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Just Listen: Scary Stories

"A Ghost" by Guy de Maupassant 

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant  was a French writer, remembered as a master of the short story form. “A Ghost” relates the tale of a brief haunting that results in a lifelong terror.

"Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is perhaps the best known of all vampire tales.  Today’s story, “Dracula’s Guest,” was excised from the original Dracula manuscript by its publisher because of the length of the original book.  It was published as a short story in l9l4, two years after Stoker’s death.

"The Canterville Ghost" by Oscar Wilde

"The Canterville Ghost" is the first of Oscar Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in two parts in The Court and Society Review in February and March of l887. The story is about an American family who moves to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman, who killed his wife and was starved to death by his wife's brothers.

Unlike most ghost stories, especially the Victorian kind, the ghost that haunts the Canterville estate must be taken with a grain of salt and a large dose of humor, as we watch him being undone by some little upstart American boys and reduced to a mere shadow of his former ghostly self.

"The Empty House" by Algernon Blackwood

“The Empty House,” is one of Algernon Henry Blackwood's most widely anthologized stories, famous for its suspense.  It details the circumstances of an elderly adventuress intent on investigating a house with a terrible reputation.

"The Trial for Murder" by Charles Dickens

Written in 1865, "The Trial for Murder" is one of Dickens' ghost stories, and is perhaps his best known outside of "A Christmas Carol."

"The Red Room" by H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, works of social commentary, satire, biography and autobiography, including even two books on war games. He is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the Father of Science Fiction.

In “The Red Room,” an overly confident visitor seeks to square off against the powerful superstitions of an ancient hour by entering a room with a horrible reputation.

"The Old Nurse's Story" by Mrs. Gaskell

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian  era.

Written on invitation by Charles Dickens, who was a fan of her work, Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” was published in 1852. The setup is classic: an elderly caregiver gathers her charges to tell them a spooky story about their mother’s childhood—and to teach them a moral lesson.