This evening’s author, Frederick George Loring, was an English naval officer and writer, and an early expert in wireless telegraphy.

Loring’s writing abilities appeared first as a technical journalist and as naval correspondent for the Western Morning News.  He was put in charge of Admiralty shore wireless stations, and in 1904 he was selected to accompany Guglielmo Marconi to America for wireless experiments.  He was appointed a civil Order of the British Empire in 1926 for his services to the development of radio.

He also wrote poetry and short stories, of which “The Tomb of Sarah” gained acclaim as a classic vampire story after it appeared in the Pall Mall magazine in December 1910.  It tells what happens the when the tomb of the evil Countess Sarah, murdered in 1630, is disturbed during the restoration of a church.

Along with Hume Nisbet’s “The Vampire Maid” and E.F. Benson’s “Mrs. Amworth,” it is among the foremost early 20th-century stories to feature a female vampire, although we aver that there must have been many more than three of them flitting around, don’t you think?

And now, turn down the lights, and join us for “The Tomb of Sarah” by F.G. Loring…