"Number 13" follows Mr Anderson, an English scholar staying at a Viborg hotel while researching Denmark's Catholic past, who notices something unsettling: the hotel has no room thirteen on its register — yet the door keeps appearing in the corridor outside his own. As strange sounds bleed through the walls, his room inexplicably shrinks by night, and a ragged arm reaches out from behind a door that should not exist, Anderson and his fellow guests must confront whatever has been lurking in that impossible space for centuries.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"The Mezzotint" is a short ghost story in which Mr. Williams, curator of a university art museum, receives an unremarkable engraving of an English manor house — and notices, hours later, that a crawling figure has appeared where none existed before. Each time witnesses examine the picture, the figure has moved: crossing the lawn, entering the house, then departing clutching something small and limp. As Williams and his colleagues race to identify Anningley Hall, a grim history of revenge, a hanged poacher, and a vanished infant child slowly surfaces behind the changing image.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"The Ash-Tree" is a short horror story set at Castringham Hall in Suffolk, where a condemned woman's dying words — "There will be guests at the Hall" — set a curse in motion that spans generations. When Sir Matthew Fell testifies against the witch Mrs Mothersole and she goes to the gallows cursing him, he is dead by the next full moon. Decades later, his grandson Sir Richard ignores old warnings and moves into the very room where his ancestor died — beneath the branches of a great ash-tree that hides something far worse than superstition.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You My Lad" follows Professor Parkins, a rigidly rational academic who travels to the Suffolk coast for a golfing holiday and stumbles upon an ancient bronze whistle buried among the ruins of a Templar preceptory. Dismissing all superstition, he blows it twice — and something answers. As strange disturbances plague his hotel room and a blind, linen-faced figure begins to stir in the empty bed across from his, Parkins's confidence in the rational world starts to crack in ways that will not easily be repaired.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"Lost Hearts" draws readers into Aswarby Hall, where twelve-year-old orphan Stephen Elliott arrives to live with his reclusive cousin, Mr Abney, a scholar of ancient pagan rituals. Mr Abney's warmth seems genuine — until Stephen begins noticing strange scratch marks, unsettling dreams, and the ghostly figures of two children haunting the moonlit grounds. As the spring equinox draws near and Mr Abney requests a late-night meeting, a dread slowly tightens around Stephen's understanding of why, exactly, his cousin was so eager to take him in.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"The Wind in the Rose-bush" follows Rebecca Flint, a sharp-eyed spinster who travels from Michigan to collect her niece Agnes from the girl's stepmother, Mrs. Dent — a woman whose warm appearance hides something cold and deliberate. Agnes is never quite home, always one excuse away, yet her presence seems to linger in unexplained ways: a rose-bush stirring on a still day, music from an empty room, a small nightgown laid out with terrible care. Freeman builds dread slowly, through evasion, suspicion, and details that refuse to add up.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"The Vacant Lot" is a free short story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman following the Townsend family, who relocate from their ancestral village to a suspiciously cheap Boston townhouse. From the very first Monday, their maid Cordelia glimpses something impossible in the empty lot next door — a shadow hanging laundry with no body attached. The disturbances escalate: phantom smells of cabbage, every mirror in the house shattering at once, a widow's crape veil appearing from nowhere, and a silent procession of white-faced figures dressed in black crossing the dining room.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

King Lear, Shakespeare's short story retelling, follows an aging king who divides his kingdom based on declarations of love — rewarding his two flattering daughters and casting out Cordelia, the only one who speaks plainly. What begins as wounded pride quickly unravels into betrayal, madness, and exile. Lear wanders a stormy heath, stripped of power and dignity, accompanied only by a jester and a servant in disguise, while the daughter he rejected raises an army to save him.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

"Luella Miller" is a Gothic short story set in a New England village where a hauntingly beautiful woman leaves a trail of exhausted, fading souls in her wake. Told through the sharp-tongued testimony of elderly Lydia Anderson, the story traces how Luella's husband Erastus, his sister Lily, and a succession of devoted caretakers each wither and die after entering her orbit — while Luella herself remains placidly untouched. Whether she is a supernatural parasite or simply a creature of breathtaking selfishness, the question lingers with quiet, unsettling menace.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.

Bartleby the Scrivener is a short story set in a Wall Street law office, where a mild-mannered employer hires a pale, eerily calm copyist named Bartleby. At first diligent to the point of obsession, Bartleby begins refusing every request with the same soft, immovable phrase: "I would prefer not to." As his refusals widen — no proofreading, no errands, no leaving — the narrator finds himself caught between exasperation, pity, and a strange, creeping helplessness before a man who seems to have quietly withdrawn from life itself.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-short-stories--6577582/support.