Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is the title of M. R. James' first collection of ghost stories, published in 1904 (some had previously appeared in magazines). Some later editions under this title contain both the original collection and its successor, More Ghost Stories (1911), combined in one volume.
There are eight classics by great Edwardian scholar and storyteller. "Number Thirteen," "The Mezzotint," "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," more. Renowned for their wit, erudition and suspense, these stories are each masterfully constructed and represent a high achievement in the ghost genre.
Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medieval scholar; Provost of King's College, Cambridge. He wrote many of his ghost stories to be read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. His stories often use rural settings, with a quiet, scholarly protagonist getting caught up in the activities of supernatural forces. The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasise the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions.
LOST
HEARTS (excerpt)
It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of
the year 1811 that a post-chaise drew up before the door of Aswarby
Hall, in the heart of Lincolnshire. The little boy who was the only
passenger in the chaise, and who jumped out as soon as it had
stopped, looked about him with the keenest curiosity during the short
interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening
of the hall door. He saw a tall, square, red-brick house, built in
the reign of Anne; a stone-pillared porch had been added in the purer
classical style of 1790; the windows of the house were many, tall and
narrow, with small panes and thick white woodwork. A pediment,
pierced with a round window, crowned the front. There were wings to
right and left, connected by curious glazed galleries, supported by
colonnades, with the central block. These wings plainly contained the
stables and offices of the house. Each was surmounted by an
ornamental cupola with a gilded vane.
An evening light shone on the building, making the
window-panes glow like so many fires. Away from the Hall in front
stretched a flat park studded with oaks and fringed with firs, which
stood out against the sky. The clock in the church-tower, buried in
trees on the edge of the park, only its golden weather-cock catching
the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently beating down
the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with
the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening in early autumn,
that was conveyed to the mind of the boy who was standing in the
porch waiting for the door to open to him.
The post-chaise had brought him from Warwickshire,
where, some six months before, he had been left an orphan. Now, owing
to the generous offer of his elderly cousin, Mr Abney, he had come to
live at Aswarby. The offer was unexpected, because all who knew
anything of Mr Abney looked upon him as a somewhat austere recluse,
into whose steady-going household the advent of a small boy would
import a new and, it seemed, incongruous element. The truth is that
very little was known of Mr Abney’s pursuits or temper. The
Professor of Greek at Cambridge had been heard to say that no one
knew more of the religious beliefs of the later pagans than did the
owner of Aswarby. Certainly his library contained all the then
available books bearing on the Mysteries, the Orphic poems, the
worship of Mithras, and the Neo-Platonists. In the marble-paved hall
stood a fine group of Mithras slaying a bull, which had been imported
from the Levant at great expense by the owner. He had contributed a
description of it to the Gentleman’s Magazine, and he
had written a remarkable series of articles in the Critical
Museum on the superstitions of the Romans of the Lower
Empire. He was looked upon, in fine, as a man wrapped up in his
books, and it was a matter of great surprise among his neighbours
that he should ever have heard of his orphan cousin, Stephen Elliott,
much more that he should have volunteered to make him an inmate of
Aswarby Hall.
Whatever may have been expected by his neighbours,
it is certain that Mr Abney— the tall, the thin, the austere—
seemed inclined to give his young cousin a kindly reception. The
moment the front-door was opened he darted out of his study, rubbing
his hands with delight...
