Classic Ghost Stories

Conrad AikenConrad Aiken was an American poet and author born in Savannah, Georgia in 1889 and died in Savannah in 1973 aged 84.His family were wealthy, originally from New England, but his father was an eye surgeon who moved to Savannah. Most bizarrely and disturbingly, Aiken’s father murdered Aiken’s mother and shot himself in 1901. Aiken was 11 at the time. He heard the shots and ran through to find the bodies. Aiken then went to live with his great aunt in Massachusetts. He went to Harvard where he became a life-long friend of the poet T S Eliot.Aiken was deeply interested in philosophy and was taught by George Santayana. This influenced his poetry as did his admiration for the work of Walt Whitman. Aiken was also heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and was due to go and meet him but never did, because he had second thoughts and money was running short.Aiken was a prolific writer and very influential in literary circles. It was his influence which led to to the recognition of Emily Dickinson as a great poet.Aiken moved to England with his Canadian wife and had three children there in Sussex. His daughter Joan became a well-known writer of children’s stories, including the famous Wolves of Willoughby Chase.Aiken was divorced in 1929 and then he returned to America. He suffered from nervous problems and was terribly frightened he was going mad. He attempted suicide at least once. Mr ArcularisConrad Aiken published Mr Arcularis in 1931. It was selected by the Library of America for inclusion in a two hundred year retrospective volume of American fantastic tales. Mr Arcularis is a strangely disquieting story. Not quite a ghost story, because he isn’t dead but dreaming until the end. The narrative becomes more dreamlike as it goes on and is threaded with the fantastic.The unsettling oddness has something of Robert Aickman’s stories to it. It’s not a moral story either. I suppose, to me it’s a curiosity — very well put together. And, on reflection if all art is to make us feel something and that is its main purpose - to work in us at the level of feelings rather than thought, then it certainly works. The description of journeys among distant frosty stars is very beautiful. It actually reminds me of when I was much younger and had some teeth out under general anaesthetic. In those days it was done by gas with a rubber mask clamped on my mouth while I struggled by the dentist. I had weird dreams that morphed in and out of reality and featured hints that I was having teeth out. This story reminds me of that rather unpleasant experience.It’s hard to know what Conrad Aiken meant by calling his protagonist Mr Arcularis. I’s not a common name. An arcularius in Latin is a maker of small chests, boxes and jewel caskets. Is Aiken alluding to this? Or is it merely because, as Mr Acularis says, his name rhymes with Polaris. Polaris the North Star, where the dead go.The first hint we get that everything is not what it seems, to me at least, is when Harry has put him on board and is about to leave and says for Arcularis to bring him a sprig of edelweiss and a postcard from the Absolute. That may make our minds cast themselves back to when he is in the car and he misses big stretches of the journey, quite plausibly by falling asleep, but certainly the story begins to acquire a more dreamlike quality from here on in.The action jumps from him being cold in his cabin to sitting opposite the freckled girl whom he recalls but can’t think who she reminds him of. Later, he feels she may be his soul — which makes me think of the Jungian concept of the Anima.The Parson, the Doctor and the Freckle-Faced woman seem alSupport the show

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Howard Phillips LovecraftHP Lovecraft was perhaps the most influential writer of horror and weird tales of his generation. That may not have been evident during his life or even for a while after his death, but his work continues to be made into movies The Colour Out of Space was recently released, starring Nicholas Cage which is a based on Lovecraft’s weird tale of the same name.Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island and died in the same city in 1937 aged only 46 of untreated stomach cancer.His family was originally wealthy but the fortune was tied to his grandfather and after his death, the money dried up. He was almost a pauper at the time of his death.Lovecraft’s father was a travelling salesman but it appears that his mother’s family had the money , In 1913 he began to get involved in pulp fiction and most of his stories were published in pulp magazines. He was a mentor to younger writers and perhaps the thing which ensured his later fame was his encouraging of other writers to develop his Mythos. It appears that Lovecraft suffered from mental illness during most of his life, most probably depression. Lovecraft was very conservative and an Anglophile in his writing. He did not like Americanisms and he uses some deliberately British stylings in his writing.The HoundThe Hound is Lovecraft’s most clearly Gothic tale, and that’s saying something. When he talks of his hero’s taste for the macabre, we can’t help but feel that Lovecraft is speaking through him. The Hound is like a story by Edgar Allen Poe channeled through Lovecraft’s pen. He never uses a normal word when he can use an outlandish one, and where one adjective would do, he piles on three or four and makes sure they are outlandish and obscure. This makes his style relatively easy to parody with its unspeakable cults and squamous monstrosities not to mention countless eldritch blasphemies on every page.The story is pretty simple. It concerns two post Baudelaire decadents going grave robbing for kicks. As often happens in Lovecraft’s stories they find an ancient arcane item (a McGuffin in screenwriting terms) and as is often the case it is made of jade. Somehow them moving the token gets the hound to haunt them all the way back to their horrible house in England and when our man ventures back to Holland to put it back (though it is robbed from him before he can do so), there he finds the monstrous hound waiting for him. Or at least that is the sense I made of it, with the addition of a good number of oversized vampire bats for good measure.In any case, a fun gothic romp, overdone and vulgar no doubt, but great fun to read out.Darkworlds ParisIf you like Lovecraft, you may like my new story [Darkworlds Paris] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084WW6LSK (Amazon.com: Darkworlds Paris: A Cthulhu LitRPG eBook: Tony Walker: Kindle Store)``) The story is the second book in the Darkworlds Series: Lovecraftian Horror set in a virtual reality computer game. The Great Old Ones are stirring, and they’re inside your head!Call to Action!This week, because of the success of the previous Call to Action, we are growing, fast and the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast is getting 12000 downloads a month. This is fantastic, but it trips us into the next cost category for Podcast Hosting. As this is a big leap up, if you would like the Podcast to keep going, and if you are able and willing, I would like to ask you to consider becoming a monthly http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon.)Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!)   http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (BSupport the show

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Piper at the Gates of Dawnby Kenneth Grahame.

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast is still producing its weekly episode of classic ghost stories - don't worry about that!

However, given the current climate and concerns about Coronavirus, I thought it would be nice to read a story with a bit of magic and wonder to it. 

As such I chose Chapter 7 of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows which tells the story of the little animals that mess about in boats on the big river. 

In this episode our small heroes row down the river on a moonlit night to meet the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, who is none other than the Great God Pan.

Summoned by his pan-pipes, the animals bow down and worship the wonderful, awesome, smiling lord of nature, and I hope that can remind us that the sun still rises, the birds still sing and the flowers bloom like madness in the spring.

Take care.

More horror next week.

Tony.

William Somerset MaughamW. Somerset Maugham was born in 1873 in Paris and died in Nice in 1965, was despite his brith and death places, English.He was a fantastically successful writer, being the highest paid author of the 1930s. His parents died when Maugham was only 10 and he was brought up by his uncle, a clergyman, and sent to King’s School, Canterbury. Many men in his family were lawyers, including his elder brother who was a viscount, but Maugham didn’t want that. He hated his school in Canterbury and finally his uncle let him to go to study German literature at the University at Heidelberg, after which he went to St Thomas’s hospital in London where he trained as a doctor, and qualified as one in 1897. He specialised in obstetrics and used his work experience to inspire his first novel, Liza of Lambeth. After that he worked as a novelist and playwright and travelled through Spain and Italy.Maugham, like many of the writers we read out, was gay. He was married to a woman but this was unhappy and after it broke down he lived in France with his male partner. His writing made him famous by the outbreak of the First World War.During the First World War he worked for the Red Cross and the Ambulance Corps before being recruited by MI6. He had missions in Switzerland and Russia for British Intelligence but when the war was finished he went back to his globe-trotting lifestyle until 1928 when he bought a villa in the South of France and stayed there until his death. The TaipanA Tai-Pan is a Cantonese word for a leader of a Western Trading Company that operated in China in the 19th Century. The Taipan who is the main character of the story is not a very sympathetic chap and I didn’t feel myself warming to him much.The story is set in the days of the British Empire among a colony of ex-pats who spend their time drinking, playing bridge, having affairs and racing horses. As well as being contemptuous of the people they are among.The Taipan is self-satisfied, sociopathic, adulterous, alcoholic, snobbish and racist and ultimately riddled with anxiety. In a short story, we see the fall of a man from the pinnacle of arrogance to become a trembling wreck. It is a nice moral tale of the mighty being humbled by their own faults. He gets what he deserves.My New BookI’ve got a Cthulhu LitRPG horror novel coming out! If you don’t know that that is go look it up at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084WW6LSK (Amazon)That’s book 2 in the series mind you. Darkworlds Paris. Book one is imaginatively named Darkworlds London. Book 3 was going to be Darkworlds Salem but I need to get my hero across the Atlantic on The Queen Mary in 1927, so book 3 will have to be Darkworlds Atlantic!If you like a bit of Lovecraft horror science fiction cyberpunk Call of Cthulhu then it’s for you!Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!)   http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee)  to help with the long nights editing!Become a  http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon)  to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Website http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast)  MusicBeginning music ‘_Some Come Back’_ is by the marvellous  https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute) . The end music is by 'MYUU Bad Encounter'Support the show

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Richard Henry MaldenR H Malden was born in 1879 in England and died in August 1951. He was brought up in East Anglia. He was educated at Eton and King’s College Cambridge and was a long-standing friend of M R James.He spent his career as a churchman, working across England from Salford to Cambridge then Leeds and Ripon and then Wells in Somerset. He married a Yorkshirewoman, the daughter of a clergyman. He was president of the Somerset Archeological Society. It is said he was a well-known sight in Wells as he wandered round in his top hat and from coat. He wrote a good deal and most of his works are on Christian themes, but he did publish a book of ghost stories in 1943: Nine Ghosts.. This book was written as a tribute to his friend M R James who had died in 1936. Malden was one of the circle of the chosen at Cambridge who heard M R James read his stories on Christmas Eve.Because of his connection to M R James, he is often compared with the great man. M R James is probably one of the best writers of ghost stories so the comparison is perhaps unfair, but Malden’s stories are certainly reasonable examples of their genre.Between Sunset and MoonriseBetween Sunset and Moonrise has certain folk horror themes. We have a remote country area where things go on far from the eye of civilisation. The remoteness and backwardness of the area are emphasised by the droves or poor roads that go out to remote, poorly-maintained cottages. There is even a boy who is what they called simple then and he can see supernatural things that others can’t.In fact that very motif was used in the 2019 folk horror movie Midsommar where the boy with the congenital defects interprets the sayings of the gods by drawing rudimentary pictures that the scholars of the tribe need to interpret.Malden was a churchman and his hero is also a clergyman. He goes in duty, on New Year’s Eve to see a woman whom he doesn’t really like and to his surprise sees her reading an obscure part of the Bible that deals with the story of the devil Asmodeus. Whether we are to think that Mrs Vries has entered into some kind of pact with an evil creature, I’m not sure, but the witness boy says that the mysterious ‘they’ had been out to get Mrs Vries. Perhaps because she was an outsider?Most if not all of James’s monsters are not exactly Satanic, whereas this one has more of the character of an adversary of the church, something from the dark books of the Bible. In fact, England is full of these strange spirits that haunt lonely roads and byways. Where I live they are called boggles and can assume all sorts of terrible shapes and shift between them. Call to Action!This week, because of the success of the previous Call to Action, we are growing, fast and the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast is getting 12000 downloads a month. This is fantastic, but it trips us into the next cost category for Podcast Hosting. As this is a big leap up, if you would like the Podcast to keep going, and if you are able and willing, I would like to ask you to consider becoming a monthly http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon.)Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!)   http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee)  to help with the long nights editing!Become a  http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon)  to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Website http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast)  MusicBeginning music ‘Some Come Back’ is by the marvellous  https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood InstiSupport the show

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Vernon LeeDespite sounding so masculine, Vernon Lee was actually a woman called Violet Paget, born in France in 1856 and died in Italy in 1935. Despite these location she identified as English. Her biographer Vineta Colby says that Lee was English by nationality, French by an accident of birth and Italian by choice.As well as the ghost stories for which she is most famous, Vernon Lee, was an essayist who wrote about travel and art and especially aesthetics. Her parents were globe-trotting, or at least Europe-trotting intellectuals and in 1873, when Vernon or Violet was 17, they settled in Florence Italy. She stayed living in the vicinity of Florence until her death in 1935.Violet published her first collection of essays when she was 24. These dealt with Italian writers and dramatists and she later wrote on William Shakespeare and Renaissance Italy. She made fun of English artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites in her 1884 novel Mrs Brown.Politically, she was a convinced pacificst. She published under a masculine name because she feared that as a woman her writing would not be taken seriously. She was a feminist and mostly dressed as a man. Though she didn’t come out, she did have crushes on women and was probably Lesbian. She suffered from health anxiety.She also fell out with other writers by making fun of them in her work; notably Henry James and Edith Wharton.Henry James wrote to his equally talented brother William warning him about Vernon Lee: the most able mind in Florence, ‘as dangerous and uncanny as she is intelligent.’A Wicked VoiceI had wanted an Italian based ghost story to continue the theme of stories set on the continent of Europe. There was not much choice! Of course there is Don’t Look Now, by Daphne Du Maurier, which I read myself but which is in copyright still and so reading it out would count as a breach. As the Podcast goes on from strength to strength, I may look into whether I would be given permission to read out stories that are in copyright still, such as I did with Along the Old Track by Sam Hicks.I read A Wicked Voice three times. By the end, I quite liked it. It’s obvious that Vernon Lee is interested in aesthetics as we have all that moonlight and blue mist and Venice languishing like a lily and the scent of the white flowers that remind the narrator of peaches. Not to mention the threshing at the farms in Mistra and the lights and music in the old cathedral at Padua!Basically the story, with all that cut out, is quite simple. I’m not sure it needs the frame at the beginning and end either; first of the narrator looking back and beginning to tell and then at the end telling of his possibly recovery.Zaffarino, to give him his nickname, has a ring with cabalistic signs. An allusion to Tartini doing a deal with the Devil to make powerful music is mentioned and so we must guess that Zaffarino has been given the power to make women love him in his music, and also the power to kill, by Old Nick himself.Though Zaffarino is described as beautiful, he is often also referred to as effeminate. I am guessing he may be a castrato? What else did he give up for his art? So the story follows the narrator who is haunted by the scent of white flowers and Zaffarino’s ghostly voice. As promised, the voice makes him fall in love with it, and it almost kills him. But not quite. I’m not sure why not? Because he interrupted the final cadenza by bursting into the haunted room perhaps?Ghost Stories in a Haunted CastleCome along to Dalston Hall, Carlisle in March to hear me read ghost stories, get a tour of the ghosts, have dinner, and even stay overnight in a haunted room!https://wwSupport the show

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Oliver OnionsOliver Onions was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England in 1873 and died in Aberystwyth in Wales in 1961, His father was a bank cashier. When he was a young man he was an amateur boxer. He didn’t like the surname Onions and changed it legally to George Oliver but still published his stories under the name Oliver Onions. Onions is in fact a Welsh name, being from the Welsh Ab Einion.Onions trained as an artist and worked as an illustrator. His most famous ghost story is The Beckoning Fair One. He is reckoned as one of the best writers of ghost stories. He has a very conversational lyrical style and the characters in his story come out via the tone of their voice.The Cigarette Case is a neat little story with a lovely twist in the end. We probably guess what’s going to happen, but it’s very well done.I particularly like Loder’s asides to other members of the circle, such as Marsham the romantic and Smith the sceptic.I was reminded by this story of An Adventure which is the reportedly true tale of two English ladies having a time slip experience in France at the Paris of Versailles in the early 20th Century.The Cigarette Case was published in 1911 in the collection Widdershins and I believe An Ad venture was published in 1910, so it is not impossible that the tale of two English ladies in France who mysteriously disappear was inspired by An Adventure.I’ll put a link tohttps://amzn.to/38vtWMB (An Adventure here)Ghost Stories in a Haunted CastleCome along to Dalston Hall, Carlisle in March to hear me read ghost stories, get a tour of the ghosts, have dinner, and even stay overnight in a haunted room!https://www.facebook.com/events/178095676767514/ (Check it out on Facebook)Call To Action!If you can recommend verbally or send a link to the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast to one friend or acquaintance who might like it, that could double our listeners every week!I’d be very grateful to you for that.Thank you to our Patreons!Thank you for their pledges to:Donna ConstanzaEmmaSandra VailKate UnwinMargaretSandra VailValerie SawyerYour support means a lot!Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show:https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!) http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee) to help with the long nights editing!Become a http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon) to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Website http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast) MusicBeginning music is Some Come Back by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute) and end sequence is Bad Encounter by MyuuSupport the show

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The Horla by Guy de MaupassantWelcome to Episode 35 of the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast!What would really help me would be if you could think of one friend or acquaintance who would enjoy the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast and share it with them! If every listener is helpful enough to do this for me, then we would double the podcast every week!Imagine that!The StoryToday’s story is a famous French short-story by a prolific and highly regarded author: Guy de Maupassant. In fact, he was known as the father of the short story!Guy de MaupassantDe Maupassant was a famous French short-story writer born in France in 1850, who died aged only 42 in 1893 in Paris. He is buried in Montparnasse cemetery.De Maupassant was considered a master of the short story form and his first story, set in the Franco-Prussian War Boule de Suif (A Ball of Suiet) was published in 1880 and is a great story. You may not know that the use of ‘de’ in front of the name (like von in German) indicates noble birth and De Maupassant’s mother urged his father to secure the right, from an ancestor, to so style himself.De Maupassant’s father was violent to his mother and the young lad was witness to this. His mother had the courage and support to separate from his father because of the violence and De Maupassant and his brother went with her. As this was the 1850s or so, this was very rare and very brave of his mother.At school, De Maupassant became friends with Gustave Flaubert. And he saved the life of the English poet Algenon Swinborne from drowning.As a profession, he was a newspaper editor and wrote fiction in his spare time. The HorlaThe Horla was first published in 1887, and is set in 1867 near Rouen in Normandy, France. The narrator is obviously a gentleman — a man of leisure who comes to believe that he is haunted by a monster, which later reveals its name as ‘The Horla.’ This is a nonsense word pronounced in French without the H- (so why then include it, monsieur de Maupassant?) but which I have chosen to pronounce in English with an h.De Maupassant was said to suffer from a mental illness and I recognise the symptoms of anxiety he describes at the beginning but which has become so advanced so that it develops psychotic features — in this case the delusion of the invisible being. There are clear paranoid elements, in that he believes the Horla is a superior being come to replace mankind. There is an example of the secondary rationality that you see in psychosis, where after the clearly irrational primary psychotic insight, in this case that he is possessed by the Horla, then rationality kicks in to explain how this could be so. In his case, he links it to a weird psychic vampire epidemic in Brazil and deduces he was infected when he saluted the Brazilian ship that went by on the Thames, before which he was fine. The power of the the Horla is the same domination of will shown by Dr Parent who hyptonises his cousin Madam de Sable.It all makes perfect sense, but of course is delusional.He shows relatively little remorse for burning his servants alive, I must say, though it wouldn’t be out of the way in many cases of paranoid psychosis that he believed them in on it. Though in this story they clearly aren’t.So, the Horla probably draws on De Maupassant’s real experiences of being mentally ill, but fictionalised. It is possibly this reality that makes the story quite unnerving. I remember being very disturbed by it when I read it first in my teens.MesmerismMesmerism or Animal Magnetism was brought to public attention in the 18th Century by the German doctor Franz Mesmer. It was a fairly weird theory of magnetic fluid, but I’mSupport the show

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Aleksandr PushkinAleksandr Sergeyeviçh Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist. He was born in 1799 in Moscow and died aged on 37 in St Petersburg. Hie was fatally wounded on a duel fought with his brother in law, a soldier who had attempted to seduce Pushkin’s wife.Pushkin’ great-grandfather was African, kidnapped from Africa, probably Cameroon, by the Turks and taken to Russia where he became the favourite of Peter the Great and rose to be a famous military engineer.Pushkin is rightly considered to be one of the greats of Russian literature and he was massively talented. He was a supporter of greater political freedom and so came under the surveillance of the Russian Tsar’s secret police, leading to his exile.The Queen of Spades story is very well written and there seems no superfluous detail or incident. The first scene of the gamblers sets up the story and Herman, who Pushkin leaves in the background while the story of the mystical St Germain and his grandmother’s magic secret of winning at cards is discussed. We realise, that though Herman is strangely quiet during this sequence it is because he is taking it all in. Herman begins to stalk the Countess and his sly plot is to get at her by the seduction of her young companion Lisa. Herman is so sly that he persists against Lisa’s initial refusal and Pushkin comments wryly that Herman knows the female heart. Be persistent, boys, is the message, and you will win her round. Many legal cases of stalking and harassment have begun with this mentality, of course.There is nothing admirable about Herman at all, which is important because we as readers know right from wrong and we want the villain to get his just rewards.I have a memory that some versions of the Queen of Spades have her winking, and so her wink, which might otherwise be comic, is sinister here.I also wonder who commands the grandmother to give the secrets of the cards to Herman against her will from beyond the grave? Is the ghost just saying this, or is she in league with another mysterious supernatural power who both want to see the scoundrel punished?Finally, it is the Queen of Spades, who must represent the spectral countess, that brings him down, winking as she does so.The Count de St GermainThe Count of St Germain was a real historical figure who lived in the 18th Century. One story claims he was the son of a prince of Transylvania. The Count was educated in Italy by the Medicis. Later in the 19th Century it was said that the Count was of Jewish origin, born in Alsace by the Rhine. He was a bit of a trickster and used many names. He is one of the late alchemists, but like them claimed to have discovered the Elixir of Life, or the Philosopher’s Stone, the goal of alchemy and claimed to have lived for five hundred years. Tales of his skill at magic abounded and so Pushkin incorporates him into his story.A later rumour has him arrested as a Jacobite spy in 1749 in London, just after the. Highland Rebellion for all you fans of Outlander. Later he appeared at the French court of Louis XV. Later still, he appeared in Holland during the Seven Years War.A man of mystery indeed: a man who knows secrets!FaroFaro also known as Pharaoh is a card game of French origin that generally was played for money rather than pure fun. It was popular in the 1800s, but gradually Poker became the favoured game for gamblers. Faro was popular among gamblers because it was easy to learn and gave good odds for gamblers. However, it was easily rigged by the gambling houses and caused a great deal of hardship and loss.The banker has an entire deck of cards and the players, known as punters. The Support the show

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Bram StokerBram Stoker was an Irish author born in 1847 in Dublin. Stoker is probably the best known horror writer in the world (after Steven King!) and is famous for his fantastically best-selling novel Dracula. Interestingly, Stoker spent his first years in bed, stricken by an unknown illness , and then he went to school even becoming an athlete there!After school he got his Bachelor of Arts degree at Trinity College and then got a Master of Arts in 1875. Stoker’s early career was in the Irish Civil Service but on the side became the theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, which was partly owned by Sheridan le Fanu, another Irish author of ghost stories who we have featured on the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. Stoker also knew fellow Irish author Oscar Wilde. I guess Dublin was a small town in those days, especially in literary circles.In 1876, he became acquainted with the forceful English actor, Henry Irving after he wrote a nice review of Irving’s performance (Hint. You never know what good will come from nice reviews!)Stoker became Irving’s manager and followed him around Britain, which entailed a stay at Whitby (a place I love, and was last at just before Christmas) in 1880. Of course this is where Dracula comes ashore. Stoker died aged 64 in London.Though he is most famous for Dracula, Stoker obviously wrote other stories. This one, Dracula’s guest, which was later published as a short story was intended as the first chapter of the novel Dracula. In it, we have our nameless hero setting off on a day trip from Munich on Walpurgis Nacht. At the end, we realise that this young man is to be the guest of Dracula who writes from Bistritz in Transylvania.The hero of this story is obviously Jonathan Harker and Stoker’s publisher obviously saw no need for the first chapter in Munich, so Dracula begins in Bistritz.The style is very similar to Dracula. The hero does what all heroes in horror stories do, he goes somewhere he shouldn’t. Stoker paints a picture of Central Europe hooching with vampires. Young Mr Harker wanders into the tomb of the vampire countess from Styria (interestingly where Le Fanu (whom Stoker knew) set his story Carmilla — see previous episodes of this podcast. He is pulled out of the tomb by a might grasp, presumably Dracula’s and Dracula presumably blasts the poor vampire countess in her marble tomb with lightning, then sits on him, in the form of a wolf, keeping him warm in the icy cold. It’s a long way from Transylvania to Munich, but as Stoker reminds us: The Dead Travel Fast.MusicMusic is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Download Charles Dickens The Signalman Free Mp3 https://bit.ly/dickenssignalman (Subscribe to our list and keep in touch with the podcast. Learn of new episodes and bonus Content. )Support our work PLUS you get a free story right now!(The Story Link is in the Thank You Email)Show Your Support With A Coffee!https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Buy the thirsty podcaster a coffee...)Final Request: The SurveyI want to know what you want. If you have three minutes, I'd be grateful to know what you think of The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast.https://my.captivate.fm/Click%20here%20to%20go%20to%20the%20Survey (Click here to go to the Survey)Support the show

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