The following is an excerpt from a school story by Major James. Come, he said, come as a burglar, getting in through Simpson's window. As soon as I could speak, I said, well, why not call out and wake everybody up? Oh no. He said, I'm not sure who it is. Don't make her out. Come and look. Naturally, I came and looked and naturally there was no one there. I was cross enough and should have called MacLeod plenty of names.

Only I couldn't tell why. It seemed to me that there was something wrong, something that made me very glad I wasn't alone to face it. We were still at the window looking out and as soon as I could I asked him what he had heard or seen.

I didn't hear anything at all, he said. But about five minutes before I woke you, I found myself looking out of this window here and there was a man sitting or kneeling on Samson's windowsill and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning. What sort of man a cloud wriggled? I don't know, he said. But I can tell you one thing. He was beastly thin and he looked as if he was wet all over. And he said, looking around and whispering as if he hardly like to hear himself and not at all sure that he was alive.

Hi, everyone, I'm Alistair Madden, and this is Haunted Places, Ghost Stories, a Spotify original from past. Ghost stories have arisen from every century in every corner of the world, from the streets of Victorian Whitechapel to the swamps of Bangladesh, whether seated around the campfire or curled up with a pair of headphones, we returned to them time and again to feel our skin crawl and our hearts race. Each week, Ghost Stories reimagines chilling paranormal tales from history's most sinister storytellers told like you've never heard them before.

And you can find episodes of this and other Spotify originals from podcast for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today's story comes from renowned English horror writer Emily James. It's a tale that features James's typical combination of late 1400's private school hijinx with carefully plotted mystery little details, Bill to reveal the truth behind a schoolteacher's dark secret. The story is narrated from the perspective of a former student recounting the tale with an old friend around a fire. Coming up, we head back to school in 1875.

Bloomberg Dotcom's global news coverage helps you see the opportunity ahead as the leading authority in global business, Bloomberg Dotcom reveals new ways of looking at the most urgent issues facing our world, like the role of climate and social justice solutions for emerging global economies, shifts in technology and more.

Every story Bloomberg Dotcom tells will expand your horizons, inspire your purpose and power your success. However you define it, invent your possibility at Bloomberg Dotcom.

This episode is brought to you by the new mini countrymen. There's nothing many about the new mini countrymen. It's a spacious four door that can fit up to five people with a trunk big enough for cargo to be discovered more at many USA dotcom. It was 1875, I believe, which is only of import due to the fact that it meant school was a good deal more exciting than it had been in other eras just a few years prior. There'd be no football, no condensed milk.

The women's fashions had become considerably more seemly, not that we ever saw a woman. And we could all expect to learn as much about Latin and maths as how to be a gentleman and dance properly at a ball. Our school was near London and look the part, a campus of sprawling white buildings in the Greek style with gardens to match it all. Overlook the Thames, which many of the boys like to go. Chivian but I found the river to be rather disconcerting.

Not only was it full of London's factory run off, but several boys were said to have drowned there during late summer storms. The one time I went, I found myself gazing into its murky depths and I dare say I saw their twisted faces staring back up at my dangling arrow. Some of the older, stronger boys had gotten it into themselves to shove me down into the river mud, perhaps so that I might join the departed, perhaps so that they might force their own dangling manhood's upon me.

That wasn't so uncommon then. Not that we're to speak of it in polite company with hardly a girl in sight. What did our elders expect anyway? I heard a roar and then felt the boy's release from my back. A large shadow fell across the water and I looked up to see a six foot Hylander towering above me, his red hair matching both above and below. I took to him immediately. He introduced himself as McLoud. His accent was strong and his vocabulary betrayed a certain lack of intelligence.

I thanked him for his assistance and asked him what might have prompted it, to which he shrugged and said he liked my shape, whatever that meant. Soon we began to spend all our time together me because I valued having a bodyguard and MacLeod because he seemed to like to hear my theories on girls and ghosts and the Queen herself. I was bookish like that. I read every tome back home in the mansion from Pliny to penny dreadfuls. I'd even read to McLeod on occasion.

We'd sit out under one of the cedar's, me with my head in his lap, him looking down at me as I regaled him with servants or some other popular novel, because we're in fine company. And you know what the old school life was like back then. I'll even go so far as to admit that on occasion our reading sessions would develop into something more. As I said, MacLeod, like my shape and his head stuck with me from the first moment I saw it looming above me in the river again.

It was not so uncommon back then when we had all our newfound virility and nowhere to stick it but each other. If the other boys noticed what we were doing in our bunk at night, I scarcely think they'd say anything for fear. We might draw attention to their own indiscretions. Most of the time when we lay in bed, we just held each other as if bracing against the four winds that were fast approaching from the north. You could hear them against the ornate window panes like ghouls trying to claw their way inside.

McLeod said he was glad to be south for the fall and winter as soon his home in Edinburgh would be frozen solid as words some of its inhabitants. Needless to say, we were close. And so it was that I grew as protective of MacLeod as he was of me. And where he was most in danger was the classroom and most especially the Latin classroom of one GW Samson.

Samson was a strict disciplinarian, though I often felt bad for him. The other boys tried to give him the runaround just about every chance they got. But Samson always tried to connect with us on some level. Most often this meant regaling us with his old war stories. He was at Sevastopol. He'd managed to survive the carnage and had a genuine Byzantine medallion he wore around his neck as proof his initials were carved into the back of it. GWC, of course, the other cards in the classroom didn't care a lick, asking if he'd had a chance to lay a pack on Florence Nightingale.

The room erupted in laughter and the perpetrator was promptly smacked and sent to the headmaster's office. We returned to the lesson at hand. A bit of the old conjugation. You remember Egg Okorocha, Larry Tadesse and Irra add to and that I mentioned the McCleod was always in danger in the classroom. And that was especially true here. As each of us carved out our own sentences using Steel Point and paper, McLoud just sat scratching his head a word. Simply did not come easy to him, much less that words from an ancient society, yet Sampson would still call upon him every time, knowing full well McCleod didn't have the answer.

He'd let him squirm, stammering and guessing a nonsense in front of the whole class. And of course, those cretins would then mock him, mock his accent and his lack of wits. They'd got a clock on the sourcebooks from a cloud in turn, and then becloud receive his own smack from Sampson and a trip to the headmaster's. I always felt it somewhat unjust. If I could, I'd sometimes step in offering a bit of my own answer to appease Sampson and prevent the whole fiasco.

But often I'd be silenced and McCleod forced to speak. That lesson was especially wrought with anxiety as Sampson decided that our torture was to be the conjugation of the verb memsahib. To remember each of us was to use it in a sentence on a piece of paper, and Sampson would then collect them one by one. I was first on the far side of the room. I wrote. I remember my father Sampson read it aloud and approved, saying that he bet I did, knowing my father was one of the wealthiest textile owners on the Thames.

He then moved on to the next boy who wrote. He remembers his book to which Samson said he had better, and so on and so forth. This, of course, ended with McLeod, who lost in the line up, was still struggling to write a single word. Samson immediately admonished him and laughter erupted from around the room. I could see McLeod turn red and wipe sweat from his brow. Samson tapped his foot, saying something to the effect of I am waiting, old chap.

But then something happened. A wave overtook the slow Hylander. He grabbed up his steel point and within what felt less than a second, had scribbled a rather lengthy sentence onto his paper. He handed it to Samson as if sending a headline off to press. Sampson examined it at first skeptical, then increasingly disturbed. His hand trembled. His gaze went back and forth from a cloud to the paper. One of the other boys noticed and asked what on earth MacLeod could have possibly written.

But before Samson could answer, the bell chimed. It was noon time for lunch, and the boys jumped to their feet, heading for the door. But Sampson cast a stern look upon McLeod, indicating that he was to stay behind. Not eager to be separated from my bodyguard, I waited in the hall. He emerged about five minutes, hence looking more poked up than usual, like he was in deep trouble. When I asked him what that had all been about, he told me he could hardly figure it himself.

He thought Sampson was upset with him, though he didn't know why. I wondered if McLeod had written some rot like the other boys will want to do, but he said that was just it. He hadn't written anything vulgar at all, but he wasn't sure why, or for that matter, how he had written what he had written. When I asked him what it said, he started to struggle. But eventually he got it out momento, put entire quiet toward Taxus.

Well, I had the slightest idea what that could mean, how in Fiedler's greened McCleod, but he said he did, or at least he could see it. I would have thought him completely gone. But then he described to me how in his head he could distinctly picture a well, a well, surrounded by trees, very specific trees, dark and with berries. I thought he meant mountain ashes. But then he corrected me, saying they were hughs.

I guffawed at him. It was the same thing. And besides, how did he know he didn't? Samson had told him and Samson also knew what the phrase meant. Remember the well among the four use I was baffled. Borderline illiterate. McLeod had managed to write a Latin sentence more complex than anything I might manage on my own, a sentence accompanied by a vision of an ominous well surrounded by berry bushes. Even then, knowing as little as we did, it was unsettling.

I inquired further. But McLeod said Sampson just prodded him with questions about his home, his people, that sort of thing. Then he'd let him go with no further chastisement. And so we let the matter pass, turning our minds instead to the gardens where our schoolmates were debating the finer point. Of the London Football Association's official rules, but something will allow me to focus my attention on the argument, Samson's trembling hand and terrified expression were all I could think about.

I could have hardly guessed that back in the classroom, G.W. Simpson himself was sure that he had been contacted by a very unwelcome spectre from his past. Next, the boys learn what Mr. Sampson is hiding. My listeners, Alistair, here with a quick but special announcement, the newest Spotify original from podcast is Unlocking the Mysteries of Superstitions. If you've ever broken a mirror or walked under a ladder, you know the feeling you've just doomed yourself to bad luck.

But have you really been marked for misfortune every week on superstitions? Take a closer look at eerie, almost mystical beliefs and practices that might just have the power to change our fates. Can holding your breath while passing a cemetery save your life while carrying a rabbit's foot bring you luck? How can you go through life always avoiding the number 13?

And why should you try?

They may seem mystical or even completely illogical, but one thing is certain. You ignore them at your own risk.

You can find and follow superstitions free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. To hear more PARCA shows search podcast network in the Spotify search bar and find a growing slate of thrilling new series to enjoy.

This episode is brought to you by the real cost and the FDA, if you vape, you could be inhaling toxic metals into your lungs to make you feel how scary that is. We could have gone to town with some real scary music thrown in, some zombie sound effects or some blood curdling screaming and over-the-top shrieking. You get the point. But nothing is as scary as the facts. Vaping and deliver toxic metals like nickel and lead in your lungs. That's metal in your lungs.

Read up about the dangers of vaping on the real cost of.

Now back to the story, it had been a few weeks since McCleod and I'd had that strange lesson from G.W. Samson, the miserable old sod had become disturbed when in Latin McCleod wrote out the phrase memento put into Urquhart's or Taxus or remember the well among the four youths.

McCleod couldn't figure how he might have even written such a thing, being that his skill with Latin or really language in general was quite middling. He wasn't as sophisticated as US London chaps, but of course all we could do was say, damned if I know about the whole thing and move on with our lives. Even if privately I still was quite preoccupied with the sense of anxiety that the situation brought about. It helped that shortly thereafter, McLeod came down with a bit of the flu and was put up for weeks, being that he was my main chocobo and my only protection from the other boys, I spent most of my time between classes at his bedside.

But then he got better after a spell, and soon we found ourselves back in that old room conjugating or in McCloud's case, failing to conjugate. Actually, if I recall correctly, this particular session, Samson had a slaving on that most insidious of grammatical situations, the conditional sentence, not just Latin, but Latin in the future. I knew my friend was bound for disaster. For my part, I was a bit cheeky and wrote out I will graduate head of my class once.

I was reasonably sure that what I'd written made a lick of sense. I looked up to find that Samson was collecting the papers rather than reading them aloud. It seemed perhaps he decided to have a bit of mercy on poor MacLeod, but boring for me, though, having to sit and twiddle one's thumbs while the teacher rifled through papers. As luck would have it, I didn't have to twiddle long. For shortly after collecting each paper, Samson stumbled back in his chair with a look of shock wrought across his face.

He cleared his throat, promptly, sat up and shot out of the room like Napoleon at Waterloo. For a moment, Busboy's forgot our rivalry and looked at each other with equal parts, amusement and curiosity for what could have driven Samson from the room, but a particularly dismal display of vulgarity.

On one of our papers, I was first to approach the desk, though I shook a bit with apprehension. I could get a good smack if Samson came back in and saw me rummaging through his personal things. But soon the other boys joined me, shuffling through the papers. I saw the usual combination of poor grammar and even poorer penmanship. But something amongst the rot stuck out to me is especially odd. One of them was written in red. I asked the lot who had gone to the effort to procure such a unique colour ink, but they all swore up and down that they were all using the standard ink midnight, not believing them.

I passed the paper round, but they shook their heads, swearing by the Empress of India herself that it wasn't theirs. And so I took it back and still quite sceptical of these fiends, counted up the papers. They were quite a few, as they were quite a few of us in the class. The boys numbered sixteen in total. However, as I shuffled the papers, the count came up to seventeen. I thought perhaps I've made a mistake, so I shuffled them again.

But no, they still came up seventeen. There was an extra paper and like as not it seemed it was the one in red ink being the only halfway acceptable student in the whole bunch.

I took it upon myself to translate the page in Latin. It said si to non whenas Atmeh aigo winningham. Atay it tricky definitely beyond my classmates. I called to McCleod to ensure he hadn't another of his spells, but he showed me his paper which contained but two words that amounted to less than Bow-Wow mutton. I took my own stab at translating the read page. Go my way. No come here or there. Not quite. But then I settled on it.

If you don't come to me I'll come to you. My stomach dropped and my skin prickle. I knew immediately that my private fear had come true. There was more to Samson's behaviour than we realised someone was threatening him.

But who could have written such a thing? We all saw Samson collect the papers. How could this one have slipped in after a fashion? Samson did return to the room, but he hardly offered us a nod, staggering about like a lump, glancing back at the paper as if he were dreaming it. He told us that would be all for today. And he left, not even bothering to pick up his things from the desk. You know, I still have the paper.

I'd show it to you now. Save for the fact that later that afternoon, as I looked at it in my locker, I found it was completely blank, as smooth as a fly ring save for the finger smooch that I made upon it, which was how I could be sure that it was indeed the same paper.

Quite later on, I would try a number of tests on it, tricks to see if the ink might have somehow faded or even been of some unique chemical that only appeared under the right conditions. I swear I'm not attempting to sell you a dog.

The ink and the message that completely disappeared that night, old MacLeod and I were once again in my bunk, but we weren't playing it anything.

We merely held each other struggling with the knowledge of that afternoon's events.

But then McLeod turned from me, somehow drawn by something happening just outside the window.

I told him to quit being a skilled Mélenchon come back to bed, but his eyes were transfixed, nay horrified at what they were witnessing. Beyond the glass pane of our dormitory, I'll admit to a complete lack of courageous behavior on my part. Hearing the wind howl and seeing the moonlight strike McCloud's bulging eyes, I simply pulled the sheets tighter around myself. After a spell, McCloud's expression seemed to weaken, and he came back to the bunk and sat at the end of the bed with a confused expression.

I asked him what all the fuss was about. He took a second trying to formulate the words as if he were back in the classroom conjugating Lattin. Finally, the words came. He said he thought it was a burglar at first, but then when he kept looking, he could see that the figure was monstrously thin and wet all over. Besides a strange sort of burglar indeed. But if it had been a burglar, then it was not much of one at all.

For all it seemed to do was crouch outside one window on the first floor beckoning. The thought of this only made me clutched the sheets tighter, beckoning to whom I was suddenly very glad to be on the third floor of our dormitory. But slowly my curiosity overcame my fear. It's not like the thing. Whatever it was, could climb up here. I asked McLeod to show me the window. We journeyed over a McLoud indicated to the parts of the building in question.

It took me no time at all to recognize where he was pointing. It was the main building across the gardens from our dormitory. On the first floor was where the old professor slept. And if I wasn't totally off my rocker, that particular window belonged to the room of none other than G.W. Sampson.

I immediately suggested that we might go and warn him, or at least that that would be the thing to do, ethically speaking, not that I really wanted to or could make my feet move, for that matter, but McCleod, in a surprising moment of clarity, said, I wouldn't even be suggesting such a thing if I had seen what he had felt. The pull, the unmistakable tug that had drawn him from the bed to the window. Not a sound, just a feeling.

And I hadn't seen the burglar, a figure I was still trying to pretend was a common thief. But the McCleod was now convinced had been a ghost, a demon, a creature that was altogether unholy.

It may not surprise you to learn that the next morning we discovered that G.W. Samson had vanished. It seems strange now, but looking back, I don't think MacLeod nor I ever said a word to anyone about what we had seen. Perhaps I just didn't want the trouble. But truly, I think at that point we both couldn't quite stomach a further inquiry to scratch the itch of the supernatural that had so uncomfortably made its way into our lives. That is not, however, where the story ends.

Some years later, one of the boys from Latin class went away to Ireland on holiday while he was sitting at the fire with his host. Much as we are now, his companion hopped up and fished out a small box from a drawer with a mischievous look on his face. He showed the contents to our classmates, asking him what he thought it could be. Inside was a gold chain, and attached to that at the very end was a medallion.

He didn't touch it right away, but instead put on his spectacles and got a closer look. He asked what the history was behind the strange object. Unaware of the chill running up our classmate's spine, his host shrugged and offered the back story. There was a well on the property, surrounded by an overgrown thicket of use. When they had been cleaning out the overgrowth some years prior, they looked down into the well and made a startling discovery. Our classmate hardly needed to guess.

He told the host. It was a body, wasn't it? But the host still had a surprise up his sleeve.

It had been not just one body, but two, both decomposed, thin and wet with rot. One corpse was clutching the other, and the one held in its grip sported the medallion, a medallion which on its side bore the initials G. W. S. Mark James was a medieval scholar at King's College, Cambridge. His knowledge of the past and love for its decaying, dusty halls inspired a certain affinity for ghost stories, which were already popular in England during the Victorian era.

But Mr James's stories stand out in comparison for their tropes as well as their timelessness, as we'll see in future episodes. Adapting James the stories. They typically include an academic setting as well as some object from the past, the past coming back to tear down the peaceful facade of Victorian and later Edwardian England is a common theme. But James writing also has a certain ambiguity, a refusal to connect all the dots for the audience that lends it to a modern, sophisticated, feel like a stylized horror movie.

This allows us to interpret the horror in different ways in a school story. It is clear that some phantom from Samson's past dragged him down the well. But beyond that, we decide for ourselves who or what it was. Perhaps a murdered colleague, a girlfriend or boyfriend. Sexual repression was certainly rampant in James's time. Everything from masturbation to even having sex frequently with your wife was seen as deviant and bad for your mental health. By 1885, homosexual activity of any kind was illegal in England.

James's own sexuality has at times been debated, as there are no writings indicating that he ever had a physical relationship with anyone. However, as author and James expert Jane mainly Piddock notes, some of his contemporaries suggest he was prone to platonic affairs with boys and was generally considered by his peers to be sort of Arrested Development Peter Pan case. And so we can imagine that in a school story, GW Samson's haunted past might very well have to do with some sort of sexual indiscretion that he thought was buried.

This anxiety over having your secrets made public or the past come back to destroy your present was very real for anyone in England at the turn of the century, whether you were a schoolboy fooling around with a friend or an unhappy wife having an affair or a sexually stunted writer, everyone had something to hide and therefore something to fear. And of course, this is still true for many of us today. Hope that your secrets stay buried in whatever. Well, you left the men because if they don't, they might just show up in the night beckoning at your window.

Thanks again for tuning in to haunted places, ghost stories. We will be back on Thursday with a new episode. You can find more episodes of ghost stories and all other originals from podcast for free on Spotify. See you on the other side. Haunted Places Ghost Stories is a Spotify original from podcast. It is executive produced by Max Cutler, Sound Design by Russell Nash with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Eric Larson. This episode of Haunted Places Ghost Stories was written by Greg Castro with Writing Assistants by Alex Garland.

I'm Alistair Murden. Hang a horseshoe above your door, keep a rabbit's foot in your pocket and follow superstitions free on Spotify, listen every Wednesday for the surprising backstories to our most curious beliefs and thrilling tales that illuminate the mystical eeriness of our favorite superstitions.