Classic Ghost Stories

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The Monolith by Tony Walker Aug 14, 2025

Show notes

A narrowboat moors in Eastwick, a village cut off by time and road. Among its postcards and memories stands an ancient stone — and in every image, a shadow that should not be there. When George Middleton takes his own photograph, the shadow moves closer.

This is one of my own stories — and this time, I’m out to scare you. Let’s see if I manage to.

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The True Story of Anthony Ffryar by Arthur Gray Aug 07, 2025

Show notes

A scholar remains behind as pestilence silences the college. The gates are locked, the chapel dim, and a single window glows with the light of something unfinished. In the stillness of old stone, a man pursues his solitary work—methodical, precise, and unknowable. What follows is not a tale of horror in the usual sense, but something quieter, older, and threaded with the weight of ritual. Memory lingers in the cloisters. The dead are not always absent.

*The True History of Anthony Ffryar* was first published in *Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye* (W. Heffer & Sons, 1919), under the pen name “Ingulphus.” The story was reissued in the Ghost Story Press edition of 1993 with an additional tale.

Arthur Gray (1852–1940) was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a scholar of Shakespeare and local history. He wrote ghost stories rooted in the architecture, liturgy, and institutional memory of the university he called home.

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How Pan Came to Little Ingleton by Margery Lawrence Aug 01, 2025

Show notes

One summer Sunday in a quiet English village, something is missing—though no one can quite say what. The air hangs thick with heat, the hedgerows whisper, and down by the river, a tune drifts faintly on the breeze. As the hours pass, unease gathers like storm-clouds, though the sky remains clear. By evening, everything will be just as it was. Almost.

“How Pan Came to Little Ingleton” was first published in The London Mercury in 1933, and later reprinted in Fireside Ghost Stories (ed. Barbara Ireson, 1976).

Margery Lawrence (1889–1969) was an English author and spiritualist best known for her supernatural fiction. Her stories blend mysticism, folklore, and an enduring fascination with the unseen.

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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?

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Rose Rose by Barry Pain Jul 25, 2025

Show notes

She was flawless. A model of grace and stillness, prized by every artist who worked with her. But beneath the surface of the painter’s studio—amid the heat, the charcoal dust, and the careful posing—something else lingered.

“Rose Rose” by Barry Pain was first published in Stories in Grey (T. Werner Laurie, 1911). It is now in the public domain.

Barry Eric Odell Pain (1864–1928) was a British humorist and writer of uncanny fiction. H.P. Lovecraft cited him as an influence, and Robert Louis Stevenson compared him to Maupassant.

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The Clock by W F Harvey Jul 23, 2025

Show notes

A letter arrives—calm in tone, almost conversational. But beneath its surface, something unsettles. A favour once done, a house long locked, a memory that won’t quite settle. There are impressions that can’t be explained, and a sense—quiet, persistent—that something was not as it should have been.

The Clock first appeared in W. F. Harvey’s 1928 collection The Beast with Five Fingers, published by J. M. Dent & Sons. It has since been reprinted in several major ghost story anthologies.

William Fryer Harvey (1885–1937) was a Yorkshire-born writer and Quaker, best known for his concise and unsettling tales of the supernatural. A former naval surgeon, he was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving during the First World War.

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The Lost Ghost (1903) by Mary E Wilkins Jul 18, 2025

Show notes

A quiet conversation between two women over tea. A rented house. A memory long buried. In *The Lost Ghost*, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman offers no gothic castles or howling winds—only the hush of a parlour, the rustle of a child’s dress, and a voice repeating the same, simple question. It is not horror that lingers here, but something colder, something closer. A presence that never left.

*The Lost Ghost* was first published in *The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural* in 1903.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) was an American writer known for her psychologically rich stories of New England life. Though acclaimed for her realist fiction, she also wrote some of the most quietly devastating supernatural tales of her age.

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Squire Toby's Will by J S Le Fanu Jul 11, 2025

Show notes

Seen from a passing stagecoach, you might think that Gylingden Hall is not the sort of place where the dead rest easily. The chimneys are cold, the gallery echoes with no human tread, and the great trees that line the avenue whisper of old wrongs and buried fury. In the shadow of the ruined chapel and beneath the rot-black timbers of the house, something lingers—a grief curdled into malice, a legacy neither signed nor forgotten. Squire Toby’s Will is not a tale of ghosts who startle, but of the slow, relentless suffocation of guilt, and of the strange things a man will refuse to see, even when they’re clawing at the door.

Published anonymously in Temple Bar magazine, Volume XXII, in 1868. Later attributed to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and often compared to his novel The Wyvern Mystery, written around the same time.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic fiction and supernatural tales, widely praised for his subtle and psychologically charged ghost stories. A master of atmosphere and ambiguity, he was admired by M. R. James and influenced the shape of modern horror fiction.

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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?

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The Confession of Charles Linkworth by E F Benson Jul 10, 2025

Show notes

A man waits in silence. The law has spoken, the doctors have done their work. But something does not rest. In the quiet rooms and corridors of the prison, a sound is heard—faint, deliberate, and not easily explained. What follows is noted calmly, professionally. Still, it leaves a mark.

*The Confession of Charles Linkworth* was first published in 1912 in *The Room in the Tower and Other Stories* by Mills & Boon, London.

E. F. Benson was a British author best known for his *Mapp and Lucia* novels and his ghost stories. He came from a clerical family deeply involved in both religion and early psychical research.

⭐ 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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Members Only Episode July 2025 Jul 09, 2025

Show notes

In the Members Only podcast episode of the Classic Ghost Stories podcast for July 2025, I spent a lot of time apologising for being late in delivering the Members Only episode to you this month.

I then talk about my Uncanny Mirror project, which I'm sure many of you will find very interesting.

I then talk a bit about our holiday in Scotland.

I read from a book called Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher.

I then get bored with that and move on to Adventures in the Supernormal by Aileen J. Garrett, who is a psychic, and I get really interested in the description of her childhood in County Meath in Ireland.

But then I sort of run out of time; the scrap man's scrapping in the background, and altogether it's a very scrappy episode, but I hope it makes you laugh.

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The Friends of the Friends by Henry James Jul 04, 2025

Show notes

What do we see in others that we cannot admit in ourselves? In Henry James's haunting tale, a woman recounts her fascination with two people who have each witnessed a ghost. She delays their meeting for years, caught between longing and fear, until it is too late. Names are withheld, but emotions are not. Beneath the surface of polite society, something older stirs—jealousy, desire, and the quiet undoing of the self.

⭐ 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

First published as "The Way It Came" in 1896, the story was later retitled "The Friends of the Friends."

Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-born author whose subtle, psychologically complex stories often explore the limits of perception and the tensions of social life. His ghost stories are never merely spectral; they are studies of the mind in shadow.

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