In the summer before I left for high school, we unravelled the mystery of the child and the spooky woman on the phone line. To be clear: this is no morality tale.
Warning: contains horror themes and occasional profanity
Spoilers Below!
Author’s Note:
As some of you will know, The Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley is a real story.
I never encountered this story by being read it as a child. It was when I was about Fiona’s age that I read mention of it in a young adult novel called Drowning in Secrets by Brenda Bellingham – one of my favourite young adult novels to this day. Until much later, I thought The Water Babies was a story the author had made up for her novel. When I thought to google it, some ten years later, I was surprised to find it wasn’t, and surprised further to read parts of it and realise just how much I didn’t like it!
Like father like daughter I suppose: I mentioned it on the phone to my dad when I started writing this story, and his response was a heavily disgusted “I hate that book” – which had me laughing and agreeing.
What is it with old kids stories and being just creepy?
Attributions:
Podcast intro and outro music: The Dark Tile , by Rafael Krux. Full licence purchased.
Episode soundtrack:
Evening of Chaos by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3723-evening-of-chaos
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
All other sounds used in the episode created by me, G. G. E. Tinsmuir, or audio files in the public domain.
The Lantern Library 