Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Southwest Chamber, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (includes YouTube)

There’s a particular kind of horror that doesn’t announce itself with screams or spectacle. It arrives slowly—a thought that isn’t yours, a memory you couldn’t possibly have, a garment that reappears where it shouldn’t be. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman knew this kind of horror intimately, and in “The Southwest Chamber,” first published in 1903, she deployed it to devastating effect.

The story follows the Gill sisters, who inherit a New England boarding house along with one deeply problematic room—the southwest chamber, formerly occupied by a recently deceased and apparently still-present aunt. One by one, guests are installed in the room, and one by one they flee it, shaken by experiences they can barely articulate. Freeman, one of the finest American ghost story writers of her era, understood that the most frightening hauntings aren’t about what a ghost does to you—they’re about what it makes you feel.

This episode of Fearsome Fiction brings you Freeman’s full story, read aloud and ready to unsettle your afternoon.