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Commonly rated among the top ten of James’ stories by his admirers, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” stands out as having many of the great tropes of what has come to be called a “Jamesian” tale: it follows a starchy English academic on an ill-fated holiday to a remote, backwards town (far from the Hobbit-esque comforts and required civility of Cambridge) where he is hopelessly drawn in by the allure of a sinister antique which brings with it a spectral guardian – eager to make h

NOTE: Each October I write a ghost story or weird tale for Hallowe'en and post it here. The following piece is 2022's "Ghost Story for...

I seem to keep running into delightful firsts this year when it comes to my reviews. Today’s first – just in time for Hallowe’en – is an...

“We had all begun to accept that things may never go back to normal. Civilization as we knew it was in the midst of a great turning. We...

Ebenezer Scrooge said it best when he begged the preceding question of Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. What, he wanted to know,...

A very warm hello to you, dear reader! In this post I'll be breaking the fourth wall a bit to chat with you about two exciting updates...

For M. R. James, who began his career as a writer of ghost stories by reading them to his friends at Christmas parties, his last great ghost story was written, fittingly, to be publicly read in front of a specific audience. It is a campfire legend, composed for a troop of Eton Boy Scouts who were camped on the rolling downs near Worbarrow Bay in Dorset, and was read to them on the evening of July 27th, 1927. In a letter he described the pitch which he was offered: "Tomorrow i

Over the past year I have been stunned by the consistent strength of the books authors have sent me to review: the last six or so books...

In a previous blog post, we specifically catalogued William Hope Hodgson’s best nautical horror stories – tales of haunted ships, sea...

Repressed by Stevenson at his wife’s insistence, “The Waif Woman” – published posthumously (and only after Mrs. Stevenson’s death) is an adaptation of a ghost story told in chapters 50-55 of the Icelandic Erybyggja Saga. The story certainly is scandalous, even by Stevenson’s standards, and presents perhaps his most brutal indictment of material greed yet. The setting is Iceland at the turn of the first Millennium, circa 999 C.E., the date when Christianity was formally adopte

Like its thematic predecessor, “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “A Descent into the Maelström” delves into themes of natural sublimity, seagoing adventure, philosophical horror, and irrational curiosity. Where “MS.” built its philosophy on a folkloric foundation of Flying Dutchman legends and hollow-earth theories, this tale is centered on the maritime legends of the Norway Maelström. Although the actual whirlpool is barely powerful enough to sink a yacht, Poe is more interested in p

To the majority of his readership – especially those in the United Kingdom – M. R. James will forever be inextricably linked to the...

As a devotee of Arthur Machen, Oliver Onions, Robert W. Chambers, Algernon Blackwood, and their ilk, I must confess to have a soft spot...

One of Machen’s most anthologized stories – and certainly his most gruesome – “The Novel of the White Powder” is an excerpt from The Three Imposters – a novel written in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson, but with the pure, burning mysticism that only Arthur Machen could bring to the slums, parks, and townhouses of fin de siècle London. The novel concerns three suspicious strangers – a woman and two men – who accost a pair of bohemian dandies, ostensibly in search of a nerv

To begin with, from the very first moment that I read Woodbridge's fiction, I was struck by how rare and delicious it is to find a...

“The Opera Ghost really existed…” Such are the opening lines of Gaston Leroux’s Edwardian homage to the Belle Epoque. Pregnant with...

By the early Twentieth Century, J. Sheridan Le Fanu was largely only remembered for three or four Gothic mystery novels – The House by the Churchyard, The Wyvern Mystery, and Uncle Silas – “Carmilla,” and – in some circles – “Green Tea.” Le Fanu’s ghost stories—now considered his most significant literary contribution—were largely forgotten or dismissed as too weird, vague, or inscrutable. In 1923, M. R. James resurrected Le Fanu by editing a collection of his best ghost stor

As any of you who have followed my blog for long are surely aware, I have a special affection for all things Washington Irving and “The...

Bierce’s most famous ghost story has all the hallmarks of a typical supernatural tale from his pen: it is broken into multiple sections, beginning in media res, tells a confusing story from different points of view (allowing clarity to come only after all sides are given a chance to present their impressions), and details acts of craven violence between seemingly devoted family members. The story borrows heavily from Edgar Allan Poe, especially the second chapter, and uses tr

This story is famous for two reasons: firstly, it is the only one of James’ stories which is set specifically over Christmas (while some – Martin’s Close, Oh Whistle, etc. – are set near Christmas, this is the only one to explicitly take place on December 25th), a holiday with which James is ubiquitously associated, and secondly, it is “the one with the demented Punch and Judy Show.” Once a childhood staple, Punch and Judy Shows – which are hardly politically correct – are in

One of Hoffmann’s most ambitious attempts at Gothic fiction is also one of his more complex: involving multiple plots layered one over the other, jumping back and forth in time, with entire casts of characters existing in each timeline. Biographically, the framing narrative about an emotionally flustered young man’s aborted dalliance with a married woman borrows from Hoffmann’s own scandalous attentions toward Dora Hatt. As with the young Julia Marc, Dora was one of Hoffmann’

NOTE: This second and final post is continued from Part I, where we explored James' transformation of the ghost story genre, his own...

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss...

NOTE: The following article is largely excerpted (other than the summary) from our most recent collection: A Warning to the Curious, Count Magnus, and Other Horrors: The Best Ghost Stories and Weird Fiction of M. R. James, Annotated and Illustrated. None of M. R. James’ ghost stories have rivalled the resilient power or popularity of “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” It is almost always the first-ranked tale in polls of his readership (voted number one twice by the