M. R. James
1) Count Magnus
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A traveler in Sweden stumbles upon the history of a mysterious and ominous figure, Count Magnus.
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Mr. Williams, the curator of a university art museum, purchases a mezzotint from an art dealer. The painting changes each time Mr. Williams his colleagues 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.
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Published in 1919, this volume is a change of pace from an author best known for his classic ghost stories. It is a history of the transmission of manuscripts from one area, culture, or age, to another. The author's moral: "Be inquisitive. See books for yourself; do not trust that the cataloguer has told you everything."
8) Two Doctors
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An antique journal is purchased and found to contain extraneous sheets, one of which is labeled by a lawyer as 'The strangest case I have yet met.'
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Mr. Dillet buys a large doll's house, six feet long, a veritable musuem piece, complete with a Chapel, furniture, crockery, and glass. But he realizes it may be more than a meticulous piece of craft when he is awoken in the middle of the night by a peal from the house.
13) The Rose Garden
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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.
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Dr. Rant leaves directions that it is to be buried by being 'put, sitting at a table in his ordinary clothes, in a brick room that he'd had made underground in a field near his house. Of course the country people say he's been seen about there in his old black cloak.'
17) Wailing Well
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A shepherd tells of well near which dwell three women and a man, who were 'bad 'uns' when they were alive, now reduced to 'flutterin' rags and whity bones', who 'hadn't much to call faces'.
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This vintage book contains Montague Rhodes James's chilling supernatural short story "An Episode of Cathedral History". First published as part of "The collected ghost stories of M.R. James" (1931), it is a hair-raising ghost story highly recommended for all lovers of the genre. Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was an English author who often published under the name M. R. James. He was a seminal medievalist scholar, but today is most famous for...