Classic Ghost Stories

When the Vermont floods of 1927 sent strange, swollen shapes down the rivers, the hill folk began telling old stories again about winged things that live on the high peaks and keep their own counsel. Albert Wilmarth, a folklorist at Miskatonic University, is certain it is all superstition, and he says so in print. Then a letter arrives from Henry Akeley, a reclusive farmer in the remote hills above Brattleboro, who claims to have the evidence that will change Wilmarth's mind. As their correspondence deepens, the letters grow more fearful, the nights at Akeley's farmhouse grow louder, and Wilmarth finds himself drawn toward the hills to see for himself.

First published in Weird Tales in 1931, this is Lovecraft at his most atmospheric, a slow and creeping tale in which a rational man's confidence is worn away one letter at a time. It is also the story that gave us the Mi-Go and the cold, patient dread of what lies beyond the edge of the map. This is our long Lovecraft offering for Halloween 2026, continuing the Classic Ghost Stories tradition of settling in with something properly unsettling on the darkest night of the year. Turn the lights down low, and keep an ear on the dark.

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The House of Sounds by M. P. Shiel | Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

On a nameless rock in the far northern sea stands a brass house chained against storm and tide. An old friend answers a summons, finding a family on the brink of extinction and an ocean roar so loud that spoken words become useless.

Join us for M. P. Shiel’s masterwork of Edwardian dread, The House of Sounds. First published in 1911, this story remains an essential highlight of classic horror literature and Edwardian weird fiction. If you prefer deep atmospheric dread over cosy ghost stories, this tale offers the relentless tension loved by fans of Bram Stoker and early 20th-century macabre tales.

In this episode:

- Unabridged audio narration of The House of Sounds by M. P. Shiel.

- Literary background on M. P. Shiel (1865–1947) and his contribution to classic horror literature.

Whether you are looking for bedtime ghost stories or classic horror audiobooks, please subscribe, leave a rating, and share the show!

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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 evening, and it concerns nothing more alarming than how far one mind might reach toward another. Yet something has noticed what they are doing, and before long Mr Bessel will have found that the self he has always taken for granted is far less secure than he supposed, and that some questions, once asked, are answered.

First published in The Strand Magazine, November 1898.
Collected in Twelve Stories and a Dream (Macmillan, 1903) and reprinted in Weird Tales, November 1925.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was an English novelist and journalist, a founder of science fiction best known for The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.
A student of T. H. Huxley, he brought a biologist's habit of mind to his scientific romances and to his short stories, a number of which edge toward the supernatural.

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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 perception has, and the solid faces around him no longer look quite as human as they once did. In his account there are no apparitions, no rattling chains, only the slow, unnerving sense that certain very ordinary people are quietly working to empty life of colour, choice, and meaning. As he talks, the calm, professional office itself begins to feel strangely less reassuring.

The Grey Ones was first published in 1952 and later collected in J. B. Priestley’s The Other Place and Other Stories of the Same Sort (1953). It stands among Priestley’s late uncanny pieces, where post‑war England is haunted less by ghosts than by structures of power.

J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) was an English novelist, playwright, essayist, and broadcaster, widely read and heard from the 1920s to the 1970s. Best known for works like The Good Companions and An Inspector Calls, he combined sharp social criticism with an abiding fascination with time, conscience, and the hidden pressures of modern life.

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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 completed work of fiction is something quieter than a cozy ghost story—and hard to shake.

Hear Edith Wharton's “All Souls,” her last completed work of fiction, written six months before her death.

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