Category: Online Audio

LibriVox: The Hollow Of The Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Hollow Of The Three Hills - illustration by Esteban Maroto

If you’re a fan of good narration, and creepy short stories about witches, check out Bob Neufeld’s reading of The Hollow Of The Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He’s a veteran narrator, with good taste is stories, and a terrific voice.

There is an “excellent” and extensive German Wikipedia entry on The Hollow Of The Three Hills – sadly, an English Wikipedia entry does not even exist.

LibriVoxThe Hollow Of The Three Hills
By Nathaniel Hawthorne; Read by Bob Neufeld
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: 2012
First published in The Salem Gazette, November 12, 1830.

And here’s a |PDF|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxI previously pointed you toward two outstanding stories that influenced HBO’s True Detective. But there’s actually a complete recording of the entire book of The King In Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers, available on LibriVox. It’s broken up into two parts:

Part 1 is available HERE, and Part 2 is available HERE.

In my researches I also found some illustrations from a 1902 publication of The King In Yellow, have a look:

The King In Yellow - The Yellow Sign

The King In Yellow - Tessie

The King In Yellow - The Street Of The Four Winds

The King In Yellow - Sylvia, Colette, and Marie Guernalec

The King In Yellow - "His all, in life"

The King In Yellow - Valentine

The King In Yellow - Rue Barrée

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Weird Circle: The Werewolf (aka The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains)

SFFaudio Online Audio

“Capt. Marryat, besides writing such short tales as The Werewolf [aka The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains], made a memorable contribution in The Phantom Ship (1839), founded on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, whose spectral and accursed vessel sails for ever near the Cape of Good Hope.”

-H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature

Normally I wouldn’t contradict H.P. Lovecraft, but he didn’t have the internet to do his research. The Werewolf he is referring to, we think, is actually Chapter 39 of The Phantom Ship – that chapter is a story within the greater narrative and has often been reprinted without the surrounding novel.

This 1944 radio drama adaptation is very tame compared with the savageness of the original (for more on that see the PDF below).

The Weird CircleThe Weird Circle – The Werewolf
Adapted from the novelette by Captain Frederick Marryat; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: MBS, NBC, ABC
Broadcast: May 7, 1944
Provider: Archive.org
A widower, living in the Hartz Mountains, takes a new wife to help raise his children, but the strange wedding vows he makes will come back to haunt him.

Here’s a |PDF| of The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains.

The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains - illustration by H.R. Millar

The White Wolf Of The Hartz Mountains -illustration by H.R. Millar

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Reading Envy Podcast

SFFaudio Online Audio

ReadingEnvyIntroducing The Reading Envy Podcast!

Jenny Colvin and I (Scott Danielson) were talking about books one day, and decided there was room for another podcast. We decided that the podcast would come out once a month, and that we’d talk about what whatever we read the month prior. To limit the length of the podcast, we decided that picking three books each would be reasonable.

We also decided that the podcast needed to include guests, and that we’d go for a light conversation like you’d have in a cafe or a pub with friends. All books are fair game.

The latest episode (#2) is posted, and our guest is Bryan Alexander. Give it a listen! We hope you enjoy it.

READING ENVY 002: RETURN OF THE EUTHANIZED BOOK

Bryan brought three books along for discussion:

Scott talked about:

And Jenny focused on:

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 002: Return of the Euthanized Book

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner

Or subscribe via iTunes by clicking: Subscribe.

Posted by Scott

LibriVox: The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

SFFaudio Online Audio

The famous and exquisitely wrought novel, The House of the Seven Gables, in which the relentless working out of an ancestral curse is developed with astonishing power against the sinister background of a very ancient Salem house … from this setting came the immortal tale — New England’s greatest contribution to weird literature — and we can feel in an instant the authenticity of the atmosphere presented to us. Stealthy horror and disease lurk within the weather-blackened, moss-crusted, and elm-shadowed walls of the archaic dwelling so vividly displayed, and we grasp the brooding malignity of the place when we read that its builder — old Colonel Pyncheon — snatched the land with peculiar ruthlessness from its original settler, Matthew Maule, whom he condemned to the gallows as a wizard in the year of the panic. Maule died cursing old Pyncheon — “God will give him blood to drink” — and the waters of the old well on the seized land turned bitter. Maule’s carpenter son consented to build the great gabled house for his father’s triumphant enemy, but the old Colonel died strangely on the day of its dedication. Then followed generations of odd vicissitudes, with queer whispers about the dark powers of the Maules, and sometimes terrible ends befalling the Pyncheons.

-H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature

The House Of The Seven Gables

For an upcoming SFFaudio Podcast READALONG of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House Of The Seven Gables I point you towards this unabridged 12 hour 20 minute solo narration by Mark F. Smith:

With novels on LibriVox my preferred file type is M4B (DRM-FREE of course) because they’re natively bookmarkable – but a Zipped MP3 version, and a vanilla podcast feed are also available.

Part 1 |M4B|
Part 2 |M4B|
Part 3 |M4B|

Podcast feed:
https://librivox.org/rss/2961

The House Of The Seven Gables - an 1875 illustration of Clifford Pyncheon by John Dalziel

Posted by Jesse Willis

The WEIRD FICTION roots of TRUE DETECTIVE

Aural Noir: Online Audio

True Detective

A couple lines from episode 2 of HBO’s new show, True Detective, made made me gasp in shock and pleasure. The stylish debut episode, though beautifully filmed, didn’t quite explicitly state the weird undercurrent that may be behind the mystery of this novel for television.

The King In Yellow

Det. Rustin Cohle (reading the diary) “I closed my eyes and saw the King in Yellow moving through the forest.”

And then “The Yellow King … Carcosa”

In Carcosa

I really began to get excited when, near the end of episode 2, birds flock into a recognizable shape, a tattoo found on the victim in episode 1.

The Yellow Sign?

a Yellow Sign?

Here are two short stories, listed chronologically, for those lines:

LibriVoxAn Inhabitant Of Carcosa
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by rasputin
1 |MP3| – Approx. [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox
Published: 2009
First published in the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser, Dec 25, 1886.

And here’s a |PDF| version.

LibriVoxThe Yellow Sign
By Robert W. Chambers; Read by CrowGirl
1 |MP3| – Approx. 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 30, 2011
The King In Yellow is a monstrous and suppressed book whose perusal brings, fright, madness, and spectral tragedy. Have you seen the Yellow Sign? First published in 1895.

And here’s a |PDF| version.

The Yellow Sign - unsigned illustration From Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Posted by Jesse Willis