The Hollow Man by Thomas Burke

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A man walks the London streets, thin as a shadow, his eyes open but unseeing. He has no destination, yet something leads him — as if by an unseen hand — to a quiet room where the ordinary will no longer hold. What follows is not terror in the usual sense, but a slow unravelling, as if the familiar fabric of life has been touched by something that should have remained at rest. The Hollow Man by Thomas Burke first appeared in Collier’s on 14 October 1933, and was later collected in Night-Pieces: Eighteen Tales (Constable, 1935). Thomas Burke (1886–1945) was a British author best known for his tales of London’s hidden quarters, especially Limehouse. He wrote across fiction, essays, and poetry, blending realism with the uncanny. ⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐ https://patreon.com/barcud Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out. You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month. Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible? Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, don't they?
0:10.4	Everybody come back, isn't that sir?
0:14.4	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:17.4	How do the dead come back, mother?
0:19.9	What's the secret?
0:21.6	The Hollow Man by Thomas Burke.
0:25.6	It came up one of the narrow streets which lead from the docks and turned into a road whose father end was gay with the lights of London.
0:34.6	At the end of this road, he went deep into the lights of London and sometimes into its
0:40.2	shadows. Farther and farther he went from the river and did not pause until he had reached
0:46.1	a poor quarter near the centre. He made a tall spare figure, clothed in a black Macintosh.
0:52.9	Below this could be seen brown dungaree trousers. A
0:56.3	peaked cap hid most of his face. The little it was exposed was white and sharp. In the
1:02.7	autumn mist had filled the lighted streets as well as the dark, he seemed a wraith, and some of
1:08.1	those who passed him looked again, not sure whether they had indeed seen a living man.
1:14.7	One or two of them moved their shoulders, as though shrinking from something.
1:19.3	His legs were long, but he walked with the short, deliberate steps of a blind man, though he was not blind.
1:25.9	His eyes were open, and he stared straight ahead, but he seemed to
1:30.0	see nothing and hear nothing. Neither the mournful hooting of sirens across the black water of the river,
1:37.1	nor the genial windows of the shops in the big streets near the centre drew his head to right or left.
1:43.8	He walked as though he had no destination in
1:46.6	mind. Yet constantly, at this corner or that, he turned. It seemed that an unseen hand was guiding
1:54.5	him to a given point of whose location he was himself ignorant. He was searching for a friend of 15 years ago, and the unseen hand
	...

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