Hollowgasts, also known as hollows, are creatures that were spawned from the Experiment of 1908. They are the secondary antagonists of the Peculiar Children series and film adaptation Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Normal hollows, which are invisible, can only be seen by librarians, while Caul's evolved hollows are visible to all. Abraham Portman, H, and Jacob Portman are the only ones known able to control them. Jacob is the only known peculiar to be able to control several.
History[]
Long ago, there were peculiars similar to modern hollowgasts. They were tri-tongued, feared and bloodthirsty, but also brilliant and even respected by some. They may possibly have been the original librarians (though this is not explicitly said), who were in charge of protecting the Library of Souls. Their descendants are able to see and sometimes control modern hollows. If they drink souls from the library, they tap into the remnant of their tri-tongued ancestors and are permanently transformed into hollowgasts unless the soul is removed in time by a light-eater, but keep their own human mind.
Birth of the modern hollowgast[]
In the late 1800s, Caul started up the Claywings, a group that wanted to rebel against the ymbrynes and achieve immortality without the aid of loops. His brother, Myron Bentham, found out an old recipe that could reset a peculiar's internal clock and collapse a loop. He fed the recipe to a guard, who gave it to Caul.
In the summer of 1908, the Claywings traveled to an old Siberian loop to carry out the recipe. However, the experiment went wrong and the peculiars were turned into hollowgasts. The experiment would be collectively known to peculiardom as the Experiment of 1908.
It is not certain what went wrong in the experiment, but there are some theories:
| “ | One theory is that they reverse-aged themselves to a time before even their souls had been conceived, which is why we call them hollowgast - because their hearts, their souls, are empty. | ” |
–Miss Peregrine, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children | ||
Most would be killed during the Hollow Wars, but enough remained, or evolved into wights, for peculiardom to live in fear of them for a century.
In an unknown year, the SS Avondale was making a journey across the English Channel, transporting a hollowgast for study. The hollow escaped its chains and killed everyone aboard in the now-infamous SS Avondale tragedy.[1]
Peculiar Children series[]
Around the start of the series, the wights figured out how to extract a peculiar's second soul, which they fed to hollows and enabled them to enter loops. Their capabilities are later improved even further by Caul.
Description[]
| “ | Torture. Everything feels half-formed. Your body, your mind, your thoughts. You're so hungry your bones feel hollow. The only relief you ever feel is when you're eating- preferably a human, and a peculiar one. And even then it's brief respite. | ” |
–Horatio on being a hollowgast, The Desolations of Devil's Acre | ||
Appearance[]
Modern hollows are soulless corruptions. They (save Caul's evolved ones) are invisible to everyone who isn't a librarian, although they can be seen when they are eating, which is when it's too late to save the person being eaten. As hollows are only usually seen by their shadow to all, they tend to hunt at night when the darkness hides their shadows.
Miss Peregrine's Museum of Wonders describes them as "a monstrous corruption of the human form": corpselike, gray faces; black pits for eyes, which drip a corrosive liquid; acutely hunched backs; and flesh that hangs loosely from their frames. A hollow has three long and extremely strong tongues inside its mouth (evolved ones having a fourth), as well as twice the normal number of teeth, which are very sharp. Hollows are taller than the average human, and smell like hot summer landfills. They can find peculiars by smelling their peculiarities and by sensing them being used, able to find one peculiar in a crowd of ten thousand normals. A hollow's eyes seem to be its most vulnerable part: blood loss doesn't seem to affect them, and their tongues can substitute for legs. Their stomach acid can melt steel.[1] They were once unable to enter loops, but this changed by the time of Hollow City.
Caul's evolved hollows from The Desolations of Devil's Acre each have a soul from the Library of Souls inside them. They are visible to all, can run faster than before, and have armored chests, making them more difficult to kill. They even stank differently, with a scent like chemicals, bleach, rat poison and something worse. Their language was also changed, and one was able to turn Jacob's command of "sleep" against himself.
Nature[]
Hollowgasts are driven by their constant hunger. They crave and feed upon the souls of peculiars, but they will eat coerfolc (normals) as well. If they consume enough peculiar souls, they become wights. They can eat as many as 100 normal souls, but can only become wights by eating peculiar souls.[2]
Hollows are not social creatures and do not naturally congregate in packs. Their only pleasure is eating peculiars, sometimes dragging their victims back to burrows or dens in squirrel-like behaviour. They also rarely sleep.[1] Jacob compares untamed hollows to rabid dogs, and when restrained, "their desperate need to murder you made the air crackle."
It is possible, however, to tame a hollowgast: most notably in the case of H and Horatio, where Horatio came to show loyalty, care, concern for his master. H was able to help Horatio develop his mind and think about more than just his hunger, and also taught him to read and understand English. The disciplines of mind Horatio cultivated allowed him to retain his memories, which many hollows lose.[3]
Evolution[]
| “ | It's believed that the hollows can live thousands of years, but it is a life of constant physical torment, of humiliating debasement - feeding on stray animals, living in isolation - and of insatiable hunger for the flesh of their former kin, because our blood is their only hope for salvation. If a hollow gorges itself on enough peculiars, it becomes a wight. | ” |
–Miss Peregrine, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children | ||
When a hollowgast consumes enough peculiar souls, they evolve into wights, who look like normal humans apart from their eyes, which have no pupils. The transformation takes a few days to complete.[4]
The start of the process was shown in A Map of Days, when the beginning of Horatio's transformation is marked by a sudden, violent seizure that stops just as suddenly, and the pain in Jacob's gut that indicates the presence of a hollowgast disappears. The eyes gradually lighten into the pupilless white characteristic of a wight, the body squirms, and the wet and ragged breathing quiets. Jacob describes it to be almost like a birth. Right after the initial transformation, Horatio struggles to speak, but develops the ability to form words within a few minutes. At this stage, Horatio is not a wight quite yet but can now be seen by non-librarians.[5]
Defenses against[]
The best defense is recommended to be running away. However, many groups have tried to form Hollowgast Defense Leagues, such as the American Hollowgast Defense League founded by Deanford Bash. These groups trained extensively, but most of them had actual encounters with hollowgasts that turned disastrous due to being unable to actually see the monsters. The use of crossbows, which Abraham Portman called the best weapon against hollows, was pioneered by Willy Winkleveiss's Alpine League.
An anti-hollow nerve gas was tested in 1936, which failed: though it could melt human lung tissue with a single whiff, prolonged exposure only gave hollows hiccups.
Because Abe could see hollows, only his network of hollow-hunters was actually successful. He founded his own group later on, some of whom shared his ability. In his tips for fighting hollows, he mentions it being best for there to be light, either from the sun or a flashlight or floodlight, in order for shadows to show. After crossbows, the next best weapons are guns, pikes, torches or javelins. Trapping a hollow in a cell or deep hole will have it starve to death in a week. Abe has also killed them by running them over with tanks, pushing them off tall buildings, and feeding them with goats stuffed with explosives.[1]
Known Hollowgasts[]
Book[]
- Malthus
- The Rogue Hollow
- Horatio (became a wight)
A police sketch of Malthus
Film[]
- Mr. Barron (formerly)
- Mr. Gleeson (formerly)
- Mr. Archer (formerly)
- Mr. White (formerly)
- Mr. Clark (formerly)
- Mr. Brown (formerly)
- Miss Edwards (formerly)
- Malthus
- two unnamed women
- an unnamed man
Trivia[]
- Hollows can be seen when they are painted, as is shown in Library of Souls. This is because, just like the invisibles, their invisibility only affects themselves.
- In the film, hollowgasts consume only peculiar eyeballs instead of savaging their whole bodies for their souls. The only time this was done in the books was when a dying H allowed Horatio to eat his eyeballs.
- In the film, 3 of the hollows are/were female, including Miss Edwards, who became wights. The rest are/were male, of which 4 became wights: Mr. Gleeson, Mr. Barron, Mr. Archer, and Mr. Clark.
- It's possible that some of the hollowgasts worship Lovecraftian deities (Riggs has mentioned both H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos as one of the inspirations for his Peculiar Children book series).
- Normal hollows can only be seen by non-librarian peculiars and normals when they are eating.
- Due to his ancestry, Jacob Portman was able to become a hollowgast by consuming a soul from the Library of Souls. It would have been a permanent transformation had it not been for Noor Pradesh removing the soul from inside Jacob before it had fully set in.