Embrace the darkness

Read by Mark Rice-Oxley, Richard Mitchley, Christopher Ragland(Unabridged: 18hrs 17mins)

Featuring stories by Alice Dunbar Nelson, Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Edwards, Amy Levy, Anatole France, Anton Chekhov & many more

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.

But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?

Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are suddenly upon us in twisted revelation that may thrill, may disturb, but will always engage and help us explore the edge of darkness where some of the very best literature patiently lurks …. waiting …. for the likes of me and you.

1 - Stories from the Shadows - 1850 - 1899 - An Introduction

2 - The Miniature by J Y Ackerman

3 - The Weird of the Walfords by Louisa Baldwin

4 - The Generous Gambler by Charles Baudelaire

5 - The 9.30 Up-Train by Sabine Baring-Gould

6 - Lost in a Pyramid (or the Mummy's Curse) by Louisa May Alcott writing as A M Bernard

7 - The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce

8 - The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

9 - The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth by Rhoda Broughton

10 - No Man's Land - Part 1 by John Buchan

11 - No Man's Land - Part 2 by John Buchan

12 - The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain - Part 1 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

13 - The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain - Part 2 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

14 - The Devil's Mother-in-Law by Fernan Caballeron

15 - Vanka by Anton Chekhov

16 - Her Murderer by Mary Cholmonderly

17 - The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins

18 - The Last House in C Street by Mrs Craik

19 - To Let by B M Croker

20 - Villa Lucienne by Ella D'Arcy

21 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens

22 - The Corpse Light by J E Preston Muddock writing as Dick Donovan

23 - A Pastoral Horror by Arthur Conan Doyle

24 - Tony's Wife by Alice Dunbar Nelson

25 - The Phantom Coach by Amelia Edwards

26 - The Lifted Veil - Part 1 by George Eliot

27 - The Lifted Veil - Part 2 by George Eliot

28 - The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller by Gustave Flaubert

29 - The Mass of Shadows by Anatole France

30 - Snap-Dragon by James Hain Friswell

31 - In the Séance Room by Lettice Galbraith

32 - A Red Flower by Vsevolod Garshin

33 - The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

34 - The Crimson Weaver by R Murray Gilchrist

35 - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy

36 - The Vampire of Croglin Grange by Augustus Hare

37 - Dog or Demon by Dorothy Havers

38 - The Botathen Ghost from Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall by the Reverend R S Hawker

39 - Of A Promise Broken by Lafcadio Hearn

40 - The Devil Stone by Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

41 - Carnivorine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper

42 - The Spectre Bridegroom by William Hunt

43 - The Lizard by C J Cutcliffe Hyne

44 - An Expiation by Arabella Kenealy

45 - The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

46 - Amour Dure - Part 1 by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee

47 - Amour Dure - Part 2 by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee

48 - Cohen of Trinity by Amy Levy

49 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London

50 - The Spectral Hand by Jean Lorrain

51 - The Horla by Guy De Maupassant

52 - Passed by Charlotte Mew

53 - The Man Without a Body by Edward Page Mitchell

54 - The Story of the RipplingTrain by Mary Louisa Molesworth

55 - The Ghost at the Wrath by Rosa Mulholland

56 - The Vampire by Jan Neruda

57 - Man Size In Marble by Edith Nesbit

58 - The Open Door - Part 1 by Margaret Oliphant

59 - The Open Door - Part 2 by Margaret Oliphant

60 - The Shape of Fear by Elia W Peattie

61 - In the Mist by Mary E Penn

62 - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

63 - Since I Died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

64 - Scarlet Runners by James S Pyke-Nott

65 - The Last of Squire Ennismore by Charlotte Riddell

66 - The Last of the Vampires by Phil Robinson

67 - The Mouthless by Marcel Schwob

68 - The Body Snatcher - Part 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson

69 - The Body Snatcher - Part 2 by Robert Louis Stevenson

70 - The Ghost in the Clock Room by Hesba Stretton

71 - Diary of a Lunatic by Leo Tolstoy

72 - Christmas Eve at a Cornish Manor House by Clara Venn

73 - The Flowering of the Strange Orchid by H G Wells

74 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde

75 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde

76 - The Shadows on the Wall by Mary E Wilkins Freeman

77 - Reality or Delusion by Mrs Ellen Wood

78 - Cheating The Gallows by Israel Zangwill