Edvane Stories

In St Barrow’s, charity was given at the church door, where God might see it and, more importantly, where no neighbour could pretend he had not. Every Sunday, when the final hymn had faded into coughs, scraping boots and the restless mutter of people pretending not to loiter, Mistress Agnes Grimshaw took her place beneath the entry arch with her black purse folded between both hands. If you enjoy...

Spearhafoc was an eleventh-century monk, artist, and goldsmith, appointed Bishop of London under Edward the Confessor. Before the crown intended for Edward could be completed, Spearhafoc vanished with the king’s gold and jewels. History gives no satisfying end to him. No recovery. No trial. No body. Only the disappearance. What follows is not history, but an imagined answer to the silence. An expl...

Regan was trained never to spill a thing at the Academy. The night she spills Angel-June Nair’s wine, she spills far more, and the so-called ‘meadow’ behind the Academy is listening for exactly that kind of girl. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonatha...

William Cox tends the gardens at Othery Grange. He also tends the truth. Five Regency courtships, five birds, and one gardener who learns that an invented omen, once spoken, never stays his alone. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠ Edvane Stories⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane a...

In late-sixteenth-century Exeter, Curate Ralph Travers preaches too often against the Devil and gives an old children’s rhyme a power it should never have had. When Bucky comes to St Olave’s churchyard, three lives are demanded, and Ralph must choose who will be taught the words that open the dark. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, an...

The Even Ash is a dark Yorkshire folk tale of Mother Greenwood, a travelling herb-woman who sells simples at country fairs and offers lonely girls an old love charm. But the ash does not promise kindness, safety, or happiness. It answers only the words spoken, and four girls learn that the first single man to draw nigh may be something far stranger than a true love. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, pl...

At St Mildred’s, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily Scratcher waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings of beauty, grace, sorrow, roads, love, labour, and goodness, and of the children made to carry what adults should not. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠Edvan...

At St Mildred’s, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily Scratcher waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings of beauty, grace, sorrow, roads, love, labour, and goodness, and of the children made to carry what adults should not. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show . Read it at Edvan...

In Streindarke, even scandal is expected to behave properly. When Lord Suze Ben-Sashe vanishes from the upper courts, Civic Quiet Ballion is sent to keep the matter narrow. But Suze’s silent apartment contains more than absence. A watching cat. A staircase where no staircase should be. A memory Ballion would rather not arrange. Inspired by Siouxsie and the Banshees’ The Staircase (Mystery) , Arran...

The Magpies of Hagley Stile begins with an old rhyme everyone knows and turns it into a sequence of dark folk warnings. Across seven tales, sorrow, joy, daughters, sons, silver, gold and secrets all gather beneath the watching eyes of the magpies, while Widow Green counts what others refuse to see. Ultimately, a village learns that old wrongs do not vanish, grief has a number, and some birds do no...

A dead ship returns through the storm, and lighthouse keeper Thomas Darling must decide whether the light is warning the sea away, or calling something impossible home. A Victorian ghost story about a ghostly vessel, a half-drowned stowaway, and a ticking machine that listens ahead. If the future can be changed, who pays the price? If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dar...

Ellen returns to Horrocks Yard with only fragments of Winvaulx left behind: a folded drawing, a missing man she can barely name, and the memory of a child the universe almost erased. The Doctor offers her another door, but for now she chooses the rain, the ambulance, and the ordinary world she may never quite trust again. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction...

The Doctor faces the terrible price of saving Peter Hale and the memory of Annie. Beneath Winvaulx Abbey, the Engine demands a correction, and the only way to close the wound is to turn its judgement back through the chain of command that opened it. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Rea...

Beneath Winvaulx Abbey, the Doctor discovers the ancient Engine that has been ringing through the empty tower. As Halcrow tries to turn it into a weapon of command, the system reads his authority, his orders, and his part in the wound and decides Peter Hale may not be the contradiction it wants after all. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Satur...

As the Bellmen withdraw, Peter Hale begins to lose the memory of the daughter the records say never existed. With the Doctor disarmed and Halcrow descending beneath the abbey, Ellen and Fish are left clinging to the only proof Annie ever lived: red wellies, mashed peas, seaside shops, and a red windmill drawn with the roof too tall. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new da...

The cowled Bellmen emerge from the mist, dry in the rain and moving with metal footsteps. As Peter Hale clings to the voice of a daughter the records deny, the Doctor begins to understand the horror beneath Winvaulx Abbey: not ghosts, but an ancient correction system still carrying out its work. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and f...

At Winvaulx Abbey, the Doctor and Ellen enter a restricted military site where a bell rings from an empty tower, written records rewrite themselves, and a lost child’s voice comes through the static. As 3:17 strikes again, the ruins begin to answer. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Rea...

The Doctor and Ellen are pulled from a rain-soaked industrial yard to the ruins of Winvaulx Abbey in 1990, where time is bruised, records cannot be trusted, and a dead tower begins to ring bells it never had. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B....

A midnight emergency call draws paramedic Ellen Ward to a rain-soaked industrial yard, where an impossible blue police box stands under the security lights. When a strange, exhausted man stumbles from its doors and gives only one name, Ellen’s night turns from routine call-out to the beginning of something far beyond ordinary medicine. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new...

Three days after the battle of Arfderydd in 573 AD, Brother Robert walks a field of the dead searching for the bard Merlin. The king lies unburied. Merlin has vanished into the forest. What follows is the moment the legend breaks. A dark Arthurian historical fiction story rooted in the earliest Welsh sources. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every S...

Rhett lifted the brush, then stopped. Charlotte's face lay beneath the lamp, pale and beautiful, but not at peace. The docket said cerebral haemorrhage. Her skin said otherwise. A gothic dark fiction story set in the city of Streindarke.  If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at...

In Lancashire, everyone knows you do not take an unbaptised child near the Smothing. One family does not listen. A dark folklore story rooted in the changeling tradition of northern England, where the old rules exist for a reason and breaking them costs more than you expect. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast— a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new lis...

In Tudor Essex, Jess Harwood returns home after seven years away to find her mother has been burned as a witch. What her mother left behind will set her on the same path. A dark folk horror story told in the first person, rooted in the witch trial history of sixteenth century England. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following he...

In the village of Duskdale, winter has brought a blight that is taking the children. Emmie steals an apple from the black orchard to save young Pip, not knowing what the orchard will take in return. A dark folk horror story about the price of forbidden things and the cruelty of a bargain you don't know you've made. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction...

During the reign of King Stephen, two children of strange green hue were discovered near Woolpit in Suffolk, speaking in an unknown tongue and refusing all food save raw beans. The boy died. The girl lived and spoke of a dim country called St Martin's Land. What follows is not a retelling of that story, but an imagined prelude to it. A dark folklore fiction story rooted in one of Britain's...