I've saved my favorite book for last. M.R. James is my favorite teller of ghostly tales. Each one is pitch perfect and strange and eerie. The above book is my favorite collection but any will suffice. The Grimshaw cover is so creepy.
"Many ... tales were penned as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to select gatherings of friends. ....James perfected a method of story-telling which has since become known as Jamesian. The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following key elements:
- a characterful setting in an English village, seaside town or country estate; an ancient town in France, Denmark or Sweden; or a venerable abbey or university
- a nondescript and rather naive gentleman-scholar as protagonist (often of a reserved nature)
- the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow unlocks, calls down the wrath, or at least attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave
According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself: 'If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'" He also perfected the literary technique of the genre: narrating supernatural events principally through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief. He summed up his approach in his foreword to the anthology Ghosts and Marvels: "Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo.… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.""
From wikipedia
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