Collected Ghost Stories

Love this book and, as with any collection, thought a specific listing of all thirty included short works might be helpful to potential buyers.Canon Alberic's Scrapbook; Lost Hearts; The Mezzotint; The Ash Tree; Number 13; Count Magnus; 'Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad'; The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas; A School Story; The Rose Garden; The Tractate Middoth; Casting The Runes; The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral; Martin's Close; Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance; The Residence At Whitminster; The Diary Of Mr. Paynter; An Episode Of Cathedral History; The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance; Two Doctors; The Haunted Doll's House; The Uncommon Prayer-Book; A Neighbor's Landmark; A View From A Hill; A Warning To The Curious; An Evenings Entertainment; There Was A Man Dwealt By A Churchyard; Rats; After Dark In The Playing Fields; Wailing Well; Stories I Have Tried To Write

M.R. James has many imitators and if you've read any ghost story anthologies at all, you're probably already acquainted with him. "Casting the Runes" and "Oh Whistle and I'll Come for You, My Lad" are probably his two most collected stories, but they're all good. I still shiver through every one of them, and I've read all of his stories at least a hundred times (well, maybe ten times). His usual protagonist is an elderly (or elderly seeming) scholar, British of course, who gets himself into horrible, occult trouble by going where he shouldn't go or reading what he shouldn't read. There are other good writers of ghostly tales: Sheridan LeFanu, Charles Dickens, E.F. Benson, Shirley Jackson, etc.; and Ramsey Campbell once wrote a short story in the style of M.R. James that almost could have been written by the Master, himself. However, if you haven't already read M.R. James' "Collected Ghost Stories", please do so. He is the writer by which all others in this difficult genre are measured.

Some of the subtlest ghost stories ever written and all the more chilling for that. James never piles on the horror as, say, Lovecraft does but plants fears in your mind that will keep you from sleep: whispering voices, the touch of a cold hand in the darkness, an unseen cat brushing your legs.James's fictional world, which owes something to Dickens, was based on the world he lived in, of Cambridge scholars exploring old libraries or churches or country houses. In such places, there are secrets hidden for centuries, only waiting for the careless unbeliever to open the door behind which they are lurking.Try some of the classics like 'Casting the Runes' or 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' or, better, splash out on the Collected Stories. The quality is very high, with no more than three or four inferior ones in the whole book.