An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
A man stands on a railway bridge. Orders pass along the line; the river says nothing. A watch ticks, a breath stalls, and time begins to misbehave. Memory intrudes, desire bargains, and the world narrows to rope, water, distance. No fanfare; only procedure—and a mind trying to outrun it. Follow the story to its far edge.
First published in 1890; collected in *Tales of Soldiers and Civilians* (1891).
Text: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842–c. 1914), American author, journalist, and Civil War veteran.
Best known for unsentimental war tales and the sardonic *Devil’s Dictionary*.
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Phantom Silhouette by Joy Burnett
A lonely farmhouse stands in a hollow of the hills—its windows dark, its doors long locked, and a story clinging to it that no one in the valley will tell aloud. When a sceptical visitor decides to spend the night within, he discovers that silence itself can harbour memory, and that the past, once woken, does not easily return to sleep. Phantom Silhouette is a tale of curiosity meeting what endures when reason has gone.
First published in The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows, edited by Rosemary Pardoe (Souvenir Press, London, 1971).
Reprinted in later anthologies of twentieth-century supernatural fiction.
Joy Burnett was an Australian-born actress who worked in theatre, film, and television after moving to England. In her spare time she wrote short stories, several of which appeared in British and American magazines; Phantom Silhouette was her first venture into the ghost-story tradition.
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Bad Company be Walter de la Mare
In a dim Underground carriage, a weary traveller meets a stranger whose silent presence unsettles more deeply than words can tell. Walter de la Mare’s Bad Company is a tale where dread arises not from what happens, but from what might.
Bad Company was first published in Walter de la Mare’s final collection, A Beginning and Other Stories (1955).
Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) was an English poet, novelist, and short story writer, best known for his uncanny tales and dreamlike verse. His supernatural fiction remains admired for its atmosphere, suggestion, and refusal to explain away the mysterious.
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Cushi by Christopher Woodforde
# Cushi - Teaser Script
In the chalk hills of Hertfordshire lies Rooksgate Green, where tradition runs deeper than any rector's authority. Here, the sexton Cushi Holloway has his own peculiar ways—with hymn numbers, with cats, with the rituals of the churchyard.
When the Reverend David Evans arrives from Cardiff, he sees only quaint village customs that need reforming. But some traditions have roots that go deeper than doctrine. And some authorities cannot be challenged.
The villagers watch in silence as their world changes. Cushi says nothing, yet something shifts in the parish—something the new rector cannot quite understand. In the churchyard where the sexton tends his domain, an older power stirs.
When the outside world intrudes upon Rooksgate Green, it will uncover more than anyone expected. Some things, once disturbed, refuse to rest quietly.
Christopher Woodforde was an Anglican clergyman, Dean of Wells, and scholar of medieval stained glass who told supernatural tales to choirboys at New College, Oxford. He died in 1962, his stories published posthumously.
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Hand in Glove by Elizabeth Bowen
In a fading Irish house, two sisters live with their reclusive aunt. Outwardly clever, even charming, they are burdened by secrecy, shabby finery, and a restless need to keep appearances intact. What follows is a tale of genteel decay, of objects that carry more weight than they should, and of a past that refuses to stay silent.
“Hand in Glove” first appeared in 1952 and has since been recognised as one of Elizabeth Bowen’s most disturbing short stories.
It is reprinted in her collection A Day in the Dark and in numerous anthologies of twentieth-century ghost stories.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, short story writer, and critic, celebrated for her precise psychological portraits and her haunting depictions of Anglo-Irish decline.
Her work includes ten novels, more than a hundred short stories, and some of the most accomplished supernatural fiction of the twentieth century.
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A weekly podcast that reads out ghost stories, horror stories, and weird tales every week. Classic stories from the pens of the masters Occasionally, we feature living authors, but the majority are dead. Some perhaps are undead.
We go from cosy Edwardian ghost stories (E. F. Benson, Walter De La Mare) to Victorian supernatural mysteries (M. R. James, Elizabeth Gaskell, Bram Stoker, and Charles Dickens) to 20th-century Weird Tales (Robert Aickman, Fritz Lieber, Clark Ashton-Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft) and wander from the Gothic to the Odd, even to the Literary, and then back again.
Each episode is followed by Tony's take on the story, its author, its content and any literary considerations, which may be useful to students!
Canada - english