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This episode is brought to you by a curious feeling of disquietude.

Tonight, to kick off our fourth annual Spooky Sleep Story series,

we'll read the opening to the novella, The Willows,

written by Algernon Blackwood and first published in 1907.

This year's series of classic horror stories will air every Monday this October.

In this story, two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the river Danube.

The natural environment, for example, the river Sun and Wind,

is personified with powerful and ultimately threatening characteristics.

Most ominous are the masses of dense willows along the river banks,

which moved on their own will as though alive.

This is one of Blackwood's best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers.

Horror author, HP Lovecraft, considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature.

The Willows is an example of early modern horror and is connected with the literary tradition of weird fiction.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths.

After leaving Vienna and long before you come to Budapest,

the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation,

where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel,

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