Hey, it's Brian.

Back with another episode for those of us getting an early start on the Christmas season.

And because it's October, I'll bet you're feeling some combination of cozy autumn vibes,

early Christmas spirit, and full-on spooky spirit as we get closer to Halloween.

Well, what better time to curl up with a spine-tingling ghost story?

If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that telling ghost stories was once

as much a part of the Christmas season as mistletoe and eggnog. Sure, we still tell that most

famous of ghost stories, a Christmas carol every year, but otherwise the tradition has largely

died out. But that means there's a trove of ghost

stories from the past waiting to be rediscovered and enjoyed by new generations. And for the past

many Christmas seasons, my friends at Bibli Oasis have been helping to make that happen. Every season,

they publish a set of forgotten ghost stories in paperback editions designed and decorated by the renowned

cartoonist known only as Seth. Some of the stories are themselves Christmassy in nature and others

are not, but what they all have in common is that they're meant to send a tingle down your spine

on a cold, dark night during the most wonderful time of the year. In today's story, we're going to France to visit a

priest in the cemetery he attends to, where the dead sleep peacefully until a railway is built nearby.

While the old priest works nightly to keep them at rest, accounts dying wife begs to be buried near

the railway. Settle in and watch out for things that go bump in the night.

It's Gertrude Atherton's 1902 story, The Dead and the Countess.

It was an old cemetery, and they had been long dead.

Those who died nowadays were put in the new burying

place on the hill, close to the boys Damor, within the sound of the bells they called the

...