Audiobook · read by volunteers
Three Ghost Stories
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Read by Muhammad Mussnoon, Marian Brown · 4 chapters · 2 h 10
About the book
Charles Dickens was fascinated by the supernatural, and he wrote ghost stories with a gift for the chill that creeps up gradually. This collection presents three of them in four recordings. The best known is “The Signal-Man”, in which a railway worker is haunted by a warning that always comes before disaster. Another, “The Haunted-House”, is told here in two parts and plays on the same unease through a house that cannot be lived in quietly. Quite different from the great realistic and humorous novels that made him famous, these stories show another side of his imagination. Two LibriVox volunteers read, and the whole lasts just over two hours. Perfect for a dark evening, and a taste of Victorian chill. Each tale is short enough to enjoy in a single sitting, and each has its own atmosphere of quiet menace.
Introduction
Charles Dickens, born in 1812 and died in 1870, was the most popular English novelist of his century, known for Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol. He also edited magazines, and the ghost story had a special place in his seasonal writing. These stories appeared in the Christmas numbers of his journals in the 1850s and 1860s, a period when the tradition of telling ghost stories around the winter fire was still strongly alive.
“The Signal-Man”, published in 1866, is one of the best-known ghost stories in English. It takes place beside a railway cutting, and the setting, with its tunnel and its signals, belongs to the age of steam. Dickens himself had been involved in a serious railway accident in 1865, and this experience is often connected with the story’s mood, though its power does not depend on any biography. “The Haunted-House”, given here in two parts, comes from a Christmas number made up of several voices telling their own accounts, a frame that Dickens often used.
Dickens was drawn to the supernatural all his life, and his ghost stories have kept their charm. Although they differ from his realistic and humorous novels, they share the same close attention to atmosphere and to the speech of ordinary people.
The recording has four parts and lasts about two hours and ten minutes. It is read by two LibriVox volunteers. The stories are ideal for a dark evening, and they show that a ghost story can be told with sympathy as well as with fear. Few writers of his period matched his gift for turning an ordinary place into a source of unease.
Public domain
Charles Dickens died in 1870: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text