David Collings

This well-produced musical adaptation of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' stars Albert Finney as skinflint Ebeneezer Scrooge. With engaging songs, played against authentic English settings, Scrooge is visited by three spirits who open his eyes to the inhumanity of his past and the joy of Christmas.

Title: The Damned Thing Author: Ambrose Bierce Narrator: Jonathan Dunne Original Publication: 1893 Public Domain: Yes Series Placement: Number 13 in the Timeless Terrors series Description: The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce is a chilling tale of the unseen and the unknown. First published in 1893 in Tales from New York Town Topics, it presents the strange account of a man's violent death and the mysterious force believed to be responsible. Told...

Title: Rats Author: M. R. James Narrator: Jonathan Dunne Original Publication: 1929 Public Domain: Yes Series Placement: Timeless Terrors No. 63 Description: Rats is one of M. R. James' most quietly terrifying tales - a masterclass in suggestion, atmosphere, and the dread of what lurks just out of view. Set in a decaying, isolated inn on the Suffolk coast, the story follows a solitary traveler who becomes curious about a locked upstairs room...

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), who wrote as M. R. James, was an English author, medieval scholar, and provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton College. He is best known for his outstanding ghost stories. James reinvented the ghost story for the modern audience by moving away from Gothic elements and using realistic contemporary settings. His protagonists and plots often reflected his own antiquarian interests. "The Story of a Disappearance...

A relic buried. A secret watched. A warning unheeded. In this chilling tale by master of the supernatural M. R. James, the boundaries between legend and reality dissolve into coastal mist. A Warning to the Curious draws the listener into a bleak and beautiful world where ancient guardians still linger-and curiosity can awaken things best left undisturbed. A haunting meditation on the price of trespass, this is classic ghost storytelling at its most...

There is no Number 13 at the hotel. At least, there isn't supposed to be. But when shadows stretch in the wrong direction and the architecture begins to forget its own shape, what starts as a quiet academic stay becomes something else entirely. Elegant, unsettling, and steeped in the unseen, Number 13 is M. R. James at his most refined-where the floorplan of reality folds, and one door too many stands ajar.

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas draws its listener into a labyrinth of ancient secrets, cryptic clues, and a warning that should never have been ignored. In this masterwork of antiquarian dread, M. R. James summons a world where curiosity is a dangerous impulse, and knowledge-particularly the hidden kind-has its price. With echoes of stone chambers and whispered Latin, this is a tale not merely of treasure, but of the peril that guards it. Let your ears...

A child's memory, a shadowed path, a glimpse of something that should not be. In A Vignette, M. R. James offers a final brushstroke of quiet terror-intimate, elusive, and disquietingly real. This short, unsettling piece lingers like a half-remembered dream, evoking the moment when the everyday slips into the uncanny. With masterful restraint and emotional undercurrent, James reminds us that the most chilling hauntings are those born in the mind-and...

This is the unabridged audio recording of M.R. James' excellent ghost story 'The Ash-Tree'. The author's stories were written with the purpose of being read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. This highly-praised version, narrated by David Collings, is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.

An Episode of Cathedral History is one of M. R. James's most quietly chilling tales-a masterwork of subtle horror, antiquarian mystery, and creeping dread. Behind the stone walls of a venerable English cathedral, the past stirs with a presence that should have remained undisturbed. In this haunting narrative, the mundane slips imperceptibly into the macabre. A scholar's inquiry unlocks a forgotten secret; shadows lengthen; and something long sealed...