Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long Frank Belknap  Long was born in 1901 in Harlem, New York (not the Netherlands) and died in 1992 aged 92 in Manhattan. He was a horror and science fiction writer and is most famous for his contribution to the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. The Cthulhu Mythos begins with H P Lovecraft, but many other authors have contributed towards the corpus of stories...

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman E T A Hoffman, as he is known, was born in 1776 in Konigsberg, East Prussia, Germany and died in Berlin, Germany of syphilis, which was extremely prevalent. He was only 46. He was a romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror as well as being a composer, music critic and artist. He wrote the Nutcracker and the Mouse King which was the basis of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Th...

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany Edward John Moreton Draw Plunkett, or Lord Dunsany was known to his friends as Eddie.  Lord Dunsany was born in 1878 in London England and died in 1957 in Dublin Ireland. Though born in England, he was heir to the oldest inhabited house in Ireland: Dunsany Castle near Tara. In County Meath. He worked to support the Abbey Theatre in Dublin with...

A man in a car crash starts wondering how come the crowds gather so fast, and then he wonders why they all look so familiar. He researches the answer and is about to go to the police... A short weird tale by the prolific master of the weird tale, Ray Bradbury If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In Here You can become a Patreon of the show for exclusive members’ only stories: https://www.patreon.co...

You will notice I call this book by at least two different titles. I don’t know why. That's it done. The commentary at the end is slightly nutty because I was tired and slightly manic. Make sure to listen to the very end. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonywalker.substack.com

More Dorian. Here we go. In this he is effete, then psychopathic, then rather out of sorts. Luckily Harry is there to cheer him up. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonywalker.substack.com

Part 3! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonywalker.substack.com

Part 2 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonywalker.substack.com

Part 1 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonywalker.substack.com

Beyond the Door is a story of a haunting. A man is haunted by visions of something coming out of the well in his cellar and by the scratching sounds in the passages of his old house. If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In here you could buy me a coffee  https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, v...

Here’s another early listen for you lovely substackers. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonywalker.substack.com

If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In Here If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In Here You could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker Become a Patron https://www.patreon.com/barcud And you can join my mailing list and get a  free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire Music By The Heartwood Institute https://bit.ly/somecomeback*** This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss t...

Hello Literati. Here’s Tom Eliot’s famous, moving, erudite, meandering, existential poem. I fancied doing some poetry for a change and it gave me the opportunity of reading out French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. How’s that for a smart-a… He do all the voices. Have yourself a happy St Andrew’s day. Fittingly I have just done Thrown Janet in my best Scots. It was a commission from C...

Sir Gawain & The Green Knight Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is the original Christmas Ghost Story. Or technically a supernatural story set at Christmas in the kingdom of Logres ruled by King Arthur. It's pretty gothic. This is a prose translation of a Middle English poem called Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. The translation by Jessie Weston was published in 1898 and though it is certainly not...

Very short and unsophisticated. Only 8 minutes listen The Piano By Tony Walker “Rain at Christmas,” Amanda said. The letting agent turned her head. “It’s not quite Christmas; maybe we’ll get snow yet.” The woman stood at the top of a flight of worn sandstone steps that led to the front door of the old house in Abbey Street. As we climbed, the cathedral bells pealed out. “Practising for the Christm...

The Pomegranate Seed The pomegranate seed is a reference to the myth of Persephone and Demeter. Winter and Spring and the Lord of the Underworld. In a sense Mother and daughter are the same, and one aspect of the woman spends time in the world of the dead, while the other walks the world of the living. Kenneth disappears to see about ‘their passages.’ It is clear that it is his passage over the ri...

The First Sheaf is a folk horror story set in the backwaters of rural England. A new vicar goes to a rural parish that has suffered a terrible drought. The local folk shun him and want nothing of his god. He fears they have other gods of their own. Then a young girl goes missing, and the vicar's son must search out the mystery of the round field and pay a terrible price for the knowledge he gains....

This is the audio extracted from the edited version of my live reading of the Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen. All the audio is there (some of the live cut out) and it is as polished as well as I can do. There are two microphones in this: the streamed version which is compressed and a little fuzzy and the camera microphone which is tinny. With those warnings, listen if you dare. PS. You can still...

Well after midnight in a newsroom high up above the city, a strange story comes tip-tapping in down the night wire. John Morgan, the night wire expert, turns the morse code into words and the words reveal a mystery. A town no one has heard of is brought to a standstill by a weird fog. This weird fog rolls right out of the graveyard and in it are seen twisted wailing forms. But this tale is strange...

In rural Pakistan, a rickshaw driver stops by a Peepal Tree and a beautiful bride steps out from the shadows. Of course, at first he thinks she must be a churail, but despite his mother's warnings, he knows he must help this distressed woman. How will his kindness be rewarded? A story by modern British author Iqbal Hussain. After the story I had the great pleasure of interviewing Iqbal and talking...

In which a writer starts to receive mysterious and increasingly menacing postcards from an apparent stranger. He asks his friends what to do. He goes to the police. And then it all becomes clear. L P Hartley Leslie Poles Harltey was born in Cambridgeshire in England in 1895 and died aged 76 in London England. L P was  educated first at  home and then a Preparatory School before going to  Harrow Sc...

Joan Aiken Joan Delano Aiken was the daughter of Conrad Aiken, whose story Mr Arcularis we read out on The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. Her elder sister Jane was a writer and her brother John was a chemist. Her father, being a poet presumably appreciated the para-rhyming of their names. Joan was born while her father was domiciled in England,  on Mermaid Street in Rye in East Sussex in 1924. She...

The Amorous Ghost by Enid Bagnold Listen above, but download link is here https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/e9e2b504-9b22-4621-930d-da6121e3018a/s02e44-the-amorous-ghost-by-enid-bagnold.mp3 Edith Bagnold Edith Bagnold, later Lady Jones was born in 1889 in Rochester, Kent and died in 1981 in London . She was most famous for her novel *National Velvet* published in 1935, which was made into a famo...

The Grey Woman Part 3 In which Anna and Amante go on the run, meet some good souls, some bad ones and accomplish miracles with corks and home-made walnut dye, thus saving their lives. Will it all go right in the end? You will have to listen, won't you? Random Notes For Part 3 Disguises. Victorians loved disguises. Think of Sherlock Holmes The beautiful Anna breaks one of her front teeth! No one la...

Oke of Oakhurst by Vernon Lee Vernon Lee Despite sounding so masculine, Vernon Lee was actually a woman called Violet Paget, born in France in 1856 and died in Italy in 1935. Despite these location she identified as English. Her biographer Vineta Colby says that Lee was English by nationality, French by an accident of birth and Italian by choice. As well as the ghost stories for which she is most...