Showing results for "The Experiment" in Classics

This is the unabridged audio recording of M R James' excellent ghost story "The Experiment". Read by David Collings, this is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

When the skipper of HMS Foam agrees to vacate his stateroom when his Mate's wife wants to take a short vacation onboard for a 10-day voyage, he has no idea that his own wife is also planning a surprise holiday on the ship. When the two women arrive, there is an immediate misunderstanding as to the arrangements... and the situation goes from bad to worse as the voyage progresses.

An Experiment in Luxury is the book end of all this as a young man visits his rich friend and his millionaire family. It is a conventional scene where the young man's friend, son of the household, encourages him to speak only conventionally to his mother or he will get on her bad side. We see her preoccupied with her worries and the husband/millionaire taking his mind off of it all by playing with a kitten.

Professor von Baumgarten wants to prove his theory that the sprits of hypnotized people can see one another. His student, Fritz von Hartmann, participates in the experiment. A switch of souls and bodies takes place....

Dr. Heidegger invites four elderly friends to his macabre study. He claims to his friends to have found liquid from the fountain of youth! The friends are skeptical, but choose to drink the liquid anyway.

Old Dr. Heidigger calls a few of his friends together to try a new "elixer of life" designed to make them all young again. The results are not what any of them had bargined for and, as is often the case with Hawthorne, the story teaches a valuable lesson.