The Chimes by Charles Dickens

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2022

⏱️ 197 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dickens's second Christmas story is called "The Chimes." The main character in this story is an old messenger Toby Veck who has lost hope in people. He is drawn to a church's bell tower, where he meets the ghosts of the bells and the goblins who help them. He learns through a series of visions why he shouldn't give up hope that people can change for the better.Though called a Christmas Story, it actually happens on New Year's Eve and a big theme of the story is closing off the business of the New Year and looking forward with hope to the new one.Again, Dickens's sympathies lie with the impoverished working classes whom he paints (on the whole) as kind to each other and human as opposed to the wealthy who are seen as shallow, hypocritical and cruel.Buy my A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Audiobook! New Patreon Request Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREE Support the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, don't they?
0:10.5	Everybody come back.
0:12.6	Isn't that so?
0:14.4	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:17.1	How do the dead come back, mother?
0:20.1	What's the secret?
0:21.1	The Chimes by Charles Dickens.
0:26.1	Of some bells that rang an old year out and a new year in.
0:31.5	Chapter 1. First Quarter
0:33.6	There are not many people, and as it is desirable that a storyteller and a story reader should
0:40.6	establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I can find
0:46.4	this observation, neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions
0:52.9	of people, little and big, young and old, yet growing up or
0:57.4	already growing down again. There are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church.
1:04.8	I don't mean at sermon time in warm weather when a thing has actually been done once or twice,
1:09.8	but in the night, and alone.
1:12.8	A great multitude of persons will be violently astonished I know by this position in the broad,
1:18.5	bold day, but it applies to night. It must be argued by night, and I will undertake to
1:24.8	maintain it successfully on any gusty winter's night appointed
1:28.3	for the purpose, with any one opponent chosen from the rest who will meet me singly in an old
1:34.6	churchyard before an old church door, and will previously empower me to lock him in, if needful,
1:41.1	to his satisfaction, until morning. For the night wind has a dismal trick of
	...

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