Fearsome Fiction Podcast: A Very Strange Bed, by Wilkie Collins

This week we present “A Terribly Strange Bed” by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1852 in Household Words, the celebrated literary magazine edited by Charles Dickens. A young Englishman in Paris visits a disreputable gambling house, breaks the bank at Rouge et Noir, and makes the mistake of accepting a bed for the night. What follows is one of the most gripping sequences in Victorian fiction—methodical, claustrophobic, and chilling in the way only the best suspense can be.

Wilkie Collins is best remembered for The Woman in White and The Moonstone, but this early story reveals the master at work long before those landmarks. He thought enough of it to adapt it for live readings later in his career. Once you’ve heard it, you’ll understand why.

No ghosts. No monsters. Just a room, a bed, and the slow, silent certainty of something descending.

Narrated in the Fearsome Fiction tradition—atmospheric, unhurried, faithful to the original text.

Story: “A Terribly Strange Bed” by Wilkie Collins (1852) — Public DomainSubscribe for new episodes every week.