Classic Ghost Stories

Mr. Williams, the curator of a university art museum (implied to be Oxford) purchases a mezzotint from an art dealer. The painting changes each time Mr. Williams and the colleagues he enlists look at it. In the end it is suggested that the painting depicts a poacher named Gawdy (who had been hanged) kidnapping the heir of a Mr. Arthur Francis, who hanged Gawdy for poaching on his land.

The tale documents the tale of Sir Richard Castringham, who has just inherited a country seat with an unfortunate history. The house has been cursed since the day his ancestor, Sir Matthew, condemned a woman to death for witchcraft. It is soon discovered that the ancient ash tree outside his bedroom window is the root of the problem.

M.R. James wrote "Wailing Well" for the Eton Boy Scouts, and read it at their summer camp at Worbarrow Bay in Dorset (about thirteen miles east of Weymouth) on July 27, 1927. In a letter of July 25 (Letters to a Friend, ed. Gwendolen McBryde, Arnold 1956, p.144), MRJ says: "Tomorrow it is proposed that the Lower Master takes me by car to Worbarrow Bay in Dorset where the Scouts are in camp - it is further proposed that by the camp fire I should read them a story of a terrible nature, which I have made - contrary to my expectation." The tale is therefore only the second that MRJ wrote specifically for reading to children (the other being "A School Story" for the King's College Choir School).

Professor Parkin, a stuffy Cambridge academic, arrives for an off-season stay at a hotel somewhere on the English east coast. Preferring to keep to himself, Parkin spends his stay walking along the beach and visits a local graveyard, which has become overgrown and unkempt. While there, he spots a small object protruding from a grave which is partly undermined by the edge of the cliff. He uncovers it and finds it is a bone whistle, which he keeps. When walking back along the shore, he turns twice and sees a dark silhouetted figure standing still in the distance in front of a setting sun, appearing to watch him. Later, in the calm of his hotel room, he cleans and inspects the whistle, revealing a carved inscription: "Quis est iste qui venit" ("Who is this who is coming?"). He blows the whistle and a windstorm begins outside. Later that night, Parkin is kept awake by mysterious noises in his hotel room. At breakfast the following morning, another guest at the hotel asks Parkin if he believes in ghosts. Parkin responds in a typically academic fashion, dismissing such beliefs as little more than superstition. However, that night, Parkin appears to have disturbing dreams of a spectre pursuing him on the beach. His nerves are not helped when, the following morning, he is informed by a maid that both of the beds in his room have been slept in – even though Parkin only slept in one. Increasingly disturbed, he searches a book for answers. That night, he is awakened by a sound like flapping sheets. As he sits up in bed, the sheets from the other bed across the room move and then rise up into the phantom from the shore. Waking another hotel guest who comes to his aid, Parkin sits in stunned terror at what he has just witnessed.

Mrs Anstruther would like to plant a rose garden, however the clearing she wishes to use gives people nightmares and they hear whispers by an old post in the clearing. Soon she and her husband learn the history of the clearing and the injustice that took place there.