Edvane Stories

Jonathan B. Edvane

Jonathan B. Edvane spent fifty years writing dark fiction for himself. Now he's sharing it with the world. Folk horror, ghost stories, historical fiction and dark fantasy — one story at a time, most Saturdays since January 2026.

From the folklore of rural England to the shadows of Middle-Earth, from post-revolutionary France to a Cistercian monk in 2137.

Read the full archive at edvanestories.com. Follow Edvane Stories so you never miss a Saturday.

Play

Open in

20 episodes
weekly
Avg 33 min
English

Episodes 20

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

S1 · E46
August 31 · 45 min
Counting Out
Ena, mena, bora mi,Kisca, lara, mora di. Eggs, butter, cheese, bread. Stick, stock, stone, dead. A dark folk-horror tale from Bodmin Moor, where five children turn an old counting rhyme into something cruel, and twenty years later discover that a game can remember its rules long after the players have forgotten them. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Discover more at edvane.world
S1 · E45
August 27 · 20 min
Pegwyche Goes Down
Pegwyche is chosen by her village for the honoured ritual of Going-Up Day and raised in a decorated cage to the floating Rookery of Ninelast. There, the blind mole groundskeeper Mister Talp reveals the truth: the girls sent up before her were never brides or blessed chosen ones, but living sacrifices, rooted beneath the Rookery so their fear can keep the floating kingdom aloft. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Discover more at ⁠edvane.world⁠
August 23 · 6 min
The Returned - The Corpse Candle
The Returned is an occasional series of tales, rejected by publishers and platforms and left to rest by the author. Discover more at edvane.world In a Welsh mining settlement in Pennsylvania, a sick boy sees a flame pass his window that burns without smoke and bends to no wind. His mother knows what it is. His father refuses to. By morning the bells are ringing across the valley. Rejected by Space & Time for their Shadows Mean Light issue, October 2026.
S1 · E44
August 21 · 31 min
The Apportionment Of Slyne Birch
In medieval churches across England, the dead address the living with a warning. As you are, so once were we. In the parish of Ashenford, on the edge of Wychwood Forest, they have something else in mind. A tithe surveyor arrives in 1843 to map every field and account for every acre. The older records name a settlement the living have agreed to forget. The dead don't want remembrance. They want someone to finish their paperwork. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Edvane Stories
S1 · E43
August 14 · 53 min
The Tayle of Robyn Hode
In 1225, a man called Robert Hod appeared in the Yorkshire pipe rolls as a fugitive whose goods had been seized by the Crown. The entry is brief. In 1936, the historian L.V.D. Owen identified it, and in the 1980s David Crook argued that Robert Hod was the same man as Robert of Wetherby, an outlaw pursued across Yorkshire by Eustace of Lowdham, a royal officer who had previously served as deputy sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Scholars will doubtless continue to debate the connection, and this is not my argument in its favour. It is a work of fiction built around the question of what might have happened if the connection had been real. If a minor landholder with a legitimate grievance against royal authority found himself pushed into outlawry. The Robin Hood of this story is not the one most readers will recognise. There is no Sherwood Forest, no Sheriff of Nottingham, no Maid Marian. What there is, I hope, is a plausible man living through plausible consequences in a world where legend and myth had not yet had their say, surrounded him with merry men, and put them in tights. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world⁠⁠⁠⁠
S1 · E42
August 7 · 23 min
The Legend of the Og Mori
A Pictish chief faces an impossible choice when Anglian raiders violate his daughters and threaten his settlement. An origin legend of the carved stones at Dunnicar, told through the bloodline that survived. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Edvane Stories⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at⁠⁠⁠ edvane.world
S1 · E41
July 31 · 17 min
Streindarke - To Shy From The Rain
Nightporter Lysand DaVivi carries three people out of their lives in a single shift. The third warrant changes everything he thought he had accepted. Inspired by 'Nightporter' by Japan If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠Edvane Stories⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at ⁠edvane.world
S1 · E40
July 24 · 26 min
Doctor Who, The First Doctor - Good Luck, Old Man
This is a First Doctor story I wrote and submitted to Big Finish’s Paul Spragg Memorial contest in 2026. Only one story would be chosen, on the basis of a short synopsis, and it was not mine, so I publish it here. The story is set during the canonical gap in the 1966 television serial The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve. In that story, the Doctor disappears for most of the narrative, leaving his companion Steven alone in Paris on the eve of one of the worst atrocities in French history. The television serial never explains where the Doctor went or what he was doing. I wrote this story to occupy that silence. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it on ⁠⁠Edvane Stories⁠⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at ⁠⁠edvane.world⁠⁠ Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, and this story is not affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC. This is an unofficial fan work, made purely for fan enjoyment, and no commercial benefit is either intended or implied
S1 · E39
July 18 · 31 min
Odd Man Dodd
In 1780s Shropshire, a parish midwife watches a man called Odd Man Dodd move between three townships. Three people die. The children learn a rhyme. Nobody asks where the words came from. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠⁠Edvane Stories⁠⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at⁠ edvane.world
S1 · E38
July 10 · 9 min
Mistress Grimshaw's Purse
In St Barrow’s, charity was given at the church door, where God might see it and, more importantly, where no neighbour could pretend he had not. Every Sunday, when the final hymn had faded into coughs, scraping boots and the restless mutter of people pretending not to loiter, Mistress Agnes Grimshaw took her place beneath the entry arch with her black purse folded between both hands. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠Edvane Stories⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
July 3 · 14 min
The Vanishing of Spearhafoc
Spearhafoc was an eleventh-century monk, artist, and goldsmith, appointed Bishop of London under Edward the Confessor. Before the crown intended for Edward could be completed, Spearhafoc vanished with the king’s gold and jewels. History gives no satisfying end to him. No recovery. No trial. No body. Only the disappearance. What follows is not history, but an imagined answer to the silence. An explanation for where Spearhafoc went, what bargain he made, and why no man ever found him. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
S1 · E36
June 26 · 21 min
Streindarke - I Spill It All
Regan was trained never to spill a thing at the Academy. The night she spills Angel-June Nair’s wine, she spills far more, and the so-called ‘meadow’ behind the Academy is listening for exactly that kind of girl. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
S1 · E35
June 20 · 1 hr 5 min
The Little Birds of Othery Grange
William Cox tends the gardens at Othery Grange. He also tends the truth. Five Regency courtships, five birds, and one gardener who learns that an invented omen, once spoken, never stays his alone. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠Edvane Stories⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at ⁠edvane.world
#34
June 13 · 41 min
Shall I Come Away?
In late-sixteenth-century Exeter, Curate Ralph Travers preaches too often against the Devil and gives an old children’s rhyme a power it should never have had. When Bucky comes to St Olave’s churchyard, three lives are demanded, and Ralph must choose who will be taught the words that open the dark. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
#33
June 6 · 42 min
The Even Ash
The Even Ash is a dark Yorkshire folk tale of Mother Greenwood, a travelling herb-woman who sells simples at country fairs and offers lonely girls an old love charm. But the ash does not promise kindness, safety, or happiness. It answers only the words spoken, and four girls learn that the first single man to draw nigh may be something far stranger than a true love. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show.Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
#32
May 31 · 38 min
The Seven Blessings of Cecily Scratcher - Part Two
At St Mildred’s, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily Scratcher waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings of beauty, grace, sorrow, roads, love, labour, and goodness, and of the children made to carry what adults should not. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at ⁠Edvane Stories⁠ Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at ⁠edvane.world⁠
#31
May 30 · 46 min
The Seven Blessings of Cecily Scratcher - Part One
At St Mildred’s, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily Scratcher waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings of beauty, grace, sorrow, roads, love, labour, and goodness, and of the children made to carry what adults should not. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
#30
May 23 · 22 min
Streindarke - Arrange The Symmetry
In Streindarke, even scandal is expected to behave properly. When Lord Suze Ben-Sashe vanishes from the upper courts, Civic Quiet Ballion is sent to keep the matter narrow. But Suze’s silent apartment contains more than absence. A watching cat. A staircase where no staircase should be. A memory Ballion would rather not arrange. Inspired by Siouxsie and the Banshees’ The Staircase (Mystery), Arrange The Symmetry is a dark tale of status, desire, disorientation, and the terrible geometry of a city that corrects everything, even the truth. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B.Edvane at edvane.world
#29
May 22 · 1 hr 3 min
The Magpies of Hagley Stile
The Magpies of Hagley Stile begins with an old rhyme everyone knows and turns it into a sequence of dark folk warnings. Across seven tales, sorrow, joy, daughters, sons, silver, gold and secrets all gather beneath the watching eyes of the magpies, while Widow Green counts what others refuse to see. Ultimately, a village learns that old wrongs do not vanish, grief has a number, and some birds do not arrive to predict fate. They arrive to witness it. A dark folk horror story rooted in British magpie folklore. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
#28
May 22 · 35 min
The Return of the SS Strumble
A dead ship returns through the storm, and lighthouse keeper Thomas Darling must decide whether the light is warning the sea away, or calling something impossible home. A Victorian ghost story about a ghostly vessel, a half-drowned stowaway, and a ticking machine that listens ahead. If the future can be changed, who pays the price? If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes