Beyond Midnight: The Visits

The Visits is a rather unusual ghost story. When he was 22-years-old, the narrator Roger James was a student at Cambridge. One grey December afternoon he went to the town of Medford and was late starting back for his lodgings. Late as he was, when he saw a lonely road he did not recognize he decided to explore it. He had only been walking for about ten minutes when he reached a house and, although he did not know it at the time, he would experience the most frightening experience of his life within its walls.

While he was staring at the house he saw an old man hobble up to its door. He bowed and then enter the house, using a key from his pocket. A little while later Roger observed the old man locking the door and leaving the house. He bowed again before he departed. A few days later Roger noticed the old man sitting on a bench in the graveyard and struck up a conversation with him. Their subject was ghosts.

Roger later learned the old man, whose name was Captain Diamond, killed his own daughter. Not with a knife or a gun, but with words. The Captain had returned home early one day and surprised his daughter with her lover. In a fit of extreme anger, the Captain cursed his daughter and she died. She later returned to haunt the house and the Captain was forced to move out.

Nobody wants to rent or buy a haunted house and the Captain needed the money to live on. It was a problem, but his ghost daughter had the answer. She rented the house from him and every quarter he went to the house for his rent. This, it turns out, is what the Captain was doing when Roger first saw him. Roger’s curiosity about the whole thing caused him to become drawn into the situation and one quarter when the old man was ill, it was Roger who had to go and pick up the rent.

Beyond Midnight Radio Show: The Visits

(Listen to the Full Episode)