The Viy – part 3

Our 2023 ghost story for Christmas continues with part 3 of Nikolai Gogol’s “The Viy”. Good friend of the Good Friends, Mike Perceval-Maxwell (host of Mr Spike’s Bedtime Stories), has once again organised a suitably eerie performance on our Discord server. He is joined by guest readers Dom Allen, John Casey, Scott Dorward, Sarah Dovey, Rina Haenze and Sue Savage. We have broken the story up into four parts. Our plan is to release them all as bonus episodes in the run-up to Christmas. You can download part 1 and part 2 here. If you would like to listen to the final part live, you can hear it on our Discord server. We will be reading at 22:30 GMT on the Friday the 23rd of December. So light some candles, mutter a protective prayer, and duck before that coffin smacks you in the head! “Shchedryk” (Carol of the Bells), performed by the choir “Solomiya”, is used here under a Creative Commons Attribution Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence. If you would like to read along at home, you can find “The Viy” on The Literature Network. There is also a fantastic film adaptation of “The Viy” available on YouTube. You can also read Scott’s review of the film, from his 2013 October Horror Movie Challenge, on this very server. And if all this has put you in the mood for Christmas ghost stories, please check out our previous readings: * “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens * “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde