Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker
  • 4.9 (588)
  • Science Fiction
  • Weekly Series

A weekly fiction podcast bringing you classic ghost stories, horror stories, and weird tales in audio form. Most episodes feature classic stories from the masters of the supernatural: cosy Edwardian ghost stories (E. F. Benson, Walter de la Mare), Victorian supernatural mysteries (M. R. James, Elizabeth Gaskell, Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens), and 20th‑century Weird Tales (Robert Aickman, Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft), wandering from the Gothic to the Odd, even to the Literary, and back again. Occasionally, we feature living authors – but the majority are dead. Some, perhaps, are undead. Each story is followed by Tony’s commentary on the tale, its author, themes, and literary context – which can be especially useful for students and anyone curious about the history of ghost stories.

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  1. Season 7 Trailer

    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 warns her the story behind them will haunt her. She only laughs — she likes weird tales, and they never trouble her. But something was disturbed in that pyramid, something bound by an old promise to whoever broke her rest. The seeds are waiting. So is the curse. Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy's Curse first appeared in Frank Leslie's *The New World* on 16 January 1869, published under initials rather than a name. It vanished for over a century before being rediscovered in the 1990s as one of the earliest true "mummy's curse" stories. Its author was Louisa May Alcott, best known to the world as the creator of *Little Women*. Behind that respectable reputation, she spent years writing anonymous, blood-soaked thrillers — and this was one of the last. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

  2. Jan 10 • Special Editions Only

    The Beetle by Richard Marsh (Chapters 1-4)

    For Members: Your January Exclusive Story The Beetle by Richard Marsh - a sensation when published in 1897, outselling even Dracula in its day, yet mysteriously forgotten by modern readers. This is Victorian gothic horror at its most lurid and unsettling. When a destitute clerk stumbles into a decrepit house in London's West End, he encounters something that defies all natural law - a shape-shifting creature of ancient Egyptian origin, neither wholly male nor female, human nor insect. What follows is a tale of mesmerism, possession, and relentless pursuit through the fogbound streets of imperial London. Told through multiple narrators, each revealing another layer of mounting dread, The Beetle delivers everything the Victorians craved: forbidden knowledge, Oriental mysticism, psychological terror, and the ever-present threat that beneath civilisation's veneer lurks something far older and infinitely more malevolent. Book One (Chapters 1-4, just under an hour) is now available exclusively to members.

    The Beetle by Richard Marsh (Chapters 1-4)

  3. Feb 6

    The Occupant of the Room by Algernon Blackwood

    A schoolmaster arrives late at night in a remote Alpine village. The inn has no rooms. Then suddenly—there is one. A room that's occupied, yet empty. A room whose previous tenant, an Englishwoman, left two days before and hasn't returned. As he unpacks his few belongings, the atmosphere begins to press in. Something lingers here—in the faded flowers by the washstand, in the air itself. And when darkness falls, he feels it: a crushing weight of despair that doesn't belong to him. Thoughts that aren't his own. A blackness so complete it whispers of only one escape. The search party is still out on the mountains. But what if they're looking in the wrong place? Publication Details: "The Occupant of the Room" was first published in 1909 in Blackwood's collection John Silence: Physician Extraordinary, featuring the psychic detective Dr. John Silence. The story showcases Blackwood's mastery of psychological horror and the contagion of extreme emotional states. Author Biography: Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was a British author, occultist, and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His work explored the boundaries between psychological experience and supernatural phenomena, establishing him as one of the most influential writers of weird fiction in the early twentieth century. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    The Occupant of the Room by Algernon Blackwood

  4. Feb 13

    The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M R James

    A mediaeval abbot leaves behind a cipher—not in his will, but scratched into the glass of his own church. The treasure it guards has lain undisturbed for centuries. Mr. Somerton, a scholar with a taste for puzzles, believes he can solve what others have missed. The Latin is difficult, the clues are scattered, but gold is gold, and curiosity has its own momentum. What waits beneath the stone was put there deliberately. It has been patient. Some things, once disturbed, do not easily return to silence. "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" was first published in 1904 in M.R. James's second collection, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The story has been widely anthologized and was adapted for television by the BBC in 1974. Montague Rhodes James was a distinguished mediaeval scholar and Provost of King's College, Cambridge, later of Eton College. He is regarded as one of the finest writers of supernatural fiction in the English language, and his ghost stories continue to define the antiquarian tradition of literary horror. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M R James

  5. Feb 20

    Mezengerstein by Edgar Allan Poe

    Two noble houses. Centuries of hatred. A prophecy that may mean nothing—or everything. In medieval Hungary, the young Baron Metzengerstein encounters a horse—gigantic, fiery-colored, unlike any creature in his stables. He rides it obsessively. Dawn and midnight. Sickness and health. Riveted to the saddle as if becoming one with the creature. It performs impossible feats. The servants whisper of things they cannot explain. Some souls dwell only once in flesh. After that—only the scarcely tangible resemblance. Publication Details: "Metzengerstein" first appeared anonymously in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier on January 14, 1832, making it Edgar Allan Poe's first published tale. It was later revised and included in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. Author Biography: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, and literary critic who pioneered the modern short story and detective fiction. His works of Gothic horror and psychological complexity remain among the most influential in world literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Mezengerstein by Edgar Allan Poe

  6. Mar 6

    The Terror of Blue John Gap by Arthur Conan Doyle

    A young doctor, recovering from illness, is sent to the Derbyshire hills for his health. He takes lodgings at a remote farm, where he notices the family's reluctance to discuss the valley below. There's a Roman mine nearby that no one acknowledges, and a particular opening in the earth that unsettles him. His diary records what starts as mild interest in local folklore. But as he explores the mine workings beneath the Blue John caverns, his entries shift. The question becomes less about what might exist in the old tunnels, and more about what happens to a man who goes looking for it. First published in The Strand Magazine in August 1910, “The Terror of Blue John Gap” was later collected in The Last Galley: Impressions and Tales in 1911. It draws on the real Blue John Cavern near Castleton, with its distinctive banded fluorite. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and author, best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Beyond detective fiction, he wrote historical novels, science‑fiction romances, and a rich vein of ghostly and weird tales. Get the last copies of the first edition of Once in a Haunted House, our print magazine. Not many left! Here: https://payhip.com/b/fE1Gz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    The Terror of Blue John Gap by Arthur Conan Doyle

  7. Mar 13

    A Recluse by Walter de la Mare

    There is a house at the end of a lane. You have seen it before — or something like it. Palladian, still, its pale stone holding the last of the May light as if reluctant to let the evening come. The chestnut trees stand tall around it. The air is warm and gold and very quiet. Charles Dash stops his car. He is trespassing, he knows, but the house is empty, surely? And it is such a beautiful house. Worth seeing, if only for a few minutes. And then the car key goes missing. He cannot find it anywhere. And the owner appears — such a welcoming man, such a pressing, generous, will-not-take-no-for-an-answer kind of man. Do come in. Stay for dinner. The night is drawing in. Why not stay? Why not? A Recluse was first published in 1926 and collected in On the Edge, Faber and Gwyer, 1930. Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) was an English poet, novelist and short story writer, regarded as one of the supreme masters of the uncanny in the English language. His ghost stories occupy a singular place in the tradition — atmospheric, oblique, and finally inexplicable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    A Recluse by Walter de la Mare

  8. Mar 20

    The Thing Invisible by W H Hodgson

    In an old private chapel attached to a country house, a trusted servant keeps night watch beside the ancient altar, alone behind a locked door. By morning he is found dead, a dagger from the chapel’s peculiar mechanism driven clean through his heart—though no human hand should have been able to strike the blow. No tracks, no witnesses, only the oppressive sense that something in that dim, little sanctuary has moved unseen. As Thomas Carnacki retraces the dead man’s final hours and tests the chapel’s sinister contrivance for himself, the silence around the altar begins to sound like an answer of its own. First published in the 1909 collection The Ghost Pirates, A Chaunty, and Another Story, “The Thing Invisible” later appeared in The New Magazine (January 1912) before being collected in Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder (1913). The story is in the public domain. William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) was an English writer of sea stories, supernatural fiction, and weird horror. He is best known for his visionary novels The House on the Borderland and The Night Land, as well as his stories featuring the occult detective Carnacki. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    The Thing Invisible by W H Hodgson
See All Season 7 (30)

Trailer

4.9
out of 5
588 Ratings

About

A weekly fiction podcast bringing you classic ghost stories, horror stories, and weird tales in audio form. Most episodes feature classic stories from the masters of the supernatural: cosy Edwardian ghost stories (E. F. Benson, Walter de la Mare), Victorian supernatural mysteries (M. R. James, Elizabeth Gaskell, Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens), and 20th‑century Weird Tales (Robert Aickman, Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft), wandering from the Gothic to the Odd, even to the Literary, and back again. Occasionally, we feature living authors – but the majority are dead. Some, perhaps, are undead. Each story is followed by Tony’s commentary on the tale, its author, themes, and literary context – which can be especially useful for students and anyone curious about the history of ghost stories.

Information

  • Creator
    Tony Walker
  • Episodes
    476
  • Seasons
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Classic Ghost Stories
  • Show Website
    Classic Ghost Stories
  • Provider
    The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

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