Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
An atmospheric tale from the early days of the London underground at the start of the 20th century. A traveller on the last tube train home has a series of unsettling and inexplicable experiences, but are they shadows of the past – or the future...? The story starts at 00:01:10
Note: This story may be familiar to long-time listeners to the channel; I have recorded it before (back in 2019). This new version is newly re-recorded to bring it in to line with my more recent content – the old version was recorded in my under-stairs cupboard in the days before I had my proper home studio, so the sound/acoustic quality was poor, and I had lost the original files so couldn't do anything to improve it.
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to exclusive content):
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Teaser and Narrator's introduction
00:01:10 In the Tube
00:42:57 Credits, thanks and further listening
About the author: Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) is probably best remembered today for his social satires, the Mapp and Lucia stories, written relatively late in his career in the 1920s and 30s and hugely popular ever since. However prior to that success he was more famous for his many “spook stories” (as he liked to call them) which he composed regularly for publication in periodicals – usually Hutchinson’s or Pearson’s magazines – from the 1890s through to the 1930s.
E. F. Benson, known as Fred, was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, where his father was headmaster at the time, the fourth of six children, although two siblings died young. Their father Edward White Benson later became Bishop of Truro and eventually Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883, until his death in 1896.
Remarkably, all four surviving Benson children became accomplished authors. The only sister, Margaret Benson, was regarded as perhaps the most academically successful, and she later became a notable Egyptologist. All three brothers – Arthur Christopher, Edward Frederic, and Robert Hugh, the youngest – published works on a wide variety of subjects but interestingly all three wrote ghost stories. I’ve read one of A. C. Benson’s stories for this channel previously, ‘Basil Netherby’ (youtu.be/UluMr2zTG7k), and would like to do more in the future, and I hope to read some of R. H. Benson’s at some point too. Of the three brothers, Fred’s ghost stories are the best known and he was certainly the most prolific of the three in that genre, producing more than 50 "spook stories" during his career.
Benson was a friend and contemporary of M. R. James, perhaps the most celebrated of 20th century ghost story authors, and he was a member of the Chitchat Club, the Cambridge University literary society where James would read aloud his ghost stories to a select few. As a writer of ghost stories, E. F. Benson's own output includes an unusually wide and adventurous range of styles and themes, encompassing stories of vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous creatures, as well as satires of charlatan mediums who became so fashionable in the 1920s.
'In the Tube' first appeared in Hutchinson’s Magazine in December 1922. London Underground history buffs will know that the tube station at the centre of this story, Dover Street, is now known as Green Park. Designed by Leslie Green, Dover Street station opened in 1906 as part of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, receiving its current name in the early 1930s when the station was refurbished as part of a series of changes to the Piccadilly Line – changes which also included the closure of a number of stations on the line, notably Down Street (in between Piccadilly Circus and Dover Street/Green Park) and Brompton Road, the home station of Anthony Carling in this story (in between Knightsbridge and South Kensington).
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2026
An atmospheric tale from the early days of the London underground at the start of the 20th century. A traveller on the last tube train home has a series of unsettling and inexplicable experiences, but are they shadows of the past – or the future...? The story starts at 00:01:10
Note: This story may be familiar to long-time listeners to the channel; I have recorded it before (back in 2019). This new version is newly re-recorded to bring it in to line with my more recent content – the old version was recorded in my under-stairs cupboard in the days before I had my proper home studio, so the sound/acoustic quality was poor, and I had lost the original files so couldn't do anything to improve it.
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to exclusive content):
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Teaser and Narrator's introduction
00:01:10 In the Tube
00:42:57 Credits, thanks and further listening
About the author: Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) is probably best remembered today for his social satires, the Mapp and Lucia stories, written relatively late in his career in the 1920s and 30s and hugely popular ever since. However prior to that success he was more famous for his many “spook stories” (as he liked to call them) which he composed regularly for publication in periodicals – usually Hutchinson’s or Pearson’s magazines – from the 1890s through to the 1930s.
E. F. Benson, known as Fred, was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, where his father was headmaster at the time, the fourth of six children, although two siblings died young. Their father Edward White Benson later became Bishop of Truro and eventually Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883, until his death in 1896.
Remarkably, all four surviving Benson children became accomplished authors. The only sister, Margaret Benson, was regarded as perhaps the most academically successful, and she later became a notable Egyptologist. All three brothers – Arthur Christopher, Edward Frederic, and Robert Hugh, the youngest – published works on a wide variety of subjects but interestingly all three wrote ghost stories. I’ve read one of A. C. Benson’s stories for this channel previously, ‘Basil Netherby’ (youtu.be/UluMr2zTG7k), and would like to do more in the future, and I hope to read some of R. H. Benson’s at some point too. Of the three brothers, Fred’s ghost stories are the best known and he was certainly the most prolific of the three in that genre, producing more than 50 "spook stories" during his career.
Benson was a friend and contemporary of M. R. James, perhaps the most celebrated of 20th century ghost story authors, and he was a member of the Chitchat Club, the Cambridge University literary society where James would read aloud his ghost stories to a select few. As a writer of ghost stories, E. F. Benson's own output includes an unusually wide and adventurous range of styles and themes, encompassing stories of vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous creatures, as well as satires of charlatan mediums who became so fashionable in the 1920s.
'In the Tube' first appeared in Hutchinson’s Magazine in December 1922. London Underground history buffs will know that the tube station at the centre of this story, Dover Street, is now known as Green Park. Designed by Leslie Green, Dover Street station opened in 1906 as part of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, receiving its current name in the early 1930s when the station was refurbished as part of a series of changes to the Piccadilly Line – changes which also included the closure of a number of stations on the line, notably Down Street (in between Piccadilly Circus and Dover Street/Green Park) and Brompton Road, the home station of Anthony Carling in this story (in between Knightsbridge and South Kensington).
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2026
