Jonathan B. Edvane
Jonathan B. Edvane spent fifty years writing dark fiction for himself. Now he's sharing it with the world. Folk horror, ghost stories, historical fiction and dark fantasy — one story at a time, most Saturdays since January 2026.
From the folklore of rural England to the shadows of Middle-Earth, from post-revolutionary France to a Cistercian monk in 2137.
Read the full archive at edvanestories.com. Follow Edvane Stories so you never miss a Saturday.
The Returned is an occasional series of tales, rejected by publishers and platforms and left to rest by the author. Discover more at edvane.world A man arrives in 1890s Seattle with rain on his back and nothing to lose. People begin to vanish from the Elliott House, leaving their boots by the bed and their coats on the hook. The official record of the Great Fire of 1889 says nobody died. The official record is wrong.
Rhett Bormis flees through Streindarke’s forgotten transit tunnels after refusing to hide the truth of Charlotte’s death. A stranger named Dove pulls him into the dark.This is the Sixth Streindarke story. Discover more of them by searching for 'Streindarke' anywhere. Story inspired by the song Fade to Grey by Visage If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
A traveller takes shelter at a roadside inn and hears the innkeeper's account of a duke, his murdered brother, and the enormous cook who arrived uninvited at the castle. What was served at the duke's feast, and what was left behind in the kitchen afterward, is a story the locals have carried for generations. Based on the #vss365 flash piompt "Divine." If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story most Saturdays, and following helps new listeners find the show. Discover more at edvane.world
The Returned is an occasional series of tales, rejected by publishers and platforms and left to rest by the author. Discover more at edvane.world A girl drinks the beastings, the first milk that should have been given back to the earth. Soon the butter will not churn, the milk turns red, and a calf is found dead. But in a small Irish community, superstition is only the beginning of Bridget O’Hara’s punishment.
Ena, mena, bora mi,Kisca, lara, mora di. Eggs, butter, cheese, bread. Stick, stock, stone, dead. A dark folk-horror tale from Bodmin Moor, where five children turn an old counting rhyme into something cruel, and twenty years later discover that a game can remember its rules long after the players have forgotten them. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Discover more at edvane.world
Pegwyche is chosen by her village for the honoured ritual of Going-Up Day and raised in a decorated cage to the floating Rookery of Ninelast. There, the blind mole groundskeeper Mister Talp reveals the truth: the girls sent up before her were never brides or blessed chosen ones, but living sacrifices, rooted beneath the Rookery so their fear can keep the floating kingdom aloft. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Discover more at edvane.world
The Returned is an occasional series of tales, rejected by publishers and platforms and left to rest by the author. Discover more at edvane.world In a Welsh mining settlement in Pennsylvania, a sick boy sees a flame pass his window that burns without smoke and bends to no wind. His mother knows what it is. His father refuses to. By morning the bells are ringing across the valley. Rejected by Space & Time for their Shadows Mean Light issue, October 2026.
In medieval churches across England, the dead address the living with a warning. As you are, so once were we. In the parish of Ashenford, on the edge of Wychwood Forest, they have something else in mind. A tithe surveyor arrives in 1843 to map every field and account for every acre. The older records name a settlement the living have agreed to forget. The dead don't want remembrance. They want someone to finish their paperwork. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories
In 1225, a man called Robert Hod appeared in the Yorkshire pipe rolls as a fugitive whose goods had been seized by the Crown. The entry is brief. In 1936, the historian L.V.D. Owen identified it, and in the 1980s David Crook argued that Robert Hod was the same man as Robert of Wetherby, an outlaw pursued across Yorkshire by Eustace of Lowdham, a royal officer who had previously served as deputy sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Scholars will doubtless continue to debate the connection, and this is not my argument in its favour. It is a work of fiction built around the question of what might have happened if the connection had been real. If a minor landholder with a legitimate grievance against royal authority found himself pushed into outlawry. The Robin Hood of this story is not the one most readers will recognise. There is no Sherwood Forest, no Sheriff of Nottingham, no Maid Marian. What there is, I hope, is a plausible man living through plausible consequences in a world where legend and myth had not yet had their say, surrounded him with merry men, and put them in tights. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
A Pictish chief faces an impossible choice when Anglian raiders violate his daughters and threaten his settlement. An origin legend of the carved stones at Dunnicar, told through the bloodline that survived. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
Nightporter Lysand DaVivi carries three people out of their lives in a single shift. The third warrant changes everything he thought he had accepted. Inspired by 'Nightporter' by Japan If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
This is a First Doctor story I wrote and submitted to Big Finish’s Paul Spragg Memorial contest in 2026. Only one story would be chosen, on the basis of a short synopsis, and it was not mine, so I publish it here. The story is set during the canonical gap in the 1966 television serial The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve. In that story, the Doctor disappears for most of the narrative, leaving his companion Steven alone in Paris on the eve of one of the worst atrocities in French history. The television serial never explains where the Doctor went or what he was doing. I wrote this story to occupy that silence. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it on Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world Doctor Who is the property of the BBC, and this story is not affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC. This is an unofficial fan work, made purely for fan enjoyment, and no commercial benefit is either intended or implied
In 1780s Shropshire, a parish midwife watches a man called Odd Man Dodd move between three townships. Three people die. The children learn a rhyme. Nobody asks where the words came from. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
In St Barrow’s, charity was given at the church door, where God might see it and, more importantly, where no neighbour could pretend he had not. Every Sunday, when the final hymn had faded into coughs, scraping boots and the restless mutter of people pretending not to loiter, Mistress Agnes Grimshaw took her place beneath the entry arch with her black purse folded between both hands. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
Spearhafoc was an eleventh-century monk, artist, and goldsmith, appointed Bishop of London under Edward the Confessor. Before the crown intended for Edward could be completed, Spearhafoc vanished with the king’s gold and jewels. History gives no satisfying end to him. No recovery. No trial. No body. Only the disappearance. What follows is not history, but an imagined answer to the silence. An explanation for where Spearhafoc went, what bargain he made, and why no man ever found him. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
Regan was trained never to spill a thing at the Academy. The night she spills Angel-June Nair’s wine, she spills far more, and the so-called ‘meadow’ behind the Academy is listening for exactly that kind of girl. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
William Cox tends the gardens at Othery Grange. He also tends the truth. Five Regency courtships, five birds, and one gardener who learns that an invented omen, once spoken, never stays his alone. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
In late-sixteenth-century Exeter, Curate Ralph Travers preaches too often against the Devil and gives an old children’s rhyme a power it should never have had. When Bucky comes to St Olave’s churchyard, three lives are demanded, and Ralph must choose who will be taught the words that open the dark. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
The Even Ash is a dark Yorkshire folk tale of Mother Greenwood, a travelling herb-woman who sells simples at country fairs and offers lonely girls an old love charm. But the ash does not promise kindness, safety, or happiness. It answers only the words spoken, and four girls learn that the first single man to draw nigh may be something far stranger than a true love. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show.Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world
At St Mildred’s, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily Scratcher waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings of beauty, grace, sorrow, roads, love, labour, and goodness, and of the children made to carry what adults should not. If you enjoy Edvane Stories, please follow the podcast — a new dark fiction story every Saturday, and following helps new listeners find the show. Read it at Edvane Stories Follow Jonathan B. Edvane at edvane.world