The Ghost Ship by Richard Middleton

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Ghost Ship by Richard Barham Middleton Richard Barham Middleton was born in 1882 in Staines then in Middlesex, but since 1965 part of Surrey. It calls itself Staines upon Thames now. I checked the 1864 map and then it was a small town surrounded by fields and woods. Even now looking at the satellite, though I see is is a much bigger urbanisation there is still some nice green land around it. But I digress. He died in 1911 in Brussels by suicide (If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In Here - You could buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker or join as a Patron for exclusive content here: https://www.patreon.com/barcud) He was educated at Cranbrook school and then went to work as a bank clerk between 1901 and 1907 but lived, the Wiki says ‘affected’ a Bohemian lifestyle at night and joined a club called The New Bohemians. He knew Arthur Machen who much admired his work and wrote a preface to the collection of stories in which I found The Ghost Ship. It’s available on Gutenberg for free. He became a magazine editor but really wanted to be a poet. He met Raymond Chandler who was put off writing almost because Middleton was so talented and he thought he’d never match it. His most famous poem is The Bathing Boy which is a paean to a beautiful young man swimming. He made very little money as a writer and lived in poverty. He moved to Brussels and aged only 29, he killed himself by drinking chloroform just after his birthday. We have done his winter ghost story, On Brighton Road which is short but good. The Ghost Ship is his most famous ghost story and, unlike On Brighton Road is humorous. In his biography by Henry Savage, Middleton is said to have claimed he had a pirate for an ancestor who was hanged at Port Royal. But Savage notes that Middleton was not diligent with facts. If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In Here You could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker Become a Patron https://www.patreon.com/barcud And you can join my mailing list and get a free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire Music By The Heartwood Institute https://bit.ly/somecomeback*** 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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, don't think?
0:10.5	Everybody come back, 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?
0:19.9	What's the secret? The Ghost Ship by Richard Middleton.
0:24.6	Fairfield is a little village lying near the Portsmouth Road, about halfway between London and the sea.
0:32.6	Strangers who find it by accident now and then call it a pretty, old-fashioned place. We who live in it, and call it home, don't find it by accident now and then call it a pretty old-fashioned place.
0:38.6	We who live in it and call it home don't find anything very pretty about it,
0:43.6	but we should be sorry to live anywhere else.
0:46.7	Our minds have taken the shape of the inn and the church and the green, I suppose.
0:51.5	At all events, we never feel comfortable out of Fairfield. Of course, the cockneys,
0:57.0	with their vasty houses and noise-ridden streets, can call us rustics if they choose. But for all that,
1:03.7	Fairfield is a better place to live than London. Doctor says that when he goes to London, his mind is
1:09.3	bruised with the weight of the houses,
1:11.4	and he was a cockney-born. He had to live there himself when he was a little chap, but he knows better now.
1:18.4	You gentlemen may laugh. Perhaps some of you come from London way, but it seems to me that a witness like that is worth a gallon of arguments.
1:27.8	Dull?
1:28.8	Well, you might find it dull, but I assure you that I've listened to all the London yarns
1:34.1	you have spun tonight, and there are absolutely nothing to the things that happen at Fairfield.
1:39.0	It's because of our way of thinking and minding our own business.
1:42.6	If one of your Londoners were set down on the
1:44.9	green on a Saturday night when the ghosts of the lads who died in the war-keep trist with the
	...

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