Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to the strange and unusual podcast early and ad-free right now.

Join Wondry Plus and the Wondry app or Apple Podcasts.

You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

In anticipation of the next episode coming out, one on the concept of haunted houses,

psychological and otherwise, that I've been researching for months.

I decided to introduce a lesser known Edwardian author and his tales of haunted places,

or perhaps haunted minds.

One of my joys in doing this podcast has been in discovering old authors of horror,

who perhaps aren't as well remembered as Poe or Lovecraft.

There have been so many that I've been ignorant of most of my life.

And whenever I've found one of their tales that sends a little chill down my spine,

I've eagerly put them into storytelling episodes when I can.

One such person is William Y. Mark Jacobs, known more simply as W.W. Jacobs.

He did manage to achieve lasting fame with his best known story, The Monkey's Paw.

If you've not heard or read it, I do go into this story on episode six,

raising the dead part one.

But while it's a well-known tale, even making it into an adaptation on The Simpsons,

his name and his other stories have become largely forgotten.

W.W. Jacobs was born in 1863, London, England,

and grew up in a working class environment near the docks on the Thames,

where his father was a wharf manager.

He started off his working life in a clerical position at the post office savings bank.

...