Classic Ghost Stories

The Stolen Body by H G Wells

Mr Bessel is a conscientious man, and the experiment he agrees to try with his friend Vincey is undertaken in the spirit of honest enquiry. It takes place on a quiet even

The Grey Ones by J B Priestley

A middle‑aged businessman sits in a psychiatrist’s office with a problem he can barely put into words. Something in the world has shifted, or else something in his own pe

All Souls by Edith Wharton | Supernatural stories and classic horror

Edith Wharton's “All Souls” begins with an empty house on a winter night and a woman waiting as the snow piles up. Written six months before Wharton's death, this final c

The Residence at Whitminster by M R James

Thanks to Hayley Smith for sponsoring this episode! The prebendal residence at Whitminster stands in the shadow of its great collegiate church, solid, respectable, and c

The Wind in the Rose-Bush by Mary E Wilkins Freeman

An unmarried schoolteacher crosses a river by ferry to collect her dead sister's daughter from the girl's stepmother, a woman with china-blue eyes and a smile that is hid

The Mummy's Foot by Theophile Gautier

In a quiet curiosity shop in Paris, a shelf holds a collection of objects from another time. Our protagonist notices a small object that at first appears to be the broken

Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy's Curse by Lousia May Alcot

A young woman sits for a portrait, turning over a small gold box while her fiancé paints. Inside: three scarlet seeds, brought back from a place he'd rather forget. He wa

Lot 249 by Arthur Conan Doyle

This was a request, but fitted in with my current interest in mummies. Read my full notes on the history of the Egyptian Mummy in Horror here: https://www.classicghost.

The Haunted Dolls House by M R James

Kindly commissioned and sponsored by Gavin Critchley for his friend Victoria, a lover of dolls' houses... A collector buys a Gothic dolls' house for sixty guineas — a mu

The Face by E F Benson

London, in the full weight of a June heatwave. The kind of golden, breathless afternoon that makes a fortunate woman feel especially fortunate. And Hester Ward is fortun

A Professor of Egyptology by Guy Boothby

Cairo, in the winter season, when the wealthy of Europe come for the warmth and the ruins. A young woman falls under the spell of a scholar unlike any other — a man treat

The Dead Man of Varley Grange by Anonymous

A young officer receives a Christmas invitation to an old country house in Westernshire. His friend, hearing the name, begs him not to go. He goes anyway. There are thi

The House Surgeon by Rudyard Kipling

A bright, modern house in the south of England. No history of violence. No death on the premises. And yet something lives in it — not a ghost, not a presence you could na

The Werewolf Howls by Clifford Ball

In the vineyards of the Château Doré, something has been moving at night. The workers whisper of a wolf — enormous, grey, and wantonly destructive — and Monsieur Etienne

Gabriel Ernest by Saki

Something is wrong in the woods. The artist notices him first — and says almost nothing. One remark, on the way to the station, barely above a murmur. Then the train com

The Devotee of Evil by Clark Ashton Smith

There is a house in Auburn, California, with a tragic history and a new tenant. Jean Averaud has come from New Orleans with money, with books, with a beautiful mute woman

A Ghost of the Sea by Francis Prevost

On the Cornish coast, a man is dying by the sea. He has chosen to be there, and he knows why, and he is willing — with one exception — to let the world draw its own concl

Hertford O'Donnells Warning by Charlotte Riddell

Gerard Street, Soho. A winter's night. A surgeon sits alone by his fire, a practical man — a man who has cut through flesh and bone without flinching, who has long since

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth by Rhoda Broughton

There is a house in Mayfair. Charming, freshly decorated, inexplicably cheap. The landlord asks no questions. The neighbours say nothing. But the grocer at the corner of

The Mystery of the Semi Detached by Edith Nesbit

A young man waits in a suburban lane for his sweetheart. She doesn't come. Walking home past her house, he finds the front door standing open, the windows dark. He goes i