Phantastic Stories with Gav Cross

A Phantastic horror story from the master, Nigel Kneale. The Pond! Join me next Tuesday at 9pm for anther Phantatstic Story. Come see the Haunted Book Club - Live! Details here. Gav Thank you eejits , Claire Pitt , Jude Wilde , Josie Ray , Rachael Prime , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Thanks for reading Gav Cross: Storyteller! This post i...

William Wymark Jacobs - W.W. himself, will pop up here a lot… He holds a facination for me. Short story writer. Playwright. Fan of the supernatural. Writer of humour. East Ender. And the author of my very favourite Phantastic Story… And I like this one too. It has that great visual quality that means you could imagine Mark Gatis getting his hands on it and making a superb Christmas TV version. I h...

Do you know who Hilda Hughes is? Genuinely. There doesn’t seem to be much biographical info about them but they have two stories in the 1934 collection: “A Century of Creepy Stories” I love books like these. They smell right! They smell like a collection of supernatural stories should smell like. Slightly mouldering… I think I've been reading short classic stories online for about five years now a...

There are 1000’s of places to read in great depth about the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories. Luckily, this isn’t one of them. I’ll just tell you the story. Written for and performed live at “Ghost Stories for Christmas” at Norton Priory Museums and Gardens in Runcorn, Halton.. Rob Sanderson-Thomas is the Chief Executive Officer for Norton Priory and a writer. This short story was writ...

Of course the most famous fantastic Story by WW Jacobs is “The Monkey’s Paw”. My love for that Story is inexhaustible but this story has a real charm. I was not surprised to hear it was converted into a play. It was like watching a black-and-white spooky film from the 1930s with those English character act faces across the cast. After this film there will be a Will Hay movie on BBC2. It is of cour...

As I typed this I realise I'm not going to be home to read a Story live. I am currently sat in a haunted Tudor Mansion, in Bolton. My job tonight is to tell ghost stories to teenagers who are going to sleep over… I love telling ghost stories. I'm telling ghost stories too the over sevens all week in my Show Ghastly Stories for Gruesome Gremlins. I'm telling Ghost stories to grown-ups in the evenin...

Full disclosure. I am a HG Wells stan. I mean, I just sent out the first programmer requests to book my show: The War of the Worlds By H.G. Wells A New Abridged Performed Reading by Gav Cross But that is not what we are here for. I love this little short story. I think it is designed to do what a big book and film of the 70s did for the Sea but in the 1890s Wilfully! Let me know what you think of...

I wasn't really a Famous Five kind of guy and I was a kid. I don't recall ever reading the books. And I didn't really watch the famous 80s TV version It was on ITV I didn't watch much ITV then. Or now… I think my most endearing introduction to the world of the famous five was through the Comic Strip Presents version. Five Go Mad in Dorset. Anyway I am culturally aware enough to recognise that this...

I am drawn to Algernon Blackwood simply by dint of his geographical location being Shooters Hill in South East London. I lived in the estate at the base of that ancient spot and it was always looming with a sense of mystery. Trees. A Tower. I knew it was ancient And for some reason I very rarely went there. Even though it was probably a mile or more from my house. To be fair I very rarely went any...

Certainly most famous for The Monkey’s Paw, W. W. Jacobs certainly liked a macabre tale when he wasn’t writing funny books about sailors or plays! I picked this one for a couple of reasons. Certainly to begin with I'm going to read the short of the short story is available I'd like to work up to Reading longer supernatural tales, perhaps over a couple of episodes… This story appealed awesome becau...

I have always loved the short story as a model. Perhaps it's because I really am part of the TV generation? All of those episodic and epic TV shows of my childhood “Tales of the Unexpected.” With its thrilling, enchanting and terrifying opening titles… I still can clearly remember individual episodes and moments from the 1980s “Hammer House of Horror” TV show. So when I discovered the short ghost...

I’m an Edith Nesbit fan. As a fellow, ex-SE London resident he was always in the literary life of school and beyond. But it was a while before I clocked that E Nesbit liked to write a good Supernatural story… And they are good. Enjoy: The Ebony Frame By Edith Nesbit Episode 01 of Phantastical Stories. Always Free. Always trying to get better! (The tech will not break me…) Any shares, comments, rec...

Read live on Substack 9pm on Mondays. Classic supernatural, ghost and weird short stories. Often found in the periodicals of magazines of the time And entertainment And enticement Everybody loves a spooky story??.. Read by StoryTeller Gav Cross to a live audience, who are invited to discuss the story afterwards, and swap and share cultural recommendations. Follow, Subscribe and join in! https://li...