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Thank you. From the blackest corners of your mind, they call, pulling you deep into shadow, twisting your senses, keeping you from sleep.

It's time to face your darkest fears.

This is Tales to Terrify. Good evening, children of the night, and welcome.

We have one tale for you this evening, about a man who enlists the help of a broken doll to help find his missing daughter. Our story tonight is a classic from F. Marion Crawford. Francis Marion

Crawford was born in 1854 in Italy to American parents, steeped in literary legacy.

His aunt was the Battle Hymn of the Republic's Julie Ward Howe.

Though he dabbled in Sanskrit at Harvard and studied across Europe,

Crawford found his voice in fiction, becoming a best-selling author of historical romances in his day.

It's his lesser-known ghost stories, though, that earned him a place in horror's hollowed

pantheon. Unlike many of his Gothic contemporaries, Crawford lived well, writing in a grand

villa on the Amalfi Coast. Still, his imagination wandered often into darker places.

Crawford believed the best ghost stories were ones that chilled without blood or spectacle,

the touch of the unseen, as he called it. He died in 1909, leaving behind shelves of forgotten romances and a handful of haunting gems

that still unsettled readers to this day.

For Crawford, the terror was never in the scream.

It was in the silence that came before.

Children of the Night, join me for F. Marion Crawford's The Doll's Ghost,

first published in The Strand magazine, 1896.

...