Classic Ghost Stories

Latest Episodes:

S02E62 Sir Gawain & The Green Knight Dec 06, 2021

Show notes

Sir Gawain & The Green KnightSir Gawain and The Green Knight is the original Christmas Ghost Story. Or technically a supernatural story set at Christmas in the kingdom of Logres ruled by King Arthur. It's pretty gothic.This is a prose translation of a Middle English poem called Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. The translation by Jessie Weston was published in 1898 and though it is certainly not Middle English she has left enough archaic words in to keep that flavour.Jessie Weston herself was born in 1850 in Surrey, England, the daughter of a tea merchant. When she was young the family moved to Bournemouth off England’s south coast and she began writing there. She studied in Hildesheim in Germany and in Paris and at the Crystal Palace School of Art in South London. She was most famous for her studies of Arthurian romances and the Grail legend where she put forth the ideas that the material was actually pre-Christian and pagan in origin. T S Eliot’s The Wasteland was influenced by Weston’s Arthurian studies. The Green Knight as it stands was composed no later than the end of the 14th Century (the date of the manuscript) and may be much older. The language is Mercian influenced Middle English, probably from Lancashire. The boundary between Mercian and Northumbrian Old English runs through Lancashire and its dialect is influenced by both, but South Lancashire and Cheshire have Midlands’ such as pronouncing the ‘g’ in ‘king’ and ‘thing’.If you’re interested in Old English dialects, check out Simon Roper’s Youtube Channel for a real treat. The poem shows signs of oral storytelling with the rich, detailed descriptions that run in sequences and would probably delight an audience as they were elaborated. The themes are of honour and courage, as befitted the courtly audience, but also of love and fashion, which traditionally interest ladies. Tricky subject these days, but that was the established view for centuries. Things change. I for one embrace change, while I mourn what it lost. I’m a bit like the VoiceOver by Galadriel at the start of the Fellowship of The Ring movie.There are folkloric features which Weston perhaps emphasis because she was interested in them: He bears a holly bough to symbolise life and rebirth. He pole vaults over water as fairies can’t normally cross running water. The bargain is for a year and a day which is in all good fairy tales. The motif of the talking head appears again and again in Celtic stories: Bran the Blessed, and Bricriu’s Feast from the Ulster Cycle where the beheading challenge is seen. Of course the severed head is seen on a platter in the Perceval/Parsifal/Peredur Stories.The old lady in the castle is the famous with Morgana La Fee.“I trow” is “I think” or “I believe”“In sooth” is “truly”, “really” ‘fo sho’“Wit, wot, witen’ are ’to know’ . So “ I wit” is cognate with the German “Ich weiss” or the Dutch “ek weet”“List” is “like” or “please” “As he may list” “As he pleases”“Welkin” is sky.“Hearken” is “hear, or listen to”Going through the recording as I edit, it strikes me that perhaps the green lace on the axe is the one that Gawain later gets from the lady and transpires to have been the knight’s. It was the magic of this lace that allowed him to survive the blow. Not sure why I didn’t figure that before. This is just what a modern author would be: place an item and bury it in detail so its significance isn’t grasped until much later.It’s mainly showing not telling too. We get some insight into Gawain’s thinking, but mostly the situations are simply described and we infer internal motivations and ruminations from what we hear. Described.I also think it’s Support the show

Visit us here: www.ghostpod.org
Buy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker
If you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcud
Music by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback

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

S02E59 Harry by Rosemary Timperley Nov 29, 2021

Show notes

Harry by Rosemary TimperleyThank you to Steve Cuff for suggesting I read this story. Rosemary Timperley was born in 1920 in North London and died in November 1988. Her father was an architect and her mother a teacher. Timperley went to her local girls school and became a teacher herself. She taught English and History in a state school. Her pupils said she was a very dramatic figure (she ran the drama club) and wore long swirling black dresses with long drop or hoop earrings. While she was a teacher she began to submit her stories to magazine and they began to be accepted. She became a staff writer and agony aunt on the magazine Reveille. She lived in Richmond, Surrey (a well-heeled suburb of London now) for many years. Many of her stories are set in London.During the Second World War she worked at the Citizens’ Advice Bureau in Kensington, London. She got married to a. Physics teacher in 1952 and they lived in Essex just outside London. They separated in the early 1960s according to some sources, but they appear to have been officially married until his death in 1968.In 1961 she mentions she is living in an old-fashioned flat and living on coffee, pink-gin and cigarettes. In 1964 she became seriously ill and had a long spell in hospital. I’m not surprised hearing about her diet. She was very prolific and was the author of 66 novels as well as radio plays and short stories. She was also editor of the 5th to the 9th Ghost Books. Harry has been filmed several times. She described herself as a recluseIf You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In HereYou could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)Become a Patronhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)And you can join my mailing list and get a free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (https://bit.ly/somecomeback)Support the show

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

S02E58 Taig O'Kane and The Corpse by Douglas Hyde Nov 22, 2021

Show notes

An Irish story told by Douglas Hyde, first president of Ireland and the craoibhinn aobhinn himself. I thought it was about time we did an Irish story and this is hits all the targets.A wastrel boy compromises the reputation of a local girl and when he goes out on the road to think, he meets a party of the fairy folk and they give him something to carry, and something to bury.Support the show

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

S02E57 Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo? by Gerald Kersh Nov 15, 2021

Show notes

Gerald KershFirstly, I need to thank Gavin Critchley who commissioned me to record this for his birthday in August and then very generously allowed me to broadcast it to you all on the podcast.Gerald Kersh was born in Teddington (just outside Central London) in 1912. He was born into a poor Jewish family and during his life had to turn his hand to many jobs to survive. These included being a cinema manager, body guard, cook in a fish and chip shop, French teacher, travelling salesman, night club bouncer and professional wrestler. It is said he began to write when he was only eight and did all the other jobs to keep him going while he tried to make a living as a writer. His first book was autobiographical and a family member sued him for libel so he withdrew it. His third novel was his most famous one. This was Night And The City which was published in 1938 and made into a film twice. Robert de Niro played the main role in the 1992 film.Kersh joined the British Army during the Second World War and went into the Coldstream Guards but ended up working for the army film unit. He was discharged from the Army in 1943 after having both his legs broken in a bombing raid. While in France, after the liberation that many of his Jewish relatives had died in the Nazi concentration camps.Kersh wrote in a variety of genres after the war and he moved to the USA because he disliked the British tax system which he felt took too much money. He became an American citizen in 1958. He died in New York in 1968.His biography on the Villancourt Books site states:Kersh was a larger than life figure, a big, heavy-set man with piercing black eyes and a fierce black beard, which led him to describe himself proudly as “villainous-looking.” His obituary recounts some of his eccentricities, such as tearing telephone books in two, uncapping beer bottles with his fingernails, bending dimes with his teeth, and ordering strange meals, like “anchovies and figs doused in brandy” for breakfast. Kersh lived the last several years of his life in the mountain community of Cragsmoor, in New York, and died at age 57 in 1968 of cancer of the throat.Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?This is a story of immortality. If we think of the alchemists who spent their lives, their fortunes, their reputation and their health to find the Elixir of Life and historical figures such as Emperor Rudolf II who, in Prague, funded lots of alchemists to produce such a tincture, then in Whatever Happened To Corporal Cuckoo, we see all of this is turned upon its head.Cuckoo gets the Elixir of Life by accident, it is invented by accident by the French surgeon who treats him. Ambroise Pare was a real military surgeon from this time.After becoming immortal, Cuckoo then spends the rest of eternity looking for get rich quick schemes in order to fund his buying what sounds like a low rent clip joint with girls and booze for low rent customers. He squanders every gift that eternity could have given him, not least by saving a little of his pay (and putting into attacker account as Warren Buffet would have you do). His answer when asked, is that he can’t be anything other than he is. He will do what his character makes him do. This is his dharma. This Indian term means duty but has come in some circles in the West to mean that what you do and can do no other. I often reflect on this these days. Could I be anything other than I am? I think within a limited circle of actions I can change the way I am, but like Cuckoo that is severely limited by my circumstances and my physical, mental and temperamental make up.I ramble about this and more in the audio notes to thisSupport the show

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

S02E56 The Beast of Blanchland by Rowan Bowman Nov 08, 2021

Show notes

A man driving home on a winter's night thinks he sees a big cat stalking the moor. He crashes his car and then the weirdness really begins. An original story by Northumberland author Rowan Bowman.#audiobook #horror #northumberland #blanchlandFurther notes sent me by Rowan after our discussion:Influences in my writing:Raymond Chandler. He writes as a film director, intent on the reader seeing the view clearly in front of them.Daphne du Maurier. Partly because of her sense of place, but also because of the subtlety of the ghosts in some of her stories, Rebecca in particular, the writing is haunted by the melancholy of the nameless narrator, and the actual haunting, the influence that Rebecca has from beyond the grave, is superbly handled. Mandalay was based on du Maurier's own house. I often set books in or around houses I have known intimately.Shirley Jackson. The best writer of mad protagonists and unreliable witnesses in my opinion.Favourite authorsThe first proper ghost story I ever read was A Christmas Carol, I think that's where a lot of people start. As a teenager I suffered from terrible nightmares and took solace in Poe and Lovecraft and progressed to Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes still gives me the shudders). Then I went on to James Herbert, Shirley Jackson and lots of crime stories and thrillers, anything that confirmed it's normal to be scared and okay not to be okay. Life sorted itself out and I was busy raising my children. The nightmares eased and I read anything I could reach while doing something else. Danielewski's The House of Leaves was the first book in years to actually scare me. I still enjoy Robert Harris thrillers and the Cormoran Strike novels, but I'm back in this stage of my life to seeking out the weird and scary.Dan Simmons is always a good read, I recommend Drood. The atmosphere is intense and like most of his stories the landscapes suck you in. I enjoyed Michelle Paver's Thin Air, but prefer Dark Matter as a supernatural horror, again the landscape is one of the characters, the real horror in Thin Air comes from mundane self-interested cruelty which rather overshadows the supernatural element for me. The landscape in The Loney is brilliantly evoked. There have been several novels since set around the area, but none capture it in the same way.My favourite China Meiville novel is The City and The City, its fantastical landscape is so well drawn that it seems more real than room you are sitting in.The best book I've read since the start of Lockdown has been Piranesi. I loved Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell; this is very different, but equally good. The reader understands what is going on just before it is revealed, set in a fantasy world that is so well drawn that it's utterly convincing. If you've ever been asked, 'What is wrong with you?' when admitting to a love of the macabre or frightening, then I recommend Noel Carroll's accessible The Philosophy of Horror (1990) and Lovecraft's collection of essays Supernatural Horror in Literature. Hope this may be of some interest.Thank you for reading The Beast of Blanchland. All the best,RowanSupport the show

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

S02E55 The Haunting of Unit 409 by Tony Walker Oct 31, 2021

Show notes

The Haunting of Unit 409 is an original horror story by me, Tony Walker and will be part of my forthcoming More Cumbrian Ghost Stories collection. This is a taster, a teaser, an early release. I hope you like it and enjoy your Halloween listening!If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In HereHate watching me? Listen to audio only versions of my podcast: https://bit.ly/vurbl (https://bit.ly/vurbl)Get my audiobooks at an insane deal. London Horror Stories https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-stories (https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-stories)If you want to say thank you for all the stories please don’t buy me a coffee (I’m wired enough), buy a book! Get an ebook here: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-haunting-of-tullabeg (https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-haunting-of-tullabeg)Get a paperback here: https://www.bookdepository.com/Haunting-Tullabeg-Tony-Walker/9798736978946 (https://www.bookdepository.com/Haunting-Tullabeg-Tony-Walker/9798736978946)Join my mailing list and get a download: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (https://bit.ly/somecomeback)————————Support the show

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

S02E54 The Girl With The Hungry Eyes by Fritz Leiber Oct 25, 2021

Show notes

The story of a female vampire, a femme fatale, a girl who just one day walks into a photographer's studio and wants to do some modelling.Get my audiobooks at an insane deal. London Horror Stories https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-stories (https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-stories)If you want to say thank you for all the stories please don’t buy me a coffee (I’m wired enough), buy a book! Get an ebook here: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-haunting-of-tullabeg (https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-haunting-of-tullabeg)Get a paperback here: https://www.bookdepository.com/Haunting-Tullabeg-Tony-Walker/9798736978946 (https://www.bookdepository.com/Haunting-Tullabeg-Tony-Walker/9798736978946)Join my mailing list and get a download: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback (https://bit.ly/somecomeback)Fritz LeiberFritz Reuter Leiber Jr was born in 1910 in Chicago, Illinois and died in San Francisco, California in 1992 when he was 81. His parents were actors and when he was a child he toured with them when they were acting. He got his degree in 1932 in psychology and then after graduating went to be a minister in the Episcopal Church. But didn’t finish and went back to do postgraduate studies in philosophy.He is best known for his fantasy, horror and science fiction stories but he was also a chess master. He was one of he fathers of the Sword & Sorcery genre along with Robert E Howard and Michael Moorcock and it was Leiber who coined the term.His early career was as an actor, following in his parents’ footsteps. But he did write some stories. His literary career seems to have been spurred on when he entered into correspondence with H P Lovecraft in 1936 (Lovecraft died in 1937) and he published his first Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser sword and sorcery story in 1939 in a pulp magazine. He had been a pacifist but when the Second World War broke out he was convinced that the struggle against fascism was worth fighting and he went to work for Douglas Aircraft corporation but still wrote fiction.He married Jonquil Stephens in 1936 and she died in 1969. Leiber had a life-long battle with alcoholism and long period of addiction to barbiturates was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Despite the success of his novels he was extremely poor and lived in a down at heel hotel surrounded by bookshelves with a manual typewriter. Things looked up towards the end of his life when he began to get royalty checks from TSR who were the publishers of the successful Dungeons & Dragons games and who had licensed his work.Leiber died in 1992 of a stroke but he married Margo Skinner in the last year of his lifeThe Girl With The Hungry EyesLieber published this story in 1949 and it was made into an episode of The Night Gallery in 1972 and has been made into a film twice, once in 1967 and then in 1995. It was also the title of a. Son by Jefferson Starship in 1979 on their album Freedom at Point Zero.Our protagonist is a down at heel commercial photographer when The Girl seeks him out. Is this an act of philanthropy? In fact as deadly as she is to all other men who covet her she seems to have a soft spot for our photographer and let’s him live, repeatedly rebuffing his attempts to engage in fatal lovemaking. This seems a very male story. It is uncomfortable to read after the #MeToo revelations because it suggests that slapping the chops off The Girl would be an appropriate and even positive thing to do and that making a pass at a girl in an empty office is exactly what all men would and should do.She is the only female in the sSupport the show

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

S02E53 Laura Silver Bell by J Sheridan Le Fanu Oct 18, 2021

Show notes

A dark fairytale set in the wild moors of the North of England. A foolish girl falls in love with a tall, dark handsome stranger who stepped out of the woods these days. He says he's a fine lord, and she sees his golden sash and his silver sword and his black velvet jacket. An old wise woman warns her not to take a gift from him, nor eat a morsel of his food, nor yet cross running water to stand beside him. But will she listen?Get a great discount on my Horror Stories For Halloween audiobook & ebook bundlehttps://spirit.ghostpod.org/horror-stories-for-halloween#audiobook #horrorpodcast #shortstories #literature***Merchandise https://my-store-5618003.creator-spring.com (https://my-store-5618003.creator-spring.com)Get my audiobooks at an insane deal. London Horror Stories https://mailchi.mp/tonywalker/london-horror-storiesBuy me a coffee to show appreciation: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker )You can get a free ebook and audiobook:https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Listen to audio only versions of my podcast:https://bit.ly/vurbl (https://bit.ly/vurbl)It is all greatly appreciated.#classicghoststories #classicstories #horrorpodcastSupport the show

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

SO2E52 The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Oct 11, 2021

Show notes

In the Backwoods, they do Bad Things. or "Be A Sport, Tessie!"My reading and analysis of The Lottery by Shirley JacksonJackson's 1948 masterpiece of naturalistic horror gone bad. Small town America shows its horrific side. Folk Horror before there was folk horror. The Purge before there was The Purge. Listen, enjoy, understand and come along with me on the journey. Meet Jack too.If you want to download my own audiobooks at an insanely discounted price that ensure no cut goes to the big boys (you know who they are) and you support my work, then check out Horror Stories For Halloween by Tony Walker: https://spirit.ghostpod.org/horror-stories-for-halloweenBy the by, if you want to sign up as a Patreon, that would be good. https://www.patreon.com/barcudIf you want to just buy me a coffee to keep me awake (though these days I don't need much help to do that) then hit here: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerGet a free audiobook and ebook here: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampireSupport the show

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

S02E51 The Pomegranate Seed by Edith Wharton Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Get a great discount on my Horror Stories For Halloween audiobook & ebook bundlehttps://spirit.ghostpod.org/horror-stories-for-halloween (https://spirit.ghostpod.org/horror-stories-for-halloween)The Pomegranate SeedThe pomegranate seed is a reference to the myth of Persephone and Demeter. Winter and Spring and the Lord of the Underworld. In a sense Mother and daughter are the same, and one aspect of the woman spends time in the world of the dead, while the other walks the world of the living.Kenneth disappears to see about ‘their passages.’ It is clear that it is his passage over the river Styx to the underworld that he finally arranges. He has been so attached to the ghost of his late wife, that he cannot escape her as she dominated him in life. He wants to escape, he wants to live with his new wife and have new experiences, but he is simply not strong enough to make it so.Charlotte represents the living, mortal world while Elise Ashby represents death. In that sense it is a story about a choice that all of us have to make: to live in this world and be of it and do what work it sets before us or spend our time dreaming of the underworld whence we came and to which we shall return. Deep for a Monday morning, I feel.However, Wharton’s skill as an observer of human behaviour also shines in this story, and for most of the time it is the skilful chronicle of that commonplace (sadly) or married life—the suspicion that our lover’s heart is tethered elsewhere. Trivial, but profoundly upsetting. Charlotte spends a lot of time arguing this when then that way that her husband is having an affair, trying to convince herself in a way that rings very true.Old Mrs Ashby plays the role of the mother goddess who loses her son in this case to the Underworld. This doesn’t totally fit. But she is on the side of life, despite her age, and she supports Charlotte and regrets her son’s attachment to his late wife.In construction there are four parts. We begin with a scene of Charlotte’s unsettledness, standing at the door. What had been her haven now disquiets her and she finds no comfort in modern New York or inside in her home that she once loved. She coveted the house when it was Elise’s and of course it has always remained Elises and again this is the story of the second wife who is dutiful and loving but is reminded by the possessions and moments and indeed children that she can never really supplant the first. Iff the first wife had been unfaithful then it would be easier, but by dying while he still loved her this has made the second wife’s job impossible. She can never win.Wharton raises questions throughout: what are the letters? Who are they from? Did he love this other woman? But she lays hints as the tension builds that these are not normal letters, they are grey, the handwriting is androgynous (perhaps because Elise is not a woman but a spirit? And therefore neither male nor female in that vague gray underworld?)But its a slow burn and the tension is that of a story about adultery, until it is revealed at the end to be a story about death’s hold on the living. Depressed now?She uses a lot of Britishisms: holiday for vacation, fortnight for two weeks —I don’t think Edith Wharton played Fortnite.The ending is ambiguous. Wharton prefers subtle hints rather than clear resolutions in her ghost stories, listen to Bewitched or Mr Jones on this channel for that.But it seems to me that both the Old Mrs Ashby and Charlotte are creatures of the daylight world and so they pretend that Kenneth’s disappearance is a daylight occurrence when they know that he has gone down into the night world. Still, they act as isSupport the show

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected