Music Welcome to snoozecast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy tonight's episode, check out snoozecasts Spooky sleep stories podcast featuring the entire collection by searching for Snuescast presents spooky sleep stories wherever you listen to podcasts or going to Snuescast.com slash series that spelled S-E-R-I-E-S. This episode is brought to you by Wayside Flowers. Tonight, as part of Snues' cast, 7th annual Spooky Sleep Story series will read The Haunted Orchard, written by British author Richard Legallian, and published in 1912. Each October our spooky story series features classic tales that are more atmosphere than fright, all candlelight and creaking floorboards. In this one a quiet country house and its untended orchard hold a lingering presence. Whispers of a young woman seen among the trees and a tune that seems to rise with the wind give the story its soft, ghostly pulse. Born, Richard Thomas Gallian, the author adopted Legallian after after college, and captivated by a lecture from Oscar Wilde, left office work to write poetry and prose. He and Wilde later struck up a brief affair and lasting friendship. Legalian married three times and fathered Eva Legalian, the celebrated actor-director. After settling in the United States and later on the French Riviera, he refused to write wartime propaganda and nonetheless kept publishing well into his 70s. Let's get cozy.

Closer. into his 70s. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. Spring was once more in the world. As she sang to herself in the far away woodlands, her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the the long winter. Daffodils flowered at the entrances to the subway. Furniture removing vans blocked the side streets. Children clustered like blossoms on the doorsteps. The open cars were running, and the cry of the cash-clown man was once more heard in the land. Yes, it was spring, and the city dreamed wistfully of lilacs, and the dewy piping of birds in in gnarled old apple trees. Of dogwood, lighting up with sudden silver, the thickening woods, of water plants unfolding their glossy scrolls in pools of morning freshness. Sunday mornings, the outbound trains were thronged with eager pilgrims, hastening out of the city to behold once more the ancient marvel of the spring, and on Sunday evenings, the railway were a flower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard, carried in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes still shown with the spring magic in whose ears still sang the fairy music. And I, as I beheld these signs of the vernal equinox, I knew that I, too, must follow the music. For sake of while the beautiful siren we call the city, and in the green silences meet once more my sweetheart, solitude. As the train drew out of the Grand Central, I hummed to myself, I've a neater sweeter maiden in a greener cleaner land. And so I set goodbye to the city, and went forth with beating heart to meet the spring. I had been told of an almost forgotten corner on the south coast of Connecticut, where the spring and eye could live in an inviolate loneliness, a place uninhabited, saved by birds and blossoms, woods and thick grass, and an occasional silent farmer, and pervaded by the breath and shimmer of the sound. Norhead rumour lied, for when the train set me down at my destination, I stepped out into the most wonderful green hush, a leafy sabbath silence through which the very train as it went farther on its way seemed to steal as noiselessly as possible for fear of breaking the spell. After a winter in the town, to be dropped thus suddenly, into the intense quiet of the countryside, makes an almost ghostly impression upon one, as of an enchanted silence. A silence that listens and watches, but never speaks. Finger on lip. There is a spectral quality about everything upon which the eye falls. The woods, like great green clouds. The wayside flowers. The still farmhouses have lost an orchard bloom. All seem to exist in a dream. Everything is so still. Everything so supernaturally green. Nothing moves or talks, except the gentle, saucerous of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet sky, or a bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself among the crowding rushes. So from the houses, one note's here and there.

There are... rushes. Though from the houses, one note's here and there, there are evidently human inhabitants of this green silence, none are to be seen. I have often wondered where the country full-cide themselves, as I have walked hour after hour, past farm and croft and lonely door yards and never caught sight of a human face. If you should want to ask the way, a farmer is as shy as a squirrel. And if you knock at a farmhouse door, all is as silent as a rapid Warren. As I walked along in the enchanted stillness, I came at length to a quaint old farmhouse, old colonial in its architecture, emboured in white lilacs, and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple trees, which cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. The orchard had the impressiveness of those old religious groves, dedicated to the strange worship of Sylvan gods. Gods to be found now only in Horace, or Catelus, and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is still dear. The old house seemed already the abode of solitude. As I lifted the latch of the white gate and walked across the forgotten grass, end up on the veranda, already festooned with wisteria, and looked into the window, I saw solitude, sitting by an old piano, on which no composer later than Bach had ever been played. In other words, the house was empty, and going round to the back, where old barns and and stables leaned together as if falling asleep.

I found a broken pain, and so climbed in and walked through the echoing rooms. The house was very lonely. Evidently no one had lived in it for a long time, yet it was all ready for some occupant for whom it seemed to be waiting. Quaint, old, four poster bedstets stood in three rooms, dimmity curtains, and spotless linen, old oak chests and mahogany presses. And opening drawers in chip and Dale sideboards, I came upon beautiful, frail old silver, and exquisite China that set me thinking of a beautiful grandmother of mine, made out of lace and laughing wrinkles and mischievous old blue eyes. There was one little room that particularly entrusted me, a tiny bedroom all white, and at the window the red roses were already in bud. But what caught my eye with peculiar sympathy was a small bookcase, in which were some twenty or thirty volumes, wearing the same forgotten expression, forgotten and yet cared for, which lay like a kind of memorial charm upon everything in the old house. Yes, everything seemed forgotten and yet everything, curiously, even religiously remembered. I took out book after book from the shelves. Once or twice, flowers fell out from the pages. And I caught sight of a delicate handwriting here or there and frail markings. It was evidently the little intimate library of a young girl. What surprised me most was to find that quite half the books were in French. French poets and French romances. A charming, very rare addition of ronde sort. A beautifully printed addition of Alfred de Moussais. And a copy of Tiofilah Gautier's Badamosell de Mopin. How did these exotic books come to be there alone in a deserted New England farmhouse? This question was to be answered later in a strange way. Meanwhile, I had fallen in love with the sad, old, silent place. And as I closed the white gate and was once more on the road, I looked about for someone who could tell me whether or not this house of ghosts might be rented for the summer by a comparatively living man. I was referred to a fine old New England farmhouse shining white through the trees a quarter of a mile away. There I met an ancient couple, a typical New England farmer and his wife. The old man, lean, chin bearded, with with keen grey eyes flickering occasionally with a shrewd humor. The old lady with a kindly old face of the withered apple type and ruddy. They were evidently prosperous people, but their minds, for some reason I could not at the moment divine, seem to be divided between their new England desire to drive a hard bargain and their dis inclination to let the house at all. and over again, they spoke of the loneliness of the place. They feared I would find it very lonely. No one had lived in it for a long time and so on. It seemed to me that afterwards I understood their curious hesitation, but at the moment only regarded it as a part of their circuitous New England method of bargaining. At all events, the rent I offered finally overcame their disinclination, whatever its cause. And so I came into possession for four months of that silent old house with the white lilacs and the drowsy barns and the old piano and the strange orchard. And as the summer came on and the year changed its name from May to June, I used to lie under the apple trees in the afternoons, dreamily reading some old book, and through half-sleepy eyelids watching the silken shimmer of the sound. I had lived in the old house for about a month when one afternoon a strange thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th.

I was reading, or rather dipping here and there, in burdens anatomy of melancholy. I read, I remember that a little unripe apple, with a petal or two of blossom still clinging to it, fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and my ears were wide open, for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful young voice, singing very softly somewhere among the leaves.

The singing was very frail, almost imperceptible as though it came out of the air.

It came and went fitfully like the elusive fragrance of sweet briar, as though a girl was walking to and fro, dreamily humming to herself in the still afternoon. But there was no one to be seen. The orchard had never

seemed more lonely, and another fact that struck me as strange was that the words that floated to me out of the aerial music were French.

Half-sad, half-gay snatches of some long dead singer of old France. I looked about for the origin of the sweet sounds but in vain. Could it be the birds that were singing in French in this strange orchard? Presently, the voice seemed to come quite close to me. So near that it might have been the voice of a dry ad singing to me out of the tree against which I was leaning. And this time I distinctly caught the words of the sad little song. Shantaroo sin yoshantar toa Y'ala koge

Toa song. Shantaroo, senyo shantatou, kiyara kore, tora lakore, yara boosh, yara boye. But though the voice was at my shoulder, I could see no one. And then the singing stopped with what sounded like a sob. And a moment or two later, I seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard. their their followed silence, and I was left to ponder on the strange occurrence. Naturally, I decided that it was just a daydream between sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book. Yet, when next day and the day after, then visible singer was in the orchard again. I could not be satisfied with such mere matter of fact explanation.

When the voice, too to and fro in the orchard. There somewhere amid the bright sun dazzled boughs. Yet, not a human creature to be seen. another house, even within half a mile. The most materialistic mind could hardly but conclude that here was something not dreamed of in our philosophy. It seemed to me that the only reasonable explanation was the entirely irrational one, that my orchard was haunted, haunted by some beautiful young spirit, with some sorrow of lost joy,

they would not let her sleep quietly in her grave.

And next day, I had a curious confirmation of my theory.

Once more, I was lying under my favorite apple tree, half reading, and half watching the sound, lulled into a dream by the word of insects, and the spices called up from the earth by the hot sun. I bent over the page. I suddenly had the startling impression that someone was leaning over my shoulder and reading with me, and that a girl's long hair was falling over me down onto the page.

The book was the Ron Sard.

I had found in the little bedroom. I turned, but again there was nothing there. At this time I knew that I had not been dreaming And I cried out, poor child, tell me of your grief that I may help your sorrowing heart to rest. But, of course, there was no answer, yet that night I dreamed a strange dream. I thought I was in the orchard again in the afternoon, and once again heard the strange singing. But this time, as I looked up, the singer was no longer invisible. Coming toward me was a young girl with wonderful blue eyes filled with tears and Gold hair that fell to her waist She wore a straight white robe that might have been a shroud or a bridal dress She appeared not to see me Though she came directly to the tree where I was sitting. And there she knelt and buried her face in the grass and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her long hair fell over her like a mantle, and in my dream I stroked it pittingly and murmured words of comfort for a sorrow I did not understand. Then I woke suddenly as one does from dreams. The moon was shining brightly into the room, rising from my bed. I looked out into the orchard. It was almost as bright as day. I could plainly see the tree of which I had been dreaming, and then a fantastic notion possessed me. Slipping on my clothes, I went out into one of the old barns and found a spade. Then I went to the tree where I had seen the girl weeping in my dream and dug down at its foot. I had dug little more than a foot when my spade struck upon some heart substance. And in a few more moments, I had uncovered and exhumed a small box, which, on examination, proved to be one of those pretty old-fashioned, chip-and-dale work boxes used by our grandmothers to keep their thimbles and needles in, their reels of cotton, and of. After smoothing down the little grave in which I had found it, I carried the box into the house and under the lamp light examined its contents. it once I understood why that sad young spirit went to and fro the orchard singing those little French songs. For the treasure trove I had found under the apple tray, the buried treasure of an unquiet soul proved to be a number of love letters written mostly in French in a very picturesque hand. Letters 2 written but some 5 or 6 years before. I should not have read them, yet I read them with such reverence for the beautiful, impassioned love that animated them, and literally made them smell sweet and blossom in the dust, that I felt I had the sanction of the dead to make myself the confidant of their story. Among the letters were little songs, two of which I had heard the strange young voice singing in the orchard, and of course there were many withered flowers and such like remembrances of bygone rapture. Not that night could I make out all the story, though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy. Later on, a gossip in the neighborhood and a headstone in the church yard told me the rest. The unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was my landlord's daughter. She was the only child of her parents, a beautiful, willful girl, exotically unlike those from whom she was sprung, and among whom she lived with a disdainful air of exile. She was, as a child, a little creature of fairy fancies, and as she grew up, it was plain to her father and mother that she had come from another world than theirs. To them she seemed like a child in an old fairy tale, strangely found on his hearth by some shepherd, as he returns from the fields at evening. A little fairy girl swaddled in fine linen and doured with a mysterious bag of gold. Soon she developed delicate spiritual needs to which her simple parents were strangers. From long truancies in the woods, she would come home laden with mysterious flowers. And soon she came to ask for books and pictures and music of which the poor souls that had given her birth had never heard. Finally, she had her way and went to study at a certain fashionable college. And there, the brief romance of her life began. There she met a romantic young Frenchman who had read Ronsaul to her and ridden her those picturesque letters I had found in the old Mahogany work box. And after a while, the young Frenchman had gone back to France, and the letters had ceased. Month by month went by, and at length one day, as she sat wistful at the window, looking out at the foolish, sunlit road, a message came. He was dead. That headstone in the village churchyard tells the rest. was very young, scarcely 19 years old. And the dead who have died young, with all their hopes and dreams, still like unfolded buds within their hearts, do not rest so quietly in the grave as those who have gone through the long day from morning until evening and are only too glad to sleep. Next day, I took the little box to a quiet corner of the orchard and made a little pyre of fragrant boughs. For so I interpreted the wish of that young, unquiet spirit. And the beautiful words are now safe. taken up again into the aerial spaces from which they came. But since than the birds sing no more little French songs in my orchard. Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n y