Gallery of Curiosities

200 years ago, four friends huddled around a fireplace and held a story telling contest to keep cabin fever at bay. Tonight we have two stories inspired by that cold summer’s night. Author Dan Micklethwaite is a freelance writer based in the north of England. His most recent short fiction has featured in Unsung Stories, Metaphorosis, and Flame Tree Publishing’s Swords and Steam anthology. His debu...

Happy Halloween! Osgoode is having trouble with some annual visitors, and he has two spooky stories for you. John Cooper Hamilton tells of of how Hollywood coped with the Zombie Apocalypse, and Spencer Koelle takes us on an excursion to the Weird West. What does Weird West have to do with Steampunk? Just ask any steampunk you happen to meet in the American Southwest. Matt Zophiel and Nonney Consta...

The Czar’s Army is having a bit of trouble with the local fauna while pressing eastward across Manchuria. Their only hope? A jaded, insubordinate corporal from the Caucasus. Benjamin Sperduto reads his own work. Author Benjamin Sperduto is a history teacher in Tampa, Florida. His short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including Coven (Purple Sun Press), Bad Neighborhood (Spooky Wo...

Mad Science Double Feature with two stories about strange inventions and the men who made them. Author Stephen S. Power’s novel, The Dragon Round, was just published by Simon and Schuster. His short fiction has recently appeared in Everyday Fiction, Swords and Sorcery, and the Stupifying Stories Showcase, and it will soon appear in Deep Magic. He tweets at @stephenspower, his site is stephenspower...

A "Professor" rents out a barn to build his bombastic inventions. A delightful send up of the steampunk aesthetic. Molly Shipwreck reads. #steampunk Author Zach Bartlett has been called the New Englandest man in New Orleans, both as compliment and insult. His work has been published by Mad Scientist Journal and Wildside Press, and he’s a regular contributor to the reading series Esoterotica. You c...

Summer is here, so let’s go up the country, all the way to to Nova Scotia for our story tonight, written and read by our own Andrew McCurdy. Andrew McCurdy has been reading and writing science fiction ever since he saw Charleton Heston kneeling in the surf, cursing the half-buried Statue of Liberty. He recently relocated from teaching college in a large city to rural Nova Scotia where he hopes to...

A tale of an alternate London, where Vapourmen man giant rosewater towers to protect the populace from bad airs. Richard Elen reads. #steampunk Red lights flickered all across the board filling one wall of Dartford Vapour Monitoring Station. The tiny gas flames in the bulbs hissed, their combined sound angrier and angrier as more and more sparked into life… Simon Kewin is the author of over 100 pu...

Consider the red riding hood with a grim agenda of its own. Karen Bovenmyer narrates. Karen Bovenmyer earned her MFA in Creative Writing: Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program in Summer of 2013. She is lucky to train future faculty at Iowa State University, where she works primarily with inspiring Ph. D. students who enthusiastically share speculative-story-ide...

A rotting ship reeking of death moors at Pool of London, the crew fallen victim to a mermaid. Vic Mullin reads. Author: Born in Yorkshire, Oxford graduate Philip Brian Hall is a former diplomat and teacher. Outside work, he has stood for parliament, sung solos in amateur operettas, rowed at Henley Royal Regatta, completed a 40 mile cross-country walk in under 12 hours and ridden in over one hundre...

A watchmaker tells of his boyhood job at the famed American Museum of P.T. Barnum, and how a demon was acquired for the menagerie. Keith Edie reads. First published in Strange Tales V. Author Elise Forier Edie is a playwright and author based in Los Angeles. Her most recent play, “The Pink Unicorn,” has been performed all over the US and Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in Metaphorosis Magaz...

A naughty boy trades places with his scheming cat. Bookworm Hienrichs reads. #vintage #fantasy #kids

Our reboot episode, featuring two curious on stories of the strangeness Love. Osgoode welcomes you to the gallery and presents two new stories for Valentine's Day. "Love is a Masterpiece" by Chris Kelworth. Mr. Kelworth lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has been writing science fiction and fantasy stories with increasing diligence for the past twenty-five years, and is a graduate of the Odyssey, Taos...

If you're going to haunt a proper English gentlemen's club after you die, you'd best be a member. Vic Mullin narrates. #ghosts #occult #vintage We return to Brunel Hall to hear Mr. Victor Mornington, the steamlands’ most famous hotelier, read The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost by H.G. Wells. Grab a drink, turn down the lights, and get comfortable, because story night is Serious Business in New B...

What is in that powder my brother keeps taking? A classic fright from 1895, said to have been an early influence on HP Lovecraft. Junie Ginsburg narrates. Arthur Machen was born in Wales and became enamored with mysticism and the occult at an early age. The Novel of the White Powder was part of The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the storie...

Good help is so hard to find, but what do you do when your family is complaining about a maid that you don't remember hiring? Junie Ginsburg reads. #VintageHorror #Ghosts Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was an eclectic scholar and folklorist whose best known work is the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers. Oddly, he is also noted for writing The Book of Were-Wolves, the 16 volume The Lives of the Saint...

An early work from H. P. Lovecraft's Dream cycle stories. Sit back, relax, and have your squire bring a coal from the stove to spark the hookah. This story was first published in the November 1919 issue of The United Amateur. Host: Vic Mullin Reader: Byron Music: Valentine Wolfe

Ghosts, revenge, skeletons in the closet? Is it October yet? Tonight, our favorite lowlander, Victor Mornington (Vic Mullin), reads "A Man of Science" by Jerome K. Jerome. First published in The Idler, an illustrated monthly of literature and humor, in September of 1892. Keep the brandy carafe near, you might need just a nip before this one is over. Host: Junie Ginsburg Reader: Victor1st Morningto...

That new servant has the Lady of the castle all in a twist. Is he a boy? Or a brownie? Vic Mullin reads. #folklore #vintage #scotland Vic Mullin reads a grim tale from his native Scotland by poet and novelist James Hogg. Hogg wrote in both Scots and English, and it is said that his grandfather was the last man to have spoken with fairies. First published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October...