Classic Ghost Stories

Latest Episodes:

Episode 17: Behind the Stumps by Russell Kirk Nov 16, 2019

Show notes

Russell Kirk was born in 1918 in Plymouth, Michigan to a relatively modest family. He died in 1994, but between birth and death, he became arguably the foremost American theorist on Conservatism in his time. He wrote lots of books on political theory, but he also wrote ghost stories. I have a copy of his collection Ancestral Shadows. Kirk spent time in Scotland as a student at St Andrews and with a name like Kirk, he had some Scottish ancestry. A few of his stories are set in Kinross and Fife and others in England. He loved tradition and from his stories you see that he had respect for traditional spiritual values of Christianity.One of his first acclaimed stories was Behind the Stumps, and that’s why I’ve chosen to read it.This story has a lovely structure. First we get a description of Pottawattomie County. Then we learn how the government want to tax the folk there. Kirk was deeply conservative and disliked government, which comes out in the story. Next we get a detailed and well-drawn picture of Cribben, the tax enumerator. When that’s all done we set off to Bear City.Kirk paints nice portraits of the characters. We have Cribben of course but then the genial Matt Heddle as postmaster. Heddle is generally well-treated by Kirk, though he does say a couple of nasty things about him. Love the alcoholic hasn’t much of a role but we can picture him. Both Heddle and Love in their way are telling Cribben not to mess with the Gholsons.Love gives information about Cribben’s nemesis, though Cribben doesn’t listen. He’s too proud. Like all moral tales, he won’t mend his ways and therefore will be punished.There is an encounter with the main Gholson man in the street, who appears awful, but even he tells Cribben not to go near, specially on a Sunday and that foreshadows what Cribben is going to get. It also gives us the knowledge that Cribben’s heart is weak. This is to prepare us for the final scene so we understand how it happens.In the bleak scrubland which is reminiscent of Lovecraft’s ideas of the badlands of rural America where strange things go on since time immemorial. This is a folk-horror theme that we see in The Wicker Man, the Blood on Satan’s Claw, Witchfinder General and the recent Midsommar. He walks through the woods rather than taking the road. Usually that’s a sign that something bad will happen. You shouldn’t depart from well-trodden ways! But it doesn’t really. But he sees the house on the hill “indefinably mutiltated’.All the Gholsons, all the cats, hens etc, are absent from the farm.Some strange energy or power emanates from the farm where the old witch is housed undying. The young peasant girl watching is started by Cribben. I’m not sure what she represents, but I may be being slow here. Is it that the Gholsons themselves fear the house so they watch it? I guess that’s it.He looks at the house and sees that it is very odd. But he pays no heed.And then, fools rush in and Cribben enters the farm and you know what happens, all lovingly set up by Kirk for us to go aaah! to at the end.I guess that the old mother, who has no name, and who is neither dead nor alive is some kind of archetype. She is the devouring and life-giving mother (see how fertile the farm is). She’s very fat — again to to with nurture. They’re terrified of her but fascinated. It’s all very Jungian.Don’t dream about this stuff. It’s unhealthy.Usual links:Support the Show!https://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Look at our Spooky Pictureshttps://www.instagram.com/classicghoststoriespodcast/ (https://www.instagram.com/classicghoststoriespodcast/)Get in touch via Twitter@classicghostst1Music 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

Epsode 16: Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu (Part 3) Nov 13, 2019

Show notes

Carmilla Part 3Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Ireland in 1814. He was highly regarded both in his time and afterwards as a master of the ghost story genre. He wrote many wonderful stories, but here we focus on his vampire story Carmilla. I think it's very interesting and a little amusing, that Joseph's father -- in common with many writers of ghost stories as it happens -- was a strict Protestant churchman. I wonder whether Joseph Sheridan — or JT as I'm calling him — ever showed Carmilla , or read it aloud to his dad. Le Fanu was a master of Gothic description, and in Carmilla his abilities are at their height. For me one of the most engaging descriptions is that of the castle in the deep and inaccessible forest in Styria in Austria. It is almost poetic. We also have great descriptions of the graveyard at Castle Karnstein towards the end of the story and the masked ball scene which is related to us by the general also sounds splendid.The masked ball from Carmilla was borrowed and done very lushly in the movie Van Helsing where Kate Beckinsale, one of my favourite female vampires, looks lush indeed.Some of the sensuality between Camilla and the protagonist is described in almost erotic detail. I think that Le Fanu was not naive about this and , of course, he had to sell stories to make a living and he did this very well.. The stock characters such as the woodsman and the bizarre Baron Vordenburg who acts as a Van Helsing type vampire expert that comes in to solve all the problems towards the end, are both fun.In terms of the structure of this novella, I feel it could actually have been a novel. The ending to me was a little bit rushed. Camilla disappears and then it's sorted and fixed within minutes it seems. As I was reading it my imagination extended it to as throughout Italy and Europe with Camilla visiting the protagonist in her bed and then hunting her much as the gang do in Dracula. That being said, there is a nice structure to the story in that almost the first thing that happens is that the expected female guest is now tragic tragic not coming giving a great disappointment to our Laura the protagonist.The general in his letter is very disturbed but we are not told why and so kept in suspense until the end when the General neatly appears, closing the circle of the story. I guess we anticipate something like this happeningNext time I'm going to do something shorter and American I have in mind doing one of Russell Kirk stories. Although Kirk was an American writer and he set a lot of his ghost stories in England and there is one I want to do around Christmas so I'm debating whether to do that in an English or American accent.In terms of podcast business, we had a lovely review on iTunes from Gabby which I was delighted to read, so thank you Gabby for that.Reviews likes and shares are the lifeblood of the podcast and enable it to surge forward to ever increasing popularity which is my aim — obviously.I therefore politely but wholeheartedly encourage you to like, share and support the podcast. I think reading so much wordy Victorian stuff, influences one’s vocabulary!If you listen to podcasts in general you will be aware that the podcasters always make a play for you to join up and subscribe and support the podcast. I put the link down below just in case you fancy doing that.You may notice that I changed the podcast music; because I actually lost the original MP3 of the other so this is a royalty free one called Ben sounds scary music.Case I'm rambling again. I’ll have a story for you again next week.Download Charles Dickens The Signalman Free Mp3 https://bit.ly/dickenssignalSupport the show

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

Episode 15: Carmilla by J S Le Fanu (Part 2) Nov 09, 2019

Show notes

I won't say much about Le Fanu. This is Part 2 of Carmilla after all.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

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

Episode 14: Carmilla by J S Sheridan Le Fanu (Part One) Nov 02, 2019

Show notes

Joseph Sheridan Le FanuJ S Le Fanu was born in Dublin to a family of mixed descent. His father’s line were French Huguenots hence the French surname. Like many horror and ghost story writers his father was actually a clergyman. He studied law as his career at Trinity College Dublin. He didn't actually live in Dublin at the time but you could do a kind of distance learning. He became editor of a literary magazine at this time.Le Fanu was active in the campaign to try and stir the British government to do something about the Irish famine. It didn’t work.He wrote in many genres he is most famous for his horror stories. But in general his horror stories are understated and emphasise atmosphere rather than pure horror.Carmilla is one of Le Fanu’s most famous stories. It is the prototypical Lesbian vampire novel. Possibly because of that it has become famous. This book of course was written at a time when Queen Victoria famously declared the ladies did not do such things. Not that they do in Carmilla either, they just get close,One of the charms of the story is it setting. It contains many of the romantic elements famous from Gothic fiction. It has the beautiful ancient and partly ruinous schloss in the middle of the Carinthian forest.I imagine that some of the descriptions of the two girls kissing and hugging was quite risque for its time. But it is perhaps because of this that Camilla has been made into films and adapted into different media across the years since its publication in 1872.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

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

Episode 13 (unlucky for some): The Tower by Marghatina Laski Oct 31, 2019

Show notes

Consistently rated as one of top scary stories ever...#Marghanita Laski# was an English journalist and author, born in Manchester to a family of Jewish intellectuals. She herself was an atheist and an advocate of nuclear disarmament. She was very intelligent and went to Oxford. She died in 1988 aged 67. She later lived in London at Hampstead (where I’d like to live if I lived in London: the home of psychoanalysts and left-wing intellectuals). Though popular and highly regarded in her day, a lot of Laski’s work is now out of print. This story: The Tower is consistently rated as one of the most ferrying ever written, even though it is pretty short.Because of that, I had to hunt down a copy and read it.I wasn’t terrified. There may be something I’m missing here. The story is well-written and the prose elegant. She conjures the picture of the upper middle class family life of a British Council official in Italy with only a few brush strokes.I read the story alone and late at night. I’d just watched a recent horror movie #A Dark Song#, which is about #black magic# and a lot scarier, but even so, with book and movie added together I slept like a baby.I get the issue about the number of steps, but still, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m missing something. I get that she’s like Giovanna and she had fallen into the clutches of the evil black magician Niccolo and that like Giovanna: she is lost, she is damned as she descended into presumably hell…However, it did remind me of a scary episode I had. Once I was at https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186632-d215173-Reviews-Charleville_Castle-Tullamore_County_Offaly.html (#Charleville Castle# )in Co. Offaly, #Ireland. I went there a lot of times on ghost hunts and horror events to be honest, but they had this ruined tower in the castle. I decided to climb up the spiral stone stair that went to the ruined top to see how far I could get. There was no hand rail, just a drop and the steps were stone slabs coming out from the walls. One or two of them had come away, but you could step to the next. The the tower seemed to slope in and the slabs got narrower and narrower and the wall pressed in on me. Unlike Caroline, I realised I needed to turn back before I got to the top. So I turned and looked back at the narrow stone slabs and the huge drop and the missing steps and I panicked.But, like Caroline, I realised I just had to go down. No question about it. So, bricking it, as we say, I descended and got to the bottom. Not to hell. I believe I had a nice glass of wine after that. I quite fancy one now, but we’ve no alcohol in the house.If you figure out what’s so scary about The Tower, let me knowIf you were helpful enough to do some or any of these following things for me, I would be immensely grateful. I swear down I would.————————Share the Podcast to your friendsRate the Podcast on Apple or elsewhereBuy me a coffee via https://paypal.me/gospatric (Paypal)Sign up as a Patron for $1 a month to keep me going on http://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon) https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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

Episode 12: The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe Oct 25, 2019

Show notes

#Edgar Allen Poe#Needs no real introduction. He was in some senses the man who began the horror genre. There had been Gothic fiction before but Poe made it macabre and strange. I see some influences or commonalities between him and the French poet Baudelaire with his Flowers of Evil, or the French novelist J K Huysman’s with his studies of Satanism and Decandence. The insanity in Poe is also matched in the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink. I must read some Meyrink for you, though I’m not aware of any short stories of his.Tell Tale Heart is a first person story narrated by someone who is at pains to assure us that he is not crazy, though pretty much as soon as he says it, and certainly with a few sentences further said, we know he is.There is a view that it is the story of a perfect crime, but it seems far from that to me. It seems pretty unhinged. He is never going to get away with this crime. He buries the dismembered body under the planks of the floor. That is going to smell, believe me. Not that I know from personal experience.I had a bit of a disaster this week. I had recorded the English writer Robert Aickman with his longish Zombie story: Ringing the Changes, but the flipping computer packed in after 15 minutes. An hour later I found out the story hasn’t recorded except the first fifteen minutes.So I had nothing. I then recorded this one. I know, I think I know, (I sound like the man in the story) that listeners prefer longer stories that are American. This is short, but it is American which is a compromise. If you were helpful enough to do some or any of these following things for me, I would be immensely grateful. I swear down I would.————————Share the Podcast to your friendsRate the Podcast on Apple or elsewhereBuy me a coffee via https://paypal.me/gospatric (Paypal)Sign up as a Patron for $1 a month to keep me going on http://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon) https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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

Episode 11: The Monkey's Paw by W W Jacobs Oct 18, 2019

Show notes

The Monkey’s Paw was written by an English author W W Jacobs and published in 1902 in his collection The Lady of the Barge. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw (The Monkey's Paw)""The Lady of the Barge""Bill's Paper Chase""The Well""Cupboard Love""In the Library""Captain Rogers""A Tiger's Skin""A Mixed Proposal""An Adulteration Act""A Golden Venture""Three at Table"The Monkey's Paw is the only one to have survived. It seems to have caught the public's imagination and that is perhaps because it is an archetypal morality tale and has themes of not tempting fate and being too proud, themes that go back to Ancient Greek theatre.Jacobs was born in London in 1863 and died in London during the Second World War in 1943. He was most known as a comedy writer in his time, but he also wrote #horror stories#, the most famous of which is this one: The Monkey’s Paw.As we seem to have some interest in the political views of our writers, we note that his wife was a Suffragette (votes for women in the UK) and he had left wing views as a young man but as an older man described himself as ‘conservative and individualistic’The Monkey’s Paw has been made into a film a number of times, first in in 1915, 1923, 1933, and in 2016. In 1928 it was made into a radio play and again 1988 which was rebroadcast in 1993 and then another version read by Christopher Lee was made in 2004! It’s a classic morality tale: don’t trust genies or other supernatural agents who promise you wishes, because it will all go wrong. Usually it’s because the wish twists things in a malevolent way like in this one, or the Genie or Mephistopheles takes you at your literal word. They’re always out to trick you, don't you know.https://amzn.to/2LhO9vy (The Monkey's Paw on Amazon)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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

Episode 10: The October Game by Ray Bradbury Oct 16, 2019

Show notes

#Ray Bradbury# Is the most modern author we’ve read so far in the #Classic Ghost Story# podcast. He was born in Illinois in 1920 and died in 2012 in Los Angeles.His most famous book is Fahrenheit 451 which he wrote as a young man in 1953. This story is set in a Dystopian future where books are burned and the fireman set any alight they find. The title is due to the temperature at which paper will catch fire.Bradbury hinted that Farenheit 451 was a warning against totalitarian states and state censorship. He wrote it during the McCarthy era. Otherwise Bradbury seems to have had pretty reactionary views.But we digress. He also wrote #horror stories# and The October Game features in a collection called The October Country. This is in fact a horror story. There’s nothing much supernatural about it but it is much anthologised in dark fiction collections. We suspect pretty soon what’s going to happen (though maybe not its full extent) and Bradbury has the skill to draw us in as spectators to the inexorable train wreck that we can see but not stop.The narrator is pretty much wholly unpleasant. Sure, he didn’t get a son but even that play for our sympathy soon palls when we begin to suspect what monstrous horror he is going to enact against an innocent just to pay back his vile rage and sense of entitled injustice. No, I didn’t like him. Even so it was only when they were in the cellar I began to suspect just how appalling his act was going to be.The story structure is masterful. It drives from beginning to end on one track. It never deviates, just builds up the fascinated appalled concentration on The Husband.Yuk. I’ll read something nicer next week. In fact I already have, but I wanted to make sure you had this horror for Halloween.If you were helpful enough to do some or any of these following things for me, I would be immensely grateful. I swear down I would.————————Share the Podcast to your friendsRate the Podcast on Apple or elsewhereBuy me a coffee via https://paypal.me/gospatric (Paypal)Sign up as a Patron for $1 a month to keep me going on http://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon) https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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

Episode 8: The Phantom Coach by Amelia Edwards Oct 11, 2019

Show notes

Amelia Edwards was born in 1831 in London, England. As such she is one of the oldest writers we’ve read so far in this podcast. She died aged only 60 in Weston Supermare, a seaside resort in the west of England.She came from a wealthy background and didn’t have to work, but she was a very successful writer based on her own talents.She was in fact a very talented woman and had the potential to be a professional artist though her father, a banker, frowned on that as a career. She also made home with a woman, long before such things were accepted by polite British society.She was also an Egyptologist and after a cruise down the Nile and a long stay among the monuments, she devoted all of her efforts to saving the Egyptian monuments and took a lecture tour over several years in the United States to promote the cause.The Phantom Coach is a much anthologised story and it has some wonderful description. I think the story falls into three parts: lost on the Moors and despite what most commentators think, I suspect this is Northumberland rather than Yorkshire given what she says about the ‘far’ north of England. Despite that I have given Jacob a fudged Northern English accent which isn’t very Northumberland but draws on my native Cumbrian accent.The first part is well-done: lost. Then our man is found. He goes to a Victor Frankenstein type natural philosopher who has withdrawn from the world and lives with his alchemical and other vaguely occult thoughts, bitter that science has turned its back on spirits. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was published in 1818, so predating Amelia by a way. Madame Blavatsky who founded the Theosophical Society was born the same year as Amelia so maybe the occult was in the air. The third part, which is a standard haunting story is very well described. The only connection I think it has with the Magus bloke in his remote house is that he has spoken about the reality of spirits: and here they are proved. No real moral point in this week’s story. Unlike the later bleak works of the early 20th Century, there is a happy ending!Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show:https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!) http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee) to help with the long nights editing!Become a http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon) to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Website http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast) MusicMusic is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute) Support the show

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

Episode 9: The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce Oct 05, 2019

Show notes

Ambrose Bierce was a prominent American author in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He is most famous for his Devil’s Dictionary. He served in the Union Army in the American Civil War and his military experience forms the background of many of his stories.He was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek, Ohio. His ancestors were English puritans. By trade he began as a printer and he was later a journalist. He was a controversial figure often mired in argument and litigation. At the age of 71, heading for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields, Bierce disappeared. He wrote a letter from Chihuahua, then he disappeared. He was never found.Bierce published the Moonlit Road in 1907. This was just about the start of the literary and artistic movement known as Modernism, though its roots can be traced a little further back. While other classic ghost story authors are distinctly Victorian, the heyday of the ghost story, arguably, Bierce appears far more Modern, or even Modernist.In the Moonlit Road, for example, Bierce uses multiple narrators giving overlapping, but distinct viewpoints of the same event. He uses this technique in other stories. It’s only through the composite that we see what has (may have) really happened, and even then, there are things missing.There are three narrators to this story, the son, the father (gone mad and forgetful of his true identity) and the mother (now dead as a mournful ghost). The three together give us a fairly clear view of what has happened, but the fourth narrator is missing. Who is the mysterious figure leaving the house by the back door? It’s this figure that drives the husband into a jealous rage, leading him to kill his wife. And his wife is unaware that it is her husband that killed her. He thinks the figure is her lover. She thinks the figure is some monster. Why does the figure hesitate to come in and leave without encountering the wife?Is the figure a real man? A thief? Or the personification of Death himself — soon to visit Mrs Hetman. The leaving out of the fourth witness to the tragedy is masterful, but then so much of Bierce is masterful.https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected