Audio of Weird: The Red Room (H.G. Wells, 1896)
Listen to a classic ghost story from the father of science fiction
Adrien Olichon, Unsplash
Not content with founding pretty much every science fiction sub-genre known to humanity, H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was also a dab hand at writing fantasy and horror short stories.
A painter encounters a devilish critic in The Temptation of Harringay (1895), a sinister body-swap takes place in The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham (1896), paranormal investigators dabble in astral projection in The Stolen Body (1898), Lovecraftian beings observe us through dimensional peepholes in The Plattner Story (1896), childhood fantasy turns to dark obsession in The Door in the Wall (1906) and a weedy phantom is encouraged to pull himself together in The Inexperienced Ghost (1902).
The Red Room is perhaps Wells’s finest ghost story, first published in 1896 in sci-fi and horror-friendly British periodical The Idler (who also published several of William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder stories).
It’s been much anthologised and was given the Jackanory treatment by Freddie Jones in the first episode of BBC kids’ show Spine Chillers (1980).
It’s the simple yet resounding tale of a young Victorian who dares spend the night in a certain room in (the fictitious) Lorraine Castle - a neat slice of gothic horror, expertly paced and ending on a surprisingly irrational note from an author famed for his rationality…
