The Doorway’s capacity to open and close on ‘a Foreign Place’ (397) indicates the alien distance and total separation of whatever seeks to come through. X’s language indicates not only a ‘place’ but also an occupant; he concludes that ‘my quiet passing did disturb an Evil Power, so that it did even come to listen or to make search’ (400). The unidentified entity, lurking on the threshold, listens at the Doorway, and attempts to reach through. In this sequence, Hodgson transforms the benign communication of the séance, under the control of a professional medium, or the occultist’s magical manipulation of unseen forces, into the near-discovery of unspeakable destructive horrors.

I am deeply fascinated at the moment by nineteenth-century Gothic sea fiction, particularly its phantoms, wrecks, and derelicts. The long nineteenth-century, as we know, saw tremendous social, industrial, and scientific developments, including the replacement of wooden sailing ships by steel and steam. The ghosts of the Age of Sail still haunted our seas; wooden derelicts trapped in the currents accounted for many a phantom ship sighting, says Margaret Baker, yet by the 1930s, these were all destroyed. These ghosts remain in our literature, and in our film.