The classic ghost story meets delicious nostalgia for 1960s summer camps for children and teens. I talk to acclaimed author Charis Cotter about coming of age ghost stories in general and in particular about The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall (Tundra Books) about to be released in paperback.

We have talked in recent episodes about fiction which begs to be dramatized. The Twelfth Century half man, half beast caught in a fishing net off England's Suffolk coast is quite possibly a drama from real life. Who was he? Why are the details of this "legend" so precise?

The radio and the ghost story have a special affinity for each other. Creaking doors, echoing footsteps, the breathless delivery of the narrator. Great opportunities for suggestive details, but enough scope for the imagination to fill in the gaps. In 1926 L.P. Hartley expertly anticipated the long relationship between the radio and supernatural terror with this story of a self-made millionaire returned to London after decades in Australia, drowsing to the sound of the BBC in a hotel lounge while some thing travels through the rain to catch up with him.

The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs, Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad, by M.R. James, The Signalman by Charles Dickens. We all know the stories and we all know at least one film or TV adaptation. But what what about the many, many other ghost stories which give us a similar frisson? The next two episodes will deal with some of these. L.T.C. Rolt's 1948 Bosworth Summit Pound, a tale of a haunted tunnel in a desolate canal is clever, sensuous, and begs for someone to adapt it for film or tv.

Sheridan Le Fanu's 1839 ghost story Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter stands out as a remarkable melding of fiction and biography. Godfried Schalken was a historical character, as was his mentor Gerrit Dou, a former pupil of Rembrandt. The story plunges us into the world of the Dutch masters and expands upon themes of darkness and transactional sexuality hinted at in some of Schalken's later works. In 1979 the story also spawned one of British television's most ambitious and daring dramatizations. I discuss both story and film.

We’re deep inside a rainforest somewhere near the border of Mexico and Guatemala, 1972. Simon Corbet, a 42-year-old entomologist with a passion for mantids, has been drawn here. Or is he running away? Running from grief, uncertainty, and a guilt he doesn't understand. Simon is haunted, both figuratively and literally, by the ghost of Penelope, a young woman who tragically died. Michelle Paver's Rainforest was hot off the press right at the end of 2025. We talk about where it lies in her oeuvre.

Michelle Paver's 2019 novel, set in Suffolk fenland, explores medieval superstition and patriarchal religion. To daughter, Maud, struggling for freedom, the fen is about inspiration and release. To father Edmund it is the home of a demon who seeks to punish him for a long-forgotten sin. Woven through the story is local folklore about exorcism and the entrapment of evil. The novel updates a number of themes common to the Edwardian ghost story, breathing new life into the genre.

Running parallel to the dapper, handsome count of stage and screen, this alternative take on the noble vampire -- bald, hunched, rat-toothed -- has haunted cinema history for more than a century, starting with F.W. Murnau's unauthorized 1922 use of Bram Stoker's story. Three Nosferatus cast their folk horror-ish shadows over the vampire genre, Murnau's, Werner Herzog's 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampire, and, most recently, Robert Eggers's 2024 production. How do they relate to each other and, just as interestingly, how do they relate to Stoker's 1897 novel?