A scholar remains behind as pestilence silences the college. The gates are locked, the chapel dim, and a single window glows with the light of something unfinished. In the stillness of old stone, a man pursues his solitary work—methodical, precise, and unknowable. What follows is not a tale of horror in the usual sense, but something quieter, older, and threaded with the weight of ritual. Memory lingers in the cloisters. The dead are not always absent.
*The True History of Anthony Ffryar* was first published in *Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye* (W. Heffer & Sons, 1919), under the pen name “Ingulphus.” The story was reissued in the Ghost Story Press edition of 1993 with an additional tale.
Arthur Gray (1852–1940) was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a scholar of Shakespeare and local history. He wrote ghost stories rooted in the architecture, liturgy, and institutional memory of the university he called home.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
46:46
--------
46:46
How Pan Came to Little Ingleton by Margery Lawrence
One summer Sunday in a quiet English village, something is missing—though no one can quite say what. The air hangs thick with heat, the hedgerows whisper, and down by the river, a tune drifts faintly on the breeze. As the hours pass, unease gathers like storm-clouds, though the sky remains clear. By evening, everything will be just as it was. Almost.
“How Pan Came to Little Ingleton” was first published in The London Mercury in 1933, and later reprinted in Fireside Ghost Stories (ed. Barbara Ireson, 1976).
Margery Lawrence (1889–1969) was an English author and spiritualist best known for her supernatural fiction. Her stories blend mysticism, folklore, and an enduring fascination with the unseen.
⭐ 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
--------
1:28:09
--------
1:28:09
Rose Rose by Barry Pain
She was flawless. A model of grace and stillness, prized by every artist who worked with her. But beneath the surface of the painter’s studio—amid the heat, the charcoal dust, and the careful posing—something else lingered.
“Rose Rose” by Barry Pain was first published in Stories in Grey (T. Werner Laurie, 1911). It is now in the public domain.
Barry Eric Odell Pain (1864–1928) was a British humorist and writer of uncanny fiction. H.P. Lovecraft cited him as an influence, and Robert Louis Stevenson compared him to Maupassant.
📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊
https://tonywalkerbooks.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
41:14
--------
41:14
The Clock by W F Harvey
A letter arrives—calm in tone, almost conversational. But beneath its surface, something unsettles. A favour once done, a house long locked, a memory that won’t quite settle. There are impressions that can’t be explained, and a sense—quiet, persistent—that something was not as it should have been.
The Clock first appeared in W. F. Harvey’s 1928 collection The Beast with Five Fingers, published by J. M. Dent & Sons. It has since been reprinted in several major ghost story anthologies.
William Fryer Harvey (1885–1937) was a Yorkshire-born writer and Quaker, best known for his concise and unsettling tales of the supernatural. A former naval surgeon, he was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving during the First World War.
📚 You can now buy my books where you are! 😊
https://tonywalkerbooks.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
47:16
--------
47:16
The Lost Ghost (1903) by Mary E Wilkins
A quiet conversation between two women over tea. A rented house. A memory long buried. In *The Lost Ghost*, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman offers no gothic castles or howling winds—only the hush of a parlour, the rustle of a child’s dress, and a voice repeating the same, simple question. It is not horror that lingers here, but something colder, something closer. A presence that never left.
*The Lost Ghost* was first published in *The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural* in 1903.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) was an American writer known for her psychologically rich stories of New England life. Though acclaimed for her realist fiction, she also wrote some of the most quietly devastating supernatural tales of her age.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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!
España