A Ghost Story by Mark Twain

The Radio Reading Room

In this Episode we feature "A Ghost Story" by Mark Twain. The story is based on a true event that occurred in 1869. The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous archaeological hoaxes in American history. It was a 10-foot-tall, roughly 3,000 pound purported "petrified man", uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell, in Cardiff, New York. He covered the giant with a tent, and it soon became an attraction site. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P. T. Barnum are still being displayed. P.T. Barnum's is on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In this tale Twain describes how a visitor to New York City, encounters the ghost of the Giant while spending the night in a rundown boarding house whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years. Read by Myron Hieronymous Thomas.