In conversation with Colin Morgan, his thoughts on horror, his expriences of writing and acting - and what's in his own library.

What interested you in narrating these classic horror stories?

Fear is an interesting area, isn't it? The experience, I think, is universal, but the question of what scares you is often very individual. Maybe also very personal; something you wouldn't readily admit or share, even to yourself. In the world today, there's a lot of very real and present fear, sometimes it seems inescapable - so why would we turn to horror classics to feel even more fear? Well, I don't think it's fear, then, that we necessarily experience in these classic stories; perhaps it's something a bit more unsettling, a doubt of the comforts of the self and questions of just who or what we are. You certainly experience those areas in the likes of the stories we're choosing to tell in The Haunted Library podcast - the feelings evoked aren't surface - they go much deeper than that. I think I get attracted to that kind of depth in stories and in characters.

Which story in the collection have you enjoyed the most?

I like the Christmas ghost stories a lot. I have such a positive and happy feeling in general when it comes to the festive time that I don't really like having it be tarnished by fear - so I think those stories have a greater effect on me because they marry a cosy, safe time with a sense of eeriness that make their effect more potent for me.

The first story in the series is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - which has influenced many modern stories, like the Incredible Hulk. Why do you think it still resonates?

Most people in the world are living a kind of duality; an online and an in-person self. Perhaps one persona feels completely opposite to the other? One presents the opportunity to edit and present; while the other leaves room for less control and more spontaneity. We're in a world where people have the opportunity at their fingertips to mould the perception of themselves. A lot of time is invested in that. But is the same amount of time invested on changes inside to match the other? Are we really, deep down, aware that the two personas could, in fact, be thought of as two different people? Enough so that we could even give them their own names? In The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this is the exact thing examined; identity. Do we like who we are? If we could change ourselves, would we? What would we change? And if the changes go too far and we want to go back, but can't? It's too late? What then? Maybe some people today can relate to that; when you go too far and don't know how to get back to yourself.

You’ve done a lot of narration work in the past - do you have any special techniques or methods to prepare?

I work from pages, not a screen. I think getting tactile with the material is important. "Musically scoring" your text with a pencil, colour-coding characters, generally making the page as stimulating to look at as possible, having all difficult pronunciations of words looked up ahead of time and phonetically written on the page they occur, cataloguing any character voices with a dictaphone to remind yourself as you go. That's about all you can do. Then on the day you just hope you're in one of those "flow states" to get you through hours of talking. And if not, then you just have to, as in most things, just do the best you can.

You’ve written your own novel - did your work as an actor help prepare you?

Definitely. The type of introspective instinct you develop as an actor to get into the heads of the roles you play was absolutely a useful default mode to have as part of my process to define each individual character in the novel, there isn't one of them that didn't have a unique voice, history and expression in my head as I wrote; in almost exactly the same way I would in preparing for an acting role. So in that respect it was a kind of one man show on paper.

Do you have any writing tips or wisdom?

It sounded so simple when it was said to me, but it isn't. "Finish it." Finishing a first draft was just very hard. There's a world where it's all working and then you suddenly seem to hit a point where finishing it seems impossible. But the advice to keep pushing past that was very useful for me.

Your work has previously taken you back to your Irish roots, such as the play Translations and the film Belfast - do you have a favourite Irish horror story?

I don't have a famous one, but there was a local ghost story in my home town of "The Green Lady" - and there was the house where she supposedly haunted that you could go to. That would always get a bit of genuine excited fear as a kid when you stood at the top of that street and looked down to where the house of The Green Lady was. I think most people have a version of that kind of local haunted house and I think those are always the best because they're probably stories you told to other kids to scare them too and maybe add in a few embellishments with each telling.

What other kinds of books do you like to read in general, and who are your favourite authors?

I'm a very wide-ranging reader. I read and listen to a lot of genres and just get attracted to great storytellers; John Boyne, John Steinbeck, Terry Pratchett, I could go on. There are also so many new, emerging talents. It's such an exciting time for storytelling - and I think we need them now more than ever.

You can listen to The Haunted Library on BBC Sounds.