And No Bird Sings by E F Benson

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A man takes a sunlit shortcut through an English wood and finds that something is missing. There is no thrush, and no blackbird, and no rustle of wings – only a strange dimming of the light, and a silence that feels willed, and watchful, and almost hungry. At his friend's house the dogs will not cross the tree-line, and they bare their teeth at empty air. In the evenings, that grey band of trees seems to lie under a shadow that falls from nowhere anyone can see. There is something in the wood, something that makes the dogs keep away and the birds fall silent. His friend suspects it, and his friend's wife avoids talking about it, and neither will say what they believe it might be. First published in Woman magazine in December 1926, and later collected in Spook Stories (Hutchinson, 1928). Public domain text sourced from Project Gutenberg Canada. Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) was an English novelist, and biographer, and master of the uncanny short story. Best known for his Mapp and Lucia comedies and his eerie tales of the supernatural, he wrote across nearly every genre of early twentieth-century popular fiction. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Attention.
0:02.0	Oh, hang on.
0:04.0	Attention.
0:05.0	Rail travellers, platform paces, window gazers and armrest negotiators.
0:10.0	Have you heard?
0:12.0	The big railfare freeze is here.
0:14.0	Railfares have been frozen across England until March 2027 on standard class tickets,
0:20.0	including off-peak, anytime and season tickets.
0:23.4	For more information, visit NationalRail.co.com.uk slash fares for ease.
0:28.3	Teas and season exclusions apply.
0:37.3	Everybody dies, don't they?
0:39.3	Everybody come back, isn't that so?
0:43.3	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:47.3	How do the dead come back, mother?
0:49.3	What's the secret?
0:51.3	E.F. Benson
0:53.3	And No Bird Sings. What's the secret? E.F. Benson. And no bird sings.
0:56.0	The red chimneys of the house for which I was bound were visible from just outside the station at which I had alighted.
1:05.0	And, so the chauffeur told me, the distance was not more than a mile's walk if I took the path across the fields.
1:12.7	It ran straight till it came to the edge of that wood yonder which belonged to my host,
1:18.2	and above which his chimneys were visible. I should find a gate in the paling of this wood,
1:23.5	and a track traversing it, which debouched close to his garden. So, in this adorable afternoon of early May, it seemed a waste of time to do other than walk through the meadows and woods,
	...

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