Sredni Vashtar

Title: Sredni Vashtar

Author: Saki (H. H. Munro)

Narrator: Jonathan Dunne

Original Publication: 1912

Public Domain: Yes

Series Placement: Timeless Terrors No. 79

Description:

Sredni Vashtar is one of Saki’s most unsettling and darkly ironic tales — a precise exploration of repression, power, and private vengeance. The story follows Conradin, a frail boy living under the rigid control of his guardian, Mrs. De Ropp, whose cold authority dominates his life. Deprived of affection and freedom, Conradin retreats into a secret world of imagination and ritual.

Central to this world is the shed at the bottom of the garden, where he keeps a ferret he worships as a personal god, Sredni Vashtar. Through quiet devotion and imagined rites, Conradin gives this creature the power denied to him, and the story unfolds with a calm inevitability toward a chilling climax.

Saki’s restrained prose makes the horror subtle yet potent, arising not from spectacle but from moral indifference and the consequences of cruelty. Narrated by Amazon-bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance captures the story’s tension, irony, and quiet menace.

Sredni Vashtar remains a timeless reminder that even the smallest, most silenced lives can harbor forces capable of unsettling and irrevocable change.