Mrs. Molesworth's Ghost Stories: The Last Four Uncanny Tales

By: Mary Louisa Molesworth

Narrated by: Susie Berneis

We have the pleasure of presenting not only three more stories by Mary Louisa herself, but also one by her son, Bevil. The first story, "The Shadow in the Moonlight", is one of her scariest. A plucky young lady and her brothers confront a ghost that brings the cold of death. Can they resist?

The second story, "At The Dip In The Road", is classic Molesworth - a sudden, mysterious encounter that leaves us with unanswerable questions of life and death.

In "Old Gervais", we encounter a different sort of ghost - one that cares very much about work left unfinished and clients left unsatisfied. Who knew that ghosts care about customer service?

Last but not least, the story by her son, Bevil, not only captures a wonderfully uncanny moment, but also presents us with a rare glimpse of life in Patagonia a century ago. It's pretty generally thought that Mary Louisa did a pretty thorough revision of it, but it's a good story and clearly one that she cared about very much. Enjoy!

©2012 Robert Bethune and Susie Berneis (P)2012 Robert Bethune and Susie Berneis

It's... alright.

The stories are fairly typical ghostly shorts of the Victorian/Edwardian/otherwise-period bent. Nothing too thrilling or chilling but entertaining enough for casual listening. Susie Berneis is a decent voice actor and her characterizations and accents are mostly well done, and she certainly narrates clearly (neither fast nor mumbly, as so many narrators seem to do these days). Unfortunately, the male voice actor, Robert Bethune, is just not nearly as good, and more unfortunately most of his lines seem to be quite a bit louder than Berneis's. It's enough to be jarring at points. Either the mix is uneven, or the difference between his abilities (and tone) and hers is such that the distinction is simply that noticeable. He's not terrible, but he's really not as emotive or effective as she.

I give three stars for each category -- it's 'alright' -- but I will not be bothering with the others in the series.