
Show Notes
Sponsored by the generosity of Gavin Critchley. Thanks, Gavin!
The valley of Cwm Garon is a place of ancient ruins and emerald meadows, tucked deep within the Welsh Borderland. When John Carfax first arrives, it seems a sanctuary, far from the grime of the city. But the stillness here is deceptive; it is a silence that watches. As the mountain shadows lengthen, the beauty of the landscape begins to distort into something more sinister4 Among the brooding crags and shifting mists, a feeling of unwelcome intrusion takes hold In Cwm Garon, the land itself remembers, and the shadows have never truly been empty.
Publication Details
"Cwm Garon" was first published in 1948 as part of L.T.C. Rolt’s landmark supernatural collection, Sleep No More.
It is frequently anthologized as a masterclass in the "antiquarian" ghost story tradition.
Author Biography
L.T.C. Rolt (1910–1974) was a prolific English writer and engineer who co-founded the Inland Waterways Association to preserve Britain's canal heritage.
While famous for his biographies of industrial icons, he is equally celebrated for his atmospheric weird fiction, often set in the isolated landscapes he encountered during his travels.
Don't forget:
24/7 Ad free stream of the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast on Internet radio. It goes on and on and on and on. For all you not-so sleepy heads, and better still: it's free! www.gravenheim.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Classic Ghost Stories
A middle‑aged businessman sits in a psychiatrist’s office with a problem he can barely put into words. Something in the world has shifted, or else something in his own perception has, and the solid faces around him no longer look quite as human as they once did. In his account there are no apparitions, no rattling chains, only the slow, unnerving sense that certain very ordinary people are quietly working to empty life of colour, choice, and meaning. As he talks, the calm, professional office itself begins to feel strangely less reassuring.
Edith Wharton's “All Souls” begins with an empty house on a winter night and a woman waiting as the snow piles up. Written six months before Wharton's death, this final completed work of fiction is something quieter than a cozy ghost story—and hard to shake.
Thanks to Hayley Smith for sponsoring this episode!
An unmarried schoolteacher crosses a river by ferry to collect her dead sister's daughter from the girl's stepmother, a woman with china-blue eyes and a smile that is hiding something.
In a quiet curiosity shop in Paris, a shelf holds a collection of objects from another time. Our protagonist notices a small object that at first appears to be the broken foot of a Greek statue. The antiques dealer, however, explains that it is the mummified foot of a pharaoh’s daughter. The absurdity of a once royal foot now serving as a paperweight strikes them both. The dealer warns that the old pharaoh will not be pleased.