Classic Ghost Stories

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S02E15 The Turn Of The Screw Part 6 Nov 29, 2020

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We continue with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. His language is getting easier. I think he's given up trying to impress me and is just getting on with the story. That is all good because the story is nifty. I do think Quint and Miss Jessel are unfairly maligned. Poor old Mrs Grose. Not sure about those (pesky) kids though. I would be surprised if it turned out they were dead already like in the Sixth Sense.I am knocking out the Turns of the Screw. I think we have about 2 episodes left to do. Should be finished by end November, then I will do Dracula as an exclusive and some Christmas one-offs before starting A Christmas Carol in December.Busy, busy. Hope you all are well. I am well. In any case, I brazenly askhttps://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Buy me a coffee)? In return you can download some free audio stories. As my old nana used to say: fair exchange is no robbery.I have a stretch goal on the Ko-Fi site that I will buy a laptop for editing the audio, but in fact I have spent all the money on coffee.Download A Free Audiobook Of My Story https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (The Dalston Vampire)Other LinksStart Music: "Some Come Back" by the Heartwood Institute, Check our their new release for Halloween, https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witchseason (Witch Season.)End Music: "https://soundcloud.com/dvoynik_au/sets/ghost-pieces (A Ghost Story)" by DvoynikSupport the show

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S0214 The Turn Of The Screw Part 5 Nov 28, 2020

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The Turn Of The Screw Part 5, being chapters 12, 13, 14 and 15.Hope you're enjoying this. I'm doing lots of recording and editing to finish it before December. I anticipate episodes falling out like apples from a barrel just before 1st December.Sign Up on https://bit.ly/2GgHv9D (Substack) For Exclusive Bonus Episodes!Download A Free Audiobook Of My Story https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (The Dalston Vampire)Contribute a caffeinated beverage, perhaps? https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Ko-Fi). There are some free audio stories there by the way. Yours for the taking.Other LinksStart Music: "Some Come Back" by the Heartwood Institute, Check our their new release for Halloween, https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witchseason (Witch Season.)End Music: "https://soundcloud.com/dvoynik_au/sets/ghost-pieces (A Ghost Story)" by DvoynikDon't you love disturbing music?Support the show

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S0213 The Turn Of The Screw Part 4 Nov 21, 2020

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The Turn Of The Screw Part 4, being chapters 9, 10 and 11.Minimal show notes this week as I plough on trying to record and edit this novella.Visit the website at www.ghostpod.org Sign Up on https://bit.ly/2GgHv9D (Substack) For Exclusive Bonus Episodes!Download A Free Audiobook Of My Story https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (The Dalston Vampire)Other LinksStart Music: "Some Come Back" by the Heartwood Institute, Check our their new release for Halloween, https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witchseason (Witch Season.)End Music: "https://soundcloud.com/dvoynik_au/sets/ghost-pieces (A Ghost Story)" by DvoynikDon't you love disturbing music?Support the show

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S0212 The Turn Of The Screw Part 3 Nov 14, 2020

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Part 3 of The Turn Of The ScrewOur part three, not Henry James's. We're getting through the story. It's a good story! The characterisation is skilled. The language is like walking through a forest littered with logs hidden among grass. You keep tripping up. Or I do.Hope you're enjoying. You'd better, be. We have some way to go yet.Sign Up https://bit.ly/2GgHv9D (The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast Substack Newsletter) For Exclusive Bonus Episodes!Downloadhttps://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (Download A Free Audiobook) of my story: The Dalston VampireVisit Our Websitewww.ghostpod.orgMusicStart Music: "http://bit.ly/somecomeback (Some Come Back)" by the Heartwood Institute, Check our their new release for Halloween, Witch Season.End Music: "http://bit.ly/dvoynikdrowning (A Drowning)" by DvoynikSupport the show

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S0211 The Turn Of The Screw Part 2 Nov 07, 2020

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S0211 The Turn Of The Screw Part 2I'm not going to say much. James's parenthetical insertions of information interrupt the flow of his sentences. He says something, the elaborates on it, then elaborates on that and sometimes elaborates on that as if his thoughts are sparking tangentially. He always comes back to the main matter, but it makes it hard to read out.That being moaned about, the story is good. He foreshadows well and creates foreboding." It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a beast."Nothing has yet happened, but he warns us that it soon will, and we tense up waiting for it.Then he describes a blissful summer evening's walk in the park which is interrupted by her seeing Quint (though she doesn't yet know his name) in the tower. The fact that it is on a beautiful summer night rather than a rainswept Gothic nighttime is well-done and serves to heighten the drama, I think.He ends each chapter with a good cliffhanger.- I wondered why...she was scared.- Mr Quint is .... dead.That's enough rabbiting for me. Check out the Substack newsletter for more news.Sign Up On https://bit.ly/2GgHv9D (The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast Substack Newsletter) For Exclusive Bonus Episodes!https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (Download A Free Audiobook) of my story: The Dalston VampireMusicStart Music: "http://bit.ly/somecomeback (Some Come Back)" by the Heartwood Institute, Check our their new release for Halloween, Witch Season.End Music: "http://bit.ly/dvoynikdrowning (A Drowning)" by DvoynikSupport the show

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S0210 The Turn of the Screw Part 1 Oct 31, 2020

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So we begin The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I have wanted to do this story for a long time but have hesitated because it's so long!Of course, we have read out The Beckoning Fair One, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and Carmilla that ran on over several episodes, but The Turn of the Screw will be the longest so far.I reckon it'll take five weeks or so, though if I crack on well, I might get it squeezed into four. By that I mean, just making the episodes longer rather than cutting bits out of the glorious story.I read The Turn of the Screw donkeys' years ago and liked it, but I'd forgotten much of the story, so it was like reading it for the first time again. A failing memory is one of the blessings of age.Netflix is currently broadcasting their drama series doing The Haunting of Bly Manor based on The Turn of the Screw, so it's probably timely to do the original.I am enjoying rereading it. James has the annoying habit for a narrator of breaking up his sentences with parenthetical information, which makes them hard to speak out. Reading them to oneself isn't such a problem.The Turn of the Screw was published in 1898, and written in 1897-1898 when he had moved to Rye in Sussex, a quaint and picturesque small English town.It was published as an illustrated serial in Collier's Weekly Magazine. Then in 1898, it was published as a whole in an anthology called The Two Magics.Just listen to how he constructs the story. He withholds lots and lots and hints and foreshadows.The introduction, set on Christmas Eve at an English country house, is just a long foreshadowing, whetting your appetite. He sets us up so that, like the guests in the house, we are on pins waiting for the story to begin.James makes us wonder. We wonder about the gentleman owner whom she has taken a fancy to but who does not wish to be disturbed.Miles is heavily foreshadowed, and as we end this episode, we can't wait to meet him to see what he's like: bad or good.Henry JamesJames was born to a well-off New York family. His father was a philosopher, and his grandfather a banker. The grandfather's many allowed the James family to indulge their intellect, talent and tastes.Henry James was the brother of the famous and ground-breaking philosopher and psychologist William James. He was born in 1843 in New York but moved to live in London, where he died in 1916. He took up British citizenship in the last year of his life; technically, he became a subject of the British Crown—just like me.The family moved to Boston in 1864 because his brother William was studying law there. Henry set to studying law, but didn't like it and instead turned to literature. The American author Nathanial Hawthorne (who we will read out one day on the Podcast) was a significant early influence on James. James was particularly fond of French literature and of the French authors, Balzac.Because of a back injury he suffered when fighting a fire, he was not fit to fight in the American Civil War.He first published in 1863 when he was twenty. It has emerged that James was gay, though, during his lifetime, this fact was hidden. Of course, being gay was a crime in both England and the USA when James was alive.James is an enormously influential figure in American literature. He wrote several very well-reviewed novels, for example, The Portrait of a Lady, but also The Bostonians, The Ambassadors and The Wings of a Dove.His work can perhaps better be considered Trans-Atlantic literature rather than purely American or British.He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916.He turned his hand to ghost stories, which of course were allSupport the show

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S0209 The Maker of Gargoyles by Clark Ashton Smith Oct 24, 2020

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S0209 The Maker of Gargoyles by Clark Ashton SmithClark Ashton Smith was born in 1893 in Long Valley, California and died in California in 1961. He began as a poet and wrote decadent, overblown Romantic poetry after the manner of Swinburne. He got early recognition for his work in California.Lovecraft loved him and with Robert E Howard and Howard Philips Lovecraft he was one of the big three writers of Weird Tales. Ray Bradbury was also a fan. A few months ago, I re-read Bradbury's *Something Wicked This Way Comes* , and I can see that Bradbury too was a lover of poetic, sometimes overblown language—like myself!Smith was clear that his use of language and rhetorical stylings as deliberate. He talked of trying to create a "sort of verbal black magic."He uses some obscure words, such as 'vans' for wings and 'ferine' which neither I, nor my spell-checker, had come across before. I must have heard the word before because I read all of these stories as a teenager. But I'd forgotten ferine. Turns out it's a version of feral: savage and untamed.I did enjoy the word 'troublously' and also 'lubricous'.Smith wrote poetry from the age of 11, and his first novel by the age of 14. He began to sell his stories aged 17. His influences were The Arabian Nights, and he was clearly entranced by fairy-tale realms. He is also influenced by Edgar Allen Poe and the Brothers Grimm as well as the classic Gothic novel Vathek. Interestingly, he loved the decadent poetry of Charles Baudelaire. He translated his poetry from French as Baudelaire in his turn had translated the works of Poe into French.He had a period of ill health. He was a correspondent of Lovecraft and also knew Jack London and Ambrose Bierce.Smith and Lovecraft used the strange names and ideas they conjured in mutually influenced stories. This 'open source' was Lovecraft's greatest gift to horror: he allowed other writers to build on his ideas and so the Cthulhu Mythos was created.Smith was a massively prolific author, but more or less gave up writing in the second half of his life.He then turned back to sculpting and painting. He nursed his mother and father during their final illnesses until finally is father died in 1937. Robert H Howard killed himself in 1935 and Lovecraft died of cancer in 1937. It’s thought that these events may have knocked the love of writing out of him.Smith himself had a heart attack in 1953, but he still married aged 61. He set up house with Carolyn Jones Dorman and took on her children, and they moved to Pacific Grove.He had a series of strokes in 1961, and one finally killed him.I must admit that of the 'big three' Weird Tales writers (Lovecraft, Howard and Smith), I prefer Smith. I found Howard mostly preposterous. The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast did a reading of Robert E Howard's *Queen of the Black Coast* which had me in stitches. You need to check Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey out. They are very good.I loved Smith from my early teens and I think that the creation of the mythical Provencal region of Averoigne is fantastic. I was mesmerised by this medieval city surrounded by werewolf haunted forests. It was merely a matter of time that I managed to sneak a story in, falsely claiming it as a ghost story.It's not a ghost story, but it is a weird tale and it does contain the supernatural and a bit of murder, so I think it's okay.Smith on occasion intrudes sexual themes, and these are mostly absent from Lovecraft's work and Poe's as I can remember. Let me know if I am missing something here. I could be. It's late. I'm tired. I've been working on sales funnels rather than poetry. Pity.Coincidentally, Smith died the year I wSupport the show

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S0208 The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood Oct 17, 2020

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https://tonywalker.substack.com/ (Subscribe here, support The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast and obtain exclusive content.)S0208: The Empty House by Algernon BlackwoodWe did the Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood as Episode 20, and there I said: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 Alistair Crowley.At one point he was a paranormal researcher for the British Society for Psychical Research and it is said that this story was based on a case that he investigated.The Empty HouseStructurally, the story is simple: our man hears of the house, he visits the house, he explores the house, weird stuff starts to happen, the ghost is revealed to be a replaying of a tragic scene from the house’s past, the protagonist is merely an observer. If he has an arc, it is the transformation of his attitude to his aunt from seeing her as a feeble old lady to a woman who is in some respects braver than he is.Blackwood lays on the dust, the shadows, the moonlight as well as scurrying beetles and some black thing that scurries off (probably a cat, maybe a rat in the dark). He does this well. We are taken right there.Michael Kellermeyer describes the story as an exploration of fear, rather than ghosts and I think that’s a good point. In that it matches some other stories like Marghatina Laski’s The Tower and H R Wakefield’s Blind Man’s BuffThere’s a whole genre of ‘night in a haunted house’ stories.The Empty House Reminds me of a story I recently read from 1835, No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince by Ralph Adams Cram. That is much older, and more decadent. It’s worth a read though.In 252 Rue. Me Le Prince, as in this story, the person visiting the haunted house is merely a witness to past happenings. At least that was my take. Of course, that is like the Stone Tape theory of hauntings, which holds that the fabric of a building somehow records strong emotion and plays these scenes back as hauntings.It is also reminiscent of Blackwood’s own The Kit Bag, in that we have someone lurking out of sight who eventually is seen and in both cases they are the ghosts of criminals.The story also reminded me of Blind Man’s Buff by HR Wakefield, which we read recently , not to mention The Judge’s House by Bram Stoker, which we haven’t yet got round to.One bizarre incident in The Empty House is when he turns to see his aged aunt’s face is transformed into the face she had as a girl. He finds this horrific and turns from out, but I can’t see why it would be horrible and what purpose it has in this story. I had wondered whether she had been transformed into the murdered maid, but this does not seem to be the case.Blackwood with his stories of outdoor adventure and colourful employment history sounds very much like a man’s man and I am familiar with that archSupport the show

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S0206 Sanatorium Under The Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz Oct 03, 2020

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Bruno SchulzBruno Schulz was a Polish writer. He was born in 1892 in Austrian Galicia. In those days that part of historical Poland was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now it is part of Ukraine. His family were well-off traders who owned a dry goods shop. I'm not wholly sure what that is, though I think I knew when I was younger.After the First World War, Austrian Galicia became part of Poland. Schulz was 26 when that happened. His home town was a drab industrial place, predominantly Jewish, at least until the Holocaust. Schulz lived there most of his life. Schulz was interested in the arts from his youth and studied design in Lviv. He then went to Vienna to study architecture for two years but returned to his home town to the school he had himself attended and became a teacher of arts and crafts. He is said not to have liked teaching much, but he entertained the pupils by telling them stories.He was Jewish, and before the Nazi partition of Poland, there was a thriving Jewish community in his hometown. He wrote in Polish but was fluent in German too. Like many writers, he was inspired to continue writing even though he received little encouragement at first. He gained success after he went to see a famous Polish novelist, who was reputedly not too keen on seeing him at first, thinking him just another wannabe writer. However, after hearing him read out the first page of his work, she asked him from the manuscript and declared she had discovered a new genius of Polish literature.His first collection of stories was published in 1934 called The Cinnamon Shops in English though it is often known as The Street of Crocodiles. Three years later he published Sanatorium Under The Sign of the Hourglass. He illustrated his own books.In 1936, he translated Franz Kafka (1883-1924)'s The Trial into Polish. Kafka who wrote in German was also Jewish and also from territory that had belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.He was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's Golden Laurel award in 1938.In 1939 the Nazis came. He was writing a novel at the time, but that is now lost. He died tragically in 1942. He was walking home through the so-called Aryan quarter of his hometown. He'd been to buy a loaf of bread when he was shot dead by a Gestapo officer. The story was that this Gestapo officer had a quarrel with an SS officer. The SS officer had shot the Gestapo officer's Jewish slave, so in return, the Gestapo officer shot Schulz, who had been employed by the SS officer to paint murals.Sanatorium Under the Sign of the HourglassReminiscent of the weirdness of Kafka and the bizarreness of Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932) (The Green Face, The Golem), there must have been something in the water in the Austro-Hungarian Empire that these three were born in. All three wrote stories which were oneiric. That's a right word, meaning dreamlike.I just feel like I've watched the third season of Twin Peaks, because like Lynch's work the story, though ostensibly happening in the real world, is dreamlike from the outset. It seems full of symbols, some of which I struggle to decipher. For example, what's with all these cakes and pastries?The guard dog and its kennel, the dog that morphs later into a man, and his Father and his mother (Father gets a capital in the story) are more apparent symbols. They could be Freudian or Jungian, and again we must remember that Freud was a child of Austria-Hungary and also Jewish. In the early part of the 20th Century, there were also the movements of Dadaism and Surrealism, that definitely turned their back on realism. Weirdness was in the air.Most of the story is mysterious tSupport the show

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S0201 A Journey of Little Profit by John Buchan Sep 19, 2020

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This is a subscriber only episode, so come on and sign up at tonywalker.substack.comJohn Buchan: John Buchan, officially 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was born in 1875 in Perth, Scotland and died in 1940 aged only 64 in Montreal, Canada. He was Governor General of Canada until he died in office. His father was a minister of the Church of Scotland. Many of our ghost story writers are children of clergymen. He studied Classics at the University of Glasgow and then moved to Oxford University. After that he went to South Africa where he was private secretary to the High Commissioner of South Africa. Like Kipling, who we read last week, Buchan was a conservative son of the British Empire. He was a bit of a softie for a conservative though because later when MP for Peebles just south of Edinburgh, he supported votes for women, national health insurance for the poor and curtailing the power of the House of Lords.Though a Scot, he was not a Scottish Nationalist, and in common with many Scots of his class and time, he though Scotland was best off within the British Empire.When he returned from South Africa, he was called to the English Bar as a barrister (an advocate in Scotland). He was also editor of the still existing conservative magazine: The Spectator.In 1916, Buchan went to the Western Front, attached to the Intelligence Corps. Just before this he had just published his famous spy story The 39 Steps. In 1935, Buchan went as Governor General to Canada. He had always liked Canada, written about it as a journalist and fought alongside Canadian troops in the First World War. He encouraged a distinct Canadian identity and nationality. He hosted King George VI on the king's tour of Canada. He suffered a stroke at Rideau Hall and then a head injury as he fell. He was treated by the famous neurologist Wilder Penfield. A Journey of Little Profit was published in 1896 in The Yellow Book, so he was just twenty-one at the time. It's a well-regarded story about a bargain with the Devil.Because of its Scottish setting it has echoes with James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and of course with the Faust Legend.The great use of dialogue and language with lots of Scottish dialect words sets this story apart but also the fact that Duncan Stewart becomes fond of the Devil and escapes with his soul. We see him first the older wiser man, now regretful of his wild youth.It's a great story, I hope you enjoyed it too.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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