The House and the Brain (A Story from The Weird Circle)

The House and the Brain is based on Edward Bulwer Lytton’s story “The Haunted and the Haunters” but The Weird Circle has exercised a certain amount of dramatic licence with the script and only the basic skeleton of the original work remains.

When a young couple, Sandra and Paul, attend an art auction at an old house in London one of the items for sale is a four-hundred-year-old painting called The Ancient Cutthroat. The strangest thing about the picture is the man’s eyes. They almost seem to be alive and Sandy is sure that she has recently seen the man in the portrait. Their friend Jim, who is auctioning the picture, is amused at the idea of such an old man walking around London and tells Sandy that it is impossible and that the only thing left of The Ancient Cutthroat is his house on Orchard Street. He built the house 450 years ago and it has not been habitable since because it is haunted.

Sandra, who has never seen a ghost, is keen to visit the house and Jim, who has a long-standing interest in the occult, arranges to rent the house for a week and maybe the ghost is expecting them because as soon as they reach the front door it swings open for them.

The Weird Circle: The House and the Brain

(Listen to the Full Episode)