Tonight, for this month’s Snoozecast+ Deluxe bonus episode, and in the vein of our Spooky Sleep Stories series, we’ll read the opening to “Dead Souls”. It was written by Nikolai Gogol and first published in 1842. It is known as a ghost story with no ghosts—unless you count the living.

The novel follows the mysterious Pavel Chichikov as he travels through provincial Russia buying the legal rights to deceased serfs—“dead souls”—to use in a scheme for social advancement.

Though often grimly comic rather than overtly supernatural, Dead Souls captures a kind of haunting unique to Gogol’s world: one of moral decay, vanity, and the hollow pursuit of status.

Our monthly bonus episodes—like this one—are made especially for Snoozecast+ Deluxe subscribers. If you’re not a Deluxe listener, you’ll hear a shortened cut of tonight’s story; to get the full episode and more, visit snoozecast.com/plus.