The Canterville Ghost

An American diplomat, Hiram Otis, buys an old English country house, ghost included, and his family refuses to be frightened. They scrub away the bloodstain that has haunted the library for three centuries with a patent stain remover, offer the ghost oil for his rattling chains, and the twin boys play tricks on him, until the miserable Sir Simon de Canterville, three hundred years dead, can no longer haunt anyone. Only the gentle daughter, Virginia, understands that he longs for rest.

Oscar Wilde published the story in 1887, a comedy about the old world and the new that turns tender at its end. David Barnes reads it in under an hour and a half.