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Chilling Ghost Stories
- Narrated by: Anthony Donovan
- Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Anthologies & Short Stories
Getting scared around the campfire is the archetypal chilling experience. Listening to an audiobook doesn't offer quite the same ambiance, but at least you get a more evocative narration than you would from a bunk mate. In this case, you also get some less-familiar stories. We may all know Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," but the five other pieces here - by Poe, M.R. James, Oscar Wilde, Ambrose Bierce, and Charles Dickens - will be new to most listeners. The publishers use music, rather than sound effects, to heighten the drama.
Publisher's Summary
A chilling collection of ghost stories containing Rats by MR James, The Raven and Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe, The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde, A Tough Tussle by Ambrose Bierce and The Signalman by Charles Dickens. In Rats, Mr Thompson comes to regret his decision to investigate a locked room in a country inn, and in The Signalman, the subject of the story is haunted by ghostly appearances that always precede tragic events.
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What listeners say about Chilling Ghost Stories
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
- Kelly Howard
- 06-03-09
good reader & stories; lousy production
The stories in the collection are by classic authors, so may seem tame to readers used to Stephen King-ish stories. But they are classic for a reason; they're good. The reader does a good job with them & "The Raven" is especially well rendered. However. The producers just HAD to include the smarmy hyper-melodramatic music before, & sometimes during, each story --sometimes even while the reader is reading. A part of one story is quite drowned out by the stupid music. It's as if they needed to pad out the time by including lousy noise. I would have given it a 4 star rating if not for the music.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Xophist
- 13-12-20
Great Narration, Stories a Mixed Bag, TOC useless
Like many Naxos audiobooks, this lacks a proper TOC. There are 2 chapters, corresponding to the 2 CDs of the physical product. Each chapter merely marks the beginning of a CD, so there is no way to jump to the stories that were not at the beginning of a CD. Lazy!
There are 3 excellent tales, and 2 stinkers. A bonus is a great reading of the poem "The Raven".
The 3 great tales run 16, 20, and 31 minutes. Add the 8 minutes for "The Raven" and you get 75 minutes of excellent content.
The 2 stinkers are by Wilde and Poe. Both stories inflict wordiness and preciosity on the listener.
I expected pseudo-intellectual wordiness from Poe. As usual, Poe telegraphs the ending far in advance, so there is no surprise when the "surprise ending" comes at last. At least his "Berenice" was only 24 minutes.
I had no preconceptions about Wilde's "The Birthday of the Infanta". It dragged on for 47 minutes and earned my objurgation. It was verbose and tendentious, and sounded like a moralizing fairy tale. The tale might please a very patient child, but I doubt it.
The redeeming feature of this audiobook is the excellent narration by Anthony Donovan.
At this time, it appears that Audible does not have any other audiobooks narrated by Anthony Donovan. I hope to hear more from him on Audible.