I just finished the Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James — the first time, I think, I’ve read them all in one go, though over the years I’ve read most of them several times.
James calls them “ghost stories,” though as far as I can tell only one of them (“A Neighbour’s Landmark”) features a ghost — if we distinguish, as I think we should, a ghost (a disembodied though possibly visible dead person) from a revenant (a reanimated corpse). In James the revenant is the norm, along with demons, which usually bear some kind of half-human half-animal appearance, like the creatures in The Island of Doctor Moreau (which I wonder if James knew).
As Adam Roberts writes in a forthcoming review of a new James biography, “there’s rarely anything spectral or evanescent about James’s hauntings: they almost always possess a hideous physicality, a solidity, palpability and presence.” Precisely. A great many fearful things in James’s stories are hairy, and most of them have mouths. And consider this moment from “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” in which the narrator is striving to discover the hidden treasure of the title:
Well, I felt to the right, and my fingers touched something curved, that felt — yes — more or less like leather; dampish it was, and evidently part of a heavy, full thing. There was nothing, I must say, to alarm one. I grew bolder, and putting both hands in as well as I could, I pulled it to me, and it came. It was heavy, but moved more easily than I had expected…. Then I heard [an assistant] call softly, “All right, sir,” and went on pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and put its arms round my neck.
Yeeeeeesh.
In an essay about writing ghost stories, James says that the two major forms that threat takes in his stories are retribution and malice. Most of the people to whom bad things happen in his stories deserve it — they receive retribution for their sins and crimes — but some are just unlucky in running across malicious things.
The chief topoi, as it were, of the stories are
- the Vengeful Dead
- Demonic Guardians
- Cursed Objects
- Flight and Pursuit
- Prophetic Dreams
The Cursed Objects are typically either books (linked to the lust for forbidden knowledge) or treasure (linked to greed). James seems especially compelled by stories of people fleeing, almost always ineffectually, from some horror. Probably the most powerful example comes from the most famous story, “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll come to You, My Lad,’“ which I think I can quote here without ruining the whole story. The narrator is having a Prophetic Dream:
A long stretch of shore — shingle edged by sand, and intersected at short intervals with black groynes running down to the water — a scene, in fact, so like that of his afternoon’s walk that, in the absence of any landmark, it could not be distinguished therefrom. The light was obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor was visible. Then, in the distance, a bobbing black object appeared; a moment more, and it was a man running, jumping, clambering over the groynes, and every few seconds looking eagerly back. The nearer he came the more obvious it was that he was not only anxious, but even terribly frightened, though his face was not to be distinguished. He was, moreover, almost at the end of his strength. On he came; each successive obstacle seemed to cause him more difficulty than the last. ‘Will he get over this next one?’ thought Parkins; ‘it seems a little higher than the others.’ Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he did get over, and fell all in a heap on the other side (the side nearest to the spectator). There, as if really unable to get up again, he remained crouching under the groyne, looking up in an attitude of painful anxiety.
So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined. There was something about its motion which made Parkins very unwilling to see it at close quarters. It would stop, raise arms, bow itself toward the sand, then run stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and then, rising upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying. The moment came when the pursuer was hovering about from left to right only a few yards beyond the groyne where the runner lay in hiding. After two or three ineffectual castings hither and thither it came to a stop, stood upright, with arms raised high, and then darted straight forward towards the groyne.
Once more I say: Yeeeeeesh.
Demons and the Vengeful Dead never (to my recollection) appear in a single story: the norm is just one of them as the primary danger. But otherwise the elements may appear in any combination.
What is extraordinary about the stories is how much variety of interest and imagination James is able to sustain — at least until late in his career: the final stories are brief and uninspired — from this extremely limited palette of options. These things are so foundational to the human experience of dread that they are capable, it appears, of being recombined infinitely. Endless forms most terrible and most dreadful, to rewrite Darwin.
