A remote New England village. Dark rumours swirl among its lonely hills. Whispers of strange rites, of a family line touched by shadows, haunt the woods and starlit nights. Something stirs where the old stones lie, and the boundary between the known and the unseen begins to thin. In my Halloween tradition, the tale chosen is “The Dunwich Horror”—a story rich in mystery, and alive with Lovecraft’s trademark unease.
First published in Weird Tales, April 1929.
Collected in "The Outsider and Others" by Arkham House, 1939.
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) was an American writer whose cosmic horror stories explored the limits of knowledge and the fragility of sanity. His influenced echoes through horror, science fiction, and popular culture to this day.
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2:00:37
Twilight by Marjorie Bowen
Twilight opens in a garden where beauty wears a mask to protect it from the years, and twilight brings regrets and confessions. A young courtier stumbles upon a Duchess at dusk—painted, jewelled, and demanding. She wants him to be her father confessor, but what does Lucrezia Borgia want to confess and why does he run away?
My first video podcast on Spotify...
Publication: First published in God’s Playthings (E. P. Dutton, New York, 1913), under Marjorie Bowen’s principal pseudonym.
Setting and subject: Ferrara; Lucrezia Borgia in her final twilight.
Author: Marjorie Bowen (Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, 1885–1952), prolific British writer of historical and supernatural fiction.
Noted for: Lush atmosphere, moral chiaroscuro, and “twilight tales” that fuse history with the uncanny
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Halloween Dark Ale by Tony Walker
A northern lad takes a cheap room above a Wapping pub in ’87, where the Thames presses at the windows like weather. He wants to be a journalist not a barman, but he needs the money... He learns. that the cellar has secrets and that the beer is popular. Especially the Thames Halloween Dark Ale.
I've made this members only story for November available to everbody as it's the Halloween one. Hope members don't mind!
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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
A man stands on a railway bridge. Orders pass along the line; the river says nothing. A watch ticks, a breath stalls, and time begins to misbehave. Memory intrudes, desire bargains, and the world narrows to rope, water, distance. No fanfare; only procedure—and a mind trying to outrun it. Follow the story to its far edge.
First published in 1890; collected in *Tales of Soldiers and Civilians* (1891).
Text: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842–c. 1914), American author, journalist, and Civil War veteran.
Best known for unsentimental war tales and the sardonic *Devil’s Dictionary*.
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For 33% discount - use coupon 33OFFGHOSTPOD
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Phantom Silhouette by Joy Burnett
A lonely farmhouse stands in a hollow of the hills—its windows dark, its doors long locked, and a story clinging to it that no one in the valley will tell aloud. When a sceptical visitor decides to spend the night within, he discovers that silence itself can harbour memory, and that the past, once woken, does not easily return to sleep. Phantom Silhouette is a tale of curiosity meeting what endures when reason has gone.
First published in The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows, edited by Rosemary Pardoe (Souvenir Press, London, 1971).
Reprinted in later anthologies of twentieth-century supernatural fiction.
Joy Burnett was an Australian-born actress who worked in theatre, film, and television after moving to England. In her spare time she wrote short stories, several of which appeared in British and American magazines; Phantom Silhouette was her first venture into the ghost-story tradition.
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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. Lovecraft) and wander from the Gothic to the Odd, even to the Literary, and then back again.
Each episode is followed by Tony's take on the story, its author, its content and any literary considerations, which may be useful to students!
UK