Victorian Horror

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915), little known now, but a renowned writer in her time, gives us five tales of the "weird" as she might herself have said. Here we have five of her better known stories, peopled with jilted lovers, blood thirsty old ladies, and grand, old houses whose restless ancestors refuse to abandon them! The five tales: "The Cold Embrace", "The Shadow in the Corner", "At Chrighton Abbey", "Good Lady Ducayne", and "Eveline's Visitant".

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.

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.

A pair of sisters travel to Waddonscombe in Cornwall where they enjoy their hosts’ ghost stories around the manor house fire. A cliché, perhaps? Yet events may not play out entirely as expected.

Forever untangling the branches of her strange family tree, Edwina Blackwood is at a turning point. Her parents’ disappearances still strike her as unaccountably odd. Her sister’s questionable life and untimely death have left her shaken. Spellfire has transformed her home and livelihood to ash. And now a devious stalker is on her trail. With supernatural detective Ian Cameron by her side, Edwina can’t get out of London fast enough.

Emma Parrish accepts a position no one else dares, as governess to the son of Lord Anthony Craven, the castle’s dark master. The mystery of Anthony Craven’s shadowy past lurk behind the locked doors of the estate’s forbidden Round Tower. Mysterious lights flash there in the night. The servants whisper warnings of death. Anthony himself warns Emma there is only danger to be found in his sensual embrace. Powerfully drawn to the dangerously alluring Anthony, Emma finds herself unable to deny her deepest yearnings.

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?

Few horror stories are as chilling as the ones written by Victorian writers. This collection of eight enduring stories, some well-known, others less familiar, carry you to all corners of the world where terrors lurk. Featuring work by H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edgar Allan Poe and Vernon Lee, experience the skin-crawling undead, a pestilence that leaves no one unaffected, imagined horrors that emerge from disturbed minds and others that require no imagination at all....

Few ghost stories are as chilling as the ones written by Victorian writers. Featuring work by Jerome K. Jerome, Rhoda Broughton, R.L. Stevenson and Violet Hunt, this second collection of eight enduring horror stories, some well-known, others less familiar, transports you to a candlelit fireside to hear tales of cursed paintings, mysterious locked chests and the consequences of promises broken....

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....

"Clifford Samuel's low, melodious voice sounds like it was made for this atmospheric queer retelling of the Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde story." - AudioFile Magazine A teen boy tries to discover the reason behind his best friend's disappearance—and the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic...

Richard Kramer, still nursing his injuries, is on his way to Germany with Lily Lefèvre to find his sister Anne and her children. Charlie Bentwith is struggling to overcome the trauma of recent events, and the enigmatic Dr. Westcott seems to be distracted by problems of his own. When a new threat arises from an unexpected source, the group of friends who had been bound together by Katherine's death are scattered and still reeling from their recent ordeal.

Sullo sfondo della brughiera battuta dai venti, una ragazza umile ma volitiva trova lavoro come istitutrice nella casa di un uomo aspro e malinconico. Tra di loro nascerà inaspettata una grande passione, che dovrà però fare i conti con un segreto scabroso. Un capolavoro di una modernità dirompente, un cult che continua ad affascinare generazione dopo generazione.

Forced to flee his home and his mother’s murderous rage when he removes his mask, his greatest desire is to be loved for himself. At the tender age of seven, he must fight for survival in a hostile world where the threat of starvation is the least of the abuses he suffers. Yet, time and again, in his naivety, he extends trust to someone he believes can fill his need for affection and acceptance. Betrayed in every instance, his anger grows.

Presenting an audio anthology of Victorian ghost stories to chill you to the bone this holiday season.