Skip to the main content
Nocturnal TalesMystery audiobooks for quiet evenings

The Ghost at the Opera

Original mysteryNo. 2371 hr 5 minHercule Poirot

Play this story
0:00
1:04:45

The story

London in November. A fog that makes even respectable streets look faintly conspiratorial. And an opera house where one box has stayed locked for twenty-four years. Box Seventeen belonged to Lady Celia Harcourt, one of the great beauties of Edwardian London, who sat in it on every first night wearing the Harcourt diamonds. She died in 1912. The box was shut up after her, and it has not been opened since. Tonight it is occupied. Halfway through the second scene the audience looks up and sees a woman seated inside — in Lady Celia's black gown, with the Harcourt diamonds burning at her throat. When the attendants break the door down, they find a man lying dead in the darkness behind the chairs. And the key still in the lock. On the inside. A dead beauty who cannot possibly have returned. A locked box nobody could have entered or left. A photograph of the dead. And a man behind the curtain whose face nobody can describe. The Belgian Detective and Arthur must work out how a ghost committed a murder in front of two thousand witnesses. The Ghost at the Opera is an original Golden Age-style mystery about beauty, memory, and a haunting arranged with very human hands. FOR LISTENERS This is an original mystery written by Nocturnal Tales, inspired by the spirit of the great Golden Age crime writers — but the plot, characters and text are entirely our own creation. All characters and events in this story are fictional. No affiliation, endorsement, or official connection is implied. Two thousand people watched that box all evening, and every one of them saw a dead woman. When a whole audience agrees on something impossible, is that a haunting — or simply very good staging? Both formats included — EPUB for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books · PDF for tablets. SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS CREDITS TAGS / KEYWORDS Belgian detective mystery audiobook, opera house mystery, locked room mystery, impossible crime audiobook, ghost story mystery, stolen diamonds mystery, Edwardian London mystery, theatre murder mystery, Arthur narrator mystery, golden age mystery audiobook, haunting explained mystery, classic whodunit audiobook, full-length mystery audiobook, gaslight mystery

Free to listen, in full, with no account and no password. Your place is remembered in this browser, so you can stop and come back.

Enjoyed this one?

Every story on Nocturnal Tales is free, and stays free. Listeners who choose to give are the reason there is a new one tomorrow.

This is our work and what we live on: two of us, writing and producing a story every night. Giving here goes straight to us, rather than through a platform that can change its mind overnight. Why donations are important.

Choose a monthly amount

or

Give with PayPal

PayPal opens in a new page. Monthly support is easiest to manage through the card option.

No story is ever locked. Payment is handled securely by Stripe — we never see your card details. You can change or cancel your support at any time, from this page, with no explanation needed.

Be the first to comment

Tell us what you made of this one. No account and no password — just a name.

No account, no password. Your email is never shown to anyone, and is used only to reply to you unless you ask for the nightly email above.

More from the library

Cover illustration for The Bathtub Enigma

The Bathtub Enigma

Hercule Poirot

London in the fog, and a block of mansion flats in Battersea where a man has been found dead in his own bath. The dead man is an architect. He was seen alive the previous evening, the door was locked from within, and the water was long cold by the time anybody thought to look.

2 hr 18 minNo. 250

Cover illustration for A Day's Folly

A Day's Folly

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard

The newspaper-reading public called it the Somersetshire Outrage, and to this day, as far as the public is concerned, it was never properly explained at all. A young shop assistant named Jane Turner is found in her lodgings at Weston, tied to a chair with a rope, a shawl over her head, half-slipping to the floor.

by Baroness Orczy

46 minNo. 249

Cover illustration for The Two Confessions

The Two Confessions

Hercule Poirot

New Orleans, the spring of nineteen thirty-three. There are certain cities which, even before one has committed a crime in them, seem already to know the secret. Arthur and the Belgian Detective have come for a rest.

1 hr 14 minNo. 248

Cover illustration for The Knight's Cross Signal Problem

It begins with Max Carrados greeting his friend Carlyle at the door and remarking that he has a mystery about him somewhere. He can hear it in the man's step. The mystery is a railway disaster.

by Ernest Bramah

1 hr 7 minNo. 247