The Occupant of the Room by Algernon Blackwood

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A schoolmaster arrives late at night in a remote Alpine village. The inn has no rooms. Then suddenly—there is one. A room that's occupied, yet empty. A room whose previous tenant, an Englishwoman, left two days before and hasn't returned. As he unpacks his few belongings, the atmosphere begins to press in. Something lingers here—in the faded flowers by the washstand, in the air itself. And when darkness falls, he feels it: a crushing weight of despair that doesn't belong to him. Thoughts that aren't his own. A blackness so complete it whispers of only one escape. The search party is still out on the mountains. But what if they're looking in the wrong place? Publication Details: "The Occupant of the Room" was first published in 1909 in Blackwood's collection John Silence: Physician Extraordinary, featuring the psychic detective Dr. John Silence. The story showcases Blackwood's mastery of psychological horror and the contagion of extreme emotional states. Author Biography: Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was a British author, occultist, and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His work explored the boundaries between psychological experience and supernatural phenomena, establishing him as one of the most influential writers of weird fiction in the early twentieth century. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast 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?
0:10.0	Everybody come back.
0:12.0	Isn't that so?
0:14.0	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:18.0	How do the dead comeback, mother?
0:20.0	What's the secrets of the come back? The occupant of the Room, by Alginon Blackwood. He arrived late at night by the
0:30.9	yellow diligence, stiff and cramped after the toilsome ascent of three slow hours. The village,
0:40.9	a single mass of shadow, was already asleep. Only in front of the little hotel was their noise and light and bustle for a moment.
0:46.6	The horses, with tired slouching gait, crossed the road and disappeared into the stable
0:51.4	of their own accord, their harnessed trailing in the dust,
0:54.8	and the lumbering diligence stood for the night where they had dragged it, the body of
0:59.0	a great yellow-sided beetle with broken legs.
1:03.9	In spite of his physical weariness of the schoolmaster, revelling in the first hours of his
1:08.6	ten guinea holiday, felt exhilarated, for the high alpine valley
1:13.1	was marvellously still, stars twinkled over the torn ridges of the d'andumidie, where spectral snows gleamed against
1:21.2	rocks that looked like ebony, and the keen air smelt of pine forests dew-soaked pastures and freshly-sorn wood. He took it all in with a kind
1:31.0	of bewildered delight for a few minutes, while the other three passengers gave directions about
1:35.6	their luggage and went to their rooms. Then he turned and walked over the course matting into
1:41.2	the glare of the hall, only just able to resist stopping to examine
1:45.5	the big mountain map that hung upon the wall by the door. And, with a sudden disagreeable
1:52.0	shock, he came down from the ideal to the actual, for at the inn, the only inn, there
1:58.8	was no vacant room. Even the available sofas were occupied. How stupid it
	...

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