Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

A short story by Edgar Allen Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man, M. Valdemar, in a hypnotic state at the moment of death. M. Valdimar remains in the state for seven months. When the mesmerist removes M. Valdemar from this state, it resembles opening the door of a freezer that has been unplugged for months, the turkey inside.

Do you believe in ghosts? You might reconsider if you don't after listening to this story of a man haunted by a longtime enemy.

"Abolish Language," said the vizier, "And man will return to primal simplicity and happiness."

The story of aging George Stransom, who is obsessed with observing the anniversary of his fiancée Mary Antrim's death, a fact that leads him to expand his commemorative pantheon to include all the other departed friends who live on in his memory. As in life, if we live long enough, the departed outnumber the living. When Stransom becomes the last of the living, who will light a candle for him?

Lois, a beautiful 19-year-old young woman travels to Baltimore to meet Harold, her love interest, as they consider a breakup. We never meet Harold; instead, the short story becomes more about Catholicism and the priesthood, as Lois first spends an afternoon with Keith, her 36-year-old brother, a seminarian in a Jesuit monastery. Lois and Keith have not seen one another for 16 years, so it is an extremely interesting reunion.

A young engineer loves his steam locomotive, Number Eighty-Seven. It is new and being broken in; it is just coming to life when a highwayman robs the gold being carried in one of her cars. When he recklessly attempts to use Number Eighty-Seven in his escape, the locomotive becomes almost human.

Metempsychosis, the supposed transmigration and death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species is the key to this short story by Edgar Allen Poe, narrated by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti. "Metzegerstein", the title of this short story by Edgar Allen Poe, is the name family name of a family that has carried on a long standing feud with the Berlifitzing family bitter rivals somewhere in Eastern Europe.

A very short story by Ambrose Bierce, that as Bierce is so prone to do ends with quite a surprise.

It is the turn of the last century, and Alaska is a mysterious wilderness. At the suggestion of several hundred thousand ladies desiring to revel and possibly riot in the saturnalia of equal franchise, the unnamed lakes in that vast and little known region in Alaska bounded by the Ylanqui River and the Thunder Mountains were now being inexorably named after women.

Robert Hugh Benson, a Catholic priest wrote this short story of the taking the life of a songbird, and the vision that accompanied it.

Here is a very short, a very slight sort of tale which may yet manage to hold either a very big ghost or a very potent allegory. Lord Dunsany penned this sometime about the period of the First World War. Yet in what period of history, from the most ancient past up to very present, has not something of the spectre of Andelsprutz been perceptible to those with a sense of history. For those, this story will prove a "thought-piece" as well as a compelling fantasy.

Forbidden love in name baronial estate. An evil man dies with an evil smile upon his face believing his evil secret is going with him to the grave. And there it remains until the lovers creep into the crypt shortly after the stroke of midnight. An erie tale certain to creep you out and keep you in suspense.

What a coincidence. The mummies wake up once a millennium, and who should stumble into the pyramid but our hero? This is a fun little story about a British ne'er-do-well who has found possible wealth and prosperity by becoming engaged to the rather plain - and plain is a nice word for it - daughter of a new English nobleman. But wait. He wanders into the pyramid when the mummies have their 24 hours of life once a millennium, and he falls madly in love with the Pharaoh's daughter, who is some 6,000 years old.

A master hustler and bank robber befriends a starving gentleman on Market Street in San Francisco. He engages the man, who hasn't eaten for three days, in a game of dice over a bottle of absinthe. The starving man plays amazingly well as he warms his empty stomach with the liquor - so well in fact that the last hand has $148,000 on the table.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti narrates "The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, a scathing indictment of war and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.

Paul Macimer is assigned to find a missing FBI file that may implicate a renegade agent. What he does not realize is that he himself is a suspect.

One of the worst storms - thunder, lightning, and rain - ever to strike London, arrived the same day the visionaries have predicted the end of the world. Could this be a harbinger of the arrival of an unseen comet that will destroy Earth? Has the apocalyptic day arrived? A beautiful maiden visiting the home of a doctor and his family believe so to the extent she is rendered catatonic. While in this state, her mind sees things unseen by mortal man.

Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible. Other Indians might have known as much of the wisdom of the trail as did he; but he alone knew the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and the law.

This short story first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1920, and later became part of Flappers and Philosophers. Fitzgerald was the master of exposing the underbelly of the aristocracy and the pompous, and here, Horace the prodigy falls in love with Monica the dancer. Horace puts his lofty goals on hold to pursue a more lucrative career as an acrobat, while Monica writes a book.

Wilkie Collins may have had issues with women, and it becomes apparent in this short story by Collins when Isaac Scatchard, not the brightest bulb on the tree, an itinerant ostler, wakes on the night of his birthday to see the apparition of a woman trying to stab him with a clasp knife. Seven years later he marries Rebecca Murdoch, against the wishes of his mother who recognizes her from Isaac's description as the dream woman. Rebecca takes to drink and fulfills the prophecy by attacking him on his birthday.