The Judge's House

Written by Bram Stoker

Narrated by Richard Williams

"The Judge's House" is a classic ghost story by the Irish author Bram Stoker. The story was first published in the December 5, 1891, special Christmas issue of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News weekly magazine. It was later republished in Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). The short story has since appeared in many anthologies.
In the story, a student arrives in a small town looking for a quiet place to stay while preparing for his examination. Making light of the local superstitions, he moves into an old mansion where a notorious hanging judge once lived. He is comfortably settled and engrossed in his work when, in the middle of the night, he is visited by an enormous rat with baleful eyes. As soon as the giant rat appears, other rats that infest the old house fall silent. When the great rat returns on the second night, the student begins to feel uneasy. He soon learns why the locals fear the Judge's House.
Famous works of the author: Krishtale Chalice, The Primrose Path, Obligations of Other Clerks in Ireland, The Snake's Pass, Dracula, The Mystery of the Sea, The Jewel of Seven Stars, Private Hear about Henry Irving, The Lady of the Shroud, The Lair of the White Worm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Release date: May 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9780880004152

Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish novelist. Born in Dublin, Stoker suffered from an unknown illness as a young boy before entering school at the age of seven. He would later remark that the time he spent bedridden enabled him to cultivate his imagination, contributing to his later success as a writer. He attended Trinity College, Dublin from 1864, graduating with a BA before returning to obtain an MA in 1875. After university, he worked as a theatre critic, writing a positive review of acclaimed Victorian actor Henry Irving’s production of Hamlet that would spark a lifelong friendship and working relationship between them. In 1878, Stoker married Florence Balcombe before moving to London, where he would work for the next 27 years as business manager of Irving’s influential Lyceum Theatre. Between his work in London and travels abroad with Irving, Stoker befriended such artists as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Hall Caine, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1895, having published several works of fiction and nonfiction, Stoker began writing his masterpiece Dracula (1897) while vacationing at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in Cruden Bay, Scotland. Stoker continued to write fiction for the rest of his life, achieving moderate success as a novelist. Known more for his association with London theatre during his life, his reputation as an artist has grown since his death, aided in part by film and television adaptations of Dracula, the enduring popularity of the horror genre, and abundant interest in his work from readers and scholars around the world.