THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Many common objects may be made the vehicles of retribution, and where retribution is not called for, of malice’. So M. R. James describes his own way of writing ghost stories. It was his particular genius to take everyday people and everyday objects and to weave them into a tale of horror and the supernatural – one, we sense, that could also happen to us. He was a master story-teller, framing the uncanny and disturbing within reasonable, believable events: the malevolent spirit in ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ might simply be the wind and bed-sheets; the solidly buried post is precisely where Mrs Anstruther wishes to create a rose garden; hotel room number 13 seems to appear only at night...

James wrote for magazines and also collected his tales into smaller volumes. This definitive collection of 30 stories first appeared in 1931. Greatly influenced by the long tradition of gothic and ghost-story writing, James continued and developed the form. Countless writers have been influenced by his style and many of his stories have been adapted for film or radio. ‘Casting the Runes’, a richly complex tale of sorcery was made into the classic film, Curse of the Demon, while ‘A Warning to the Curious’ and ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ were adapted for television in the 1970s. The original stories are guaranteed to raise a chill to the skin and a tingle to the spine.