "Swellhead", it is mentioned that Carnacki was a member of the Diogenes Club as a special occult investigator; when he retired, his position was taken by Newman's character Richard Jeperson.

Spanish author Alberto López Aroca wrote the short story "Un olvidado episodio caudetano" ("A Forgotten Caudetan Incident"), included in the book Los Espectros Conjurados (ISBN 978-84-607-9866-8), featuring Carnacki in a Spanish village, Caudete; and by the same author, "Algunos derivados del alquitrán" ("Some Coal-tar Derivatives"), included in the volume Sherlock Holmes y lo Outré -Publisher: Academia de Mitología Creativa Jules Verne de Albacete, 2007[13]-, with Carnacki visiting a retired Sherlock Holmes in Fulworth.

Carnacki himself is referenced as a member of the Conspiracy, a shadowy cabal among whose number also includes Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula, Victor Frankenstein, and the Invisible Man, who a young Snow investigates.

August Derleth, whose Arkham House publishing firm issued the first American (and first expanded edition) of Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder, pays affectionate tribute to the character in one of his Solar Pons stories.