Hearthside Horrors

Escape into the eerie Canadian wilderness with 'A Haunted Island' on Heathside Horrors. While attempting to study in complete seclusion on an isolated island in Lake Ontario, a student finds himself besieged by an oppressive supernatural stillness and the spectral apparition of an ancient Mohawk canoe. Algernon Blackwood's early masterpiece of elemental dread and atmospheric horror (19...

Step inside a malevolent coastal mansion in 'The Empty House' on Heathside Horrors. Algernon Blackwood's famed psychical investigator Jim Shorthouse joins his iron-willed Aunt Julia for an overnight vigil in a notorious abandoned home. As midnight tolls, muffled footsteps and a terrifying countenance appear upon the stairwell, testing their nerve against an ancient murder that replays...

The thrilling season finale of Heathside Horrors: Season 1 presents 'Count Magnus' by M.R. James. While touring Sweden, scholar Mr Wraxall investigates the tomb of Count Magnus de la Gardie, a cruel seventeenth-century lord rumored to have undertaken the 'Black Pilgrimage' to Chorazin. Unwittingly tampering with the padlocks on the massive copper sarcophagus, Wraxall finds himself...

On Heathside Horrors, we unearth 'The Ash-tree' by M.R. James. In 1690, Mrs Ann Mothersole was hanged for witchcraft on the testimony of Sir Matthew Fell. Her dying words, 'There will be guests at the Hall,' prove prophetic as generations of the Fell family meet sudden, agonizing deaths in their ancestral bedroom. What monstrous breed dwells within the hollow branches of the ancien...

An innocuous monochrome engraving becomes an instrument of terrifying supernatural vengeance in 'The Mezzotint' on Heathside Horrors. When museum curator Mr Dennistoun purchases an antique print of a country house, he and his fellow dons notice impossible changes in the image: a skeletal shape crawling across the lawn toward an open window. One of M.R. James's most inventive and chilli...

Step inside Aswarby Hall on Heathside Horrors. When young orphan Stephen Elliott is taken in by his eccentric cousin Mr Abney, he is initially charmed by the quiet estate. However, phantom sightings of an Italian girl and a gypsy boy bearing horrific mortal wounds soon reveal the abominable price of Mr Abney's quest for pagan immortality. A quintessential masterpiece of atmospheric horror by M...

In tonight's episode, an English scholar visits the ancient cathedral town of Saint Bertrand de Comminges in the Pyrenees, where he purchases a priceless illuminated scrapbook from the church sacristan. But the unprincipled canon who assembled the collection left behind a horrific guardian that still stalks the nocturnal shadows. Written by master of the antiquarian ghost story M.R. James (189...

What happens when you grapple with a nightmare you cannot perceive? In this episode, we dive into the dark heart of Victorian suspense with the haunting tale, 'What Was It?'. When an unseen force attacks in the dead of night, the line between madness and the supernatural blurs. Listen as we unravel this terrifying encounter with the unknown. Are you prepared to face the invisible?

"Art is a shadow of the divine... but some shadows hold a darker truth." Welcome back to Hearthside Horrors . Tonight, we reach into the dusty corners of the Victorian imagination for a tale of obsession and cold, white marble: “The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts,” another unsettling entry from the 1896 classic, A Stable for Nightmares . In this story, the world of fine art takes a maca...

Welcome to the latest episode of Hearthside Horrors . Tonight, we peel back the shroud of time to revisit a Victorian masterpiece of the macabre: “Haunted,” a standout selection from the 1896 anthology A Stable for Nightmares . In this classic tale of gothic dread, we follow a traveler seeking the quiet solitude of an ancient estate. However, the sprawling corridors and heavy velvet drapes of the...

Some guests arrive uninvited. Tonight on Hearthside Horrors, we resurrect The Phantom Fourth, a masterful, slow-burn psychological thriller from Victorian horror legend J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Dim the lights and settle in for a tale of shadows, paranoia, and the terrors that wait just out of the corner of your eye.

Doctor Feversham’s Story by J. S. Le FanuIn this episode of Hearthside Horrors , we travel to a gloomy, isolated mansion in the north of England to uncover J. S. Le Fanu’s chilling medical mystery, Doctor Feversham’s Story . When a skeptical young physician takes up residence with the aristocratic Collingham family, he is tasked with treating their teenage daughter's bizarre, clairvoyant tranc...

Dickon the Devil by J. S. Le Fanu Stir the coals and settle into the shadows. In this episode of Hearthside Horrors, we journey to the cursed estate of Barwyke to confront J. S. Le Fanu’s chilling tale, Dickon the Devil. When our narrator arrives at a sprawling, desolate manor to manage a wealthy estate, he is warned of a sinister presence that wanders the grounds. But the true nightmare begins wh...

In this episode of Hearthside Horrors , we travel to the bleak and isolated Cumberland moors for a chilling tale of inheritance and the supernatural in A Debt of Honor . After suddenly inheriting a gloomy, long-neglected estate known as The Shallows, a young man finds himself entangled in a bitter, generations-old dispute over a sprawling neighboring property. But the deep-seated grudges of the li...

Stir the coals and settle into the shadows. In this episode of Hearthside Horrors , we unlock the terrifying secrets of Craymoor Grange in J. S. Le Fanu's haunting tale, Catherine’s Quest . When the young and spirited Catherine l'Estrange stays at an ancient, rambling English estate, she is suddenly plagued by horrifying night terrors centered around a mysterious chest beneath her bedroom...

Stir the coals and settle into the shadows. In this episode of Hearthside Horrors, we delve into the creeping psychological dread of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic tale, Devereux’s Dream. When Paul Devereux experiences a vivid, terrifying nightmare of a gruesome murder aboard a train, he dismisses it as a mere phantom of an exhausted mind. But three years later, the horrific events of his dream...