Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Part 3! No dj-ing. Share? 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

I think I posted this in the wrong order. It should go 1, 2, 3…. Not 1,3,2 Forgive me. 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

- Classic Ghost Stories Podcast has done a Poe story before: [ The Tell-Tale Heart (Episode 12) ] and that was fine, but the Fall of the House of Usher is, in my humble opinion, finer. Poe was an American writer born in 1809 in Boston who died aged only forty in Baltimore in 1849. He is one of the best-known American writers of his generation and famed all over the world for his Gothic and macabre...

The Turn Of The Screw So we begin The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I have wanted to do this story for a long time but have hesitated because it's so long! Of course, we have read out The Beckoning Fair One, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and Carmilla that ran on over several episodes, but The Turn of the Screw will be the longest so far. I reckon it'll take five weeks or so, though...

S0209 The Maker of Gargoyles by Clark Ashton Smith Clark Ashton Smith was born in 1893 in Long Valley, California and died in California in 1961. He began as a poet and wrote decadent, overblown Romantic poetry after the manner of Swinburne. He got early recognition for his work in California. Lovecraft loved him and with Robert E Howard and Howard Philips Lovecraft he was one of the big three wri...

Subscribe here, support The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast and obtain exclusive content. S0208: The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood We did the Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood as Episode 20, and there I said: Algernon Blackwood Algernon Blackwood was an English writer born in 1869 who ended up as a broadcaster on the radio and TV. His writing was very well received at this time and critics loved him...

Bram Stoker Bram Stoker was an Irish author born in 1847 in Dublin. Stoker is probably the best known horror writer in the world (after Steven King!) and is famous for his fantastically best-selling novel Dracula.  Interestingly, Stoker spent his first years in bed, stricken by an unknown illness , and then he went to school even becoming an athlete there! After school he got his Bachelor of Arts...

Edith Nesbit Edith Nesbit was an English novelist born in 1858 in Kennington, which was then Surrey and is now part of London. She died in 1924 in the next county from where she was born. Nesbit is most famous for her children’s books and her most famous work The Railway Children is well beloved. I loved her Five Children and It stories which I read in a Victorian house all decked out for Christma...

Bruno Schulz Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer. He was born in 1892 in Austrian Galicia. In those days that part of historical Poland was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now it is part of Ukraine. His family were well-off traders who owned a dry goods shop. I'm not wholly sure what that is, though I think I knew when I was younger. After the First World War, Austrian Galicia becam...

Charlotte Riddell This episode of for our free subscribers who joined via Substack recently. Please recommend and share if you like it and appreciate what I’m doing here. Charlotte Riddell was born in 1832 in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. After she married she moved to London where she lived most of her life and died in Ashford in Kent in 1906. Riddell was a very prolific novelist and well know...

August Heat W F Harvey was a Yorkshireman, born in 1885 and died in 1937. He was a Quaker and suffered from ill health all his life. He joined an ambulance unit in the First World War but then went to work as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He actually won a medal for saving lives but suffered from lung trouble the rest of his life from that rescue, though that didn’t stop him smoking a pi...

Listen for free to H P Lovecraft’s The Hound on the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. Howard Phillips Lovecraft HP Lovecraft was perhaps the most influential writer of horror and weird tales of his generation. That may not have been evident during his life or even for a while after his death, but his work continues to be made into movies The Colour Out of Space was recently released, starring Nichola...

This is another of mine from the Horror Stories From Halloween. In it I get to do American, Australian and French accents… You can judge my success. It’s the second story done with sound effects. The underlying music is gifted to me by Dvoynik, alias Michael Romeo. Check out his Soundcloud here You can get the Horror Stories For Halloween here Sound effects are from Freesound. Samples are from Gho...

I loves this story, but with some caveats. I would have cut some bits out if I’d been his editor, but the nightmare becoming real motif, is a good one. I’ve used it myself after reading this, and a weird thing that was told to me once… The sound is a bit dodgy as it was done on my old microphone. Hope it’s acceptable. Please share on Social Media. Ta. Tony. Tan toc. Edward Frederic Benson was born...

Edith Wharton, nee Jones, (born New York 1862, died aged 75 in France) was a famous American novelist. Her nickname interestingly was Pussy Jones. She was very high society and was a debutante and socialite. She was also a very good writer. Wharton wrote best-sellers such as The Age of Innocence, which won the 1921 Pulitzer prize, and Ethan Frome. She also wrote short stories, and among those shor...

I am embarking on uploading the old episodes to Substack. But there are a lot of them, and I sometimes forget which ones I’ve done…. I don’t think I’ve uploaded this one before. This was Episode 3 or so. Please share. M R James is known as the father of the English ghost story. He wasn’t the first to write ghost stories, but he was the finest of his generation whose work continues to be published...

Do You Like It? Or not… I am a big fan of Alice Isn’t Dead, the podcast. It’s a fiction Podcast that you may know. They use a lot of sound effects and music under the dialogue, so I wanted to have a play around with the same. Some people (Sheila) have said that they don’t like it with the sound effects as it’s distracting. Let me know if you like it. Or not! Tony This is a public episode. If you w...

The Twisted Wood Well, it's the anniversary of the Podcast! The first episode The Yellow Wallpaper went up a year ago, and what a year it has been. The Podcast has succeeded far more than I ever thought. When I started I just wanted to read the stories I enjoyed. It seems that others enjoy them too. We have also done some stories by living writers, so here's another. It's mine! This is the first s...

Part 4 of The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onion starts off with another philosophical discourse by the unseen narrator. I'm not clear whether these are Paul Oleron's thoughts, or the narrator's observations. He talks about a letter dropped, disregarded that lies, and I guess this refers to a letter from a well-wisher, probably Elsie Bengough. But I'm not sure what these high falutin' reflections...

This section comprises parts 8, 9 and 10 of The Beckoning Fair One. I find the first section of 8 a bit long, and if I'd been his editor, I would have cut it. That's the bit where he muses somewhat abstractly with long words about this and that. However, the next bit when Elsie comes round and they go on the bus is excellent. Not from a ghost story point of view, but just as a snapshot of an awkwa...

The first part of section five of The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions has him sitting in the house listening to the noises and from nowhere he begins to muse that someone in the future might have an impression of a ghost that was started by his presence. This section achieves two things; firstly it sets up the ghost, and secondly it strengthen's the idea that the house itself has a personality...

The Beckoning Fair One By Oliver Onions Because this story is actually a novella, I am splitting it into four episodes much as I did for Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu. I'm doing The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions for a couple of reasons. Firstly, of course it is a classic ghost story and has been described as a 'cut above' the standard ghost story. This episode represents sections 1-4 of the...

Robert W. Chambers Robert William Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1865 and died in New York in 1933, aged 68. He was born to a well-off family; his father was a corporate lawyer with his own firm which did very well.  Robert’s early love was art and of course this is evident in the story, The Yellow Sign. He first studied art in New York and then aged 21 went to Paris to study at the Ec...

M R James is known as the father of the English ghost story. He wasn’t the first to write ghost stories, but he was the finest of his generation whose work continues to be published and re-presented as TV shows and radio plays. He was born in 1862 at Goodnestone in Kent. His father was a clergyman and was rector of Livermere in Suffolk. East Anglia features as the setting of many of M R James’s st...

M R James This is the third story we've done by M R James, previous ones being  The Experiment  and Episode 3:  Whistle and I'll Come to You . We talked about James the man there. In a nutshell, he was an academic who had jobs at Eton College and Cambridge University. The heroes of his stories tend to be dusty old academics like himself. He is considered the godfather of the English ghost story, c...