The Classic Tales Podcasts and Audiobooks

What better way to cap a Halloween Scare Fest than with a strange murder confession from Edgar Allan Poe , as B.J. Harrison brings us " The Cask of Amontillado ," a tale of murder by wine. Or rather, the promise of wine. As you may remember, this was the first story B.J. recorded for The Classic Tales Podcast . If you still have your old audio copy , it should be fun to compare it to today's production so you can see how far B.J. has come. " The Cask of Amontillado " is one of Poe's most popular stories, published in 1846 in the magazine Godey's Lady's Book , which was at the time, the most widely read magazine.  Many critics consider this a 'perfect' story.  It may well be the perfect crime, unless the whomever Monrtesor is telling this story to goes to the authorities! In looking around the web for interesting takes on this story, I ran into two different productions.  One of them is a rap song , evidently produced to get school...

B.J. Harrison and The Classic Tales continue the Halloween Fright Extravaganza this week with a Bram Stoker 's short story called "The Squaw."  B.J. found this story when he picked up a book of short stories on a recent trip to the Shakespearean Festival with his wife.  I wonder if they slept that night. It is a story of a couple in the midst of their honeymoon who join forces with a colorful American cowboy in their tour of Germany. Jokes turn into accidents, and accidents engender thoughts of hate and revenge in the mind of a black cat. By the time the party tours the medieval torture chamber, tensions run very high, indeed. You know Bram Stoker best as the author of Dracula , the vampire who wanted to move from Transylvania to England.  But if you are a fellow avid listener of The Classic Tales, you also know him as from his short tale,  Dracula's Gues t . Dracula's Guest was originally slated to appear in the novel, but was cut and later released a...

Friday's latest installment of Fear in The Classic Tales was William Hope Hodgson's "The House Among the Laurels."  This story is part a chapter from a larger book called Carnacki .  Carnacki is also the name of the lead character, a ghost hunter.  In this story, our hero and his aids must investigate the horrific tales surrounding an Irish mansion. Once the blood begins to drip, people begin to die... A big shout out to listener Vincenzo Bonitatibus for suggesting the week's author to B.J. Harrison  Hodgson was quite a character.  For a while, he owned a gym, where he trained cops.  He was also on stage with Houdini at least once, and put the cuffs on the magician.  Later Houdini claimed that Hodgson has purposely sabotaged the cuffs so they were particularly hard to open.  Hodgson spent much of his youth at sea, first as an apprentice and later as a mate.  His time at sea not only inspired many of his stories, but was also the cause ...

 This week, B.J. and  The Classic Tales continue their spooky story Halloween fest with M.R. James ' ghost story "Casting The Runes." English writer M.R. James broke the mold of the Gothic ghost story by making the settings and devices much more realistic.  The stories took place in small villages, and there was often an item of ancient power (often a book) that set the story rolling.  This use of ancient objects led James' stories to be called "antiquarian ghost stories." Montague Rhodes James was a scholar and provost of King's College in Cambridge and then of Eaton College.  His academic life revolved around the medieval era.  It was through his studies that he came to choose that time period as a setting for his stories, and how he became fascinated by evil and magical objects which he would then  feature in his ghost stories. As I mentioned earlier, James wanted his stories to be believable. He said he wanted to "put the reader into th...