Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

M. R. James, a Cambridge medievalist by profession, more or less perfected the English ghost story in this first collection of eight tales. His method rarely varies and never tires: a quiet scholar poking through an old library, cathedral, or seaside town disturbs something that should have been left alone, and the horror arrives slowly, through half-glimpsed shapes and a mounting sense of wrongness. “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” and “Count Magnus” rank among the most anthologized ghost stories in the language. James first read the tales aloud to friends at Christmas, and they keep that fireside intimacy, all the more unsettling for how reasonable his narrators sound. Available as a free PDF and EPUB edition.