The Red Room by H G Wells

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In H.G. Wells's "The Red Room," a young man, confident in his rationality, seeks to debunk the supernatural in a reputedly haunted chamber. He is certain that his experience will be defined by logic and reason. But the air within the castle walls is heavy with unspoken dread, and as the candles dwindle, something shifts. Is it the room itself, or something within him, that begins to unravel? "The Red Room" was first published in The Idler magazine in March of 1896. H.G. Wells (1866-1946), a visionary of science fiction and social commentary, explored the depths of human experience with unparalleled skill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, don't they?
0:10.5	Isn't that same?
0:14.4	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:17.1	How do that they'd come back, mother?
0:19.9	What's the secret?
0:21.2	The Red Room by H.G. Wells.
0:25.3	I can assure you, said I, that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me,
0:31.8	and I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.
0:35.9	It is your own choosing, said the man with a withered arm, and glanced at me askance.
0:41.2	Eight and twenty years, said I, I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.
0:47.9	The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.
0:53.5	Ah, she broke in, and eight and twenty years you have
0:57.7	lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to see when one's
1:03.1	still, but eight and twenty. She swayed her head slowly from side to side, her many things to see,
1:10.0	and sorrow for. I half suspected the old people were
1:14.1	trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my
1:20.3	empty glass on the table and looked about the room and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and
1:25.9	broadened to an impossible sturdiness in the queer old
1:29.0	mirror at the end of the room.
1:30.5	Well, I said, if I see anything tonight, I shall be so much the wiser, for I come to the
1:36.0	business with an open mind.
1:38.4	It's your own choosing, said the man with the withered arm once more.
	...

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