A Recluse by Walter de la Mare

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 116 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There is a house at the end of a lane. You have seen it before — or something like it. Palladian, still, its pale stone holding the last of the May light as if reluctant to let the evening come. The chestnut trees stand tall around it. The air is warm and gold and very quiet. Charles Dash stops his car. He is trespassing, he knows, but the house is empty, surely? And it is such a beautiful house. Worth seeing, if only for a few minutes. And then the car key goes missing. He cannot find it anywhere. And the owner appears — such a welcoming man, such a pressing, generous, will-not-take-no-for-an-answer kind of man. Do come in. Stay for dinner. The night is drawing in. Why not stay? Why not? A Recluse was first published in 1926 and collected in On the Edge, Faber and Gwyer, 1930. Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) was an English poet, novelist and short story writer, regarded as one of the supreme masters of the uncanny in the English language. His ghost stories occupy a singular place in the tradition — atmospheric, oblique, and finally inexplicable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What I've dedicated my life to is revenge.
0:04.7	A brand new drama based on the best-selling novel.
0:07.5	They think they're better than us?
0:08.5	Who do you think you are?
0:09.7	I'm going to prove to them that they're wrong.
0:11.5	She's punishing me.
0:13.0	You destroyed my family.
0:14.3	I will not rest until I've destroyed yours.
0:16.9	A woman of substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.
0:29.3	Everybody dies, don't think?
0:31.5	Everybody come back.
0:33.6	Isn't that so?
0:37.2	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:39.3	How do the dead come back, mother?
0:40.9	What's the secret?
0:45.1	A recluse by Walter Dillamere.
0:50.5	Which of the world's wiseacres, I wonder,
0:56.5	was responsible for the aphorism that the best things in life are to be found at its edges. It's too vague, of course. So much depends on what you mean by the best and the edges.
1:04.5	And in any case, most of us prefer the central. It has been explored. It's safe. You know where you are. It has been amply,
1:14.6	copiously corroborated. But amusing, well hardly, quite so, as my friend Mr. Bloom would have said.
1:24.6	But then Mr. Bloom has now ventured over the borderline.
1:29.5	He is, I imagine, interested in edges no longer.
	...

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