Classic Ghost Stories

Sarah Orne JewettThis episode is a real treat for me for a number of reasons. One is that this was my first commission! Susan Foust very kindly introduced me to this story and even paid me to read it out. Win-win-win. If you would like a commission, it would be remiss of me not to point out, you can get me to read any story under 10,000 words here. https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker/commissions (Order A Story!)So back to Sarah Orne Jewett. She lived her life on the southern coast of Maine in New England. She was born in 1849 in South Berwick and died in 1909 aged only 59 in the same year. She wrote a few collections of short stories, the most famous of which is The Country of Pointed Firs and you can get all of her work for free via the marvellous Project Gutenburg. Her family were Mainers going a long way back. The family home was built in 1774. Her father was a doctor who specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology. Her mother suffered from rheumatoid arthritis so the young Sarah spent many hours walking in the local countryside. She often visited Boston but her stories feature the small towns she was familiar with, even when she disguises their names.She had an interested in the Swedish mystic Swedenborg and she believed, apparently in Divine immanence: that god is in all things, though she was a firm believer in individual responsibility, which I always imagine as being a big thing in New England.I am struck by how different her New England is to that of Lovecraft of even of Russell Kirk whose Behind The Stumps we read out ages ago. I must do more of his stuff. I must do more of lots of people's stuff: there are outstanding calls for more Poe, which I will get to.Sarah Orne Jewett published her first story aged only 19 and her reputation grew in the 1870s and 1890s. People commented that her stories were driven by a focus on local colour more than plot, but I think Lady Ferry has an interesting, if gentle plot.She never married a man but had a close friendship with a married woman and the woman's husband and when the husband, a publisher died, the two women moved in together. Of course this was a time when certain types of love were not allowed to speak their name. They travelled together through America and Europe until in 1902 she had a carriage accident which ended her writing career. This was compounded when she had a stroke in March 1909 and she died soon after. Lady FerryThis is a delightful story and I am grateful to Susan Foust for bringing it to my attention. We see everything through the eyes of a young girl and the mystery is framed by her youth and her maturity as later she comes back to satisfy her curiosity.It appears to be a supernatural story but is very subtle. Lady Ferry haunts the garden as a ghost, but she is corporeal though no one knows her origin. It is hinted that she cannot die and that she is ancient. For example from the dresses she wears taken from the original builder of the house's chest at least a century or more earlier, by the fact she claims to have known Marie Antoinette and the grandfather of Mr McAllister. This puts her origin well back into the 18th Century. And she must have been born at least in 1750 if not earlier. She also references The Spanish Main, which might even suggest memories of the 17th Century.But this is explained away by her wandering mind. These are just fancies, surely? But there are a number of gothic touches which throw doubt on this. Firstly the visitors who come for the ball in the middle of the night. Though this is just a dream, surely? But then the boats are missing. I loved the funeral arrangement and I loved the descriptions of mSupport the show

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Mary Elizabeth BraddonAnother accomplished woman novelist of the Victorian period. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in 1835 in London and died in Richmond, Surrey (now part of London) in 1915.She wrote more than eighty novels, one of which, Lady Audley's Secret, was a great success. A number of her stories have supernatural themes, and she lived in the heyday of the ghost story so that is not surprising.When she was 25 she moved in with a publisher whose wife was locked away in an Irish mental asylum. She lived with the man and was stepmother to his existing children, marrying him finally in 1874, fourteen years after she first moved in, now allowable because his wife had passed away. She had six children by him.Her husband was also a property developer and a number of the streets in Richmond are named after characters from her novels.The Cold EmbraceThe Cold Embrace was published in is a very accomplished story both in form and in prosody. It has the feel of a folk-tale and its theme surely is that promises made in love should be kept and that the flighty and arrogant will be punished for breaking them.It was a delight to read because of the use of formal rhetorical forms like the repeated use on anaphora where the beginning of a sentence is repeated, usually three times to create a tricolon. Often an ascending tricolon where each phrase is longer building towards a climax.It almost reminded me of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in its atmosphere. The final masked ball with the young lady on his arm who fades slowly into the corpse bride.We the readers are aware that the boisterous gaiety he feels at the ball, which he mistakes for his old light-heartedness is a return of the fever that will, this time, kill him.And the picture of stage coaches (the diligence) and hordes of labourers walking across Germany with their meerschaum pipes and dogs was like scenes out of Goethe, or William Wordsworth's account of his traipsing across Europe at a similar time. Braddon herself was born later than this, so this is historical fiction and we have the device that M R James endorses too: set the ghost story in the past, not too distant past, but enough that there is a mist of history which allows us to suspend our disbelief (although that phrase belongs to Tolkein). Music byhttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (The Heartwood Institute)The last track with the lovely violin is Under The Rose by https://bit.ly/midnighfolk (The Hare & The Moon,) whose lead performer is Grey MalkinWe also feature music by Michael Romeo of https://bit.ly/dvoykinbandcamp (Dvoynik)Support the Podcast Any Way You Can!http://bit.ly/ghostiest (Buy the thirsty, hyperactive podcaster a cup of Java)Sign up For Exclusive Stuff and Early Bird Exposures on http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon)Get the https://bit.ly/substacklanding (Substack Newsletter) with ExclusivesMy Ghost StoriesGet my free audiobook download, The Dalston Vampire https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (here), and you may consider purchasing my https://bit.ly/HorrorStoriesForHalloween (Horror Stories For Halloween), which is now long past.Support the show

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The Spider by Basil Copper@stuieburley on Twitter put me onto Basil Copper. He had recommended the Janissaries of Emilion. I'd never heard of Basil so I got a Kindle Edition of The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper which includes that story. However, it is long. I may do it another time, but for this week I selected a shorter story. But it's a good one.Basil Copper was born in 1924 and lived until 2013 when he died aged 89! He was born in London, England.His first story was published in March 1938, the Magazine of the Tonbridge Senior Boys School. Tonbridge is in Kent, and when I was a boy we went on an exchange visit to Kent. Most schools in England went to foreign countries but the trip from Cumberland to Kent, England's most northwesterly county to England most southeasterly county, was enough of a culture shock for us.He is most famous for his stories featuring the character Solar Pons. This character was created by August Derleth, H P Lovecraft's protege, and is very much in the Lovecraftian tradition of authors sharing worlds and characters between their stories. Copper was published by the Arkham House publishing house, run by August Derleth. Many of Copper's stories feature the Cthulhu Mythos. Despite his links with the Cthulhu Mythos, Copper admitted that his influences were M R James and Edgar Allan Poe and he was interested in Gothic literature. The Spider is a phobia story. It's very cleverly written, neat and effective. In that it reminds me of Marghatina Laski's The Tower where the phobia is vertigo. Here it is arachnophobia. Turns out that the landlord of the wayside auberge just south of Paris has a skin for picking up on a visitor's fears and killing the visitor via heart attack by inducing the phobia. The insect horror theme is of course featured in Boomerang by Oscar Cook.This story appears in the 1964 Pan Book of Horror Stories. He was paid £10 for the story. Copper lived at Sevenoaks in Kent and founded the Tunbridge Wells Vintage Film Society. He was a movie buff and a member of several societies related to films. His wife was French and he is clearly familiar with the county in which The Spider is set. Apparently the story idea came from a spider that was in a room in a hotel he and his wife stayed in while on holiday in Paris. He met his wife and married in her in 1960 when she was in England learning English.His first novel was actually a detective storyCopper was very prolific and in addition to his weird tales and novels he wrote 58 detective novels set in LA. When he wrote the first novels, he had never visited the city and used maps and films to provide background. He worked as a journalist, running a county paper at the age of 17. He served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and took part in the D-Day landings. Music byhttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (The Heartwood Institute)The final tune is by Michael Romeo of https://bit.ly/dvoykinbandcamp (Dvoynik)Support the Podcast Any Way You Can!http://bit.ly/ghostiest (Buy the thirsty, hyperactive podcaster a cup of Java)Sign up For Exclusive Stuff and Early Bird Exposures on http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon)Get the https://bit.ly/substacklanding (Substack Newsletter) with ExclusivesMy Ghost StoriesGet my free audiobook download, The Dalston Vampire https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (here), and you may consider purchasing my https://bit.ly/HorrorStoriesForHalloween (Horror Stories For Halloween), which is now long past.Support the show

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Music Hath Charms by LTC RoltLionel Thomas Caswall Rolt, was an English writer born in 1910 and who died in 1974, therefore for us, he's a recent writer! He was a prolific writer who had an interest in engineering and that shows in this story in his description of the tunnels and the knowledge of ventilation shafts which are integral to the plot of the story. In keeping with this love of engineering, he wrote biographies of major engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He had a major enthusiasm for vintage cars, heritage railways and was a pioneer of the canal cruising industry. From 1936, Rolt decided he wanted a life afloat and he converted his uncle's old boat Cressy into a boat he could live in and spent his time mooching up and down the canals of England.During the Second World War, he went to work for Rolls Royce and made Spitfire engines, the Royal Airforce's legendary fighter plan. After the war, Rolt teamed up with Robert Aickman, another major ghost story writer to form the Inland Waterways Association to promote the use of the canals and restore them. L T C or Tom Rolt was an accomplished author and an inland waterway enthusiast, and together with the another famous ghost story writer, Robert Aickman, and their wives, formed the Canal Restoration Trust which was responsible for bringing back the industrial waterway network of England and Wales back into service for leisure travel.When we know Rolt's love of machinery we understand the detailed description of how the musical box works in Music Hath Charms. I now know all about them. He also gives more detail than many would to about bus timetables.The story is set in wild Cornwall, which because of its remoteness and its Celtic past is a suitably remote setting for a ghost story. Cornwall has a history of smugglers and wreckers and this is the background to this story. We also see that another author who set her work in Cornwall, Daphne Du Maurier often used smugglers and indeed Frenchmen in her stories. La Pucelle means a maiden or a girl. This is of course a Faustian story. The smuggler, the Count Pierre Henneze de Hou. There is a French name Hennezel, and a De Hou, but no Henneze that I could find, so Tom Rolt may have miscopied the name. I suspect the title 'count' is a self-styling. I have often fancied called myself Count Tony Walker, but don't have the brass neck to get away with it.Carn Zawn doesn't exist, though the name is good Cornish. Carn is a heap of stones and Cornish 'sawan' means 'throat' and is used for a narrow inlet of the sea. Trevarthan is a real Cornish surname as well, arising from two separate places in West Cornwall. The only mistake Tom Rolt makes with his Celtic nomenclature is to have his housekeeper called Penrice. It sounds Cornish, but is in fact a Cumbrian surname arising from the place-name Penrith. Of course Cumbric and Cornish were closely related languages, so we can excuse him. Of course, it's also possible that the Penrices were Cumbrian immigrants to Cornwall. In fact, there were many Cornish who came to Cumbria to work in the mines, but not so-much the other way. This is proved by the fact there are two Cornish pasty shops in Keswick alone, but not a single Cumberland sausage shop in Truro, or Penzance.But back to the Devil. We presume that the shadowy creature in the engraving is Old Nick, gamboling and pranking. The Music Box conjures him. Count Pierre is presumed to have traded something, likely his soul as the De'il is found of those, for a life of opulence and the lusty company of La Pucelle, our Jeanne. She has a husky voice after all, surely a euphemism, or at lSupport the show

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The Story of Salome by Amelia B EdwardsWe did https://player.captivate.fm/episode/9913ad9b-e382-4acb-a42a-1000157a734c (The Phantom Coach )by Amelia B Edwards as Episode 8, which seems a long time ago now.That was a splendidly written story too. To remind ourselves:Amelia Edwards was born in 1831 in London, England. As such she is one of the oldest writers we’ve read so far in this podcast. She died aged only 60 in Weston Supermare, a seaside resort in the west of England.She came from a wealthy background and didn’t have to work, but she was a very successful writer based on her own talents. She was born in London to an Irish mother and a father who had been a British army officer before becoming a banker.She was in fact a very talented woman and had the potential to be a professional artist though her father, a banker, frowned on that as a career. She also made home with a woman, long before such things were accepted by polite British society.She was also an Egyptologist and after a cruise down the Nile and a long stay among the monuments, she devoted all of her efforts to saving the Egyptian monuments and took a lecture tour over several years in the United States to promote the cause.I found this Story of Salome in the https://amzn.to/3nfbbDJ (Virago Book of Ghost Stories)Edited by Richard Dalby. Richard Dalby had great taste in stories and there are lots of good ones in this anthology.You may, or may not, know that I have a fondness for Venice. I have read this Story of Salome, on the podcast as well as Ray Russell’s https://tonywalker.substack.com/p/s0202-vendetta-by-ray-russell (Vendetta) and Vernon Lee’s https://player.captivate.fm/episode/b2eed482-997c-4621-9f2a-42361174312f (A Wicked Voice).I have also written my own Christmas ghost story set in Venice which is available in my More Christmas Ghost Stories, soon to be out as an audiobook once Audible get their finger out. If you can’t wait for Audible, Audiobookstore has it https://audiobookstore.com/audiobooks/more-christmas-ghost-stories.aspx (here)The subject of the story is Salome, daughter of Isaac. She is Jewish and inevitably this throws up attitudes that make me uncomfortable. I do not think this is an anti Semitic story though it does have the theme of converting Salome to Christianity. It is of its period but better than many in its attitudes.I think it very well written and was easy to narrate without the tripping syntax of James or the excitable lists and adjectives of Dickens.Edwards performs the trick of portraying a main character who is reasonably convinced that the grave belongs to Salome’s aged father Isaac, rather that to her. In the end, when the truth is almost impossible to ignore she had a nice little run of him convincing himself that there must be another Salome, that his Salome can’t be dead. We’ve all been there, trying to kid ourselves that something isn’t true when we know fine well it must be.And the description of his flighty friend, Coventy Turnour, loving Salome followed by a disinterested account by our main character only to slowly reveal that he himself is infatuated with her. This is the same trick as him believing the grave is Salome’s fathers. We the readers and listeners know before he admits it to himself both that he loves Salome and that she is dead.And he finds her more beautiful as a ghost, though he doesn’t know it. He talks about her more spiritual beauty.One mystery is why Turnour left Venice. He lost hope in winning Salome quite suddenly, and left. She in her turn converted secretly to Christianity. It’s not explained why, but I wonder whether it was something to do with Turnour? DidSupport the show

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Richmal Crompton Richmal Crompton was born in Bury, Lancashire in 1890 and died in Bromley, Kent in 1969, aged 78. She was the daughter of a clergyman who though he was ordained worked as a teacher of Greek and Latin at Bury Grammar School. She was not born into the aristocratic world portrayed in this story.She was educated at a private school for the daughters of clergymen in Lancashire. She trained as a schoolteacher like her father and got a BA in Classics from the Royal Holloway College in 1914. She was a supporter of Women's Suffrage. She worked as a teacher until 1923 when she became a full-time writer. She never married and had no children.She contracted polio and had to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life.She had moved to Bromley in Kent, just outside London when she was twenty-seven to teach at the school there. She never left the area and her writing was so successful she had a house built for herself on the Common.She was a successful novelist and published forty one novels. Her most famous series of novels was for children and featured the comic figure of William, a rather feckless schoolboy. The first of these Just William was published in 1922. The stories are hilarious and were a great favourite of mine when I was a small boy.She wrote several ghost stories and these were published in 1928 as Mist and Other Stories.Rosalind by Richmal CromptonIn Rosalind, we are plunged once more into that Edwardian world of the leisured rich of England such as we see in the stories of E F Benson. However, the story is also about an artist and his model, such as we heard in The Yellow Sign. It's quite a different story to the Yellow Sign for all that.I think this is one of the best ghost stories we have ever read. The characterisation is very poignant. Our unnam med narrator paints such a picture of Heath as the bored, but talented rich boy to whom everything comes to easily and for whom everything is therefore shallow.He takes Helen, our man's beloved, with no thought. He doesn't even consider our narrator at all. It's not selfishness, it's blindness to the existence of other people. He falls in love with Rosalind but there is no question that an artist's model will every be a life match for the future Viscount of Evesham. It would have been easy for Crompton to suggest Rosalind wished this but she is subtle enough to have Rosalind accept it too. I guess that Rosalind is willing to accept being his mistress and mother of his illegitimate child.Heath is the selfish narcissist that he sees the pregnancy only as an interruption to his idyll. He is bad tempered about this, and we see him pleased that his child and Rosalind have died so as to put an end to the possibility that it will ruin his well-planned marriage to Helen.But Heath is sentimental too. Once he realises he's lost Helen, and is unfulfilled by his planned marriage, he starts to mope and goes over the top bringing down armfuls of orchids and roses in a sentimental but ironically cheap gesture.He is so sentimental that Rosalind gestures him to his death. We can look at this in several ways. First that this is Rosalind's revenge from beyond the grave and that her ghost has connived at this and timed it perfectly just before his wedding. We remember Rosalind's vow that se won't let Helen have him.Or, it might be seen as the workings of a greater Fate, in that Heath's marriage to Helen was untenable because it was in bad faith, and that it could not be allowed to go ahead.Presumably, Helen is going into this marriage with her eyes open. She knows what it will entail and is willing to take it on as a job in order to obtain the posSupport the show

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THE STORY OF A DISAPPEARANCE AND AN APPEARANCE by M R JamesThe Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance is one of the few M R James stories actually set at Christmas. He was well-known for reading out his stories at Christmas, but few of them are actually set over the festive period. It was first published the June 4, 1913 issue of the Cambridge Review. It then appeared in his anthology A Thin Ghost and Others in 1919. First of all some explanations of words which may be strange to some listeners. Bands are a kind of white tie worn by Anglican clergymen. A bagman is a commercial traveller, a salesman or pedlar. Clearly he'll be late home if he's still on the road on Christmas Eve. So what happened?It appears that Uncle Henry got murdered, his head bashed in and his corpse buried in the sandpit. My reading was that the two Punch & Judy men killed him. These two who were masquerading as Italians but who were English rogues really. The bagman told W R that he had not seen any suspicious characters on the road: no gipsies, tramps or wandering sailors. This all happened not long after the Napoleonic wars and out of work sailors and soldiers had to wander the countryside looking for a living. No Help for Heroes for them. The bagman did see a most wonderful Punch and Judy show. These travelling showmen or 'carnies' as such folk would later be called in the USA are inherently dubious, so it's no wonder that they would murder an innocent clergyman. It is heresy to say anything against the great M R James, but I would only observe that he throws a few 'portents' and 'omens' into the story that seem to have no real bearing on the narrative. They aren't clues or anything, unless I'm missing some subtlety. I mean the owl that wakes our man W R from sleep, the Toby Dog running off and howling, the organ wolving during the funeral and the odd ringing of the bell. These are all signs that something unnatural and eerie is afoot. There is also mention of the bier being put out by mistake and the moth-eaten pall taken out and having to be folded on Christmas Day. Most inappropriate, but they seem more what we would have called 'dungeon dressing' in my D&D days—something to create atmosphere that is not essential to the plot. But again, I may be missing something.The mention of the Toby Dog reminds me of Cole Hawkins and the Toby Dog in John Masefield's Box of Delights that I will be re-reading, or at least watching the 1980s BBC version this Christmas. Punch and Judy is a ghastly tale of murder played out for children and so it has its own horror lurking not far below the surface. It seems that the dead Uncle Henry came as visitation to the two murderous Punch & Judy chaps, like a proper vengeful ghost and cause the first to die of fright inside the Punch and Judy set-up, while the other runs to the sandpit, breaks his neck and reveals the resting place of Uncle Henry, up until now hidden. Mr Bowman the inn keeper seems only there for comic effects, and to show that Uncle Henry was rather serious and straight-laced. I think that M R James has put in the comic inn-keeper and the portents and omens to entertain the audience rather than to drive the narrative. W R also at one point alludes to a vague reason why he's writing everything out in longhand, but this is well before anything supernatural or even out of the ordinary occurs. Again, I can't help but suspect that this is just to gee-up the reader because it comes to not much.James has a way or inserting the jarringly weird into his stories, and it is this weirdness that really unsettles the reader. We have it in the flapping shirt and advancing figure in Support the show

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A Christmas Carol Part 4: The Spirit of Christmas Future & The End of ItThe Ghost of Christmas Future is the scariest of the ghosts. No jovial sprite he! He's just a heap of black cloak and a pointing hand. At the end, the spirit's hand quivers kindly, but he gives Scrooge no answers. Scrooge, even unanswered, intuits that he will be okay if he mends his ways. I thought that the first scene with the lowly char-folk and undertakers men and old Joe with his greasy fat and mouldy bones was a masterpiece of dialogue. The attitude of the working folk to Scrooge reveals tons about the man. It is this scene that breaks Scrooge even though he thinks it's some other skinflint that has met his end. Dickens withholds the information in a neat little device that we twig who the dead man is far sooner than Scrooge does. We are shouting out, 'Scrooge, it's you lying there you damn fool!' All the while as he wonders why he doesn't see himself. It's darned obvious. Then the last walk to the walled graveyard (and the fact it's walled adds something) to the graveside when we see from Scrooge's faltering steps that at last he realises what the name on the stone will be. The last section, the denouement with happy jokey Scrooge is a nice bit of comic Dickens that I enjoyed reading out. I enjoyed reading the scary bit of the Ghost of Christmas Future too.So that's that. A job well done, I thought, if only that it's done and nothing else. You see I am getting quite Dickensian in my ramblings!I promise you a bit of M R James for Christmas, but if I don't see you before, have a Merry Christmas or a happy Hanukkah. It's a bit late for Diwali, but may any Festival of Light you choose be truly marvellous. And for those of you who don't prefer light, your Festival of Darkness. Actually, I love the winter dark in its stillness and brooding. I love the dark and star-spangled winter skies. I've never seen the Northern Lights, though Sheila says she has. Me, I think it was Dumfries.MusicStart and Middle Music by The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (Listen on Bandcamp)End music is The Drowning by Dvoynik. Listen and download for https://bit.ly/dvoynikdrowning (free)Free Download Audiobook https://bit.ly/DalstonVampire (The Dalston Vampire)My New Collection of Christmas Ghost Storieshttps://amzn.to/3lViZKg (More Christmas Ghost Stories)The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast Newsletterhttps://bit.ly/substacklanding (On Substack)***If you'd like to show your appreciation for the Podcast, you can buy me a coffee!http://bit.ly/ghostiest (Ko-Fi)Support the show

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A Christmas Carol Part 3: The Spirit of Christmas PresentHe brought a tear to my eye and halt to my throat, did Old Dickens in this episode. I think he was a man of great humanity who genuinely did care for those who were not as well-off as he was.The only slight caution I had was Old Topper chasing The Plump Sister and getting her in a corner. We inevitably all view behaviour through the lens of our own time and of course this behaviour reminded me of the #MeToo. I certainly wouldn't want my daughters, mother or my partner cornered like this. But I read it out, because I must make some kind of editorial decisions about which stories I read out. Some, I suppose, I will choose not to read, and if I read them out, I won't abridge them.Except, I recall changing single offensive words that would just be a jolt to the reader. I suppose if the word is not used by the writer to be offensive... but that might be a cop out. It's all up for debate I know.But yes, this was a lovely episode. The descriptions are wonderful and lots of episodes are superfluous to the narrative, but great fun. The other observation is about the degree to which Dickens is reporting the Christmas festivities of his period or is actually encouraging them, and in measure therefore creating them. Were Christmasses as Christmassy as Dickens portrays them? Maybe not before, but certainly afterwards as we all began to emulate what we read and heard in this book, even if we didn't read it or hear it ourselves but only obtained it via the TV.Enjoy your plum pudding. More Christmas Ghost Stories Ebook & PaperbackOh, did I mention my https://amzn.to/3olobIJ (More Christmas Ghost Stories) it out? The paperback and ebook are done and the audiobook is being approved now. So you can get it if you want. The stories are good, and improved by the attention of my Beta Readers. I have had the most wonderful 5 star review. Thanks a million Emhack from Torquay for that. Also had a splendid and rather humbling review for the podcast from Sandra Quintal from Canda.Thanks also to my Substackers and Patreons for your ongoing support. Dracula soon, just for you. MusicThe opening music is Some Come Back by The https://bit.ly/somecomeback (Heartwood Institute). At the end I've added The Heartwood track: From The Forest, From The Furrows, From The Fields which is on their Secret Rites album. As I say in the episode, this is a canonical folk horror track.The last piece of music is from The Hare & The Moon and is called https://bit.ly/midnighfolk (The Midnight Folk). I talk about my love of John Masefield's book of that name. Of course the Midnight Folk was the sequel to The Box of Delights and that was made into BBC series which I think is enjoying its 36th anniversary this Christmas.Both Jonathan of The Heartwood Institute and Grey Malkin (ex Hare & The Moon) allow me to use their music free of charge, so if you fancy popping over to Bandcamp and getting some of their stuff, I (and I'm sure they) would be very pleased.Begging Bowlhttps://bit.ly/2GgHv9D (Sign Up For Exclusive Bonus Episodes and Get Episodes As Soon As I Make Them!)And/Or Buy A Thirsty Podcaster A https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Ko-Fi)And you could always https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (Download A Free Audiobook Of My Story The Dalston Vampire)Support the show

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Christmas Carol Part 2. The First Spirit.I am enjoying this story. It's a long time since I've read it, and I'd forgotten a lot of the detail. I do like Dickens's writing. His description of the Ghost of Christmas Past with its extinguisher (a candle-snuffer I think) and its sparkling belt.His description of the country lane they appear on on Christmas Day where young Scrooge is alone is wonderful.With all these stories that go over more than one episode there isn't much to say in the show notes. The only thing that occurred to me as I was driving along today is that writers today are told to cut things out—extraneous scenes and superfluous words must go! Dickens didn't work like that. He was paid by the word so he puts scenes in that the story could probably do without and still get its message along. I mean the scene with Fezziwig dancing and some of the others. When they make adaptations of the story, they cut out huge swathes.But it made me think that these scenes are a delight. It doesn't matter that they aren't essential to the story; they are fun. It's like telling a composer to cut out the extra bits that aren't essential to the story. Those pieces of music are what we listen for, and these extra scenes in A Christmas Carol are to the story, not take away from it.I shall make my stories three times as long.More Christmas Ghost Stories Ebook & PaperbackOh, did I mention my https://amzn.to/3olobIJ (More Christmas Ghost Stories) it out? The paperback and ebook are done and the audiobook is being approved now. So you can get it if you want. The stories are good, and improved by the attention of my Beta Readers.MusicThe opening music is Some Come Back by The Heartwood Institute. Check out their new release https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/ (Witchseason). Listen to it for many reasons but at least one of those should be to hear the insane comments in Witchphase 1.5 from the King of The Witches, Alex Sanders. Who knew he was so mad?The first track after my commentary is https://thehareandthemoon.bandcamp.com/track/the-haunted-cabaret (The Haunted Cabaret) by Kentin Jivek and The Hare and The Moon.The second is https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/track/circle-of-protection (Circle of Protection) by The Heartwood Institute. Begging Bowlhttps://bit.ly/2GgHv9D (Sign Up For Exclusive Bonus Episodes and Get Episodes As Soon As I Make Them!)And/Or Buy A Thirsty Podcaster A https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Ko-Fi)And you could always https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (Download A Free Audiobook Of My Story The Dalston Vampire)Support the show

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Music by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback