Ancient and medieval ghost stories, told as living fiction.
Creepy Classics turns old ghost stories into richly narrated fiction and builds each one around a scene. In one, a grandmother leads a child into an Icelandic church; in another, an innkeeper watches pilgrims gather for Canterbury. Juliet Harrison writes and performs the stories, then steps outside the tale to talk about where it came from.
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Creepy Classics turns ghost stories from ancient and medieval sources into fully dramatised fiction. Juliet Harrison writes and performs them, and Ed Harrison composes and performs the music. The stories are built as scenes. Rather than summarising an old account, Harrison builds a world around it, heavy on weather, seasons and daily work. In 'The Wife of Laxárdala's Tale', summer is ending in Iceland, and a girl named Hurdis follows her grandmother into a church whose pews are carved with curling dragons. Another story is told by the keeper of the Tabard Inn, who loves April because that is when pilgrims crowd the common room before riding out to Canterbury. Framing like this gives the old material a human point of view: someone listening, someone watching, someone caught up in events. The hauntings themselves vary. In 'The Hound's Voice', a dog-creature's story sends about forty men digging through frozen ground along a drover's road for the bones of a murdered stranger. In 'Looking for Absolution', the thing that was once the younger de Boltby hauls itself out of its grave and is pinned against a gate by Robert Foxton, who drops his staff and simply grabs it. 'The Poet and the King' features a Samhain feast in a ring fort, a poet in a cloak of bird skins and feathers, and a tomb carrying Ogham letters that Brideen wishes she could read. 'The Root of all Kinds of Evil', billed as a fable, brings a smooth-talking pardoner into the inn, offering pardons in exchange for silver coins, rings and brooches. Ancient material sits alongside this, including 'The Story of the Haunted House from Pliny, with Tony Keen', with its crumbling mansion below the acropolis and vines creeping in at the windows. The writing leaves room for comedy, as when William Brewster gags on his ale and runs home shouting for Marjorie. Elsewhere dialogue carries the tension: Thorkell, set on reaching home by Easter, brushes off his cousin's warning that a storm is coming. When a story ends, the register changes. Harrison talks casually about sources and plans, and in one closing she concedes that a reference from 1898 is a smidge out of date. Other closings mention her books, including 'Haunting Tales for Winter', and short videos of her learning Irish and Welsh. The credits sometimes list more people: one episode has vocals by Olivia Knops, and another was made with assistance from Birmingham Newman University. Viking stories, medieval ghost tales and ancient haunted houses all appear in the same list of episodes. Each episode gives the story first and its origins after.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants old ghost stories told as proper fiction, with atmosphere, characters and weather, and who also likes hearing afterward where a tale came from.
What sets it apart: It performs the ghost stories before it explains them. Old accounts become full scenes, often told by a framing narrator such as an innkeeper or a grandmother, and the talk about sources is kept for after the story ends.
Ancient, medieval and early modern ghost stories re-told, followed by a short discussion of where they come from and what they might mean. julietteharrisson.substack.com
Three dogs know something is at the window before you do.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candlelit Icelandic tale turns a storm warning into supernatural dread.
As summer ends, a church vigil opens into Gudrun's memory of prayer, grief, and something that carries the stink of rotten seaweed. Hurdis follows her grandmother past candlelit aisles, carved dragons, and flickering wooden decorations before hearing how Thorkell pushed to be…
A Samhain feast turns into a wary encounter with a feather-cloaked poet and an old king's troubling past.
Creepy Classics shapes a Samhain feast into a shadowed story of hospitality, memory, and recognition that comes too late for comfort. Fogol, a stranger in a cloak of bird skins and feathers, reaches King Mungan's ring fort and asks to take the empty place of poet at court.
A medieval tavern tale turns paid-for salvation into a sharp, bawdy test of greed.
At the Tabard Inn, April's pilgrims assemble for the 90-mile road to Canterbury, pulled by miracle stories, devotion, and the noisy business of pilgrimage season.
A fireside haunting grows into a graveyard confrontation with a strange comic edge.
Looking for Absolution builds its chill from an ordinary spring evening turned suddenly unsafe. John and Sarah Smith are settled by the fire as their baby sleeps, until the dogs react to the open window and Sarah glimpses a pale, dirt-marked face behind the bars.
Greek myth told with fatal momentum.
Ancient empire told in old public-domain voices.
Creepy Classics retells Gudrun's story from Laxdæla saga, where her nightly prayers in a small Icelandic church lead to a dream of a white-faced sorceress under the floorboards.
Fogol arrives at Mungan's ringfort during the Samhain feast and earns a place by retelling the Fionn MacCool and Salmon of Knowledge story.
Creepy Classics’ “The Root of all Kinds of Evil” retells Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, beginning with the Tabard Inn in Southwark and a Pardoner selling fake relics, including a veil of Mary and pardons for adultery, theft, blasphemy, and covetousness.
Creepy Classics’ “The Hound’s Voice” follows William Souter, who first hears a human-like shriek on a snow-covered drover’s road near a sheep field.
Creepy Classics' "Looking for Absolution" retells a late-1300s Byland Abbey ghost story set near Kilburn and Boltby in North Yorkshire.
A student from Miletus accepts ten gold pieces to guard a corpse in Larissa, Thessaly, where he is warned that witches can take the shape of a dog, bird, mouse or fly.
Creepy Classics opens with Juliet Harrison's roughly 14-minute retelling of Robin Hood and Little John walking to Kirklys, where an old woman on a plank bridge curses Robin's name while wringing blood from a green tunic.
Creepy Classics presents Orpheus and Eurydice as a tale told by a nanny to a boy who fell in a stream and a girl who "didn't fall in the river." The story follows Orpheus from his wedding-day loss through Cerberus, the Styx and the throne room of Hades and Persephone, where Persephone sets a condition.
A retelling of an ancient Roman ghost story about a haunted house in Athens, followed by discussion of its origins and meaning.
A dramatic retelling of the fall of Troy from the perspective of a survivor, blending historical narrative with supernatural elements.
Retelling of a Roman ghost story from Petronius' Satyricon about a dinner party where a pig is gutted on the spot.
This episode retells the story of Achilles and Patroclus from the Iliad, focusing on the treatment of their bodies after death.
A retelling of an ancient ghost story about a miller's wife visiting a witch, followed by discussion of its origins and meaning.