Classic Ghost Stories

Latest Episodes:

The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant May 09, 2025

Show notes

What price, a parent's love? A Scottish family, seeking a quiet life, rents Brentwood House – a grand, Georgian mansion standing in wooded grounds beside a ruined keep and a deep glen – only to find themselves in a terrifying ordeal. As their son plunges further into despair, can they, as a family, keep a hold of reality? Is there a happy solution? "The Open Door" by Margaret Oliphant was originally published in 1881 as part of the collection Stories of the Seen and Unseen. Join me, Tony Walker, narrator of The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast, for this week's story.

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Young Billy-Me-Lad by Annie Smith May 06, 2025

Show notes

What happened down in the cellar? In Andrea Smith's disquieting tale, Peg grapples with her brother Milo's delicate state after a shocking incident. Whispers, unease, and a chilling presence haunt their isolated cottage. Can Peg protect Milo from whatever threatens them, or will a haunting past cast a shadow over them both?

📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊https://tonywalkerbooks.com/

⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐

https://patreon.com/barcud

Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.

You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month.

Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible?

Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work

https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk

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Celui-là by Eleanor Scott May 02, 2025

Show notes

Who digs in dead ground? A chance encounter on a desolate beach leads Maddox to a discovery that chills the very air. A parchment, a prayer, or perhaps a curse. The local priest knows better than to pry, but Maddox cannot resist the lure of the unknown. On the windswept Breton coast, something awakens. Experience the unsettling tale of "Celui-Là."

Helen Madeline Leys, born on 11 July 1892 in Hampton Hill, Middlesex, and passing away in Devon in 1965, was a British educator and writer whose work, though initially overlooked, is now gaining renewed appreciation for its subtly unsettling atmosphere and exploration of folk horror themes. Whilst her given name was Helen Madeline Leys, she wrote under a number of pseudonyms, most notably Eleanor Scott.

📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊

https://tonywalkerbooks.com/

⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐

https://patreon.com/barcud

Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.

You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month.

Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible?

Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work

https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk

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The Haunted Spinney by Elliott O'Donnell Apr 25, 2025

Show notes

Elliott O'Donnell, a prolific author who often blurred the lines between ghost story and alleged fact, invites us into "The Haunted Spinney." First published in 1904, the tale unfolds in a foreboding woodland, following a man's discovery and its haunting aftermath. What ghosts lie hidden beneath the twisted trees? This is a story where truth and imagination, madness and hauntings are not easily disentangled. Prepare to journey into "The Haunted Spinney."

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The Child by L A Lewis Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

An English traveller, delayed in an unfamiliar village, hears a troubling local legend—one the villagers are reluctant to discuss. Drawn by curiosity into a nearby wood no one dares enter, he finds the past is not so easily buried. What he encounters there resists explanation, hovering uneasily between tragedy and nightmare. L.A. Lewis’s tale unfolds slowly, in quiet conversation and half-glimpsed memory, before leading the listener into something far darker, and far stranger, than expected.

Not everything seen can be forgotten—even when forgetting is all we want.

📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊

https://tonywalkerbooks.com/

⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐

https://patreon.com/barcud

Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.

You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month.

Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible?

Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work

https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk

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The Wishing Well by E F Benson Apr 18, 2025

Show notes

E.F. Benson's "The Wishing-Well" was first published in the United Kingdom in the collection Visible and Invisible by Hutchinson & Co. in 1923. This collection, featuring a range of supernatural and uncanny tales, showcases Benson's skill in blending traditional ghost story elements with psychological depth and social commentary. "The Wishing-Well," a particularly potent example of his Cornish-set fiction, has since been reprinted in numerous anthologies of ghost and horror stories, cementing its place as a classic of the genre.

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The Parlour of Futures Lost by Tony Walker Apr 17, 2025

Show notes

In a dim parlour by the sea, where the waves sigh like old regrets, Madame Lily Floss lays her tarot cards on green silk and dreams of escape. She longs for a life beyond the shore, beyond her mother’s house, beyond her fate. Then, one evening, a stranger arrives — a man who claims they’ve not yet met… but already remembers everything.

One of my own.

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Through the Gates of the Silver Key by H P Lovecraft and E Hoffman Price Apr 11, 2025

Show notes

Is time an endless ocean? Randolph Carter, armed with a silver key, sets sail across its fathomless depths. His quest: the ultimate truth. But the waters are treacherous, and the shores lead to alien worlds and entities beyond human reckoning. And what if once you go, you can't get back?

Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is a short story co-written by American writers H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price between October 1932 and April 1933. A sequel to Lovecraft's "The Silver Key", and part of a sequence of stories focusing on Randolph Carter, it was first published in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

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Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.

You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month.

Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible?

Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work

https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk

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The House of Horror by Seabury Quinn Apr 08, 2025

Show notes

"The House of Horror," despite its pulp sensibilities, clearly resonates with the Poe-esque tradition of detective fiction intertwined with the macabre and the sensation novel. Like Poe's tales, Quinn's story utilises a combination of rational investigation and visceral horror to create a sense of dread and suspense. De Grandin, though more flamboyant than Poe's Dupin, embodies the detective figure who seeks to unravel a dark mystery through observation and deduction. The story shares Poe's fascination with the grotesque and the psychologically disturbed, as exemplified by the character of Dr. Marston and his horrifying experiments.

While Quinn's style is less atmospheric and more reliant on plot-driven thrills than Poe's, "The House of Horror" nonetheless shares a common lineage in its blend of mystery, horror, and a fascination with the darker aspects of human nature.

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The Beast With Five Fingers by W F Harvey Mar 28, 2025

Show notes

In W.F. Harvey’s The Beast with Five Fingers, we enter the world of Eustace Borlsover, an eccentric gentleman immersed in the study of the natural world and its more unusual phenomena. Set within the quiet gloom of Borlsover Conyers, his ancestral home, the story gradually evolves into a tale of obsession and nightmare. What if part of our very selves could act with a will of its own—and meant us harm? Join me as we step into a place where reason begins to unravel, where dust settles thick on forgotten shelves, and where something spiderlike begins to crawl across the library in the dark depths of the night.

⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐

https://patreon.com/barcud

Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.

You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month.

Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible?

Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work

https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices