There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy Tube platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden, inexplicable chill. There's no need for a ticking clock, a limping footstep, or a knock at the door to start you trembling. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all.
WH Auden, Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward were among his fans... But have you discovered E. F. Benson yet?
In a Holbein portrait above the grand old fireplace, Francis Vail, second baronet, brandishes a beautiful golden goblet, encrusted with pearls, rubies and emeralds. But this treasure, the Luck of the Vails, has since brought the family nothing but ruin and death.
On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Harry Vail discovers the Luck hidden in the attic of his ancestral home, the family curse is reawoken, and a tale of madness, avarice and murder unfolds.
Murder mystery... Ghost story... Whodunnit. This is a classic detective story from the author of Mapp and Lucia. Crime fiction at its best.
WH Auden, Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward were among his fans... But have you discovered E. F. Benson yet?
Morris Assheton is in love and means to be married. But his happiness is spoilt when he discovers that someone has been whispering poisonous rumours about him to the girl’s father. The culprit is Mills, dastardly partner to the Assheton family's trusted lawyer. Morris vows revenge.
When Mills’ body is discovered, brutally beaten, the ugly quarrel comes to light and suspicion naturally falls on Morris. His innocence is debated in a tense courtroom, as an eager public and press look on.
Murder mystery... Courtroom drama. This is a classic whodunnit from the author of Mapp and Lucia. Crime fiction at its best.
In How Fear Departed the Long Gallery, for the Peverils, the appearance of a ghost is no more upsetting than the appearance of the mailman at an ordinary house. Except for the twin toddlers in the Long Gallery. No one would dare be caught in the Long Gallery after dark. But on this quiet and cloudy afternoon, Madge Peveril is feeling rather drowsy . . .
E. F. Benson was the English writer of the Mapp and Lucia series.
There was a new class-room in course of construction for the first form at Helmsworth Preparatory School, and the ten senior boys, whose united ages amounted to some hundred and thirty years, were taken for the time being in the school museum. This was a big boarded room, covered with corrugated iron and built out somewhat separate from the other class rooms at the corner of the cricket-field. The arrangement had many advantages from the point of view of the boys, for the room was full of agreeably distracting and interesting objects, and Cicero almost ceased to be tedious, even when he wrote about friendship, if, when you were construing, you could meditate on the skeleton of a kangaroo which stood immediately in front of you, and refresh yourself with the sight of the stuffed seal on whose nose the short-sighted Ferrers Major had balanced his spectacles before Mr. Dutton came in. Or, again, it was agreeable to speculate on the number of buns a mammoth might be able to put simultaneously into his mouth, seeing that a huge yellowish object that stood on the top of one of the cases was just one of his teeth. . . .
Of course it depended on how many teeth a mammoth had, but the number of a boy’s teeth might be some guide, and David, in the throes of grinding out the weekly letter to his father, passed his tongue round his own teeth, trying to count them by the sensory quality of it. But, losing count, he put an inky forefinger into his mouth instead. There seemed to be fourteen in his lower jaw and thirteen and a half in the upper, for half of a front tooth had been missing ever since, a few weeks ago, he had fallen out of a tree on to his face, and the most industrious scrutiny of that fatal spot had never resulted in his finding it. In any case, then, he had twenty-seven and a half teeth, and it was reasonable to suppose that a mammoth, therefore, unless he had fallen out of a tree (if there were such in the glacial age) had at least twenty-eight. That huge yellow lump of a thing, then, as big as David’s whole head, was only one twenty-eighth of his chewing apparatus. Why, an entire bun could stick to it and be unobserved. A mammoth could have twenty-eight buns in his mouth and really remain unaware of the fact. Fancy having a bun on every tooth and not knowing! How much ought a mammoth’s pocket-money to be if you had to provide on this scale? And when would its mouth be really full? And how . . . David was growing a little sleepy.
Mark Gatiss (Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones) reads chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story - E.F. Benson.
There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy train platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden, inexplicable chill. There's no need for a ticking clock, a limping footstep, or a knock at the door to start you trembling. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all.
1.The Room in the Tower
2.The Dust Cloud
3. Gavon’s Eve
4. The Other Bed
5. The Bus Conductor
6.The Confession of Charles Linkworth
7.Caterpillars
8. The Cat
9. The House with the Brick Kiln
10. The Bath Chair
11. The Man who went too Far
12. Outside the Door
13. The Gardener
14. Bagnell Terrace
15. The Terror by Night
16. The Thing in the Hall
17. The Step
18. The Horror Horn
19. The Face
20. At the Farmhouse
Caterpillars is the story of a strange visit to the mysterious Villa Cascana, where one bedroom is inexplicably always kept empty. The visitor feels uneasy immediately on arriving, although there is no obvious reason why he should. And then the nightmares begin. Or are they nightmares? Surely the sinister, terrifying caterpillars which infest the empty room cannot be more than just a bad dream....
E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his sparkling, comic “Lucia”novels. In his own day it was his ghost stories which were his most popular works.
Naboth's Vineyard exemplifies Benson's fine literary style and his ability to create the most frightening of supernatural and macabre tales.
Public Domain (P)2017 Spiders' House Audio/Roy Macready
'Royal Visitors' is a humorous story set at Trinity College, Cambridge, and tells the story of a revenge prank by the undergraduate nicknamed 'The Babe' on his tutor, Mr. Stewart, who at short notice had withdrawn a lunch invitation to dine with visiting foreign royals.
'The Missing Model' by Lettice Galbraith
'Pomegranate Seed' by Edith Wharton
'The Screaming Skull' by F. Marion Crawford
'The Ghost in the Cupboard Room' by Wilkie Collins
'The Shadow on the Blind' by Louisa Baldwin
'A Ghost's Revenge' by Lettice Galbraith
'The Lost Ghost' by Mary Wilkins-Freeman
'On the Northern Ice' by Elia W. Peattie
'The Cold Embrace' by Mary E. Braddon
'The Dust Cloud' by E. F. Benson
'The Haunted Dolls' House' by M. R. James
'For the Blood Is the Life' by F. Marion Crawford
'Miss Mary Pask' by Edith Wharton
'Mrs Raeburn's Waxwork' by Eleanor Smith
'The Man with the Roller' by E. G. Swain
'Over an Absinthe Bottle' by W. C. Morrow
'The Diary of Mr. Poynter' by M. R. James
'The Snow' by Hugh Walpole
'They' by Rudyard Kipling
'The Evil Clergyman' by H. P. Lovecraft
Plus 30 more classic ghost stories....