Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James

Among the unrecorded pieces of M. R. James bibliography exists a long-forgotten and unique ghost story competition which was selected and judged by James at Christmas 1930 on behalf of The Spectator. One of the difficult rules of the competition specified that the entries should not exceed a thousand words, which meant that the leisurely build-up of Jamesian tales had to be forfeited in favour of a more speedy and pithy approach. From the large number of stories submitted, the dozen best ones were carefully read by James, and his interesting comments are here reprinted for the first time, together with the two entries which proved most successful in his opinion.

GHOST STORY COMPETITION By Dr M. R. James

The limitations of the space allowed to competitors, viz., ‘not exceeding a thousand words’, has inevitably cramped their style. I have always thought that one very desirable quality in a ghost story is leisureliness. Before now I have said it. The ghost story is essentially a somewhat old-fashioned thing; that is one of the reasons why Christmas time, which appeals to old association in so many ways, is considered the proper season for ghost stories. And in so far as the ghost story is old-fashioned, it ought to move at a pace suitable to its age. Such alarming features as it has, if they are to produce their one effect, must be introduced gradually. An explosion, as of a maroon, is often legitimate enough, but the reader must be put into the mood of expecting it. Hence I attribute great importance to the setting of such a story. I like, as I do in a detective novel, to make some sort of acquaintance with the actors. And, I would add, the more ordinary and normal both setting and actors are, the more effective will be the entangling of them in a dreadful situation, and the more ready will he who follows their adventures be to shake the head and murmur those words which I have long since registered as the proper ones for the reader of ghost stories, to wit, ‘If I’m not very careful, something like this may happen to me.’

Now it is clearly impossible for anyone so limited as are your competitors in point of space to fulfil the conditions I have laid down. The writer is forced to plunge in medias res. Still, he must have a setting and an environment to indicate, and a patient who must be characterized, as well as some being to operate upon that patient. The question is, who has managed these matters best among the twelve authors who have come before me?

I tabulate the settings and I find that three are connected with car-smashes, two with trains, one with France ancient, one with France modern, one with the War, one with a London house, one with a country house; one gives us a benevolent ancestral ghost; and the scene of one is set in China. The car, in spite of its terrific death-roll, is hardly the right vehicle for the peculiar horror we want in the Christmas ghost story. It moves too quick (much too quick for my liking) and runs the risk of a Grand Guignol effect. That is the fault of The Grin, and A Night’s Hospitality. One without title which tells of the Great North Road is better, but its point—a ghost who disbelieves in ghosts after having been one for a year—is too sophisticated.

Of the two train stories neither is quite coherent. I do not ask, heaven forbid! for a rigid sequence of cause and effect in a ghost story, but I do want some thread to tie the happenings together, though it should be guessed at rather than seen. In the Red Beard I do not get this: I cannot see what connexion can be supposed to exist between the man seen in the train and the wicked Baronet. The other, In the Fog, does connect the events together, but the catastrophe is wholly obscure (nor, though I may be very stupid, do I understand how that which was going on in the next compartment was seen reflected on the fog: does this happen?).

The revolution episode in The Return is of good quality: but if you are asking to be alarmed you will be disappointed. The other French scene, No Wine, etc., I cannot class as a ghost story. The ‘ghost’ was a living man. As to the War story, The Haunted Trench, one feels that almost anything might have happened in the War. It is the wrong setting to choose for a ghost story: you cannot make it more terrifying in that way.

In The Atmosphere That Stayed we find familiar ground, an evil home in St John’s Wood. Very right: but our ghost is too vague: were the story a ‘veridical’ account of an experience, communicated with proper credentials to the S.P.R., it would command the attention which it fails to rouse as fiction. The benevolent great grandmother in Old China does not stray out of an ordinary groove.

Two tales remain which I think the best, The House-Party and Here He Lies, etc. The latter causes me a slight difficulty: the note at the end appears to indicate that the writer did not invent the story but had it told to her. It is a good story and well told, and, if this note does not constitute a disqualification, I should place Here He Lies first. If it is disqualified, I should give the prize to The House-Party, which has the merits (in my eyes) of a perfectly ordinary setting, a horrid catastrophe, and a curiosity legitimately excited, and not satisfied, in the mind of the reader. There is sympathy, too, roused for the victim—another good point.

It has been an interesting and pleasant experience to read these stories. All of them show some imagination: few have any serious faults in expression. The chief obstacle to excellence has been, as I said, the limited space: almost everyone would have been better for more elbowroom: but I cannot wonder that a limit was imposed. What might not have been the fate of a preliminary sifter, compelled to read, against time, a hundred stories of 3,000 words apiece!

M. R. JAMES

Eton College

‘HERE HE LIES WHERE HE LONGED TO BE’ Winifred Galbraith

You won’t believe this story; you’ll say it is all moonshine. I should say so myself, if I did not know it were true. But whenever I think it must have been a dream, I see again that look of deep peace on Lao Ming’s face, and then I feel glad that the old man sleeps with his fathers in the distant Shensi hills and not in the crowded rabbit-warrens of the Shanghai cemeteries.

I met Lao Ming in 1927 when I left the interior because of the Communists. He told me he had been born and bred in Shensi and had held high official positions under the Manchus, but, since the Revolution, he had drifted to Shanghai and lived—goodness knows how—in one room in the native city. During that dreary winter some of my most pleasant hours were spent in that dirty little room. We both loved to talk about Shensi and I found that his dearest wish was to return there to die, although such a journey really seemed impossible for a man of his age. He was a classical scholar, deeply learned in the magics of (corrupt) Buddhism and, one day, he introduced me to a friend who, he said, was a wizard of great skill and repute. As I listened to their talk, I used to feel as if I had fallen out of the twentieth century into the company of two mediaeval magicians. This charm eaten at night would bring a much-desired son; rats’ ears ground to powder and applied on an enchanted paper would relieve a swelling tumour; and once they spoke of spells for the dead, but there I showed my scepticism too plainly and they stopped. Strange talk within sight of the Shanghai Bund!

When I was able to return inland and went to say ‘Goodbye’ to Lao Ming, I found he was very ill. His magician friend was with him and followed me out.

‘I’m afraid he’ll never see the Shensi hills now,’ I said.

I caught a strange look on the man’s face and I did a silly thing.

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘If I give you fifty dollars, will you promise to bury Lao Ming in Shensi?’

The magician bowed.

‘It shall be done,’ he said. And I actually counted out fifty dollars and pushed them into his hand. I did feel wild with myself afterwards, I can tell you, as I was awfully short of money at the time and knew they would only waste it on a good feast at the funeral.

It was a fine, clear night. My coolies had consented to go an extra stage after dark, as we all wanted to get home before the festival. They trotted along with bent knees, crooning a little song, and I walked behind, not too tired to enjoy the beauty of the moon, as it lit up the rice fields in the valleys and the dark clumps of trees on the hill sides. Suddenly the foremost coolie gave a blood-curdling yell, dropped his burdens and fled, screaming over the fields. The others followed. I could see no cause for alarm. A little string of people advanced towards us on the narrow path. It was rather unusual to see men out so late, but I thought they were probably a band of villagers who had been delayed at the market. Then I saw that the first man held a bowl before him in both hands, but the others carried nothing and walked rather stiffly, without moving their heads. I called out a greeting as I stepped off the path to let them pass, but no one replied. The second in the line was a woman with a little baby tied on her back, the third was a man in a ragged soldier’s uniform with a great gaping wound all down one side of his bare leg. And then—I looked straight into the face of my friend Lao Ming. With a scream I could not suppress, I turned and ran like the coolies across the wet fields. The magician had kept his word and Lao Ming would rest in his beloved Shensi.

When we were safely round the fire that night, the coolies told me more about this curious procession. It was a death march. Some men have power to prevent the decomposition of the body and to make the dead move at their command. When a man dies far from his native land, his relatives find out such a wizard and pay him to lead the corpse home. He waits till he has collected a number of such commissions and then sets out on his long march. He walks by night, carrying a rice-bowl of water in his hands and followed step by step by his charges. At dawn he plans to reach an inn where he engages a room, puts the bowl down on the floor and the bodies at once fall over and lie there till nightfall, when their weary pilgrimage begins again. Over hills and rivers for hundreds of miles they walk till they reach their goal. Then the water must be spilt on the ground and the bowl broken to fragments. So can their bodies decay and their souls rest in peace.

It is incredible, isn’t it? I did one more thing about it. I wrote to our agent at the place where Lao Ming’s family graves were said to be and asked him if there had been a recent burial. He made enquiries and found that there was a newly-dug grave but there seemed to be some mystery, for no one would tell him anything nor could he hear that anyone had recently died.

Somehow I don’t regret that fifty dollars now!

[NOTE—The Chinese gentleman who told me this tale and vouched for its truth held a diplomatic position in England for many years. WINIFRED GALBRAITH]

THE HOUSE-PARTY Emma S. Duffin

It was Saturday morning. Bella, the new housemaid at Stamford Court, was going from room to room with trays of tea, pulling up blinds, leaving cans of hot water, nervously trying to make as little noise as possible, but the tea-things had an unfortunate way of sliding on the tray in her shaking hand, the blinds eluded her grasp and sprang with an alarming rattle up the windows, and the brass cans clanged against the basins as she deposited them on the washstands. Some of the occupants of the beds opened half-awake and slightly irritated eyes; others yawned and turned sleepily on their pillows.

She gave a sigh of relief as she closed the last door, then stood doubtfully regarding another at the end of the corridor. Was she in charge of that room too? This big house was so confusing, and Alice, the head housemaid, was so snubbing that she did not like to ask. Yes, she supposed she must be. How dreadful if she had forgotten it . . . She hastily returned to the pantry and prepared another tray.

Ten minutes later she knocked at the door of the bedroom. There was no reply, but few of the week-end guests troubled to reply, so she opened the door quietly. The room was dark and bitterly cold; as she crossed the threshold she felt as if she had stepped into an ice-cold fog; it smelt musty, too—like a cellar. A feeling of unreasoning terror seized her and froze her blood. Between the door and the window she paused, feeling as if her shaking limbs could carry her no farther. The tray in her hand shook so that the tea-things rattled. She stood at the foot of the old-fashioned four-poster bed and unwillingly, as if mesmerized, turned her head in its direction.

In the dim light of the dark winter morning she could not discern whether the occupant were a man or a woman. Above the bed clothes a pair of eyes seemed to glow as a cat’s eyes glow in the dark, and to pierce through to her very brain. It was only with a terrible effort of will that she deposited the tray on the bedside table; then hastily pulling up the blinds, reckless of—indeed, reassured by—the noise she was making, she hurried from the room, not daring to cast another glance at the bed lest she should see—what?—she asked herself wildly as she stood with panting breath and flying pulse in the corridor. But her unspoken question remained unanswered.

As she descended the backstairs, a smell of coffee and frying bacon reached her nostrils; from below came the cheerful clatter of breakfast preparations. She heaved a sigh of relief as she heard the homely sounds.

After breakfast she emptied basins, made beds and dusted rooms, leaving what she in her own mind designated ‘the room’ till the last.

When she entered it her fears seemed absurd. The sun shone through the windows, the bed stood empty, but its late occupant seemed to have spent an uneasy night: the sheets were twisted into ropes, the pillows crushed so that she had to put clean covers on them. Strange, too, the water in the basin was dyed a rusty red and one of the towels was stained with blood. Even as she told herself that the guest must have cut himself shaving, a feeling of indescribable horror crept over Bella, but she put the room to rights and went about her other duties.

The next morning found her, in spite of good resolutions, shaking from top to toe as she stood outside the door and knocked with a trembling hand. As before, no voice answered; again, as she crossed the threshold, a chill seemed to penetrate to her very bones. She had decided that she would on no account look at the bed or its occupant; so, putting the tray hastily down, she crossed to the window and pulled up the blinds, but she felt that the eyes from the bed were watching her and that something worse than a wild animal was crouching to spring. She stumbled from the room in a panic, shutting the door with a bang that reverberated down the corridor. Rushing to the backstairs, she leaned half-fainting against the bannisters.

At breakfast in the servants’ hall she looked round the staff with tragic eyes, seeking someone in whom she could confide; but they were all strangers to her and her courage failed. When she went upstairs again the room door lay open, the room was empty, but as before in confusion, the basin filled with that sinisterly dyed water, the towel again blood-stained. Tremblingly she once more put it to rights.

Monday morning—thank God the house-party would break up today. This was the last time she need enter that ghastly room! She comforted herself with this thought as she knocked at ‘the door’.

Three hours later, Mrs Grieves, the housekeeper, was inspecting the empty bedrooms with Alice, the head housemaid, to see that all was left in order.

‘You needn’t inspect the haunted room,’ Alice said, sarcastically; ‘nobody slept in it. Her Ladyship gave orders nobody was to be put in it again.’

Nevertheless, Mrs Grieves conscientiously opened the door. The furniture was shrouded in linen covers, the hearthrug rolled back, the curtains of the four-poster looped up; but what was that? A figure on the bed. Mrs Grieves and Alice approached, and a cry of horror and dismay burst simultaneously from their lips. Across the bed lay the figure of a girl. One hand clutched the bed curtain, the other arm was thrown up as if to ward off something, and the crooked elbow partially concealed the face. But as they looked down they recognized in the twisted features, the staring eyes, the half-open mouth, Bella, the new housemaid. She was dead.