A Ghost Story for Christmas

As regular part of his Christmas Eve celebrations, M.R. James, medieval scholar and academic administrator, would read original ghost stories to the delight of his friends and colleagues. James's ghost stories, which were part of much older British tradition of telling tales of the supernatural at Christmas time, are some of finest ghost stories ever written. He abandoned many of the dated tropes that had been common and had become chiched - gothic castles, the aristocracy.

Most of James's stories have a contemporary setting - often the English country side. His protagonists are typically unassuming, some times naive, academics... not unlike their creator.

As a bit of bonus content to mark this yuletide, I'm including an audio version of one of James's most famous stories, his 1904 ghost story "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' read by the incomparable Michael Horden.