One of the joys of the festive season for me is enjoying a good, old-fashioned, spooky tale so, in the run-up to Christmas, I will be posting ghost stories from years past. The first of these is a masterly BBC adaptation of M R James’ classic Number 13:
Click image to read my short story, 'Liddell’s Ghost' in Cygnus, the Journal of Speculative Fiction.
Click image to read my short story 'Changed' in The Cynic Online Magazine.
Click image to read my short story 'First Date' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Click image to read my short story 'Ghost Walk' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Welcome to my humble abode, dear readers of the supernatural! Today, we’re going to have a creep-tastic time exploring the question of whether M R James was the father of the supernatural ghost story genre. Now, if you’re not familiar with M R James, he was an English author who wrote some of the most […]
‘There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas,’ wrote Jerome K. Jerome in the introduction to his darkly comic collection Told After Supper (1891), ‘something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails’. Dickens would no doubt agree, […]
The macabre beneath the landscape is not dispelled by nearness to the sea. What Henry James knew, and described in English Hours (1905) – the strangeness present on a flattened seashore – M R James (no blood relation, although the two were acquainted) expressed in two of his best-known ghost stories: Oh, Whistle, and I’ll […]
Here’s a real festive treat. In 2000 the BBC produced a series called Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee in which Lee played M R James reading four of his own stories. Lee, who actually once met James, obviously enjoyed making this series and A Warning to the Curious is a real highlight – enjoy!
I have been haunted by the writings of M R James since childhood but when asked what is my favourite of all his ghostly tales I’ve never fully been able to answer. Lost Hearts, an early tale which apparently James didn’t much care for, and which only appeared in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary to […]
Ghost Cities 