The Whistling Room | W H Hodgson | Carnacki the Ghost Finder | read by Greg Wagland | 1910

Well, this is perhaps the best and creepiest of the stories so far. It's set in Ireland, which I thought I'd establish here, rather than allowing the character work to suggest the Punjab and points east. A room in the old wing, with a peculiar bit of ironmongery attached to the fireplace, some Americans (possibly with ancestry in the Punjab!), copious amounts of whiskey (Irish spelling) and presumably not whisky (Scotch - sic - spelling) just to take away the funk. Funk, in its Edwardian context has nearly died out, but not quite: you occasionally hear people say 'I was in a bit of a funk'. This was written in 1910, eight years before the death of the author, W. H. Hodgson, who died, probably hit by a German shell, in World War One. He enlisted early on, was badly wounded, in 1916, left and then re-enlisted, only to be killed months before the end of the war. His biography, quite good on wikipedia, shows him to have been a remarkable man. Thank you for listening. If by any chance you wish to support the channel there is a little button below the YouTube screen that will take you to Super Thanks where you can toss a cyber shilling or two into the old titfer (Cockney rhyming slang). Read by Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio 2026.