What benighted creatures lurk in the pit where the trickle of river springs from the ground?

William Hope Hodgson, today on the Classic Tales podcast.

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The House on the Borderland, part two of five by William Hope Hodgson. 5. The Thing in the Pit. This house is, as I have said before, surrounded by a huge estate and wild and uncultivated gardens.

Away at the back, distant some 300 yards, is a dark, deep ravine, spoken of as the pit by the peasantry.

At the bottom runs a sluggish stream so overhung by trees as scarcely to be seen from

above.

In passing, I must explain that this river has a subterranean origin, emerging suddenly at the east end of the ravine, and disappearing

as abruptly beneath the cliffs that form its western extremity. It was some months after my vision,

if vision it were, of the great plain, that my attention was particularly attracted to the pit.

I happened one day to be walking along its southern edge, when suddenly several pieces of

rock and shale were dislodged from the face of the cliff immediately beneath me

...