A Visitor from Down Under by L. P. Hartley

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On a wet and foggy evening in post-war London, a man arrives at a modest hotel carrying the calm assurance of wealth and distance. But something else arrives that night too—quietly, without fuss, with a newspaper clipping and a request for a room. In the lounge, the sounds of unseen children drift through the walls. In his sleep, the man dreams of trees and dead branches. And outside, the fog thickens. *“A Visitor from Down Under” first appeared in *The London Magazine* and was later collected in *The Travelling Grave and Other Stories* (1948). It was included in *The Collected Macabre Stories of L. P. Hartley* (Tartarus Press, 2001).* L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) was an English novelist and short story writer, best known for *The Go-Between*. Though celebrated for his novels, his ghost stories reveal a quieter, colder kind of terror. ⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐ https://patreon.com/barcud Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out. You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month. Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible? Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, don't they?
0:10.4	Everybody come back, isn't that sir?
0:14.4	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:17.4	How do that they'd come back, mother?
0:19.9	What's the secret? A visitor from Down under by L.P. Hartley.
0:25.6	And who would you send to fetch him away?
0:29.6	After a promising start, the March day had ended in a wet evening.
0:33.6	It was hard to tell whether rain or fog predominated. The loquacious bus conductor
0:39.5	said, foggy evening to those who rode inside and a wet evening to such as were obliged
0:45.1	to ride outside. But in or on the buses, cheerfulness held the field, for their patrons
0:50.9	inured to discomfort, made light of climatic inclemency.
0:56.0	All the same, the weather was worth remarking on.
0:59.0	The most scrupulous conversationalist could refer to it without feeling self-convicted of banality.
1:05.0	How much more the conductor, who in common with most of his kind had a considerable conversational gift.
1:12.6	The bus was making its last journey through the heart of London before turning in for the night.
1:16.6	Inside, it was only half full. Outside, as the conductor was aware by virtue of his sixth sense,
1:23.6	there still remained a passenger too hardy or too lazy to seek shelter.
1:29.0	And now, as the bus rattled rapidly down the strand, the footsteps of this person could
1:34.4	be heard shuffling and creaking upon the metal-shod stairs.
1:38.3	Anyone on top? asked the conductor, addressing an errant umbrella point and the hem
1:43.7	of a Macintosh.
1:44.9	I didn't notice anyone, the man replied.
	...

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