Classic Ghost Stories

In the year 1795, in the secluded Derbyshire town of Barford, a stranger settles into the old White House. He renovates it handsomely, pays every bill on time, and quickly wins the friendship of the local squire and his daughter. Among the hunting gentry, he seems to fit right in. But this is a story of the hunting gentry—and the secrets they don’t know, and the things people do when no one is looking. The Squire’s Story is a Gothic tale by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in Household Words in 1853. Known for Cranford and North and South, Gaskell here turns her subtle realism to darker terrain. 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊 https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ Hello In the year 1795, in the secluded Derbyshire town of Barford, a stranger settles into the old White House. He renovates it handsomely, pays every bill on time, and quickly wins the friendship of the local squire and his daughter. Among the hunting gentry, he seems to fit right in. But this is a story of the hunting gentry—and the secrets they don’t know, and the things people do when no one is looking. The Squire’s Story is a Gothic tale by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in Household Words in 1853. Known for Cranford and North and South, Gaskell here turns her subtle realism to darker terrain. 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊 https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ and thank you! Welcome and take a look around. If you have any questions let me know . In the meantime, here's a link to my Google drive of stories I may be running late with uploading the latest ones so give me a nudge if one you want is missing. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TlPMQHk6A3WZfhQqHunBaimaBCjz4b0l?usp=drive_link And here's the link to the Members Only Library https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MEHmW8OxcDm68ONBIBnj2SQURsfoz3HN?usp=drive_link Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A gale howls in from the sea as a traveller takes shelter with a smallholder on the Cornish coast. Above the hearth hang two relics: an old cavalry trumpet and a weathered drum, bound together with a brass-lettered lock. No one knows the word that opens it. As the fire burns low, the smallholder begins to tell a tale—half history, half haunting—of shipwrecks, silence, and the names that must still be answered. The Roll-Call of the Reef was first published in 1911 in Noughts and Crosses, a collection of stories by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. It remains one of his most enduring supernatural tales and has been reprinted in The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), who published as “Q”, was a Cornish writer, critic, and anthologist. He is best known for his editorship of The Oxford Book of English Verse and his lifelong dedication to the literary life of Cornwall. ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clark Ashton Smith's "Symposium of the Gorgon," a masterful blend of satire and fantasy, made its debut in _Fantastic Universe Science Fiction_ in October 1958. Published relatively late in Smith's career, the story showcases his enduring talent for crafting bizarre and imaginative narratives, even as his output had begun to wane. The appearance in _Fantastic Universe_ introduced this darkly humorous tale to a new generation of pulp readers. ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In H.G. Wells's "The Red Room," a young man, confident in his rationality, seeks to debunk the supernatural in a reputedly haunted chamber. He is certain that his experience will be defined by logic and reason. But the air within the castle walls is heavy with unspoken dread, and as the candles dwindle, something shifts. Is it the room itself, or something within him, that begins to unravel? "The Red Room" was first published in The Idler magazine in March of 1896. H.G. Wells (1866-1946), a visionary of science fiction and social commentary, explored the depths of human experience with unparalleled skill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Late one fog-bound night, a man goes in search of a book to help him sleep. He finds a book he doesn’t remember. Did he inherit it? It has no title. No author. It’s written in Latin, in an unknown but legible hand. And once he begins to read it, he can’t stop returning to it each night. He was a happy family man. A little bored, but happy. But what is he now? Margaret Irwin’s *The Book* first appeared in *The London Mercury* in 1930—a quietly chilling study of possession, hidden knowledge, and the horrors that live on our own shelves. ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beneath the brooding skies of Braun Fell, the Dewle family grapples with a dark inheritance, and John, a boyhood friend, is urgently summoned to help them navigate their dilemma. A lust for wealth consumes beautiful Jonquil, driving her to urge the use of questionable methods, while her husband, who would do anything to please her, is wary about such a path. So what will John advise? Join me as we unravel this tale of greed, forbidden knowledge, and the shadows that linger in the human heart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What lives after love dies? A man once full of charm and wit writes from a forgotten island—Delos, sacred to Apollo, now silent and desolate. He is bound by invisible chains, haunted by the soul of a wife who once tried to revive a long-dead mystery cult, drawing down ancient gods and transfiguring herself through ritual, art, and something far older than reason. In a mansion of endless chambers lit by perfumed oil, something stirs. Something born of beauty, death, and myth. As memory decays and sanity loosens its grip, only a scarlet thread guides the living through a maze of visions, shadows, and flesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What lives inside beautiful, silent things? In a quiet English manor, a collector of rare objects welcomes guests, family, and a child with an unusual gift. The air is calm. The room is bright. But some objects carry more than history. D.K. Broster’s Clairvoyance is not a tale of shadows and creaking floors. It is something more delicate—and more unsettling. A story where knowing too much may draw you close to something you never meant to meet. D.K. Broster’s short story Clairvoyance was first published in 1932 as part of her collection A Fire of Driftwood, issued by William Heinemann Ltd. The collection showcases Broster’s range beyond historical fiction, featuring several supernatural tales that highlight her psychological insight and narrative control. Clairvoyance stands out for its restrained atmosphere and eerie ambiguity, earning it enduring praise among readers of uncanny fiction. The collection is now in the public domain and is freely available through digital archives such as Faded Page and Project Gutenberg Canada. 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊 https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What watches us from the trees? A solitary girl begins to wander, again and again, into the woods above her home. At first, they offer calm—shade, silence, the companionship of trees. But as the summer deepens, so does her enchantment. She begins to hear music. She starts to see movement—half-glimpsed figures, never quite there. The woods begin to notice her. And something waits at their heart, beautiful and terrible. This is In the Woods, a haunting story by Amyas Northcote. Quiet. Slow. Uneasy. You can hear it now, on the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What price, a parent's love? A Scottish family, seeking a quiet life, rents Brentwood House – a grand, Georgian mansion standing in wooded grounds beside a ruined keep and a deep glen – only to find themselves in a terrifying ordeal. As their son plunges further into despair, can they, as a family, keep a hold of reality? Is there a happy solution? "The Open Door" by Margaret Oliphant was originally published in 1881 as part of the collection Stories of the Seen and Unseen. Join me, Tony Walker, narrator of The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast, for this week's story. 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊 https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happened down in the cellar? In Andrea Smith's disquieting tale, Peg grapples with her brother Milo's delicate state after a shocking incident. Whispers, unease, and a chilling presence haunt their isolated cottage. Can Peg protect Milo from whatever threatens them, or will a haunting past cast a shadow over them both? 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who digs in dead ground? A chance encounter on a desolate beach leads Maddox to a discovery that chills the very air. A parchment, a prayer, or perhaps a curse. The local priest knows better than to pry, but Maddox cannot resist the lure of the unknown. On the windswept Breton coast, something awakens. Experience the unsettling tale of "Celui-Là." Helen Madeline Leys, born on 11 July 1892 in Hampton Hill, Middlesex, and passing away in Devon in 1965, was a British educator and writer whose work, though initially overlooked, is now gaining renewed appreciation for its subtly unsettling atmosphere and exploration of folk horror themes. Whilst her given name was Helen Madeline Leys, she wrote under a number of pseudonyms, most notably Eleanor Scott. 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊 https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elliott O'Donnell, a prolific author who often blurred the lines between ghost story and alleged fact, invites us into "The Haunted Spinney." First published in 1904, the tale unfolds in a foreboding woodland, following a man's discovery and its haunting aftermath. What ghosts lie hidden beneath the twisted trees? This is a story where truth and imagination, madness and hauntings are not easily disentangled. Prepare to journey into "The Haunted Spinney." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An English traveller, delayed in an unfamiliar village, hears a troubling local legend—one the villagers are reluctant to discuss. Drawn by curiosity into a nearby wood no one dares enter, he finds the past is not so easily buried. What he encounters there resists explanation, hovering uneasily between tragedy and nightmare. L.A. Lewis’s tale unfolds slowly, in quiet conversation and half-glimpsed memory, before leading the listener into something far darker, and far stranger, than expected. Not everything seen can be forgotten—even when forgetting is all we want. 📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊 https://tonywalkerbooks.com/ ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

E.F. Benson's "The Wishing-Well" was first published in the United Kingdom in the collection Visible and Invisible by Hutchinson & Co. in 1923. This collection, featuring a range of supernatural and uncanny tales, showcases Benson's skill in blending traditional ghost story elements with psychological depth and social commentary. "The Wishing-Well," a particularly potent example of his Cornish-set fiction, has since been reprinted in numerous anthologies of ghost and horror stories, cementing its place as a classic of the genre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a dim parlour by the sea, where the waves sigh like old regrets, Madame Lily Floss lays her tarot cards on green silk and dreams of escape. She longs for a life beyond the shore, beyond her mother’s house, beyond her fate. Then, one evening, a stranger arrives — a man who claims they’ve not yet met… but already remembers everything. One of my own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is time an endless ocean? Randolph Carter, armed with a silver key, sets sail across its fathomless depths. His quest: the ultimate truth. But the waters are treacherous, and the shores lead to alien worlds and entities beyond human reckoning. And what if once you go, you can't get back? Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is a short story co-written by American writers H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price between October 1932 and April 1933. A sequel to Lovecraft's "The Silver Key", and part of a sequence of stories focusing on Randolph Carter, it was first published in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales. ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The House of Horror," despite its pulp sensibilities, clearly resonates with the Poe-esque tradition of detective fiction intertwined with the macabre and the sensation novel. Like Poe's tales, Quinn's story utilises a combination of rational investigation and visceral horror to create a sense of dread and suspense. De Grandin, though more flamboyant than Poe's Dupin, embodies the detective figure who seeks to unravel a dark mystery through observation and deduction. The story shares Poe's fascination with the grotesque and the psychologically disturbed, as exemplified by the character of Dr. Marston and his horrifying experiments. While Quinn's style is less atmospheric and more reliant on plot-driven thrills than Poe's, "The House of Horror" nonetheless shares a common lineage in its blend of mystery, horror, and a fascination with the darker aspects of human nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In W.F. Harvey’s The Beast with Five Fingers, we enter the world of Eustace Borlsover, an eccentric gentleman immersed in the study of the natural world and its more unusual phenomena. Set within the quiet gloom of Borlsover Conyers, his ancestral home, the story gradually evolves into a tale of obsession and nightmare. What if part of our very selves could act with a will of its own—and meant us harm? Join me as we step into a place where reason begins to unravel, where dust settles thick on forgotten shelves, and where something spiderlike begins to crawl across the library in the dark depths of the night. ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can Death be bargained with? In the town of Erlach, whispers of an old legend linger. They speak of Agnes Weberin, a woman known for her piety, her devotion— and her fate. Her husband, Berchthold Weber, was a learned man, a physician whose success in saving lives came at an unspeakable cost. The town murmured of a pact, a debt owed not to man, but to Death itself. As the appointed time drew near, Agnes made a choice. But when the moment arrived, when the valley of Totesdal echoed with the presence of something unseen, was it love that triumphed... or something far more mysterious? ⭐ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices