The Ghost Stories of E F Benson, read by Richard Crowest

“I woke again with the sense that there was something creeping up to the house, like the fog that was now thick outside my window, and seeking admittance.”

“With a sudden sinking of his heart, he heard behind him the step which he thought he had silenced for ever.”

“I went to sleep at once, and from dreamlessness awoke suddenly to a consciousness of terror and imminent peril.”

“Terror, that was slowly becoming a little more definite, terror of some dark and violent deed that was momently drawing nearer to me held me in its vice.”

“At that moment I saw the face of Fear; my mouth went dry, and I heard my heart leaping and cracking in my throat.”

“All was not well with the house: in some strange manner the shadow that had come between her closed eyes and the sun as she sat on the garden-bench had entered, and was establishing itself more firmly day by day.”

“I could not stir, I could not speak. I could only strain my ears for the inaudible and my eyes for the unseen, while the cold wind from the very valley of the shadow of death streamed over me.” (Note: this story features a suicide.)

“Then suddenly I saw something black move in the dimness in front of me, and against the grey foam rose up first the head, then the shoulders, and finally the whole figure of a woman…”

“I am sure that no phantom of the dead that die not could have evoked so unnerving a terror.”

“I tell you that vampirism is by no means extinct now. An outbreak of it certainly occurred in India a year or two ago.”

“Every guest on his arrival in the house is told that the long gallery must not be entered after nightfall on any pretext whatever.”

“In the shadows in the corner of my room there sits something more substantial than a shadow.”

“Then the sense of nightmare began, for his two companions, gripping him tightly, pulled him along towards it, and he struggled with them knowing there was something terrible within.”

“An odd uneasiness came over me, for I had been so certain that the house was uninhabited.”

“At that moment the memory of the séance the evening before, about which up till now I had somehow felt distrustful and suspicious, passed into the realm of sober fact…”

“Soft as the fall of a single snow-flake, fear settled on his heart…”

“Find it and have it buried, and then I shall be free from its dreadful presence.”

“The only live thing that lurked here was that monstrous, mysterious creature of evil.”

“Just room for one inside, sir…”

“A-pen-ara curses any who desecrates or meddles with her bones…”

“Jack will show you your room. I have given you… the room in the tower…”

“In the paralysis of that fear I tried to scream, but not a sound could I utter.”

“The thing seemed scarcely human at all; it was a monster from which he had delivered himself...”

“A dream hasn't anything real about it, has it? It doesn't mean anything?”

“I think that before I opened the pill-box I expected something of the sort which I found in it.”

“I knew I was not alone in the room. There was something there, something silent as yet, and as yet invisible. But it was there.”

Recorded in front of an audience at E F Benson's home, Lamb House in Rye.

“One of the things invisible, of the dark powers, leaped into light, and I saw it with my eyes…”

"I can't go back now. I wouldn't if I could; not a step would I retrace…"

It is not only the dead who haunt the living.

“Surely this is the strangest manner of song ever yet heard on the earth, this melody from the brain of the dead...”

Something has come in to the house. Come in out of the rain...