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.
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1:11:26
Squire Toby's Will by J S Le Fanu
Seen from a passing stagecoach, you might think that Gylingden Hall is not the sort of place where the dead rest easily. The chimneys are cold, the gallery echoes with no human tread, and the great trees that line the avenue whisper of old wrongs and buried fury. In the shadow of the ruined chapel and beneath the rot-black timbers of the house, something lingers—a grief curdled into malice, a legacy neither signed nor forgotten. Squire Toby’s Will is not a tale of ghosts who startle, but of the slow, relentless suffocation of guilt, and of the strange things a man will refuse to see, even when they’re clawing at the door.
Published anonymously in Temple Bar magazine, Volume XXII, in 1868. Later attributed to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and often compared to his novel The Wyvern Mystery, written around the same time.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic fiction and supernatural tales, widely praised for his subtle and psychologically charged ghost stories. A master of atmosphere and ambiguity, he was admired by M. R. James and influenced the shape of modern horror fiction.
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1:38:18
The Confession of Charles Linkworth by E F Benson
A man waits in silence. The law has spoken, the doctors have done their work. But something does not rest. In the quiet rooms and corridors of the prison, a sound is heard—faint, deliberate, and not easily explained. What follows is noted calmly, professionally. Still, it leaves a mark.
*The Confession of Charles Linkworth* was first published in 1912 in *The Room in the Tower and Other Stories* by Mills & Boon, London.
E. F. Benson was a British author best known for his *Mapp and Lucia* novels and his ghost stories. He came from a clerical family deeply involved in both religion and early psychical research.
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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
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1:10:30
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1:10:30
Members Only Episode July 2025
In the Members Only podcast episode of the Classic Ghost Stories podcast for July 2025, I spent a lot of time apologising for being late in delivering the Members Only episode to you this month.
I then talk about my Uncanny Mirror project, which I'm sure many of you will find very interesting.
I then talk a bit about our holiday in Scotland.
I read from a book called Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher.
I then get bored with that and move on to Adventures in the Supernormal by Aileen J. Garrett, who is a psychic, and I get really interested in the description of her childhood in County Meath in Ireland.
But then I sort of run out of time; the scrap man's scrapping in the background, and altogether it's a very scrappy episode, but I hope it makes you laugh.
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The Friends of the Friends by Henry James
What do we see in others that we cannot admit in ourselves? In Henry James's haunting tale, a woman recounts her fascination with two people who have each witnessed a ghost. She delays their meeting for years, caught between longing and fear, until it is too late. Names are withheld, but emotions are not. Beneath the surface of polite society, something older stirs—jealousy, desire, and the quiet undoing of the self.
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Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.
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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
First published as "The Way It Came" in 1896, the story was later retitled "The Friends of the Friends."
Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-born author whose subtle, psychologically complex stories often explore the limits of perception and the tensions of social life. His ghost stories are never merely spectral; they are studies of the mind in shadow.
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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!
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