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PODCAST

Classic Ghost Stories

A weekly podcast that reads out ghost stories, horror stories, and weird tales every week. Classic stories from the pens of the masters Occasionally, we feature living authors, but the majority are dead. Some perhaps are undead. We go from cosy Edwardian ghost stories (E. F. Benson, Walter De La Mare) to Victorian supernatural mysteries (M. R. James, Elizabeth Gaskell, Bram Stoker, and Charles Dickens) to 20th-century Weird Tales (Robert Aickman, Fritz Lieber, Clark Ashton-Smith, and H. P

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All Episodes

46:24

Episode 50 Fullcircle by John Buchan

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/05/23

John 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

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58:26

Episode 49 They by Rudyard Kipling

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/05/16

Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was the great poet of British Imperialism. He was born in 1865 in Mumbai (then Bombay) British India. He died in London, England in 1936 aged 70.He was named Rudyard because that was the place his parents had met and courted at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England. Kipling was well-connected. HIs cousin was a conservative prime minister and two of his aunts were married to famous painters, one the great pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-JonesHe was immensely

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29:37

Episode 48: The Dining Room Ghost by Megan Taylor

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/05/09

Megan TaylorMegan is a British author, who has four novels, the latest being https://amzn.to/2z94akj (We Wait) UK link and https://amzn.to/2XQOFI1 (We Wait) USA LinkMegan lives in Nottingham, England. She teaches Creative Writing workshops has published four novels: We Wait (the latest, which is a haunted house story), The Woman Under the Ground which is a collection of short stories, The Lives of Ghosts and **The Dawning. They are all very well reviewed and there is great praise for the writing.In

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88:05

Episode 47: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde...

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/05/03

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde Themes"As we think in our hearts, so are we."(Proverbs, 23.7)The TwinsMost cultures have a fascination with the phenomenon of twins. Jekyll and Hyde can be understood to be a strange type of twin. Castor and Pollux were twins in Classical Mythology, both had the same mother (as would be expected): Leda, but each had a different father. Castor’s father was Leda’s mortal husband and was thus mortal, while Pollux was the son of Zeus, and thus an immortal. When push came to shove

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75:07

Episode 46 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde...

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/05/02

Robert Louis StevensonR L Stevenson was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenons in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He died aged only 44 in Samoa. He was phenomenally successful in his time and is still remembered for such classics as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and of course The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.Robert Louis (he changed his name from Robert Lewis Balfour when he was around 18) was an only child. His father Thomas Stevenson was a famous lighthouse engineer, from a line of lighthouse

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37:38

Episode 45 The Men in the Snow by Alex Boast

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/04/25

Alex BoastAlex Boast is a young British writer, born in Ipswich, raised in Surrey and living in London. He has an MA in Creative Writing and is constantly improving his skills by writing on https://medium.com/@boastalex (Medium) and https://www.quora.com/profile/Alexander-M-Boast (Quora) as well as doing Master Class courses and attending writing courses by the British writing school The https://www.arvon.org/ (Arvon Foundation).He has a love of ghost stories and references H P Lovecraft and Stephen

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29:12

Episode 44 Bosworth Summit Lock by L T C Rolt

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/04/18

L T C RoltLionel Thomas Caswall Rolt, was an English writer born in 1910 and who died in 1974, therefore for us, he's a recent writer! He was a prolific writer who had an interest in engineering and that shows in this story in his description of the tunnels and the knowledge of ventilation shafts which are integral to the plot of the story. In keeping with this love of engineering, he wrote biographies of major engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He had a major enthusiasm

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23:15

Episode 43: A Strange Goldfield by Guy Boothby

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/04/12

Guy BoothbyGuy Boothby was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1867 and died in Bournemouth, England in 1905. At the time of his birth South Australia was a recently established British colony and his father's family were important administrators and legislators of the colony. Boothby's mother was English and she separated from his father when he was only seven, and took him back to England where he was educated at Salisbury.He returned to Australia aged sixteen and entered the colonial administration

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52:26

Episode 41: Mr Arcularis by Conrad Aiken

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/04/04

Conrad AikenConrad Aiken was an American poet and author born in Savannah, Georgia in 1889 and died in Savannah in 1973 aged 84.His family were wealthy, originally from New England, but his father was an eye surgeon who moved to Savannah. Most bizarrely and disturbingly, Aiken’s father murdered Aiken’s mother and shot himself in 1901. Aiken was 11 at the time. He heard the shots and ran through to find the bodies. Aiken then went to live with his great aunt in Massachusetts. He went to Harvard where

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53:30

Episode 42: The Ring of Thoth by Arthur Conan Doyle

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/04/04

Sir Arthur Conan DoyleOr to give him his full name, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh in Scotland and he died in Crowborough, Sussex, England aged 71. His family name was just Doyle and Conan was his middle name but taking Ignatius and Conan together with the surname Doyle, he could hardly be anything other than of Irish Catholic heritage. His mother was Irish and though his father was born in England, he was of Irish family. He was born in Edinburgh and his father

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30:42

Episode 40: The Hound by H P Lovecraft

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/03/21

Howard Phillips LovecraftHP Lovecraft was perhaps the most influential writer of horror and weird tales of his generation. That may not have been evident during his life or even for a while after his death, but his work continues to be made into movies The Colour Out of Space was recently released, starring Nicholas Cage which is a based on Lovecraft’s weird tale of the same name.Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island and died in the same city in 1937 aged only 46 of untreated

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27:48

Episode 39: The Taipan by W Somerset Maugham

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/03/14

William Somerset MaughamW. Somerset Maugham was born in 1873 in Paris and died in Nice in 1965, was despite his brith and death places, English.He was a fantastically successful writer, being the highest paid author of the 1930s. His parents died when Maugham was only 10 and he was brought up by his uncle, a clergyman, and sent to King’s School, Canterbury. Many men in his family were lawyers, including his elder brother who was a viscount, but Maugham didn’t want that. He hated his school in

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34:09

Episode 38: Between Sunset and Moonrise by R H Malden

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/03/07

Richard Henry MaldenR H Malden was born in 1879 in England and died in August 1951. He was brought up in East Anglia. He was educated at Eton and King’s College Cambridge and was a long-standing friend of M R James.He spent his career as a churchman, working across England from Salford to Cambridge then Leeds and Ripon and then Wells in Somerset. He married a Yorkshirewoman, the daughter of a clergyman. He was president of the Somerset Archeological Society. It is said he was a well-known sight in

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75:49

Episode 37: A Wicked Voice by Vernon Lee

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/02/29

Vernon LeeDespite sounding so masculine, Vernon Lee was actually a woman called Violet Paget, born in France in 1856 and died in Italy in 1935. Despite these location she identified as English. Her biographer Vineta Colby says that Lee was English by nationality, French by an accident of birth and Italian by choice.As well as the ghost stories for which she is most famous, Vernon Lee, was an essayist who wrote about travel and art and especially aesthetics. Her parents were globe-trotting, or at

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35:13

Episode 36: The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/02/22

Oliver OnionsOliver Onions was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England in 1873 and died in Aberystwyth in Wales in 1961, His father was a bank cashier. When he was a young man he was an amateur boxer. He didn’t like the surname Onions and changed it legally to George Oliver but still published his stories under the name Oliver Onions. Onions is in fact a Welsh name, being from the Welsh Ab Einion.Onions trained as an artist and worked as an illustrator. His most famous ghost story is The Beckoning Fair

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67:04

Episode 35: The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/02/15

The Horla by Guy de MaupassantWelcome to Episode 35 of the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast!What would really help me would be if you could think of one friend or acquaintance who would enjoy the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast and share it with them! If every listener is helpful enough to do this for me, then we would double the podcast every week!Imagine that!The StoryToday’s story is a famous French short-story by a prolific and highly regarded author: Guy de Maupassant. In fact, he was known as the

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32:22

Episode 34: The Queen of Spades by Aleksandr Pushkin

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/02/08

Aleksandr PushkinAleksandr Sergeyeviçh Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist. He was born in 1799 in Moscow and died aged on 37 in St Petersburg. Hie was fatally wounded on a duel fought with his brother in law, a soldier who had attempted to seduce Pushkin’s wife.Pushkin’ great-grandfather was African, kidnapped from Africa, probably Cameroon, by the Turks and taken to Russia where he became the favourite of Peter the Great and rose to be a famous military engineer.Pushkin is rightly

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37:47

Episode 33: Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/02/01

Bram StokerBram Stoker was an Irish author born in 1847 in Dublin. Stoker is probably the best known horror writer in the world (after Steven King!) and is famous for his fantastically best-selling novel Dracula. Interestingly, Stoker spent his first years in bed, stricken by an unknown illness , and then he went to school even becoming an athlete there!After school he got his Bachelor of Arts degree at Trinity College and then got a Master of Arts in 1875. Stoker’s early career was in the Irish

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51:54

Episode 32: The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/01/23

Robert W. ChambersRobert William Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1865 and died in New York in 1933, aged 68.He was born to a well-off family; his father was a corporate lawyer with his own firm which did very well. Robert’s early love was art and of course this is evident in the story, The Yellow Sign. He first studied art in New York and then aged 21 went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. When he returned to New York, he sold his illustrations to well-known magazines such as

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53:34

Episode 31: Back Along The Old Track by Sam Hicks

Classic Ghost Stories ·

2020/01/23

Sam HicksSam Hicks is an English writer based in London. She caught my eye when I read the splendid anthology https://amzn.to/2NwI8MN (Fiends In The Furrows) by Nosetouch Press. The story was then lifted to the https://amzn.to/3abxnsY (The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 11). These anthologies are stuffed with good stories, but Back Along The Old Track was one of the best.It’s strange that I don’t begin these show notes with Writer was born in 1800 and died in 1900 or suchlike because Sam is still very

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