The HorrorBabble Podcast

"Sweets to the Sweet" by Robert Bloch

"Sweets to the Sweet" is a short story by Robert Bloch. The story, which first appeared in Weird Tales in March 1947, tells of an eight-year-old girl with uncanny abilities.

"Afterward" / A Classic Ghost Story by Edith Wharton

"Afterward" is a short story by Edith Wharton. It was first published in the 1910 edition of The Century Magazine and in her books, The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton and Tales of Men and Ghosts, 1910. It is an ironic ghost story about greed and retribution. The ghost comes for one of the main characters long after a business transgression where the character wronged another.

"The Lady in Gray" by Donald Wandrei

"The Lady in Gray" is a short story by the American author, Donald Wandrei. The tale first appeared in Weird Tales in its December 1933 edition, and was described by the magazine as follows: “The story of a strange woman and a loathsome gray slug that came to a sleeper in his dreams..."

"The Family of the Vourdalak" by Aleksey Tolstoy

Written in French by Russian author, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy in 1839, The Family of the Vourdalak tells a tale of vampirism in rural Serbia. 

"Rats" by F. A. M. Webster

"Rats" is a short story by the British author, F. A. M. Webster. First published under a pseudonym in the 1931 anthology, At Dead of Night, the tale tells the story of Mike Halliday, a man determined to make the most of a problematic holiday in dreary England.

"The Unnamable" by H. P. Lovecraft / A Randolph Carter Story

"The Unnamable" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. In the tale, the antiquarian Randolph Carter tells a close friend the tale of an indescribable entity that allegedly haunts a dilapidated house near an old cemetery.

"Dread Summons" / A Classic Weird Tale by Paul Ernst

"Dread Summons" is a short story by the regular Weird Tales contributor, Paul Ernst. The tale was given the following synopsis back in November 1937: “The old butler heard a scream, muffled by the street noises from outside, and when he investigated he found that a dread summons had been answered.”

"The Creeper in Darkness" by Frank Belknap Long

"The Creeper in Darkness" is a short story by Frank Belknap Long, which first appeared in Strange Stories in April 1939. The tale tells of a disturbing encounter with a witch's familiar.

"Black Bargain" by Robert Bloch

"Black Bargain" first appeared in Weird Tales in May 1942, and tells of a situation involving a man who is quite literally afraid of his own shadow.

"The Imp of the Perverse" by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning as an essay, it discusses the narrator's self-destructive impulses, embodied as the symbolic metaphor of The Imp of the Perverse.