When we think of ghost stories, we tend to think of cub scouts cringing by a fire, s'mores at the ready, as some aging camp counselor tries to scare them witless with yet another tale from the crypt.

M.R. James had a great, and simple, formula for writing ghost stories. Establish the mundane and everyday detail (which is heightened by the Victorian academic settings), and then introduce, briefly, the supernatural, which cracks the surface of everything normal that has been so carefully established.

This IS a book of CLASSIC horror stories. They don't depend nor do they need buckets of blood slung against a wall or descriptions of disembowelments or decapitations.

'M. R. James is to the ghost story as Petrarch to the sonnet: he didn't invent the form but he perfected it and no one since has been able to write one without acknowledging the master.'