You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms.
As a belated festive gift, I’ve done a reading of a classic ghost story by Sheridan Le Fanu – a favourite of mine called Green Tea.
It’s from his book A Glass Darkly, an influential collection of some of his previously published, or revised, supernatural and mystery stories. I’ve always admired Le Fanu’s tales for their atmosphere and intelligence. He’s able to convey complex ideas and emotions, and build terror, with great subtlety and ambiguity. Some of his stories even deal with sexual subject matter, and in a remarkably mature way for his time.
Suitably, the narrator of Green Tea is something of a supernatural investigator himself. A practitioner of ‘metaphysical medicine’ trying to understand the science of spirituality and the body. Not to mention the influence of dark forces on the mind.
I confess this was rather a challenge – reading Victorian prose, with its different structure, emphasise and vocabulary was not easy. It took a lot or re-reading and editing to make this work. Hopefully none of that is too noticeable and I hope you enjoy this trip back in time to when the genre of supernatural storytelling was really coming into its own.
New Ghost Stories Volume 3 is out in 2021. You can read a sample story here and check out previous volumes here.
New Ghost Stories Podcast Bonus - Green Tea by Sheridan Le Fanu