Classic Ghost Stories

There’s something quite Dickensian about this story. A man is shown his fate by a friendly ghost in a pub over a whisky soda or two. It transpires that he has not yet died, though he is on the cusp of it. For one thing he has considered suicide. But the ghosts Ralph Bain and the Canon don’t bother showing him the mistakes of his life, instead they engage him him metaphysical discussion.I don’t know enough of Kirk’s writing to know where he stood on Christian dogma. By instinct he was a Catholic and spiritual so he definitely believed in a spiritual dimension and from this story we might guess that at the very least he had a hope of an afterlife.There is something reminiscent of Henri Bergson, the French philosopher’s ideas on time and duration. Timeless moments!It is quite comforting to think that we can go back to that cosy pub on Christmas Eve and listen to the church bells peal in as they have done on that night since time out of mind. And we drink our whisky sodas and enjoy a wonderful sense of conviviality. Of course I’d be drinking IPA.The Canon tells Finlay that this eternal moment in the Cross Keys pub (I wonder whether he chose the Cross Keys as the name because crossed keys are associated with the church?) is a sign that he may experience grace in death.But the story has a moral purpose. The message, like Dickens’s message to Scrooge is, I think, don’t give up on life. Keep on going while you have it because things that appear not to be worthwhile can turn out to be rewarding with a little persistence and effort.Something might be accomplished however, given will, given spirit, given grace!A bit like this Podcast maybe!At the end Finlay has his choice sleep in the restful bed for eternity or struggle through the cold night in the hope, but not certainty, that he will accomplish something and not let his wife suffer alone.I think I know which choice we’d all make.Anyway, enough of that. More Christmas Stories to come before Christmas.https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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Christmas Eve on a haunted hulk by Frank CowperFrank Cowper  was born in 1849 and died in 1930. He was an English yachtsman primarily famous for his pioneering work in developing the whole business of modern cruising. He was primarily a sailor but gained fame with his book /Sailing Tours/ which described his voyages in his yachts.He clearly also was an accomplished writer  as we see it in this story /Christmas Eve on A Haunted Hulk/ has a very realistic style. The vividness of the description of his foray  through the marshes shows he was very familiar with this kind of terrain. One incidental gem of this story is the picture he gives of the provincial life of educated gentlefolk amongst the Victorian peasantry. I have no doubt that this was drawn from Frank Cowper’s actual experience. I suspect that the being stuck under his bed after falling out in the night is also an actual incident from his life.I read this particular story as part of my series of Christmas themed ghost stories leading up to Christmas this year. I have done /The Snow/ by Hugh Walpole and I anticipate doing a couple more Christmas stories before tackling Charles Dickens is /A Christmas Carol/. However there is many a slip twixt cup and lip and it may be that I do not get round to reading a Christmas Carol as I have rather a busy schedule between now and the winter festival itself.I am sitting alone here editing this audio file and trying to get it done before bed. I hope then you will forgive that I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about this story.In some ways it has elements similar to last week’s story /The Kitbag/ by Algernon Blackwood. In both tales, we have the sensory description of something going on that frightens yet does not actually touch the protagonist. Frank Cowper’s description of the cold and damp of the abandoned hulk was very convincing. The only other point I want to make is that it is not particularly Christmassy in tone. For one thing there is no snow! However this dreary cold rainy weather is far more characteristic of an English Christmas than the picture postcard snowman and Santa Claus we would like to believe in.Many things have happened since I last spoke to you however we now have a website. Please check it out. http://www.classicghoststories.com (Www.classicghoststories.com)As always, I beg you to share, rate and love the podcast. Let us grow strong!https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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Algernon BlackwoodAlgernon Blackwood was an English writer born in 1869 who ended up as a broadcaster on the radio and TV. His writing was very well received at this time and critics loved him. Even the great American author of weird tales HP Lovecraft cited Blackwood is one of the masters of the craft.Blackwood came from a well-to-do family and was privately educated despite that he was quite an adventurous man. He was interested in Hinduism as a young boy and his career was varied. For example, he ran a dairy farm in Canada and also hotel in the country. It became a newspaper reporter in New York City and was also a bartender and a model and also a violin teacher!All of this time, though he was always writing. He liked being outdoors and his stories often feature the outdoors. He was also interested in the occult and was a member of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn along with such other characters is Arthur Machen and WB Yeats and Alisteir Crowley.I chose this story The Kitbag because it fitted in with the Christmas period we are approaching but the kitbag is not Blackwoods most famous story. His two most famous stories are The Willows which features a trip down the River Danube in central Europe and The Wendigo which is set obviously in North America.The Kitbag is a simple story in terms of its structure. In this case rather than the protagonist being the victim of his own wickedness as is often the case in horror stories Johnson here is a complete innocent. His only crime is to have partaken in the trial of a notorious murderer. Blackwood portrays Johnson as a likeable if somewhat naive chap who has been shocked by the horrible things he has heard. He has a good relationship with his boss whom he asks to lend him his kitbag when he plans a very innocent and refreshing Christmas break in the Alps skiing in the bright frosty air and dancing with red cheeked girls in the apres-ski.By an unfortunate error Johnson’s boss has sent the wrong kitbag and instead of the fine new one, he is given the exhibit that the murderer cut up the victim and stuffed them into. Johnson ends up with this stained monstrosity, which he only seems to find dirty and odd after he has long packed his socks and skates. It seems that the spirit of the murderer comes with the kitbag. We find out at the end that the supernatural happenings only occurred after the murderer. unbeknownst to Johnson, killed himself.The story is very simple but what Blackwood does very well is ratchet up the mounting tension of the old monster in the house scenario. We hear, and we become aware that something threatening is there but we never quite get a glimpse of it until the very end.The great ghost writer MR James ,who was also an admirer of Algernon Blackwood, talked about the importance of subtlety in ghost stories. James is very much against being too blatant and showing too much. I think we see this still in modern horror stories and I'm aware that the movie alien use this to great effect at the beginning and a different part of that movie series where by the monstrous alien is suspected and heard but not directly seen. I recently watched a film called The Ritual set in a forest in Norway and again until quite late in the film we went we didn’t see the monster. When the monster is just in your imagination it is far more terrifying than when it is portrayed on the screen.That’s it for this week. More Christmas ghosts to come.https://tonywalker.substack.com/ (Sign up to Our Blog For Free Stuff PLUS Exclusive Episodes for $5 Subscribers)Support the show

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Hugh Walpole was an English novelist born in New Zealand in 1884 and died in June 1941. His father was a clergyman and he was intended originally for a career as a clergyman but he  preferred writing and wrote his first novel in 1909. He was a prolific writer and wrote a novel a year. In common with many writers of ghost stories he was actually gay. He ended up living in the English Lake District not far from where I am now. And I often drive by his house. I have a particular tradition of driving on that side of the lake on New Year's Eve and looking down at the Christmas lights from the heights. The house certainly has a wonderful view and I would quite like to live there though I could never afford it. He ended up living with a policeman at the time when such things were illegal in England.Reading The Snow particularly after reading a number of Victorian novels, I found the style refreshingly modern and so it was actually quite easy to read. It presents a snapshot of upper-class English life in the provinces. Walpole  settled in Cumberland and though he gives his Cathedral town a made up name I can't help but see the Cathedral precincts of Carlisle Cathedral when he's describing the scene.Alice Ryder seems a vain, selfish, cruel woman, and certainly the first time I read the story, I thought she got her just deserts. But then when editing the audio, I came to the part where she speculates that the ghost of Elinor might in fact be there hovering about, and causing her to lose her temper with Herbert. And then I gained a little sympathy for her.Then again, the ghost warns her not to lose her temper with Herbert because if she does, it will be for the last time.  And what do you know - she goes on and loses her temper. Herbert maintains his quiet dignity and is rather a sympathetic character.  Though Alice Ryder is portrayed as quite the bitch, the first Mrs Ryder was no saint either. Herbert tells Alice that his first wife Elinor would never let go and though she adored him, he hinted that her tenacious fidelity was a bit overbearing.So which of the Mrs Ryders is the real villain here? Is it the young, vain, bitchy Mrs Ryder or the controlling unforgiving elder one?This week’s story was quite short compared with usual and recent ones but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I have been very busy in my life and I know that this week coming up I will be in London for three days so I wanted to get this in the can. One of the things we're going to do when we are there In London is to see the adaptation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Stories_(play) (Ghost Stories )which is supposed to be very scary and is the talk of the West End. I'm not sure it has been to Broadway but I'm sure it has. It premiered in Liverpool.So that's it for this week remember the music is by the heart Institute and I'll put a link to that just below. You can buy me a coffee to the coffee app or you could just write and like the podcast on Apple podcast or stitcher or which ever podcast server you use.Go listen to music by http://bit.ly/2OvcmPO (Heartwood Institute)You could by me a http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Kofi)We also have some merch now!https://ebay.to/2XD0wYh (A mug!)http://bit.ly/2XD11l0 (Two T-shirts)Or you can rate, review and share the Podcast!Ta.Tata for NowTonyhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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This story was written by Elizabeth Gaskell. Elizabeth Gaskell was born in 1810 in London and died aged  only 55 in 1865 in Hampshire. She was an accomplished novelist and with many successful novels in her time, but we are most interested in her ghost stories.She is one of the earliest writers that we have featured and I think you can tell that in the writing which seems a little archaic at times. An Old Nurse’s Story was published in 1852 and it is part of the Victorian tradition of Christmas ghost stories where the family would sit around the fire by candlelight and listen to ghost stories at Christmas. I think that is quite a delightful tradition and one that I would like to bring back.The Old Nurse’s Story features a lot of the Gothic tropes that we are familiar with. We have the castle or the grand old house which is so big and part of it uninhabited. It is set in a remote area. We've seen that Bram Stoker uses Transylvania while Joseph Le Fanu uses Styria in Austria. Even the far more modern Russell Kirk uses the backwoods of New England. What is amusing to me is that the remote trackless area that Elizabeth Gaskell uses is in fact my home region and I'm very familiar with the fells of Cumberland and Westmorland and Northumberland.It's ironic that I was more self-conscious of doing the accent and I think rather than having my own native Cumbrian accent I sounded a bit Yorkshire.It is actually quite a magnificent story and in common with many of the Victorian ghost stories Elizabeth Gaskell spends a lot of time describing the scenery. So we have a very clear picture of the huge and gloomy mansion. We have very romantic ghosts and in common with many ghost stories this is a moral tale. The older lady Miss Furnival pays in age for the sins of pride that she committed when she was young.The story winds towards its ending in quite a direct way but there wasn't any time when I was reading it that I thought that any part of it was surplus.I plan to do a series of Christmas ghost stories as we get closer to Christmas. This one isn't technically a Christmas ghost story but it is very wintry with snow and  cold.In terms of what I'm up to at the moment. We are quite busy with our ghost story evenings tour around in about the place. I am also editing an audiobook of my own which is the Cumbrian ghost stories, although this podcast gets in the way of doing that. I have a small volume of Christmas ghost stories out on Amazon which is selling quite well. It's a slim volume of three stories and there is an audiobook to go along with it if you fancied getting a copy of that from Audible.It seems the podcast goes from strength to strength and a number of listeners is increasing which is great news. We had another anonymous five star review on Apple podcasts but I'm not complaining because it was anonymous. In fact, thank you to the anonymous person who wrote thatAs always I wouldn’t treat you to like share and rate the podcast however you choose to listen to it.You can always support the podcast via https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon) and I’ve got a new link to https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Kofi) so you can buy me a cup of coffee and there is no ongoing payment involved or commitment.I'm still looking for suggestions for stories to read after Christmas so please drop me a line through Twitter. On Instagram also. The music is by the Heartwood Institute so go and get copies of that on https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Bandcamp)Here’s my Twitter @classicghostst1Instagram is https://www.instagram.com/classicghoststoriespodcast/ (Classicghoststoriespodcast)You can buy Support the show

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Russell Kirk was born in 1918 in Plymouth, Michigan to a relatively modest family. He died in 1994, but between birth and death, he became arguably the foremost American theorist on Conservatism in his time. He wrote lots of books on political theory, but he also wrote ghost stories. I have a copy of his collection Ancestral Shadows. Kirk spent time in Scotland as a student at St Andrews and with a name like Kirk, he had some Scottish ancestry. A few of his stories are set in Kinross and Fife and others in England. He loved tradition and from his stories you see that he had respect for traditional spiritual values of Christianity.One of his first acclaimed stories was Behind the Stumps, and that’s why I’ve chosen to read it.This story has a lovely structure. First we get a description of Pottawattomie County. Then we learn how the government want to tax the folk there. Kirk was deeply conservative and disliked government, which comes out in the story. Next we get a detailed and well-drawn picture of Cribben, the tax enumerator. When that’s all done we set off to Bear City.Kirk paints nice portraits of the characters. We have Cribben of course but then the genial Matt Heddle as postmaster. Heddle is generally well-treated by Kirk, though he does say a couple of nasty things about him. Love the alcoholic hasn’t much of a role but we can picture him. Both Heddle and Love in their way are telling Cribben not to mess with the Gholsons.Love gives information about Cribben’s nemesis, though Cribben doesn’t listen. He’s too proud. Like all moral tales, he won’t mend his ways and therefore will be punished.There is an encounter with the main Gholson man in the street, who appears awful, but even he tells Cribben not to go near, specially on a Sunday and that foreshadows what Cribben is going to get. It also gives us the knowledge that Cribben’s heart is weak. This is to prepare us for the final scene so we understand how it happens.In the bleak scrubland which is reminiscent of Lovecraft’s ideas of the badlands of rural America where strange things go on since time immemorial. This is a folk-horror theme that we see in The Wicker Man, the Blood on Satan’s Claw, Witchfinder General and the recent Midsommar. He walks through the woods rather than taking the road. Usually that’s a sign that something bad will happen. You shouldn’t depart from well-trodden ways! But it doesn’t really. But he sees the house on the hill “indefinably mutiltated’.All the Gholsons, all the cats, hens etc, are absent from the farm.Some strange energy or power emanates from the farm where the old witch is housed undying. The young peasant girl watching is started by Cribben. I’m not sure what she represents, but I may be being slow here. Is it that the Gholsons themselves fear the house so they watch it? I guess that’s it.He looks at the house and sees that it is very odd. But he pays no heed.And then, fools rush in and Cribben enters the farm and you know what happens, all lovingly set up by Kirk for us to go aaah! to at the end.I guess that the old mother, who has no name, and who is neither dead nor alive is some kind of archetype. She is the devouring and life-giving mother (see how fertile the farm is).  She’s very fat — again to to with nurture. They’re terrified of her but fascinated. It’s all very Jungian.Don’t dream about this stuff. It’s unhealthy.Usual links:Support the Show!https://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Look at our Spooky Pictureshttps://www.instagram.com/classicghoststoriespodcast/ (https://www.instagram.com/classicghoststoriespodcast/)Get in touch via Twitter@classicghostst1Music Support the show

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Carmilla Part 3Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Ireland in 1814. He was highly regarded both in his time and afterwards as a master of the ghost story genre. He wrote many wonderful stories, but here we focus on his vampire story Carmilla. I think it's very interesting and a little amusing, that Joseph's father -- in common with many writers of ghost stories as it happens -- was a strict Protestant churchman. I wonder whether Joseph Sheridan — or JT as I'm calling him — ever showed Carmilla , or read it aloud to his dad. Le Fanu was a master of Gothic description, and in Carmilla his abilities are at their height. For me one of the most engaging descriptions is that of the castle in the deep and inaccessible forest in Styria in Austria. It is almost poetic. We also have great descriptions of the graveyard at Castle Karnstein towards the end of the story and the masked ball scene which is related to us by the general also sounds splendid.The masked ball from Carmilla was borrowed and done very lushly in the movie Van Helsing where Kate Beckinsale, one of my favourite female vampires, looks lush indeed.Some of the sensuality between Camilla and the protagonist is described in almost erotic detail. I think that Le Fanu was not naive about this and , of course, he had to sell stories to make a living and he did this very well.. The stock characters such as the woodsman and the bizarre Baron Vordenburg who acts as a Van Helsing type vampire expert that comes in to solve all the problems towards the end, are both fun.In terms of the structure of this novella, I feel it could actually have been a novel. The ending to me was a little bit rushed. Camilla disappears and then it's sorted and fixed within minutes it seems. As I was reading it my imagination extended it to as throughout Italy and Europe with Camilla visiting the protagonist in her bed and then hunting her much as the gang do in Dracula. That being said, there is a nice structure to the story in that almost the first thing that happens is that the expected female guest is now tragic tragic not coming giving a great disappointment to our Laura the protagonist.The general in his letter is very disturbed but we are not told why and so kept in suspense until the end when the General neatly appears, closing the circle of the story. I guess we anticipate something like this happeningNext time I'm going to do something shorter and American I have in mind doing one of Russell Kirk stories. Although Kirk was an American writer and he set a lot of his ghost stories in England and there is one I want to do around Christmas so I'm debating whether to do that in an English or American accent.In terms of podcast business, we had a lovely review on iTunes from Gabby which I was delighted to read, so thank you Gabby for that.Reviews likes and shares are the lifeblood of the podcast and enable it to surge forward to ever increasing popularity which is my aim — obviously.I therefore politely but wholeheartedly encourage you to like, share and support the podcast. I think reading so much wordy Victorian stuff, influences one’s vocabulary!If you listen to podcasts in general you will be aware that the podcasters always make a play for you to join up and subscribe and support the podcast. I put the link down below just in case you fancy doing that.You may notice that I changed the podcast music; because I actually lost the original MP3 of the other so this is a royalty free one called Ben sounds scary music.Case I'm rambling again. I’ll have a story for you again next week.Download Charles Dickens The Signalman Free Mp3 https://bit.ly/dickenssignalSupport the show

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I won't say much about Le Fanu. This is Part 2 of Carmilla after all.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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Joseph Sheridan Le FanuJ S Le Fanu was born in Dublin to a family of mixed descent. His father’s line were French Huguenots hence the French surname. Like many horror and ghost story writers his father was actually a clergyman. He studied law as his career at Trinity College Dublin. He didn't actually live in Dublin at the time but you could do a kind of distance learning. He became editor of a literary magazine at this time.Le Fanu was active in the campaign to try and stir the British government to do something about the Irish famine. It didn’t work.He wrote in many genres he is most famous for his horror stories. But in general his horror stories are understated and emphasise atmosphere rather than pure horror.Carmilla is one of Le Fanu’s most famous stories. It is the prototypical Lesbian vampire novel. Possibly because of that it has become famous. This book of course was written at a time when Queen Victoria famously declared the ladies did not do such things. Not that they do in Carmilla either, they just get close,One of the charms of the story is it setting. It contains many of the romantic elements famous from Gothic fiction. It has the beautiful ancient and partly ruinous schloss in the middle of the Carinthian forest.I imagine that some of the descriptions of the two girls kissing and hugging was quite risque for its time. But it is perhaps because of this that Camilla has been made into films and adapted into different media across the years since its publication in 1872.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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Consistently rated as one of top scary stories ever...#Marghanita Laski#  was an English journalist and author,  born in Manchester to a family of Jewish intellectuals.  She herself was an atheist and an advocate of nuclear disarmament. She was very intelligent and went to Oxford. She died in 1988 aged 67. She later lived in London at Hampstead (where I’d like to live if I lived in London: the home of psychoanalysts and left-wing intellectuals). Though popular and highly regarded in her day, a lot of Laski’s work is now out of print. This story: The Tower is consistently rated as one of the most ferrying ever written, even though it is pretty short.Because of that, I had to hunt down a copy and read it.I wasn’t terrified. There may be something I’m missing here. The story is well-written and the prose elegant. She conjures the picture of the upper middle class family life of a British Council official in Italy with only a few brush strokes.I read the story alone and late at night. I’d just watched a recent horror movie #A Dark Song#, which is about #black magic# and a lot scarier, but even so, with book and movie added together  I slept like a baby.I get the issue about the number of steps, but still, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m missing something. I get that she’s like Giovanna and she had fallen into the clutches of the evil black magician Niccolo and that like Giovanna: she is lost, she is damned as she descended into presumably hell…However, it did remind me of a scary episode I had. Once I was at https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186632-d215173-Reviews-Charleville_Castle-Tullamore_County_Offaly.html (#Charleville Castle# )in Co. Offaly, #Ireland. I went there a lot of times on ghost hunts and horror events to be honest, but they had this ruined tower in the castle. I decided to climb up the spiral stone stair that went to the ruined top to see how far I could get. There was no hand rail, just a drop and the steps were stone slabs coming out from the walls. One or two of them had come away, but you could step to the next. The the tower seemed to slope in and the slabs got narrower and narrower and the wall pressed in on me. Unlike Caroline, I realised I needed to turn back before I got to the top. So I turned and looked back at the narrow stone slabs and the huge drop and the missing steps and I panicked.But, like Caroline, I realised I just had to go down. No question about it. So, bricking it, as we say, I descended and got to the bottom. Not to hell. I believe I had a nice glass of wine after that. I quite fancy one now, but we’ve no alcohol in the house.If you figure out what’s so scary about The Tower, let me knowIf you were helpful enough to do some or any of these following things for me, I would be immensely grateful. I swear down I would.————————Share the Podcast to your friendsRate the Podcast on Apple or elsewhereBuy me a coffee via https://paypal.me/gospatric (Paypal)Sign up as a Patron for $1 a month to keep me going on  http://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon) https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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