Hugh McFarland (born 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. In reflecting on his previous membership and following new avenues of research, he became concerned that the ritual cleverly concealed aspects of manipulation and conditioning and that it was masons themselves that were the victims and not the unsuspecting general public as is commonly believed.

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'.

McFarland claims that criticism of his position on Freemasonry is not related to what he has written but are mainly personal attacks for writing a free guide for other eBook authors on the benefits of using the US library system as a way of promoting their work - see article.

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' - see review on IMDB. Following the success of the DVD, it is anticipated that a hard copy print version of 'Freemasonry Inside Out' will be published soon.