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if i had a creepy cool name like montague rhodes james i'd probably write ghost stories too.
I don't watch horror movies because of the engulfing experience that leaves me terror-stricken for a few days and I thought reading horror tales might be a better alternative as I would have more control over the absorption of it. Stephan King is my go to for such an experience, but I am really glad to discover M R James. His stories do not give you jump scares, you do not even feel the element of being haunted or chased. It's a silent unexplained uneasiness that blankets you in a few sentences
Hard to imagine a more perfect collection of ghost stories if you like that sort of thing.
Set from around the 1880s to 1early 20th century, these ghost stories are more subtle in the horror and more polished in the scene set, and the detective work involved in solving the mystery.Many of them were written to be told as Christmas Eve enterntainments read to gatherings of friends.The horror usually comes at the end and precisely because of the scene set is what makes the stories memorable in their own way.Set usually in a country or seaside town, or an abbey or old university or librar...
Its the perfect season for a horror read. The nights are dark and wintry, and the days are bleak and cloudy. This time of the year I decided that instead of reading a novel, I should try my pick at reading some short horror stories. I am glad I made this decision because this brought me to the works of the famous author, M.R. James, who to be honestly embarrassed with myself I had never heard of before. After reading his biography I realized that he used to write short stories which he would nar...
I have been reading ghost stories for more than thirty years now, and still consider Montague Rhodes James' stories as the most superior, skilfully written and chilling tales to be produced in this genre.
There is a Monty Python sketch in which a chat show host interviews a man whose only claim to fame is that he says things in a very roundabout way. That man could have been MR James, who seemed to face an epic internal struggle every time he wanted to commence a new story. It became clear half way through this collection that I could probably skip the first two thirds of any story as unnecessarily detailed set-up. How's this for an opening paragraph, from "Count Magnus"?"By what means the papers...
Originally published in 1931. Quite spooky and very, very upper-class English.I love the little asides sprinkled throughout:"Few people can resist the temptation to try a little amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for the satisfaction of how successful they would have been had they only taken it up seriously."" ' I think probably it was quite an attractive place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any tolerable features. ' "And I love that James descri...
I don't like being scared. I don't watch horror films. I've spent years trying to forget the ghost stories I overheard as a child. But this hasn't been too bad. I suppose a vintage ghost story isn't as scary as the one told by your aunt when you are 11 😉
I did this as a mix of reading and listening to and it worked very well. These are ghost stories in a traditional sense and they are done really well. Of course there are a lot of similarities in the stories and also M.R. James tends to tell all his stories in a very fixed way. But nevertheless I enjoyed them and there was a dark undertone to them, I often miss in other ghost stories.
I didn't finish it, only read a few stories from the beginning. It was alright, I suppose. A generic late 19th/ early 20th-century novel to spook yourself with. The stories were entertaining, albeit a tad redundant. Not very surprising. I understood the formula and could pretty much predict what would happen in the stories. Was pretty cool for the Halloween season though. :)
Classic ghost stories will always have a place in my heart. When it comes to the sub-genre of ghosts there is no question those writers who crafted the genre had an advantage over current writers. They were traveling new territory and laying the very groundwork for those writers in the future. And so many of them got it right, including M.R. James.This collection of some of his finest works not only features moonlight shores, ghostly apparitions and classic spectres, it's also an absolutely gorg...
