Victorian Horror

The story's protagonist and narrator is an unnamed woman whose husband, a doctor named John, makes her spend the summer in the country for her health. The woman, her baby, John, John's sister and some servants stay in a large rented house. John chooses a bedroom for himself and his wife which is large and airy but otherwise quite unpleasant. The narrator takes an immediate dislike to the room's yellow wallpaper. She soon starts to see grotesque images in its pattern. After some time, the narrator becomes convinced that the wallpaper depicts a woman trapped behind a cage.

A female passenger travelling in a by rail is intrigued and increasingly frightened by one of her companions in the compartment. Entirely covered by a cloak, are their intentions nefarious, supernatural or entirely innocent?

Traumatised by dreams and visions about the unassuming chest under the window in her bedroom, Catherine Lestrange demands it be opened; but what is found inside has the power to change her future as well as her reveal her past. 'Catherine’s Quest' is taken from the second volume of the Victorian Anthologies Horror series, featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known.

Young Earnest befriends another little boy on his family’s weekly trips to church. But is he an imaginary friend conjured to amuse during long sermons, or is the little stone cherub something more? 'The Marble Child' is taken from the second volume of the Victorian Anthologies Horror series, featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known. With music by Benedict Edwards.

In a warning against the fickleness of youth and love, a young artist makes a promise he has no real desire to keep and from which he discovers there is no escape. 'The Cold Embrace' is taken from the second volume of the Victorian Anthologies Horror series, featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known. With music by Benedict Edwards.

The story takes place aboard a transatlantic ocean liner. A passenger named Brisbane is puzzled when the steward behaves oddly while taking his luggage to his stateroom, number 105. In the middle of the first night, Brisbane is further perplexed when his roommate suddenly leaps down from the upper berth and runs out of the cabin. In the morning, Brisbane learns that his roommate has gone overboard - and was the fourth consecutive occupant of the same upper berth to do so.

The story concerns the attempts by a prince and his followers to shield themselves from a terrible plague which is devastating the surrounding area and to carry on living lives of pleasure. Their attempts ultimately prove futile. The Red Death is the name of the infectious disease which causes people to die within 30 minutes. Those who are infected bleed profusely from their skin, especially their faces, before they die. Some six months after the arrival of Prince Prospero's guests, a masked ball is held for them.

In The Wedding Knell, Mrs Dabney (a woman who married and was widowed twice) is going to be marrying Mr Ellenwood, a 65-year-old who had been attracted to Dabney in the past. When Mrs. Dabney enters the church for the wedding, the bell let out a deep knell, usually reserved for funerals. The bell continued to ring until the groom arrived. The groom arrived with a funeral precession, and claimed that Mrs Dabney's youth was given to other husbands, and he was forced to live an unhappy life because he couldn't have her.

A stay in Paris should be just the tonic for a distracted and insular German student. But it is the beginning of the French Revolution and the blood-stained guillotine is doing its grisly work every day. So when the student encounters a beautiful, distraught woman in need of comfort on its steps in the dead of night, he doesn’t consider this meeting perhaps as strange as he should. "The Adventure of the German Student" is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural.

Legendary thriller writer David Morrell transports listeners to the fogbound streets of London, where a killer plots to assassinate Queen Victoria. The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, and their Scotland Yard companions, finds himself confronted by an adversary who threatens the heart of the nation.

As far as rash decisions go, it was formidable. But Lady Jocelyn Rathbourne's will remains strong. If the only way to save her family's estate and reputation is by aiming a small pistol at the Duke of Calydon, then so be it. For Lady Jocelyn demands satisfaction - and she will have it at any cost. Even if it means demanding the hand of the intense and foreboding Duke himself....

The narrator - the old nurse of the title - is an old family retainer who has worked in the service of the same family for three generations. She tells the young children about a dark incident that she experienced in the company of the children’s mother, when she was a young woman and visiting her mother’s ancestral home.

Almost always when we think of Ghost Stories, we first think of those written by the Victorians. If you want a really good ghost story to bring that edge of chill, that foreboding of dread, that feeling that in an empty house we are not quite alone and that sometimes the sharp, sheer shock of what just happened is upon us then look no further than ‘The Victorian Ghost Story’ for your listening pleasure.

At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in 19th-century New England. When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. But it's not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: Rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. One by one, they sicken.

In India, Colvin used to be friends with an Englishman named Broughton. They both moved back to England, where Broughton settled down, married and moved into Thurnley Abbey, an ancient manor that was rumoured to be haunted. These rumours were fed by the previous owner, who hated people. Broughton doesn’t fully believe in the ghost, and even if it exists, he seems unworried.

Whatever the reasons given or proffered the reality and known facts are that if you want a really good ghost story to bring that edge of chill, that foreboding of dread, that feeling that in an empty house we are not quite alone and that sometimes the sharp, sheer shock of what just happened is upon us then look no further than ‘The Victorian Ghost Story’ for your listening pleasure.

1887, the Cornwall coast. For years, rumors have flown through the village of Suttonsbury about Ashthorne Hall—that its occupants hoard pirate treasure, that a ghost walks its halls—but botanist Hyacinth Bell only cares about the estate’s extensive one-of-a-kind orchid collection. As an independent woman, she is eager to focus on her career, even if it means waiting to pursue a romantic relationship. After all, love—like an orchid—must be nurtured and tended before it can bloom. What she doesn’t expect is to be swept away by Lucas Harding, the manor’s caretaker, upon their first meeting.

Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical in every way, except that Tilly hasn't grown a single inch since she was five. Then at the age of 15 the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as 'Captain'. Theo is an orphan, raised by his grandfather. Resenting his grandson for his mother's death in childbirth, Theo is forced to leave home without a penny to his name when he remarries, and a new heir is produced. Unable to train to be a doctor as he'd hoped, Theo finds employment in Dr Summerwell's Museum of Anatomy in London, and here he meets Captain and his theatrical 'family'.

Anne Rice lures us once again into the seductive world of vampires with her short story, The Master of Rampling Gate. In 1888, siblings Richard and Julie are drawn to the beautiful but foreboding 400-year-old family mansion. What was the "unspeakable horror" their father saw in the luxurious home they are so drawn to? Available in audio exclusively from Audible.

It is December 1888. Jack the Ripper has not killed for over a month and London is beginning to relax as Christmas approaches. When Katherine Kramer cuts herself on a strange book at a dinner party, she quickly falls ill. Her husband Richard is a professor of medicine, but even his efforts are futile as the mysterious illness blazes through her. As Katherine dies, she gives birth to something nightmarish. Something which should not exist. Something which spurs Richard to embark on a terrifying journey of discovery as he chases the answer to one question: who or what killed his wife?