The Ghosts of an Antiquary

M. R. James (1862-1936) is in my mind the greatest of all the ghost story writers. Nobody else can deliver a true shudder of grim terror like he did. His greatest collection was his first, The Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904). There were masterpieces that came after but the majority of his best are in this book. Not one of the eight is a dud. All have been anthologized endlessly over the years but have lost none of their effectiveness for that.

One of the secrets to James’ skill is that his ghosts are always hostile, virulently so. No gruff Canterville ghosts who eventually reform. No silly Jerome K. Jerome spoofs at Christmas. James’ ghosts are serious business. Part of this is due to the individual monstrosity of his fiends, not mere phantoms in elder dress. His ghosts are monsters in the truest sense.

James’ opens the book with “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book”. This tale has a manuscript hunter who happens upon a choice item only to find it comes with strings. The haunter of the book:

“In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, grey, horny and wrinkled. He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin – what can I call it? -shallow, like a beast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them – intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man.” (“Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook” by M. R. James)

If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 3:From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly