Victorian Suspense

A young man’s inheritance includes more than a house when an ebony-framed painting of a beautiful woman starts to exert a strange hold over its new owner. Could this lead to his tragic demise?

In this well-known classic, a school inspector travelling to the village of Pit End wonders whether the things he’s seeing are products of his imagination or something supernatural. There’s a rational answer, but is it the right one? Was It an Illusion is taken from the Victorian Anthologies series featuring short stories by classic writers of the spooky, the scary and the supernatural. Guaranteed to give you the shivers, each collection includes familiar and loved creepy tales as well as those less well-known. With music by Benedict Edwards.

‘The Signalman’ (1866) is a short story by the English writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870). In the story, a practical-minded narrator meets a railway worker who has been seeing supernatural visions. The narrator doubts the man at first, but at the story’s conclusion a strange event makes him a believer.

Emily Wilkins has led a glamorous life, part of a famous Circus family she has her own Act and a loving family. But a dramatic accident in the Ring means she has to face up to the fact that she never felt she fitted in. With her faithful donkey Claude she sets out for Montana to heal and find herself, but she gets much more than she ever bargained for. Widower Matthew Simmons wants something more than he always has had.

Es beginnt 1815: Auf dem Ball der Duchess of Richmond am Vorabend der Schlacht von Waterloo zeigte sich sehr deutlich, wie verliebt die junge Sophia Trenchard, Tochter eines Geschäftsmanns, in Edmund Bellasis war, den attraktiven Neffen der Duchess. Aber in den folgenden Wochen trugen sich schreckliche Ereignisse zu.