Skip to content

The House Surgeon by Rudyard Kipling

July 24, 2026 · 1 h 30 min

Show notes

A bright, modern house in the south of England. No history of violence. No death on the premises. And yet something lives in it — not a ghost, not a presence you could name, but a weight that settles over everyone who stays there. A grief that belongs to no one in the house. A judgement passed somewhere else, by someone else, for reasons the walls should know nothing about. The question is not what haunts the house. The question is what was done to the dead.

"The House Surgeon" was first published in Harper's Magazine in September 1909 and collected in Actions and Reactions later that year.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, and remains one of the most widely read English writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

⭐ Join my Patreon ⭐


https://patreon.com/barcud


Go here for a library of ad-free stories, a monthly members only story and early access to the regular stories I put out.


You can choose to have ghost stories only, or detective stories or classic literature, or all of them for either $5 or $10 a month.


Many hundreds of hours of stories. Who needs Audible?


Or, if you'd just like to make a one-off gesture of thanks for my work


https://buymeacoffee.com/10mn8sk


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All episodes of Classic Ghost Stories

Settings

Display

Language

Decides which stations you see first on the home page.

History

Recently played stations and episodes and your latest searches are only stored in this browser.

Notifications

A short notice when a podcast you follow has a new episode. Turn off single podcasts with the bell on their page.

Account

Save favorites – in the app and on the website.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Open search
Space
Play or pause
← →
In the player: back 15 s, forward 30 s (episodes) · in a row: next tile
↑ ↓
In a row: target within the tile
Home / End
In a row: first or last tile
Esc
Close window or menu
?
This overview
Now playing

Go to station page

Play next

    Add episodes with “Play next” – they play after the current episode.