The Occupant of the Room | Algernon Blackwood | A Bitesized Audiobook

An English schoolteacher touring the Swiss Alps arrives in a remote village late at night to find that the only inn is full. After some bargaining, he is offered a room which is "in a sense engaged" because the previous boarder has disappeared without checking out. Will he take the risk of sleeping in a room to which the rightful occupant may return at any moment? The story starts at 00:01:00

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:00 The Occupant of the Room
00:27:30 Credits, thanks and further listening

For a selection of Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories by various authors, including Charles Dickens, Amelia Edwards, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, and many more:    • Victorian Ghost Stories  

About the author: Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) was an English author and journalist best remembered for his "weird tales" and ghost stories. He was born in Kent and went to school at Wellington College in Berkshire. In his youth he travelled widely, in particular in North America, and gained experience in a startling variety of professions, including hotel management and dairy farming in Canada, as well as newspaper journalism and violin teaching in New York City. He contributed short stories and other pieces of journalism to a number of publications on both sides of the Atlantic; his first short story, 'A Mysterious House' was published in The periodical 'Belgravia' in July 1889.

Blackwood settled back in the UK in the first decade of the 20th century and his first collection of supernatural fiction, 'The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories' was published in 1906. He went on to write many more, as well as 14 novels and a number of children's books. He also found success as a playwright, often as adaptor or co-author, most famously 'The Starlight Express' (1915), an adaptation of his own children's story with Violet Peam. His short ghost stories and novellas remain very highly regarded today: amongst the best-known are 'The Willows' (1907), 'The Wendigo' (1910), as well as a short series featuring the supernatural detective John Silence (1908).

'The Occupant of the Room' was first published in Nash’s Magazine in December 1909. It has been much anthologised ever since, including in Blackwood's own collections 'Day and Night Stories' (1917) and 'Strange Stories' (1929).

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