More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
MORE GHOST STORIES
OF AN ANTIQUARY
BY
MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES, Litt.D.
AUTHOR OF “A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS”, “GHOST STORIES,”
“A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS”
NEW EDITION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1927
(All rights reserved)
Made and Printed in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, LONDON AND WOKING
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Some years ago I promised to publish a second volume of ghost stories when a sufficient number of them should have been accumulated. That time has arrived, and here is the volume. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to warn the critic that in evolving the stories I have not been possessed by that austere sense of the responsibility of authorship which is demanded of the writer of fiction in this generation; or that I have not sought to embody in them any well-considered scheme of “psychical” theory. To be sure, I have my ideas as to how a ghost-story ought to be laid out if it is to be effective. I think that, as a rule, the setting should be fairly familiar and the majority of the characters and their talk such as you may meet or hear any day. A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself, “If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!” Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story. Again, I feel that the technical terms of “occultism,” if they are not very carefully handled, tend to put the mere ghost story (which is all that I am attempting) upon a quasi-scientific plane, and to call into play faculties quite other than the imaginative. I am well aware that mine is a nineteenth- (and not a twentieth-) century conception of this class of tale; but were not the prototypes of all the best ghost stories written in the sixties and seventies?
However, I cannot claim to have been guided by any very strict rules. My stories have been produced (with one exception) at successive Christmas seasons. If they serve to amuse some readers at the Christmas-time that is coming— or at any time whatever—they will justify my action in publishing them.
My thanks are due to the Editor of the Contemporary Review, in which one of the stories (“The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral”) appeared, for permission to reprint it here.
M. R. JAMES.
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WORKS BY DR. M. R. JAMES
(PROVOST OF ETON COLLEGE)
“In this book are no ordinary hauntings or common-place apparitions, but real, inexplicable, horrid Things belonging to another world, such as might have been summoned by medieval wizards to their own lasting undoing. Dr. James excels in the description of intelligences higher than beasts and lower than men, whose aim is to do evil. The spiders in ‘The Ash Tree’ seemed to us bad enough, but the toad-shaped guardian of the ‘Treasure of the Abbot Thomas’ surpasses them, The antiquarian setting of the story lends to them both interest and probability; an old document, an inscription, an ancient whistle discovered amongst some ruins are the means by which the powers of darkness are called forth, and when they come they appear in a way which convinces the reader of their actual existence. We do not hesitate to say that these are among the best ghost stories we have ever read; they rank with that greatest of all ghost stories, Lord Lytton’s ‘The Haunted and the Haunters.’”—The Guardian.
With Illustrations by GILBERT JAMES
“An uncanny, unusual, but quite delightful fairy-tale is Dr. M. R. James’s latest excursion into a field where he has already made his mark. Wide knowledge, deep thought, vivid fancy, and a rare gift for visualising the invisible universe which lies about us have gone to the construction of this fascinating tale, with its never-failing wealth of delightful surprises and original fancies.”—The Guardian.
“A very charming and original story, beautifully written and of most delicate invention. It is actually a new kind of fairy story.”—New Statesman.
“The Provost of Eton, who has written some of our best and most haunting ghost stories, is seen here in a lighter atmosphere. In ‘The Five Jars’ he gives us a delightful fantasy of fairies and conversational animals. He relates his tale with such a convincing particularity of detail and such a clear simplicity of style that miracles seem the most natural thing in the world.”—The Spectator.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
WORKS BY DR. M. R. JAMES
“I wish to place myself on record as uureservedly recommending ‘More Ghost Stories.’ It is Dr. James’s method that makes his tales so fascinating. As he puts it in his preface, a ghost story ought to be told in such a way that the reader shall say to himself, ‘If I am not very careful something of this kind may happen to me.}’”—Punch.
“He fascinates; he ensnares us in the delights of the gruesome; we cannot lay down the book until we have finished it, and we dismiss it in an agreeable ecstasy of terror.”—Daily News.
“Dr. James has a fine gift for making his minor characters real, living, crotchety, human beings, and so compels us to believe in his ghostly adventures and to be horribly afraid of them.”—Mr. E. B. Osborne in The Morning Post.
“Not only are the studies written with a distinction of style to which the reader of similar works is totally unaccustomed, but the Provost of Eton has managed to impart a most authentic feeling of alarming eeriness to the apparitions which he so vividly describes.”—Spectator.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD & C0.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1936, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 87 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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