In the Tube | A Ghost Story by E. F. Benson | A Bitesized Audio Production

An atmospheric tale from the early days of the London underground at the start of the 20th century. A traveller on the last tube train home has a series of unsettling and inexplicable experiences, but are they shadows of the past – or the future?

A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.

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Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) is best remembered today for his social satires of the 1920s, the Mapp and Lucia stories. However in his lifetime he was perhaps more famous for his many "spook stories" (as he liked to call them) which he composed regularly for publication in periodicals – usually Hutchinson's or Pearson's magazines – from the mid 1890s through to the 1930s. He was a friend and contemporary of M. R. James, the most celebrated of 20th century ghost story authors, and was a member of the Chitchat Club, the Cambridge University literary society where James would read aloud his ghost stories to a select few. E. F. Benson's own output of supernatural tales encompasses an unusually wide and adventurous range of styles and themes, including stories of vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous creatures, as well as satires of charlatan mediums.

Historical note: London Underground history buffs will know that the tube station at the centre of this story, Dover Street, is now known as Green Park. Designed by Leslie Green, Dover Street station opened in 1906 as part of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, receiving its current name in the early 1930s when the station was refurbished as part of a series of changes to the Piccadilly Line – changes which also included the closure of a number of stations on the line, notably Down Street (in between Piccadilly Circus and Dover Street/Green Park) and Brompton Road, the home station of Anthony Carling in this story (in between Knightsbridge and South Kensington).

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2019.