Category: Horror
“Bring Me a Light!”
Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories – #4, by “J.M.H.” (Jane Margaret Hooper) This story first appeared in 1861, in the periodical Once A Week. Victorians – and those who proceeded them – were terrified of fire, and rightly so; buildings were built of material that burned easily. So …
Christmas Ghosts – The Old Nurse’s Story
Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghosts – Story #2, by Elizabeth Gaskell The second story in this excellent collection is “The Old Nurse’s Story.” Hester, speaking in first person without the typical layering of narrators, gets right down to business as she tells her former charge’s children how close their …
Merry Ghostly Christmas!
Many of you already know that ghost stories were popular at Christmas time in Victorian England. Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is the most well-known example. What you may not know is that many Victorian publishers capitalized on that popularity by publishing periodicals filled with ghost stories. Valancourt Books, a present-day …
National Poetry Month #14 – Edgar Allan Poe
A reading of Poe’s “The Raven,” by actor Basil Rathbone.