Hugh McFarland (born 26 November 1950, Carlisle, Cumbria, UK) is the author of the controversial work 'Freemasonry Inside Out'.
Although listed as an 'anti-Mason' on the authoritative Masonicinfo website, McFarland claims on his own website that he is not actually anti-masonic in the usual sense of the word but has rather undertaken a sociological and psychological study of Freemasonry based on his personal observations of over 20 years membership, academic background in behavioral sciences and knowledge of hypnosis gained from a tutor of Paul McKenna.
He claims his initial motivation was not to reveal any of the so-called secrets or to criticize individual masons but to understand why, after leaving Freemasonry following a near-fatal accident, the Masonic Oath still had such a hold on him. As the Oath forbade writing about the ritual, putting pen to paper helped break its spell.
Initially he published his observations in an eBook called 'Hoodwinked - How I Slipped the Freemason's Grip' which received mainly negative comments from contributors to the newsgroup 'alt.freemasonry' most of which stated that they hadn't actually read it.
When his eBook was granted an ISBN number and selected for inclusion in the US library system, he withdrew the book from sale. In order to help other eBook writers to get their book into the library system, he wrote a free guide that is now available from over a 1000 different websites.
The criticism of McFarland on the anti-mason website oddly is not related to what he has written about freemasonry but rather that he has withdrawn his eBook from sale and has written a free guide on the benefits of using the library system as a way to disseminate information.
In 2007, together with John Hamill, Curator and Librarian of the Grand Lodge of England, and others, he featured on a DVD called Freemasons: Behind the Craft. Following the success of the DVD, a hard copy print version of 'Freemasonry Inside Out' is expected shortly.