Stories Obscured by Time: Recent Episodes
The Ideopraxist
I found this story in a book titled TIME: A Monthly Miscellany or Interesting & Amusing Literature. Published in 1881. This essay was written by one who claims to study babies as others study butterflies.
Listen as the Ideopraxist reads another ghost story by Mr.s Molesworth. This is a true story, told to Mrs. Molesworth by a friend and immortalized in her book, Four Ghost Stories. Published in 1888, Four Ghost Stories was dedicated to her nieces, Lilian and Georgina Molesworth. Ghost stories written by women in that time, were generally poorly reviewed because they lacked the "excitement" and action of ghost stories written by men. These were too cerebral to be scary. I think Mrs. Molesworth realized and objected to this because she wrote into the conversation that true ghost stories usually seemed inconsequential, because they were true and not fantasies of delusion.
A gathering of friends almost come to an impasse when choosing a way to pass the time. They decide upon hearing a ghost story, but only if it is told firsthand. Who, today, could imagine that one of the most chilling cinema ghost archetypes was first imagined centuries ago.
This is the second story read aloud from Simple Tales by Amelia Opie. In this story we find that inexperience in young adults have for centuries made them prey to selfish and destructive decisions as well as unscrupulous characters. Warning: This story contains themes of suicide, gambling addiction and drug abuse.
A young woman’s charitable habits lead to the vexation of her father and the ridicule of her peers at a social gathering that changed the opinion of the only man she ever wished to please.