Collected Ghost Stories (OWC Hardback) [Hardcover]

I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mold, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...

Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and nighttime settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace from creatures seeking retribution and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb.

This edition presents all of James' published ghost stories, including the unforgettable Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad and Casting the Runes, and an appendix of James' writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones' introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own.

Introduction
Select Bibliography
Chronology of M. R. James
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. Poynter
An Episode of Cathedral History
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
Two Doctors
The Haunted Dolls' House
The Uncommon Prayer Book
A Neighbor's Landmark
A View from a Hill
A Warning to the Curious
An Evening's Entertainment
There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
Rats
After Dark in the Playing Fields
Wailing Well