'Tis the Season = M.R. James

Collected Stories lives on my bedside cabinet but Xmas = M.R. James time for real. Read "Casting the Runes" again the other night cos it's pleasant enough to not kick the nightmares in i.e. at least it ends well. That thing he wrote for the Boy Scouts is maybe the wickedest piece of child-scaring I've ever read.

I know there's some James love on this board, let's try and work out why he's the best Christmas writer ever.

Right, you've inspired me to get out my collections--will report back!

The Complete Stories is almost certainly my most revisited book but it mysteriously seems to go missing all the time. Like right now damnit.

Not been updated for ages, and not the most accessible of sites, but if you love MRJ, you need to know about this:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GS.html

He always makes me want to chase up people like Arthur Machen and I think this is partly some proto Wicker Man "british isles is evil and old" imaginary anti-nostalgia but I have never read a writer who can properly compete.

The White People by Machen is definitely worth a read.

Online here: http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/whtpeopl.htm

Much more dense and trippy than James. Some elucidation here: http://www.violetbooks.com/REVIEWS/rbadac-numinous.html

I read some Machen on the net one time but I need proper fo' real books.

BBC sussed this shit cos they always do James adaptations over the christmas-tide. I suppose it ties into hiding in our mead-halls over the winter solstice atavism too.

Hard to pick a favourite James story but the Scouts one is definitely one of the darkest and most horrible.

Hard to look at an unmown summer field without feeling it, too.

'Rats' is a really intense shocker. 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' and 'Count Magnus' also jump to mind.

Doesn't seem to be online, but there is an occasionally reprinted chapbook called "The James Gang", listing MRJ influenced authors of ghost stories. From memory: H.R. Wakefield, E.F. Benson. L.T.C Rolt, A.N.L. Munby, Andrew Caldecott and so on . .

Benson is a guy who always cropped up in childhood ghost compilations and I should maybe try and track down his collected ghost stories next.

Wordsworth do a cheap (3-quid) omnibus of the ghost stories of Benson and his brother.

E F Benson lived in Lamb House in Rye after the death of Henry James in 1915... my Wordsworth collection of Henry James' supernatural stories sits right next to my Wordsworth collection of M R James' supernatural stories...SPOOKY

Getting back to M.R. James, he was an academic expert on the biblical apocrypha, and the medieval literature around it, knew a lot about medieval ideas on demonology and witchcraft and seems to have been at least open to the idea that some of it was true. This certainly gives his stuff its antiquarian depth, and must have something to do with its psychological edge.

There's a good essay by someone called Jacqueline Simpson in Folklore about the origins (particularly Scandinavian) of his ghosts, the rules that they obey.

Here we go -

"The Rules of Folklore" in the Ghost Stories of M. R. James

Jacqueline Simpson
Folklore, Vol. 108, (1997), pp. 9-18

Interestingly, the device he used in Casting the Runes (of the unwitting acceptance of a message resulting in death unless it can be passed on to another unsuspecting victim - later used in, amongst others, the various Ringu/Ring films) Simpson claims is completely original.

Casting the Runes also has that memorable image of the insects crawling out of the slide projection screen at a children's party - possibly a precursor to that brilliant and startling moment in the Ring films.

That's fascinating - he puts that over so convincingly that I just assumed it was a real tradition. Be interested to know if the writer of Ringu was referencing either the James story or the Night of the Demon movie.

The whole slide projection sequence in "Casting the Runes" is vivid and memorable. If anything the "happy" ending undermines the horror a little bit.

I'm sure that there are folkloric precursors to the cursed message, even if James invented the specifics himself. The Black Spot in Treasure Island is kind of an influence I think. Not to take anything away from James himself tho.

I think the Black Spot (god how that gave me nightmares as a child - that and Blind Pew) was just a signal, like a white feather, that some sort of (man made) retribution or communal judgement was at hand, but yes, certainly I'm sure cursed objects, papers etc are a strong element of lots of folk beliefs - I suspect that she was referring to either the unwitting nature of the person receiving the message, or the element where if it gets passed on, the curse moves entirely over to the other person, possibly both - as you say, the specifics.

I've read (nowhere particularly authoritative I don't think) that Ringu was influenced by Casting the Runes, but at the time I read that, I felt that was perhaps a little tenuous, I'm not really sure now, but not knowing anything about the genesis of the film, am only really going on instinct.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_v108/ai_20438230/?tag=content;col1

Here's a link to that Jacqueline Simpson article by the way.

Thanks!

xpost: I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Night of the Demon (the film of Casting the Runes) is well-known and respected in Japan. I don't know if MRJ's stories are, but it would be nice to make the connection.

I have a vague recollection that Ringu was based on some kind of actual school playground urban legend, but I could be wrong.

A big problem I have with lots of non-James stuff is the characters often explicitly hypothesise about the nature of the hauntings, go on about the spiritual dimension, speculate about mechanisms for passing from one side to the other, etc etc. It always comes across as thoroughly bogus and destroys any suspension of disbelief. I can't recall James ever doing this, his horrors just are, and you accept them thoroughly.

Same point made in the article above, I discover.

A collection of James' own pieces on the history and construction of ghost stories:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/mr/collect/appendix.html

i only learnt today his first name is montague

James' ghosts and demons are almost never communicable with, which is another point in their favour. They're almost always implacable forces of evil once they've been disturbed, with no chance for the victim to reason with them. At best, you can dodge them or put them onto somebody else's trail.

Also they're generally real physical things - revenants and demons - rather than wispy spooks and spectres. Not that there aren't scary stories with spooks and spectres, but James' ghoulies seem to generate a more palpable fear.

Yeah as in they will mess you up for real so shutting your eyes going "not scared not scared" won't cut it. As real things I guess they are also that much more tied to their landscape too, hence landscape = fear.

This stuff was all very real to him, that's what makes it so intense. His ghosts are as real as his haunted houses - he would have been able to tell you all about their architecture - and as solid as the old-testament universe that he saw behind the Edwardian world he lived in.

44 sleeps till christmas a website just told me! fuck off. coincidentally i am reading m r james for the first time and huh.

well that made me very efficiently spooked when i was walking around the house in the dark last night but i don't really know how else i felt about it

+enjoyed the running jokes about golf
+favourite 'the mezzotint' = the cambridge types in it displaying utter aesthetic detachment at the supernatural stuff, just kinda 'huh, that ghoul totally stole a kid ... no biggie', like the inverse of Standard Lovecraft Emotion
+don't know how much of this stuff was as ... familiar? not predictable exactly ... at the head of the last century
+like the one with the ward of the guy who's an expert on sacrificial rituals and whose previous wards have vanished
+and he explains that afterwards!! in case you didn't figure it out!!
+whereas 'whistle and i'll come to you, my lad', there's a foregrounded MYSTERIOUS INSCRIPTION which he never explains!!
+contrast to the ones in canon alberic's treasure, which are explained and overexplained. is 'the gold-bug' the (modern) origin of this type of story?
+'room 13' or 'number 13' a fine display of the 'the space in the room is wrong' thing, which is probably my favourite horror topos or trope of all time

Mezzotint = owner is freaked out but god help him he has to watch = maybe archivist's reaction to the unstoppable brutality of the past

inscription in Oh Whistle doesn't feel untranslatable but again the finder's "pooh pooh"ing draws him in
room 13 is straight Poe but Poe is ugly at this kind of horror of physics too, James sells you the naivety of his protagonists imo

I presume you've all googled the inscription.

Interesting display of (non-scholarly) detachment in "Rats".

sorry yeah i think i cd read the inscription anyway when i was undrunk

anyho the place is the thing, imagine how horrible non-rural UK ghost writing mostly cd be

the mezzotint guy didn't seem that freaked out by it. he was willing to give that it was enough of a suspension of normal circumstances that his scout could use his chair, that was the limit.

i enjoyed the presence in a couple of cases of references to psychical-research types at the periphery of the story, curious what it would do to the logic of these fictions if they'd moved any more central

basically after three stories i was thinking 'must get the collected stories as soon as possible' and after i finished the book i thought 'maybe i will get the collected stories one day when i see a copy'

Is there a "best place to start" or just dive in with any book/edition?

There are collected stories freely downloadable. Usually collections are largely chronological, it works well because a lot of his classics are in the first batch of stories but I think he gets richer and more interesting in some ways later on

cosine this

the penguin 'count magnus and other ghost stories' is his first two collections with no omissions and some extra stuff and s.t. joshi's notes are only a little bit annoying

+don't know how much of this stuff was as ... familiar? not predictable exactly ... at the head of the last century
+like the one with the ward of the guy who's an expert on sacrificial rituals and whose previous wards have vanished
+and he explains that afterwards!! in case you didn't figure it out!!

apparently i have a long history of hating on 'lost hearts'

weird note: i have a strong memory of reading that particular copy of 'ghost stories of an antiquary' in the house i grew up in ... which on the evidence of this thread never happened, as my parents had left long before the date i say i'm reading it for the first time ~

There are collected stories freely downloadable

MRJ might be the only author where I have a sudden luddite desire to claim that there's no substitute for reading him on paper. There is or was a cheapo wordsworth classics edition of the complete ghost stories, which has all but three.

There's a run of stories towards the end that up till now have never left any impression on my memory - An Episode of Cathedral History, The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance, Two Doctors, The Haunted Dolls' House, The Uncommon Prayer-Book. Just reread them all and I would need some convincing that this isn't the weakest set of the bunch.

An Episode of Cathedral History: this is good and important (= i have a *theory* abt it which i am waiting to deploy on freaky trigger).

All the others have one perfectly formed memorably nasty element but are otherwise slight (two doctors, which is largely period pastiche), formally a repeat (dolls house, as he admits), erm not un-racist (prayerbook), or technically flawed (disappearance, which i remain fond of for the punch-and-judy stuff).

caveat: i am the biggest MRJ-stan on the board and basically he did NOTHING BAD and EVERYTHING IS GOOD shut up

also ledge is clearly setting djh up for some kind of sacristan-style business with his "read it in an actual book"

one reason i like the copy i've downloaded is it collects everything and has James's introductions to the original published volumes.

There is or was a cheapo wordsworth classics edition of the complete ghost stories, which has all but three.

that's collected not complete, which sounds less oxymoronish. it has this cover, which is a perfect evocation of the jamesian atmosphere, if not quite enough to inspire the terror of the sacristan:

http://www.fineartprintsondemand.com/artists/grimshaw/moonlight_walk-400.jpg

i have a *theory* abt it which i am waiting to deploy on freaky trigger

only five others to go first eh

it's the brass ring of mrj and gatiss will as usual fail to seize it 😔

if i was Gatiss i would simply say "i'm rubbish at this, give somebody good a go"

When will there be more freaky trigger hauntography posts, that's what I'd like to know.

yeah those lazy assholes

knowing the murkiness of the details about the comings and goings of the guy in 'a warning to the curious' i've just spent some time finding out if it was possible that for count magnus's unfortunate victim, "much of his journey" home was by canal boat, alongside a traveller going from stockholm to trollhättan. it was.

that trollhättan in full:

https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2015/11/Finn-Family-Moomintroll_Hat.jpg

now there's a crossover i'd like to see.

This isn't cheap but the concept is pretty great: a book about the real life settings of hundreds of ghost stories
http://tartaruspress.com/ghost-story-gazetteer.html

I just heard a reading of "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book" on the Ephemeral podcast. Inspired me to download Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Happy Holidays.

Asking gpt-3 to write a moomin story in the style of m.r. james. 'in the style of' doesn't seem to work so well but this one gets a bit meta:

As the moon rose high in the night sky, the moomins gathered around their cozy little house, huddled together against the chill of the autumn air. In the distance, the forest was alive with the rustling of leaves and the howling of the wind, but the moomins were safe and warm inside their home.

Suddenly, a knock at the door startled them all. Who could it be at this late hour? The moomins hesitated, but eventually one of them bravely opened the door to find a stranger standing on their doorstep.

The stranger was tall and thin, with a long, curved nose and a strange, otherworldly air about him. He introduced himself as Mr. James, a traveler who had been lost in the forest for days. The moomins welcomed him inside, offering him a cup of tea and a warm fire to sit by.

As they talked, Mr. James told the moomins of his adventures in the forest, of the strange and wondrous creatures he had encountered, and of the many dangers he had faced. The moomins listened with rapt attention, entranced by his tales of adventure.

But as the night wore on, the moomins began to sense that there was something not quite right about Mr. James. His stories seemed too fantastical, too far-fetched, to be true. And there was a glint in his eye, a hint of malice, that made them uneasy.

As the moomins prepared for bed, Mr. James retired to his room, but they could hear him muttering and chanting late into the night. And when they woke the next morning, they found that Mr. James had disappeared, leaving behind only a strange, cold feeling in the air.

The moomins knew then that they had been visited by a mysterious and dangerous creature, one that threatened to upset the balance of their peaceful world. But they were strong and brave, and they knew that they would overcome this threat, just as they had overcome all the others that had come before.

And so the moomins went about their days, keeping a watchful eye out for any further signs of Mr. James, determined to protect their home and their way of life from the dangers of the forest.

As the sun set over the peaceful Moomin Valley, the Moomins gathered around the fire to tell each other ghost stories. Little My was the first to speak, her voice trembling with fear as she told the tale of the ghostly Moominpappa who roamed the woods at night, searching for lost souls to haunt.

But it was Snufkin's story that truly chilled the Moomins to the bone. He spoke of the Moominmamma who, long ago, had been possessed by a dark spirit and had begun to prey on the other Moomins, luring them into her clutches with her sweet words and gentle touch.

The Moomins listened in horror as Snufkin described how the Moominmamma had lured Moominpappa into her embrace, only to reveal her true, monstrous form and devour him whole. And now, he warned, she was coming for the rest of them.

As the fire crackled and the night grew darker, the Moomins could hear the sound of soft footsteps approaching. And then, from the shadows, the Moominmamma emerged, her eyes glowing with malevolent intent as she reached out to embrace them all.

The Moomins screamed in terror as they were pulled into the darkness, never to be seen again. And in the silence that followed, the only sound was the Moominmamma's chilling laughter, echoing through the empty valley.

classic snufkin

Count Magnus was underwhelming on several levels. I swear I take no joy in this, and if i was less hungover and more energetic would have a good think about what's wrong with the commissioning process, the cultural expectations and a bunch of other non-Gatiss factors that wind up with these rote simulacra of past glories. Schalcken the Painter was on BBC4 the night before and tho that has a few minor issues of its own the yawning gulf in quality and ambition probly just soured Magnus even more.

at least if it was bad that would've been something

no wait, one more thing. Adaptation is adaptation, fine, it's not just about faithfulness to the source text. but what fucking use is a Count Magnus with all of the horror and dread flattened out of it?

didn't realise it was on - will have to fit it on over the next few days. stoked for the disappointment.

not sure whether my memory is up to its usual tricks, or I've never heard of schlacken the painter.

it's been discussed somewhere this year i think? if not this thread, then maybe Wyrd Britain or one of the old TV movie threads

it isn't a strictly functional ghost story maybe, but it pisses over this latest effort

magnus is a pmtough ask translating across mediums IMO but trust gatiss to fvck it up lol

pmtough = p tough

yeah i asked myself what a good version would look like and i'm not at all sure. but not this one

then i thought maybe the Beeb should start A Borges for Christmas and give it to fucking Danny Boyle or someone

considered opinion: Gatiss isn't a big James fan

The Tractate Middoth was ok and the other one was crap, I'm in no hurry to watch this.

I meant The Mezzotint

I think I missed his version of The Mezzotint, or at least I remember nothing about it. Probably commented on ilx somewhere if I did watch it but can't be fucked to search. I suspect Gatiss *is* a James fan but yeah, his adaptations have been deeply underwhelming for the most part, this one included. His own one, The Dead Room, I thought was a genuinely good addition to the canon.

Didn't realise Schalcken was on BBC4, have already arranged a rewatch with a friend for our own Ghost Stories For Christmas shenanigans. I remember thinking it was wonderful when I last saw it but not much about what happens! We've already done a rewatch of The Exorcism from Dead of Night and oh man, if you haven't seen that one you really should. Powerhouse of a scenery-chewing performance as the centrepiece of that one, and deeply political. Also Clive Swift.

gattis is forever on book shambles podcast and its various offshoots talking about that stuff - I've just been listening to their stay-at-home-festival stuff they did during lockdown. which makes it more of a mystery why he never quite nails it.

haven't seen magnus yet because parents TV only gets sport and afternoon quiz shows, somehow

i quite enjoyed mezzotint right up to the final moments bcz i tht rory kinnear was p good and then they gerald's gamed it lol

tbf this error goes all the way back to casting the runes / night of the demon == climactic horror being underwhelming after all

fond tho everyone justly is of:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/horrormovies/images/e/e8/The_Bad_Dude_Night_of_the_Demon_%281957%29.jpg

Of course Night of the Demon is great but it's the cat that's the scary monster

emil.y I haven't seen The Exorcism as far as I know and I'll look out for it

"Poor Bilbo Baggins! He set out on his journey to the Shire on the next day, as he had planned, and he reached England in safety; and yet, as I gather from his changed hand and inconsequent jottings, a broken hobbit"

perhaps bcz forewarned it wd be poor i didn't hate this (tho my co-viewers were very underwhelmed): jason watkins playing wraxall (or wraxhall as gatiss calls him and fraxhall as voiceover magnus pronounces him) as bumptiuously irritating and silly, with austin powers moves. which is a reading (the swedes in the original story none of them extend their chats with him lol) even if it makes him p hard to care about. no harm bringing in the countess as a new exposition deliverer (rather surprisingly in life james actually spent time with women but he didn't write so many). the bystanders were more wickerman complicit than the original story quite suggests -- as if they need a sacrifice and feel bad for him even if he is super-annoying -- but actually i quite like this evolution. bcz he knows and wills the ending, and sees the victim as his pet's lunch more than sociology, magnus as voiceover strips out abt half of the device by which the reader observes wraxall's terror mouintg = the reader reading w's increasingly panicked journal over his shoulder: also i think it was gatiss doing fake swedish, which fvck that.

the look of the setting was (to say it 18th century style) pleasantly BOSKY, tho not i think v swedish, it was filmed nr beaconsfield, which probably undermines w's sense of solitude. my co-viewers were "there's not much to it!" -- well no, despite being somewhart cryptically warned off wraxall wakes the terror and the terror goes after him, that's literally it, the value and weight of the story is in the measure of the mounting dread not the rubber tentacle lol.

here's a passage quoting from W's journal piling up the dread: "as I sit here in my room noting these facts, I ask myself (it was not twenty minutes ago) whether that noise of creaking metal continued, and I cannot tell whether it did or not. I only know that there was something more than I have written that alarmed me, but whether it was sound or sight I am not able to remember." i'm not going to say this idea is literally unfilmable, but gatiss made no adequate attempt and found no adequate solution, in favour of cutting to -- and then p much past -- the chase

imv gatiss is a malignant mediocrity who never fails to extract the mysterious transformative element from his subject matter before representing, adapting or reviewing it.

i *partially* agree with it being more or less unfilmable, but feel someone with an imagination and an understanding of the mechanics of james’ ghost stories might make a decent fist of it. i don’t think gatiss has an ounce of imaginative capability in his entire frame. I haven’t seen CM yet tho. am almost reluctant to, tho like you thought the mezzotint was actually fairly acceptable, again mainly because of rory kinnear, who is an incredibly good actor at minimal conveyance of thought and emotion. just magically good at it. and also v good at amplifying that subtle approach on stage as well, which is a total mystery to me how you do it.

oh and merry xmas/wobs etc all!

by making Wraxall a buffoon you basically eliminate the possibility of sympathetic terror

the emphasis all very much on the wrong things as per

otm (in advance of me having seen it but p certain it’s otm).

while we’re here i want to rep once again for The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance, which i read again the other day and feel is neglected esp as it has the important element of a f’ing sinister punch and judy show.

the painting was a classic of bad art in a movie :D

this is the de la gardie MRJ is generally assumed to have had in mind:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Jakob_delagardi.jpg

wikipedia on the de la gardies then and now:
The family's social status in France is uncertain; the founder, Ponce d'Escouperie, son of a tradesman, came to Sweden as a mercenary in 1565 and took the name Pontus De la Gardie when registered by the House of Knights. He was given the title friherre in 1571 and married Sofia Johansdotter Gyllenhielm, an illegitimate daughter of king John III in 1580.

The baronial title ended with his eldest son John De la Gardie. Pontus De la Gardie's second son, Jacob De la Gardie, was given the title count of Läckö in 1615; his grandson Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie became a favourite of Queen Christina and married her cousin, Countess Palatine Maria Eufrosyne of Zweibrücken (a sister of Charles X Gustav of Sweden).

The De la Gardie of Läckö comital lineage is extinct. The current head of the family, Carl Gustaf De la Gardie (1946– ), lives outside Linköping.

linköping is the swedish for microwave

CM is the one where Chorazin is referenced isn’t it? For all those Spectre vs Rector fans out there.

yup

chorazin-ah as MES refers to it 😇

pronouncing it convincingly would've been a good idea too

it has the same root as chorizo: he was on the black pilgrimage there to meet the prince of the air SPICY MEDITERRANEAN SAUSAGE

its-a me magnus

brb going to chatgpt for spector vs rector in the style of joe dolce.

https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/b/b5/Blooper_-_MarioPartyStarRush.png/1200px-Blooper_-_MarioPartyStarRush.png

Magnus's companion, earlier today

"as I sit here in my room noting these facts, I ask myself (it was not twenty minutes ago) whether that noise of creaking metal continued, and I cannot tell whether it did or not. I only know that there was something more than I have written that alarmed me, but whether it was sound or sight I am not able to remember."

from Wormwoodiana blog:

At the Cambridge University Library Special Collections website* Clarck Drieshen discusses the authentic medieval magical document, held by the library, which was deployed by M R James in his New Year's Eve 1931 ghost story 'The Experiment'. A fresh look at the manuscript identifies it as one known in other collections of 15th and 16th century magical texts and, by comparing these and re-examining the text, he reveals that James may have mis-read the name of the presiding spirit.

As he observes: "This changes the nature of the ritual from an angelic to a demonic one". The misinterpretation sounds itself like an incident that might have occurred in a Jamesian story, no doubt with drastic consequences . . .

(Mark Valentine) *https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=24166

it's true that james mis-decrypts a demon's name (""assaell", elsewhere known as "azazel") for one ordinarily associated with angels ("raffaell") -- he indicates his uncertainy with a question mark in the text and didn't have time or opportunity to go back and check as the story was on deadline and the library had closed for christmas -- but i am unconvinced james ever saw this ritual as in any routine way "angelic"! or perhaps more accurately that he would even have considered "angelic" a shorthand for things only nice and good: this is magic and it requires the advice and assistance of those we should not treat with, and it is always evil

in fact the otherness and predatory peril of angels (yes fallen, but they're still angels) sat directly within his purview as a scholar -- he himself had discovered or recovered a section of the latin translation of the biblical (or more accurately apocryphal) book of enoch, in which all this is expanded at some length. azazel even gets a passing mention (as a kind of sauron-when-still-fair figure):

Chapter 8
1 And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made
known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and
ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly
stones, and all
2 colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and
they
3 were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways (…)

cheers for that Azazel

Am now very worried for this instagrammer, who may not have read any MR James. LEAVE IT BE, MIKE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY pic.twitter.com/cV2HfD5Qbe

— Helen Macdonald (@HelenJMacdonald) January 4, 2023

just watched Schalcken, it's on iPlayer until Saturday. loved all the Flemish art references

The climax is a little ripe I think - and I like expressionism over realism! - but the journey to it has lots of beautiful creepiness and creepy beauty, yes. And on reflection the whole thing, like all Flemish art, is about accountancy