
Voluntary Committal
A Short Story from '20th Century Ghosts'
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $10.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
David LeDoux
-
By:
-
Joe Hill
About this listen
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Best New Horror
- A Short Story from '20th Century Ghosts'
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: David LeDoux
- Length: 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eddie Carroll is sick to death of editing the collection America's Best New Horror, sick of reading through second-rate stories in order to find the few "best new". But one afternoon he stumbles across a new story so remarkable that he soon embarks on a quixotic quest to find its author - a quest he may not live to regret.
-
-
Disturbing and great!
- By Rocio on 04-13-15
By: Joe Hill
-
In the Tall Grass
- By: Stephen King, Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 1 hr and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they've lost one another. The boy's cries are more and more desperate. What follows is a terrifying, entertaining, and masterfully told tale, as only Stephen King and Joe Hill can deliver.
-
-
Irredeemably Vile. Epic Fail.
- By Bill on 09-24-14
By: Stephen King, and others
-
The Pram
- Creature Feature Collection
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 1 hr and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Willy and Marianne’s farmhouse in Maine has acres of meadow and fresh air, and a lonesome bridle path in the forest along which Willy daydreams and ambles. When he’s loaned a decrepit old baby stroller to cart his groceries home, the rickety squeak of the wheels comforts him. So do the sweet coos of a baby Willy knows can’t be real. Can it? In this twisted thicket, wishes come true—with a price.
-
-
Freaking Brilliant!
- By Wysh on 03-19-24
By: Joe Hill
-
20th Century Ghosts
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: David LeDoux
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . . Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . . John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead.
-
-
Wonderful and recommended
- By Kasey on 02-12-09
By: Joe Hill
-
Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume I
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King, Tim Curry, Rob Lowe, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A star-studded cast of readers present unabridged tales of horror and suspense from Stephen King's classic best-selling short story collection.
-
-
Great short stories!!
- By Walter on 04-12-09
By: Stephen King
-
Heart-Shaped Box
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost. It's the real thing.
-
-
Yikes! Five stars for fright
- By Lesley on 02-23-07
By: Joe Hill
-
Best New Horror
- A Short Story from '20th Century Ghosts'
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: David LeDoux
- Length: 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eddie Carroll is sick to death of editing the collection America's Best New Horror, sick of reading through second-rate stories in order to find the few "best new". But one afternoon he stumbles across a new story so remarkable that he soon embarks on a quixotic quest to find its author - a quest he may not live to regret.
-
-
Disturbing and great!
- By Rocio on 04-13-15
By: Joe Hill
-
In the Tall Grass
- By: Stephen King, Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 1 hr and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they've lost one another. The boy's cries are more and more desperate. What follows is a terrifying, entertaining, and masterfully told tale, as only Stephen King and Joe Hill can deliver.
-
-
Irredeemably Vile. Epic Fail.
- By Bill on 09-24-14
By: Stephen King, and others
-
The Pram
- Creature Feature Collection
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 1 hr and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Willy and Marianne’s farmhouse in Maine has acres of meadow and fresh air, and a lonesome bridle path in the forest along which Willy daydreams and ambles. When he’s loaned a decrepit old baby stroller to cart his groceries home, the rickety squeak of the wheels comforts him. So do the sweet coos of a baby Willy knows can’t be real. Can it? In this twisted thicket, wishes come true—with a price.
-
-
Freaking Brilliant!
- By Wysh on 03-19-24
By: Joe Hill
-
20th Century Ghosts
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: David LeDoux
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . . Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . . John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead.
-
-
Wonderful and recommended
- By Kasey on 02-12-09
By: Joe Hill
-
Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume I
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King, Tim Curry, Rob Lowe, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A star-studded cast of readers present unabridged tales of horror and suspense from Stephen King's classic best-selling short story collection.
-
-
Great short stories!!
- By Walter on 04-12-09
By: Stephen King
-
Heart-Shaped Box
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Stephen Lang
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost. It's the real thing.
-
-
Yikes! Five stars for fright
- By Lesley on 02-23-07
By: Joe Hill
-
Horns
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache, and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances.
-
-
people are funny
- By bet on 12-05-10
By: Joe Hill
-
UR
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 2 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reeling from a painful break-up, English instructor and avid book lover Wesley Smith is haunted by his ex-girlfriend's parting shot: "Why can't you just read off the computer like everyone else?" He buys an e-book reader out of spite, but soon finds he can use the device to glimpse realities he had never before imagined, discovering literary riches beyond his wildest dreams...and all-too-human tragedies that surpass his most terrible nightmares.
-
-
shouldn't audible give us a break?
- By a on 02-19-10
By: Stephen King
-
Full Throttle
- Stories
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Zachary Quinto, Wil Wheaton, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in 13 relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass”, one of two stories cowritten with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.
-
-
A Strong Collection
- By Celeste on 11-05-19
By: Joe Hill
-
The Fireman
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
-
-
GOD'S WAITING ROOM; AKA FLORIDA
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-25-17
By: Joe Hill
-
Strange Weather
- Four Short Novels
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Joe Hill, Wil Wheaton, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative number one New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.
-
-
Can’t keep Politics out of it.
- By Tom N. on 06-19-18
By: Joe Hill
-
A Face in the Crowd
- By: Stephen King, Stewart O'Nan
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. It’s Rays/Mariners, and David Price is breezing through the line-up. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone from decades past, someone who shouldn’t be at the ballgame, shouldn’t be on the planet. And so begins a parade of people from Evers’s past, all of them occupying that seat behind home plate. Until one day Dean Evers sees someone even eerier….
-
-
Perfect Match
- By Tim on 10-04-12
By: Stephen King, and others
-
NOS4A2
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.
-
-
Gripping performance by Kate Mulgrew....
- By Leslie on 05-06-13
By: Joe Hill
-
Riding the Bullet
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Josh Hamilton
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Stephen King ghost story in the grand tradition, Riding the Bullet is the ultimate warning about the dangers of hitchhiking. Lock those car doors before listening!
-
-
A Good Read
- By Lady Pamela on 07-30-15
By: Stephen King
-
Mile 81
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann, Thomas Sadoski
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At Mile 81 on the Maine turnpike is a boarded up rest stop, a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It’s the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother, who’s supposed to be looking out for him, heads off to the gravel pit to play “paratroopers over the side”. Pete, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his 10th birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out.
-
-
For a couple of dollars, more get Bazaar
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 02-14-16
By: Stephen King
-
The Long Way Home
- By: Richard Chizmar
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Each tale is a magic trick, luring you toward the light while leading you down an ever-darkening path. There is hope mingled with horror, and that s Chizmar s secret power. His storytelling always beats with a huge, passionate heart. Stephen King says he writes terrific stories served with a very large slice of disquiet pie, and with The Long Way Home, Richard Chizmar has taken his evocative and compelling storytelling to an entirely new level.
-
-
Loved it
- By timj26 on 07-25-19
By: Richard Chizmar
-
Skeleton Crew
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King, Matthew Broderick, Michael C. Hall, and others
- Length: 22 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy - tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows through the years; obscene presences and angels of grace - here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills.
-
-
Excellent narrators for classic King collection
- By Sheryl McCallister on 04-07-20
By: Stephen King
-
Big Driver
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Jessica Hecht
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now a Lifetime original movie, Stephen King's haunting story about an author of a series of mystery novels who tries to reconcile her old life with her life after a horrific attack and the one thing that can save her: Revenge.
-
-
Annoyed with Audible, but excellent Stephen King-
- By Mark Hancock on 05-13-15
By: Stephen King
Critic reviews
What listeners say about Voluntary Committal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David Signorino
- 04-14-19
Joe Hill
Joe never fails to entertain me. He has the ability to connect me with a character just like his father does. The whole family is talented as all heck, let's not forget Tabby & Owen!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nancy Olson
- 06-02-20
I have read a lot of stories
Joe Hill rarely disappoints. This is an unusual story with a cryptic ending in which a bully gets his just desserts! An older brother with a younger with special needs and a mysterious arrangement of boxes in which you can get lost!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rocio
- 04-13-15
Fascinating!
Joe Hill does it again! Voluntary Committal is a great incredibly imaginative short story that will give you goosebumps! A definite read and would make a fun campfire story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Cathy
- 07-28-08
how fun!
I really enjoyed this story. I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. It was well worth my time. Joe Hill has his own style and once I got over the fact that he isn't his dad I really liked his own unique style.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Matthew S. Hill
- 11-29-16
Absolutely awesome!
Joe Hill is truly one of the greatest writers of new horror today. The stories come across as if they're scenes out of troubled dreams.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!