Ghost Horror

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.

Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he's carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country's most haunted places, after haunting them himself. When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for two weeks, he believes he's finally found the location that will bring him a best seller. Then things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement.

A young wife becomes obsessed with the wallpaper in the room of her holiday home in The Yellow Wallpaper. A man is tormented by the embalmed hand of his deceased uncle in The Beast with Five Fingers. For the protagonists of these three supernatural stories, ghostly terror lurks beneath the surface of ordinary life, and reality can all too easily fray at the seams.... Evocatively read by three of our finest actors, and with atmospheric music, these eerie, enthralling tales are perfect listening for dark winter nights.

A lone narrator meets a railway worker who is confined to a cold, gloomy station in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance. This worker is a signalman, and it is his responsibility to give the green light for trains to pass through the area. These are slow, monotonous days. The signalman’s life is not marked by much, until the nightmares begin. Three times in a row, a ghost mysteriously appears before the signalman – and with each apparition, a tragic accident unfolds on the rail tracks. Although our narrator doubts the man at first, events soon make him a believer too.

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil’s hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you’re here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it’s just the wind....

Late one moonlit night, Walter Hartright encounters a solitary and terrified woman dressed all in white. He saves her from capture by her pursuers and determines to solve the mystery of her distress and terror. Inspired by an actual criminal case, this gripping tale of murder, intrigue, madness and mistaken identity has never been out of print since its publication and brought Collins great fame and success.

Devil's Island. An abandoned island in the Caribbean Sea with a dark and bloody past. An island with a terrible secret. Nick Gorman, billionaire movie producer, assembles a team of ghost hunters and scientists to investigate the Thornhill Manor on Devil's Island - the most haunted place in the world that no one's ever heard of. He's there to find proof of ghosts, evidence of an afterlife...but he's also there to uncover the secret that is hidden on the island...to possess it.

The year is 1942. Britain is in the grip of the Second World War, bringing blackout conditions to much of the country. For several years, Briarwych Church has remained locked and unused. Arriving to take up his new position, Father Lionel Loveford's first task is to open the great wooden door and get the church back into use. But something lurks in the shadows. A terrible tragedy once took place in Briarwych, and now the locals live in fear of a vengeful spirit that has sometimes been spotted looking out from the church's windows.

Andrew Sachs reads these four classic stories of suspense - "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens, "The Haunted Doll's House" by M. R. James, "The Room in the Tower" by E. F. Benson, and "The Bus-Conductor" by E. F. Benson. These spine-tingling tales, from the golden age of the ghost story, are sure to leave you with a creeping sense of dread.

A second collection of tales from the master of ghost stories, M. R. James, whose stories have for many years inspired the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas TV adaptations. This volume includes 'A Warning to the Curious', 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral', 'The Mezzotint', and 'A Neighbour's Landmark'.

Pain, horror, fear - these are the things that have comprised best-selling novelist Lance Metzger's life. His childhood remains a riddled wasteland of abuse by a sadistic father and abandonment by an apathetic mother. In turn his only refuge became his writing. When Lance loses his ability to write and becomes haunted by a nightmare that he'd thought was buried, he is drawn inexplicably to a house on the shores of Lake Superior, where he finds his muse once again - but something is waiting for him when he arrives.

In the midst of the woods stands a house called Lichen Hall. This place is shrouded in folklore—old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who is not quite a child. Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed. Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something. Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds—and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place.

Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife, Allison, is killed. Haunted by her absence - and her ghost - Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death.

They said the dead can't hurt you.... They were wrong. The House on Cold Hill is a chilling and suspenseful ghost story from the multimillion-copy best-selling author of Dead Simple, Peter James. Moving from the heart of Brighton and Hove to the Sussex countryside is a big undertaking for Ollie and Caro Harcourt and their 12-year-old daughter, Jade. But when they view Cold Hill House - a huge, dilapidated Georgian mansion - Ollie is filled with excitement.

A big, brilliant, spooky collection of classic and contemporary ghost stories that will make you hesitate before turning off that light.

Okiku wants vengeance...and she gets it. Whenever there's a monster hurting a child - the same way she was hurt 300 years ago in Japan - her spirit is there to deliver punishment. But one American boy draws her like no other. The two are pulled into a world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from the American Midwest to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan. The boy is not a monster, but something evil writhes beneath his skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos.

Menace awaits. Sleath. Quiet, peaceful. A small village hidden away in the Chiltern Hills, almost forgotten by the modern world. Nothing much seems to happen here; little disturbs the centuries-old tranquillity. Until the ghosts begin to appear and frighteningly bizarre events start to occur. Psychic investigator David Ash, a man burdened by the dark secret of his own past, is sent to Sleath to investigate the phenomena and his discoveries there drive him to the very edge of his own sanity.

Newly divorced Alison Kerby wants a second chance for herself and her nine-year-old daughter. She's returned to her hometown on the Jersey Shore to transform a Victorian fixer-upper into a charming-and profitable guest house. One small problem: the house is haunted, and the two ghosts insist Alison must find out who killed them.

Alison Kerby’s guesthouse is haunted all year round. Surviving the dead of winter, though? That’s a spooky proposition. Even with a blizzard bearing down on New Jersey, Alison can count on at least two guests—Paul and Maxie, the stubborn ghosts who share her shore town inn.

Welcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England. It's 1926. Sarah Grey has a new job - assistant to Harry Price, London's most infamous ghost hunter. Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England's 'false hauntings', and never has he left a case unsolved. They are invited to Borley Rectory - a house so haunted that objects fly through the air. But when night falls, they're forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real.