New Ghost Stories Podcast

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. I put many hours of research into each New Ghost Stories case. Sometimes the research is interesting, like when you get to travel to a new place or walk in the aisles of a beautiful library. But sometimes, it’s pretty dull. I know there are some who would enjoy an afternoon checking 30-year-old train timetables o...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. I know there are going to be questions about this short episode, so let me try and head the main one off: yes, I do understand that glass eyes aren’t actually round. Glass eyes - nowadays made usually of acrylic - are usually curved and they sit over an eye which no longer functions, and does not appear like the...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. William Hope Hodgson was not a writer who led a quiet scholarly life. At the age of 13 he attempted to run away from boarding school to join the navy. Though he was caught, he eventually convinced his father to allow him to take an apprenticeship as a cabin boy. In an eventful sea-faring career he was awarded the...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. And with this episode we bring season 2 of the New Ghost Stories Podcast to a close. A huge thanks from me for listening to the podcast and for reading along to these blogs. We will of course be back very soon with a new bonus episode. I ran a poll on Twitter pitting 4 classic stories against each other. It was t...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. And if you’re enjoying these supernatural stories, please take a moment to give the podcast a review, it really helps the show. I have found myself facing ethical questions in the years since I started the New Ghost Stories project. On several occasions, I’ve had to consider the subject of exploitation, for examp...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. In times of great uncertainty, it’s common for alternative and esoteric practices to start growing in popularity. The reason seems to be that when the world becomes more intimidating and confusing, we turn back to an idealised past. When what the present world offers seems shallow and unfulfilling, spiritual prac...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. And if you enjoy the podcast, please consider subscribing or leaving a review. Life would be much easier if we could really talk honestly with each other about how we feel and what we experience. It’s hard not to listen to this tragic case without wondering what might have occurred if the people involved had been...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. What do you do when a story is never over? What do you do when leaving isn’t an option? And when that which plagues you, follows you, and promises never to leave you alone? Guilt is a recurring theme in many ghost stories. The supernatural can offer a perfect way to represent a mind that knows it has done wrong,...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. And if you enjoy this frightening podcast, please take a moment to leave a review. It really helps the show. We are back. Thanks for sticking with me. Moving house is never simple or swift. I am settled into a new place, and now my life is largely one of moving and emptying boxes. The intent is to start each new...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. I have another little New Year’s bonus for you. It was inevitable that I’d do an M.R. James piece eventually. Number 13 appeared in his first published collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, featuring alongside classics like Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, and The Treasure of Abbott Thomas. If not...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. What would I like most for Christmas? I think probably some rest. This has been a busy year. And Christmas itself brings plenty of stresses too. It can be hard work getting everything organised, making sure you’re where you need to be and that everyone who deserves a present has a present. I’ve started to wonder...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. Time is in such short supply at the moment. I’m preparing to move house and at the same time I’m trying to finish a new story for Christmas. This story came in too late to be featured in New Ghost Stories Volume Three, but as it was a festive story - something of a rarity in the archive - I decided to push on wit...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. When I choose the cases which will go into the next New Ghost Stories book, I don’t deliberatly pick any theme. The stories that make it in are those which I feel are ready to be published. I’ve scrutinised the material, fact-checked them, and performed the basic editing required to make them readable for my audi...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. As you’ll hear in the introduction to this month’s podcast, this is one of the more difficult and distressing of the New Ghost Stories cases. In the podcast you will get one view of events. Another version of events obviously does exist. There is no version without a tragic outcome. The question here is who is re...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. It was my birthday recently, so I’ve recorded a bonus episode featuring one of my favourite stories. Saki, aka Hector Hugh Munro, only occasionally delves into the supernatural in his works. His acidic shorts are predominantly black comedies of manners. Think P.G. Woodhouse but with less whimsy and more malevolen...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. With my casefile crossing the 400 mark, it’s fair to say that I’ve heard a lot about haunted houses. Our private space, our personal territory, is not something we take lightly. It’s where we feel safest; where we’re most vulnerable; it’s private. When we move somewhere else, it can take a little time to let our...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. I’ll always remember the moment he said, “I can introduce you if you like.” Some pieces of evidence tell a story more clearly than others. Most of the substantiation that subjects offer is circumstantial; emails, transactions, texts – they only back up small elements of their account. I’m rarely offered something...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. The votes were counted, and the winner of the poll for the 1-year anniversary bonus episode of the podcast is The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs. It beat stories by Lovecraft, Robert Louis Stevenson and M.R. James. I was sure James would walk it, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised – The Monkey’s Paw is one...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. The classic image of a haunted house is a ramshackle old building, generations old, somewhere off the beaten track, with broken windows, tiles slipping from the roof and the garden badly overgrown. If someone lives there, they’re seldom seen, seldom spoken to, and only ever whispered about. We may see or come acr...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. Sometimes you have to draw a line. I remember distinctly standing outside her door. Wondering whether to knock. I’d heard so much about her. This story was as much about her as about the subject I’d interviewed, who’d first told me about her. Their two tales were inextricably intertwined. I had learnt second-hand...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. Some have argued against the ethics of what I do. Some I have spoken to could be classed as vulnerable. People with significant mental health difficulties. Am I engaging in an act of exploitation? It’s certainly plays on my mind. I have declined to proceed with some cases because I felt that the subject was not i...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. Some of the people I’ve interviewed for New Ghost Stories could fairly be described as ‘unreliable’. It’s important to make a distinction between unreliable and dishonest here. Someone who’s dishonest misleads deliberately. The motives of someone I would describe as unreliable are complex, and they may not even u...

Oops… forgot to send this out on time… You can download the podcast here Sometimes, it’s possible to find comfort in ambiguity. It could have happened, it might not have happened. You can’t be sure, so you just file it under ‘weird’ because it’s unsolvable and you’ll just never know. It’s tougher to do that when you see the fallout of something strange. I don’t want to give away too many details a...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. As a belated festive gift, I’ve done a reading of a classic ghost story by Sheridan Le Fanu – a favourite of mine called Green Tea. It’s from his book A Glass Darkly, an influential collection of some of his previously published, or revised, supernatural and mystery stories. I’ve always admired Le Fanu’s tales fo...

You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. Christmas can be a tough time of year for many. As I write this, the festive plans of millions of people across the UK have been turned upside down. I myself won’t now be able to spend Christmas with my family for the first time. It’s a sad end to a year which has already taken away so much we would normally take...