Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James

by M. R. James

  Lee himself had actually met the author in 1935, while he was a schoolboy at Eton during James’ last years as Provost. As he later recalled: “The first thing I saw was a mummy in a glass case. The second was a little old man in glasses with a skin like parchment. This was the Provost, M.R. James. I knew that he was a master of the macabre, and I knew Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary very well. And so did all my form mates.

  “Of course, I heard all about the fact that he used to recite his ghost stories to groups of colleagues and occasionally boys on winter evenings, but I am afraid I was never lucky enough to be among those fortunate people—although apparently they were almost scared out of their wits by his masterful storytelling!”

  In 2005, BBC Four briefly revived A Ghost Story for Christmas with a version of “A View from a Hill” directed by Luke Watson and starring Mark Letheren as the owner of a pair of cursed binoculars. It was followed the next year by Pier Wilkie’s forty-minute version of “Number 13,” in which Greg Wise’s Professor Anderson discovered that his lodging house contained a ghostly room next to his own.

  Originally broadcast by BBC 2 on Christmas Eve 2010, Andy de Emmony’s misguided Whistle and I’ll Come to You starred John Hurt and was billed as a “modern reworking” of M.R. James’ classic story. Unfortunately, scriptwriter Neil Cross seemed to mistakenly believe that he could improve upon the original, while the author’s name was banished to the end credits.

  Made by Anglia Television, Clive Dunn’s documentary A Pleasant Terror: The Life and Ghosts of M.R. James (1995), co-written by the director and Michael Cox, featured dramatized extracts in which Michael Elwyn portrayed the author. Despite some unnecessary speculations about James’ sexuality, the excellent hour-long documentary featured contributions from Christopher Lee, Ruth Rendell, Jonathan Miller, Daniel Easterman and Laurence Staig.

  Peter Lawrence’s M.R. James: Supernatural Storyteller (aka M.R. James: The Corner of the Retina, 2004) was a half-hour documentary produced by the BBC to introduce a series of repeats of the author’s work. It featured numerous clips from the broadcaster’s various adaptations of the author’s stories, and Sir Christopher Frayling, Muriel Gray, Michael Cox, Ruth Rendell, Kim Newman and Lawrence Gordon Clark were amongst those who were interviewed.

  The most memorable—and only credited—feature film adaptation of M.R. James’ work is Night of the Demon (USA: The Curse of the Demon, 1957), directed by Jacques Tourneur. Based on “Casting the Runes,” Niall MacGinnis played the deceptively evil warlock Dr. Julian Karswell, who met his end at the claws of a fire-breathing demon (reportedly depicted on screen against the director’s wishes).

  Ramsey Campbell has described it as “one of the most accomplished examples of British horror cinema.”

  Campbell has also speculated that the scene in Hammer’s The Brides of Dracula (1960), in which the padlocks drop one by one off a coffin before Andree Melly’s fledgling vampire rises from it, were possibly inspired by a similar occurrence in “Count Magnus.”

  Michele Soavi’s La Chiesa (The Church, 1989), co-scripted by Dario Argento, included several uncredited ideas from James’ story “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” while Hideo Nakata’s Ring (Ringu, 1997) also contained a number of Jamesian elements.

  Sam Raimi’s disappointing Drag Me to Hell (2009) reportedly started out as a remake of Night of the Demon, and a few elements of the original story were retained in the screenplay.

  Co-writer and director Nick Murphy acknowledged that his 1920s-set supernatural drama The Awakening (2011) took its cues from some of the literature of that time, including the work of M.R. James.

  There have also been a number of short films based on James’ stories, including Patrick Amery’s Lost Hearts (2007) and Stephen Gray’s Rats (2010).

  Given the author’s propensity for reticence in his stories, it is no wonder that they have perhaps best been served by radio, where it is left up to the listener’s imagination to conjure up the horrors only hinted at on the printed page.

  The first known radio adaptation of James’ work was Madam, Will You Walk?, a forty-minute version of “Martin’s Close,” broadcast by the BBC on the Home Service in March 1938. Adapted by C. Whitaker-Wilson and produced by John Cheatle, the cast included A. Bromley-Davenport, Franklyn Bellamy, Gladys Young and the scriptwriter himself. Under its original title, “Martin’s Close” was also presented as an abridged reading by John Gloag on the same wireless service in April 1940.

  The first American radio adaptation of M.R. James was William N. Robson’s “Casting the Runes,” broadcast as the thirteenth episode of the CBS series Escape in November 1947. The show featured John MacIntyre as Edward Dunning and Bill Conrad as Karswell.

  In February 1949, the BBC broadcast a dramatization of “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” as part of its Man in Black series on the Light Program, and there were reportedly dramatizations of both “Casting the Runes” and “The Uncommon Prayer-book” on the Home Service in the early 1950s.

  Around 1956, “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” was produced for, of all things, Children’s Hour, and radio’s Man in Black himself, Valentine Dyall, read an adaptation of “A Neighbor’s Landmark” a year or two later on air.

  “The Tractate Middoth” was atmospherically re-titled A Mass of Cobwebs when it was adapted by Brian Batchelor for an April 1959 broadcast on the BBC’s Light Program.

  In the early 1960s, Erik Bauersfeld’s Black Mass series, which ran on stations KPFK/KPFA in Berkeley, California, broadcast adaptations of both “The Ash-tree” and “An Evening’s Entertainment.”

  The well-known English stage actor-manager Sir Donald Wolfit appeared in a Home Service dramatization of “Martin’s Close” in August 1963. Four months later, the same station broadcast a half-hour version of Michael and Mollie Hardwick’s adaptation of “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,’” which featured Michael Hordern as Perkins, a role he would recreate in Jonathan Miller’s controversial television production five years later.

  Between 1982 and 1988, Hordern also narrated a series of audio cassettes released by Decca Records under the Argo label that featured unabridged versions of James’ stories.

  “Count Magnus” was dramatized by the New York City Board of Education’s radio station WNYE-FM in the mid-1960s as part of its Tales of Mystery and Imagination series, and Bernard Cribbins read “Lost Hearts” on BBC Radio 3 in December 1971.

  An updated version of “Casting the Runes” formed the basis of “This Will Kill You,” originally broadcast in 1974 as part of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, hosted by actor E.G. Marshall. “The Mezzotint” was re-titled “The Figure in the Moonlight” for the same show four years later.

  In December 1975, Peter Barkworth read an abridgement of “Number 13” on BBC Radio 4’s Story Time: Ghost Trilogy, and The Ghosts of M.R. James, broadcast on Boxing Day 1977, featured a talk on the author by Michell Raper along with readings from “Wailing Well,” “Lost Hearts,” “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” and “Rats” by Gerald Cross, Norman Shelley and Kenneth Fortescue.

  Robert Trotter read “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” on the same station in December 1980, while readings of “Rats” by Richard Hurndal and “The Haunted Dolls’ House” by David Ashford were featured on Radio 4’s Morning Story slot in the early 1980s.

  Conrad Phillips, Peter Copley and Kim Hartman starred in yet another version of “Casting the Runes,” written by Gregory Evans and re-titled “The Hex,” which was broadcast in January 1981 as an episode of Radio 4’s Afternoon Play.

  James Aubrey read “Rats” on the same station in June 1986, while The Late Book: Ghost Stories was a series of fifteen-minute readings of M.R. James stories that ran on Radio 4 between 1997 and 1998. Abridged and produced by Paul Kent and narrated by Benjamin Whitrow, the titles adapted were “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook” [sic], “Lost Hearts,” “A School Story,” “The Haunted Dolls’
House” and the ever-popular “Rats.”

  BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour featured nine classic ghost stories dramatized by Robin Brooks in fifteen-minute slots and broadcast in December 2000. The two M.R. James stories included were “Casting the Runes” and “Count Magnus.”

  Derek Jacobi took the role of James himself as he introduced Chris Harrald’s fifteen-minute adaptations of “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,’” “The Tractate Middoth,” “Lost Hearts,” “The Rose Garden” and “Number 13” on Radio 4’s M.R. James at Christmas in 2007.

  In October 2009, the BBC’s digital station Radio 7 featured Robin Bailey reading “The Mezzotint” as part of its Classic Tales of Horror series, originally released on audio CD, while Alex Jennings read an abridged version of “A Warning to the Curious” on BBC Radio 3’s Twenty Minutes in June 2011.

  Between 1976 and 1992, BBC Radio 4 broadcast seven plays written by Sheila Hodgson which featured M.R. James as a character. David March portrayed the author in the first six, while Michael Williams took over the role for the final one. An eighth play was broadcast by Ireland’s Raidió Telefis Éireann in 1994, with Aiden Grennell playing the part of James. Several of the plays were based on plots described in “Stories I Have Tried to Write,” and the prose versions were collected in Hodgson’s The Fellow Travelers and Other Ghost Stories, published by Ash-Tree Press in 1998.

  Over 2006 and 2007, the Cambridge-based Nunkie Theater Company’s one-man show, A Pleasing Terror: Two Ghost Stories by M.R. James, toured the UK and Ireland and featured Robert Lloyd Parry’s acclaimed portrayal of M.R. James. The initial stage play adapted “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” and “The Mezzotint,” and was followed in 2007 by Oh, Whistle … (“‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” and “The Ash-tree”) and in 2009 by A Warning to the Curious (the title story and “Lost Hearts”).

  Parry recreated his award-winning role for special performances at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York; the 2009 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon, and the 2010 World Horror Convention in Brighton, England, as well as for various audio books and DVD recordings.

  Although James McBryde remains perhaps the best-known artist to have illustrated James’ stories, he is far from the only one. There have been many interpretations over the years in books and magazines, and some of the most memorable depictions of the author’s work include Clive Upton’s illustration accompanying “The Mezzotint” in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries (1936) and Ernest Wallcousins’ scene from “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,’” which was used as the frontispiece for the 1947 edition of The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James.

  Charles Keeping produced nine lithographs for the Folio Society’s 1973 collection Ghost Stories of M.R. James, selected by Nigel Kneale.

  M.R. James’ amusing autobiography, Eton and King’s: Recollections, Mostly Trivial 1875–1925 was published by Williams & Norgate in 1926, but there was more to be found in American history professor Richard William Pfaff’s privately-funded biography Montague Rhodes James (1980) and Michael Cox’s complimentary study, M.R. James: An Informal Portrait (1983).

  In 1956, Gwendolen McBryde—the widow of the illustrator of Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary—edited Montague Rhodes James: Letters to a Friend, in which she collected approximately 300 letters that she and her daughter had received from the author between December 1904 and December 1935.

  As unlikely as it may seem today, James’ final story, “A Vignette,” from the November 1936 issue of The London Mercury and Bookman, had languished in obscurity until editor Richard Dalby rediscovered it for his 1971 anthology The Sorceress in Stained Glass and Other Ghost Stories. Even more remarkably, there were more rediscoveries to come.

  “The Experiment: A New Year’s Eve Ghost Story” was originally published in the December 31, 1931, edition of the Morning Post. Once again, probably because it was published too late to be included in The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James, it remained mostly forgotten until anthologist Hugh Lamb reprinted it in The Thrill of Horror (1975).

  “And to close this anthology of rare tales,” wrote Lamb in his introduction to the tale, “I am extremely proud to present a story by the great M.R. James, not included in his collected volume, as far as I can ascertain never before published in book form and certainly forgotten for over forty years … Though I would be the first to acknowledge that it is by no means the best story James ever wrote, it still makes an important addition to the available works of the undisputed master of the ghost story.”

  The tale was apparently written under some editorial constraints: “The limits of space are tiresome,” complained James, “and I don’t know if they will take it—I’m not sure I would in their place.”

  Even more obscure was “The Malice of Inanimate Objects,” which appeared in the first edition of a little Etonian magazine and then promptly disappeared for almost fifty years.

  “In 1932 James compiled an incomplete list of his published writings on the back of an annotated Greek Testament whose interleaves served him as a rudimentary diary,” explained Michael Cox. “During the preparation of my biography of James, I consulted the ‘diary’ on several occasions and was puzzled by an item that seemed to indicate a connection with the ghost stories.

  “The entry in question was ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’; there was a date—1933—and there were references to ‘Masquerade’ and ‘Eton.’ Investigation revealed the existence of an Etonian ephemeral magazine called The Masquerade, the first number of which appeared in June 1933. There were two copies extant in the college library. On pages 29 through 32 was a short ghost story, ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ by M.R. James, who was then Provost of Eton.”

  The story was finally reprinted in Ghosts & Scholars No.6 (1984) and received its first American publication the following year in the August edition of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine.

  “It is, to be sure,” continued Cox, “far from being one of James’ best stories, and shows every indication of having been written hastily, perhaps in response to a request for a tale from the editors of The Masquerade. But it is nonetheless an interesting addition to the corpus of perhaps the greatest modern ghost writer.”

  Ghosts & Scholars was a small magazine that Rosemary Pardoe began publishing in 1979. Dedicated to M.R. James and stories in the Jamesian tradition, the irregular publication included nonfiction contributions from, amongst others, Mike Ashley, Hugh Lamb, Richard Dalby, A.F. Kidd, Christopher and Barbara Roden, and James himself.

  In 1987, Dalby edited Masters of Fantasy 3: M.R. James for a series of booklets produced by The British Fantasy Society. It not only included a biographical essay and a checklist of first editions by the editor, but Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe contributed a guide to hotels the author stayed at, and there were reprints of James’ “A School Story” and his Evening News article “Ghosts—Treat Them Gently!”—the first time that the latter had seen publication in fifty-six years!

  That same year, Dalby and Rosemary Pardoe coedited the illustrated hardcover anthology Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James. Along with an Introduction by Michael Cox, the book also included “Ghosts—Treat Them Gently!,” twenty-three short stories, plus two of the better entries in a Christmas ghost story competition selected and judged by James himself on behalf of The Spectator magazine (December 27, 1930).

  However, perhaps Rosemary Pardoe’s most important contribution to the Jamesian canon was The Fenstanton Witch and Others, a fifty-three-page booklet of M.R. James material issued under her own Haunted Library imprint in 1999.

  It contained revised versions of the titular short story draft (originally published in Ghosts & Scholars No.12 [1990]), “Marcillyle-Hayer” (Ghosts & Scholars No.22 [1996]), “John Humphreys” (Ghosts & Scholars No.16 [1993]) and “A Night in King’s College Chapel,” which was possibly written as early as
1892 and received its first publication in Ghosts & Scholars No.7 (1985).

  The booklet also featured the first publication of the incomplete story drafts “The Game of Bear,” “Speaker Lenthall’s Tomb” (in a severely truncated version) and “Merfield House,” along with a reprint of “The Malice of Inanimate Objects,” the revised transcript of the original notes for a lecture James gave on “The Novels and Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu” at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on March 16, 1923 (first published in Ghosts & Scholars No.7), a selection of letters written by the author to Sibyl Cropper and another, written in 1928, to Nicholas Llewelyn Davies (with notes by Jack Adrian).

  After twenty-one years and thirty-three issues, Pardoe’s Ghosts & Scholars changed its name to The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter in 2002, ceased publishing fiction and started producing both electronic and paper editions, but soon dropped the electronic version. A twice-yearly hard-copy edition continues to be published today, and the magazine has recently started including fiction again.

  Issue No.20 (October 2011) included a previously unpublished supernatural poem by James, contained in a letter written to his family from Cyprus in January 1888. It was titled “Living Night” for its appearance in the twice-yearly periodical.

  In 1979, respected British anthologist Peter Haining compiled M.R. James—Book of the Supernatural, which brought together various obscure pieces by and about the author (including the stories originally unearthed by Richard Dalby and Hugh Lamb), along with contributions by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Erckmann-Chatrian. Sir John Betjeman supplied a brief Foreword, while Christopher Lee was represented by “A Tribute to M.R.J.” The book was reprinted in America three years later under the title M.R. James—The Book of Ghost Stories.