A narrowboat moors in Eastwick, a village cut off by time and road. Among its postcards and memories stands an ancient stone — and in every image, a shadow that should not be there. When George Middleton takes his own photograph, the shadow moves closer.

This is one of my own stories — and this time, I’m out to scare you. Let’s see if I manage to.

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At Brinton-on-Sea, the summer passed in gentle rhythms. Mariella and her young fiancé read side by side on the beach, swam together in the quiet sea, while her parents looked on from their chairs. Nothing seemed amiss. But something was. She said nothing, yet her smiles grew thinner, her sleep unsettled. Her eyes lingered too long on nothing at all. And in the evenings, the air inside the house felt changed—thickened, as if it held its breath. Whatever troubled her was unseen, but it was growing.

Publication details:“Old Man’s Beard” was first published in Old Man’s Beard: Fifteen Disturbing Tales by Geoffrey Bles in 1929.

Author biography:H. R. Wakefield (1888–1964) was a British writer and publisher, known for ghost stories that marry restrained supernatural suggestion with psychological unease. He brought the Edwardian tale into the modern world with quiet menace.

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A letter arrives—calm in tone, almost conversational. But beneath its surface, something unsettles. A favour once done, a house long locked, a memory that won’t quite settle. There are impressions that can’t be explained, and a sense—quiet, persistent—that something was not as it should have been.

The Clock first appeared in W. F. Harvey’s 1928 collection The Beast with Five Fingers, published by J. M. Dent & Sons. It has since been reprinted in several major ghost story anthologies.

William Fryer Harvey (1885–1937) was a Yorkshire-born writer and Quaker, best known for his concise and unsettling tales of the supernatural. A former naval surgeon, he was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving during the First World War.

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On a wet and foggy evening in post-war London, a man arrives at a modest hotel carrying the calm assurance of wealth and distance. But something else arrives that night too—quietly, without fuss, with a newspaper clipping and a request for a room. In the lounge, the sounds of unseen children drift through the walls. In his sleep, the man dreams of trees and dead branches. And outside, the fog thickens.

*“A Visitor from Down Under” first appeared in *The London Magazine* and was later collected in *The Travelling Grave and Other Stories* (1948). It was included in *The Collected Macabre Stories of L. P. Hartley* (Tartarus Press, 2001).*

L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) was an English novelist and short story writer, best known for *The Go-Between*. Though celebrated for his novels, his ghost stories reveal a quieter, colder kind of terror.

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She was flawless. A model of grace and stillness, prized by every artist who worked with her. But beneath the surface of the painter’s studio—amid the heat, the charcoal dust, and the careful posing—something else lingered.

“Rose Rose” by Barry Pain was first published in Stories in Grey (T. Werner Laurie, 1911). It is now in the public domain.

Barry Eric Odell Pain (1864–1928) was a British humorist and writer of uncanny fiction. H.P. Lovecraft cited him as an influence, and Robert Louis Stevenson compared him to Maupassant.

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Seen from a passing stagecoach, you might think that Gylingden Hall is not the sort of place where the dead rest easily. The chimneys are cold, the gallery echoes with no human tread, and the great trees that line the avenue whisper of old wrongs and buried fury. In the shadow of the ruined chapel and beneath the rot-black timbers of the house, something lingers—a grief curdled into malice, a legacy neither signed nor forgotten. *Squire Toby’s Will* is not a tale of ghosts who startle, but of the slow, relentless suffocation of guilt, and of the strange things a man will refuse to see, even when they’re clawing at the door.

Published anonymously in *Temple Bar* magazine, Volume XXII, in 1868. Later attributed to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and often compared to his novel *The Wyvern Mystery*, written around the same time.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic fiction and supernatural tales, widely praised for his subtle and psychologically charged ghost stories. A master of atmosphere and ambiguity, he was admired by M. R. James and influenced the shape of modern horror fiction.

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In H.G. Wells's "The Red Room," a young man, confident in his rationality, seeks to debunk the supernatural in a reputedly haunted chamber. He is certain that his experience will be defined by logic and reason. But the air within the castle walls is heavy with unspoken dread, and as the candles dwindle, something shifts. Is it the room itself, or something within him, that begins to unravel? "The Red Room" was first published in The Idler magazine in March of 1896. H.G. Wells (1866-1946), a visionary of science fiction and social commentary, explored the depths of human experience with unparalleled skill.

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Returning home to England after the American Revolutionary War, General Browne, a soldier hardened by war and governed by reason, accepts an invitation to the castle of his old school-friend, Lord Woodville. The place has only lately been inherited and is undergoing tasteful restoration, its mediaeval past slowly yielding to Georgian elegance. But not all traces of the past have been swept away.

One chamber remains veiled in its former splendour—its faded tapestry concealing more than just stone walls. It is this room that is given to the General to stay in overnight.

The Tapestried Chamber was written by Sir Walter Scott and published in The Keepsake for 1829, during the final years of his life, when he was writing under intense pressure in an effort to repay heavy debts.

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In the year 1795, in the secluded Derbyshire town of Barford, a stranger settles into the old White House. He renovates it handsomely, pays every bill on time, and quickly wins the friendship of the local squire and his daughter. Among the hunting gentry, he seems to fit right in.

But this is a story of the hunting gentry—and the secrets they don’t know, and the things people do when no one is looking.

The Squire’s Story is a Gothic tale by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in Household Words in 1853. Known for Cranford and North and South, Gaskell here turns her subtle realism to darker terrain.

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Beneath the brooding skies of Braun Fell, the Dewle family grapples with a dark inheritance, and John, a boyhood friend, is urgently summoned to help them navigate their dilemma. A lust for wealth consumes beautiful Jonquil, driving her to urge the use of questionable methods, while her husband, who would do anything to please her, is wary about such a path. So what will John advise? Join me as we unravel this tale of greed, forbidden knowledge, and the shadows that linger in the human heart. I am, Tony Walker, narrator of The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast and this week's story is: The Withered Heart by G G Pendarves.

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