Spectral Tales is a periodical publication dedicated to the tradition of the ghost story, with a particular focus on the legacy of M. R. James and his disciples. The issue under consideration is Number One, dated June 1988, and is dedicated to the Jamesian ghost story tradition. The publication is edited by Robert M. Price and issued by Cryptic Publications. The issue is explicitly dedicated to Rosemary Pardoe and her Haunted Library, acknowledging a debt to the English magazine Ghosts and Scholars, with the editor noting that imitation is sincere flattery.
The contents of this issue include an editorial titled “Invocation,” two original stories—”An Episode of Prep School History” by Peter Cannon and “A Tale of a Lonely Island” by Jason C. Eckhardt—two reprints, and a critical essay. The reprints are “God’s Devil” by Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, which first appeared as “God’s Devil: A Ghost Story with a Moral” in Chiaroscuro in 1961 and was later collected in Montgomery’s essay collection Principalities and Powers, A New Look at the World of the Occult, and “The Thing from the Sea” by Frederick Cowles, reprinted from his scarce collection The Horror of Abbott’s Grange, with thanks to Richard Dalby and the Cowles estate. The issue concludes with S. T. Joshi’s critical article “M. R. James and the Limitations of the Ghost Story.” Joshi is described as the editor of Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction and the foremost scholar on H. P. Lovecraft. The editor notes that Joshi’s essay proves the magazine is not uncritical apologetics for M. R. James.
The publication also includes a poem titled “Fear” by Lin Carter. The issue as a whole represents a blend of new fiction, reprinted classics, and scholarly criticism, all unified by an interest in the antiquarian ghost story tradition.
Context
The publication emerges from a specific milieu within weird fiction fandom and scholarship of the late 1980s. The editor’s acknowledgment of Ghosts and Scholars, a British magazine devoted to the Jamesian tradition, situates Spectral Tales within an ongoing conversation about the legacy of M. R. James and his imitators. The dedication to Rosemary Pardoe, who was associated with the Haunted Library, further cements this connection to the community of James enthusiasts and scholars.
The issue reflects a broader revival of interest in the antiquarian ghost story, a sub-genre characterized by scholarly protagonists, dusty manuscripts, ancient buildings, and carefully constructed atmospheres of dread. The editor’s “Invocation” addresses the paradox of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve, questioning whether the ghost story frightens by invading coziness or whether the spectral visitant reinforces the reader’s snugness by being fictitious. This framing suggests an audience familiar with the conventions of the genre and interested in its aesthetic pleasures rather than mere scares.
The inclusion of S. T. Joshi’s critical essay, which takes a dim view of James’s limitations, indicates that the publication aims to engage critically with its subject matter rather than simply celebrate it. Joshi, known primarily as a Lovecraft scholar, brings a comparative perspective that situates James within the broader weird fiction tradition. The editor’s note that the essay proves the magazine is not uncritical apologetics suggests a deliberate editorial policy of balanced assessment.
The two reprints also reflect the publication’s historical consciousness. Montgomery’s “God’s Devil” dates from the early 1960s and represents a theological approach to the ghost story, while Cowles’s “The Thing from the Sea” comes from a scarce collection, making it a valuable rediscovery for readers. The inclusion of these older works alongside new stories by Cannon and Eckhardt demonstrates a commitment to both preserving and extending the tradition.
Structure of the Book
The issue is organized as a curated collection rather than a continuous narrative. It opens with the editorial “Invocation,” which sets the tone and frames the reader’s expectations. This is followed by the four works of fiction and the concluding critical essay.
The first story, “God’s Devil” by John Warwick Montgomery, is a first-person narrative told by a clergyman who recounts an encounter with his old college friend Ross Cavender at a Cornell alumni reunion. The story unfolds through the narrator’s recollection of his seminary days, his crisis of faith, and a preaching assignment that led him to a remote church on the Old Drummer’s road. The narrative is framed by the reunion conversation, with the clergyman explaining his journey from intellectual doubt to ministry.
The second story, “An Episode of Prep School History” by Peter Cannon, follows a schoolmaster named Prescott as he is shown around a chapel by Miss Pym, a colleague at Aquidneck Academy. The story moves through a detailed tour of the chapel, including the crypt containing the tomb of Charles Brinley Walling, and the tower room that was Walling’s original study. Prescott subsequently spends his evenings in the tower room, examining old books and becoming increasingly disturbed by a particular volume, De Rerum Fabularum by “Fra. Junius Eckhardt,” printed in 1588. The story builds toward a supernatural intrusion, with Prescott discovering evidence of unauthorized entry and eventually confronting a presence in the tower room.
The third story, “The Thing from the Sea” by Frederick Cowles, is a reprint that tells of Sidney Bailey, a prosperous businessman who returns to the island of Sheppey thirty years after his wife Winnie drowned under suspicious circumstances. The narrative alternates between Bailey’s present-tense return and his memories of the past, including his purchase of a book on magic and witchcraft and his deliberate failure to save his wife. The story concludes with a newspaper extract reporting Bailey’s own death by drowning, with seaweed wound about his neck.
The fourth story, “A Tale of a Lonely Island” by Jason C. Eckhardt, follows Milton Twitchell, an historian researching the Winfield family at the Casco Islands Historical House on Brackett Island. The narrative interweaves Twitchell’s research with the historical account of Susan Winfield, a seventeenth-century settler who survived an Indian attack that killed her family. Twitchell becomes obsessed with Susan, experiences a supernatural visitation, and ultimately steals a letter that reveals her darker nature. The story concludes with Twitchell fleeing to New York and abandoning his historical career.
The poem “Fear” by Lin Carter follows the prose fiction, presenting a brief lyrical meditation on a supernatural shadow that haunts the speaker after reading a forbidden book.
The issue concludes with S. T. Joshi’s essay “M. R. James and the Limitations of the Ghost Story,” which offers a critical assessment of James’s work, examining his narrative techniques, his treatment of ghosts, and the limitations of his approach.
Main Arguments
The publication makes several arguments about the nature and value of the ghost story tradition. The editorial “Invocation” argues that the carefully constructed mood of the antiquarian ghost story is meant to be enjoyed for its own sake, not to set the reader up for a scare. This suggests that the genre’s primary appeal lies in atmosphere and craft rather than in simple terror. The editor names M. R. James and his disciples—E. G. Swain, R. H. Malden, A. N. L. Munby, M. P. Dare, W. C. Dickenson, and Christopher Woodforde—as the most enjoyable practitioners of this sub-genre, implying a hierarchy of quality within the tradition.
Montgomery’s “God’s Devil” argues for the reality of spiritual evil. The story’s narrator, a clergyman, initially doubts the existence of a personal devil, treating the concept as a symbol of humanity’s distance from evolutionary perfection. His sermon on the temptation in the wilderness argues that the modern mind must give up the idea of a personal devil. The story itself, however, suggests that this intellectual position is inadequate, as the narrator’s encounter with evil forces him to confront the reality of the supernatural. The story’s title, “God’s Devil,” implies a theological framework in which even the devil serves God’s purposes.
Cannon’s “An Episode of Prep School History” argues that the past is not safely contained. The story’s setting—a boys’ school with a chapel, crypt, and tower room reconstructed from a historical figure’s study—suggests that the dead remain present in the places they inhabited. The story also comments on the tension between preserving historical artifacts and making them accessible, as Miss Pym argues that the old books do the academy no good and ought to be in a university library. The bequest of the Walling library, accepted as an “indissoluble package” with a generous gift of securities, represents the compromises institutions make for financial survival.
Cowles’s “The Thing from the Sea” argues that guilt is inescapable. Sidney Bailey’s deliberate failure to save his wife is punished thirty years later when her decomposed head pursues him in the sea. The story suggests that supernatural vengeance operates independently of human justice, as the coroner sympathizes with Bailey and commends his supposed rescue attempt. The newspaper extract at the story’s end reports Bailey’s death as an accident, masking the supernatural agency that actually killed him.
Eckhardt’s “A Tale of a Lonely Island” argues that historical research can uncover uncomfortable truths. Milton Twitchell’s investigation of Susan Winfield initially presents her as a heroic survivor, but the stolen letter reveals that she “turned harpy,” suggesting that her persecution continued past the grave. The story also argues that historical narratives are constructed, not discovered, as Twitchell decides to exploit his revelation to establish himself as an authority. His theft of the letter represents the corruption of scholarship by ambition.
Joshi’s essay argues that M. R. James, despite his reputation, was a limited writer. While acknowledging James’s “unquestioned power and, even, originality,” Joshi takes a dimmer view, frustrated that James limited his talents and was out of sympathy with related branches of the weird tale. The essay argues that James’s obsession with narrative mechanics, his use of distancing, and his specific dating of events create problems for the reader. Joshi suggests that James’s method of having half-educated narrators tell supernatural events roundabout and colloquially achieves a certain effect but also represents a limitation.
Key Concepts
The publication develops several specific concepts and motifs that recur across its contents.
The antiquarian ghost story is a central concept, defined by its scholarly protagonists, its interest in old books and manuscripts, and its carefully constructed atmosphere. The editor’s “Invocation” describes this sub-genre as one whose mood is meant to be enjoyed for its own sake, suggesting that the pleasure of the text lies in its craft rather than its capacity to frighten.
The material ghost is a concept developed primarily in Joshi’s essay. Drawing on Lovecraft’s observation that “the average James ghost is lean, dwarfish, and hairy—a sluggish, hellish night-abomination midway betwixt beast and man—and usually touched before it is seen,” Joshi examines the physicality of James’s supernatural creations. The James ghost is remarkably material, often appearing as a mass of coarse, matted black hair covering a fearful thin body, with muscles standing out like wires and a dusky pallor. This materiality distinguishes James’s approach from more ethereal conceptions of ghosts.
The amphibian motif appears in James’s work, with creatures described in terms of toads and frogs. In “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” the monster is described as a “horrid, grotesque shape—perhaps more like a toad than anything else,” while “The Haunted Dolls’ House” features “a frog—the size of a man.” Joshi traces no especial symbolism behind this motif, save in its repulsiveness, but notes its recurrence.
Distancing is a key concept in Joshi’s analysis of James’s narrative technique. James valued what he called “a slight haze of distance” in ghost stories, referring to chronological distance. This explains why many of his stories are set in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, periods that appeared to James as a “fairly recent yesterday.” The specificity of dates in James’s stories—such as “Two Doctors” (1718), “The Residence at Whitminster” (beginning in 1730), “Lost Hearts” (1811-12), and “A School Story” (around 1870)—compels readers to envision precise historical periods, though Joshi argues this assumes “a very elastic conception of history” that James couldn’t rightfully assume in readers.
The narrator as editor is another concept Joshi develops. James’s narrators or central figures often piece together documents and present them in “artfully edited form.” This method serves two purposes: it emphasizes the character’s fundamental rationality, and it distances the narrative frequently by several stages. The greatest indirection occurs in “A Warning to the Curious,” where the principal narrator paraphrases a subsidiary narrator who meets a traveller named Paxton, who heard a legend from a rector, who heard it from the “old people” of the community.
The pseudo-document is a related concept, referring to James’s inclusion of fabricated historical materials within his stories. Examples include the lengthy Latin passage opening “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” the replicated eighteenth-century obituary in “The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral,” and the paraphrased eighteenth-century documents in “The Ash-Tree.” These documents lend authenticity to the narratives while also creating additional layers of mediation.
The incubus appears in Cowles’s “The Thing from the Sea” as a metaphor for Sidney Bailey’s burden, likely his wife Winnie. The term suggests a demonic压迫, implying that Bailey’s marriage was itself a form of supernatural oppression.
The half-educated narrator is a concept Joshi identifies in James’s later work, where the supernatural portion of the narrative is placed in the mouth of a “half-educated person” telling the tale roundabout and colloquially. This technique achieves a certain verisimilitude but also represents a limitation in James’s approach.
Themes
Several deeper themes emerge from the publication’s contents, representing interpretive readings grounded in the texts.
The tension between faith and doubt runs through Montgomery’s “God’s Devil.” The narrator’s journey from intellectual skepticism to ministry is framed as a movement from “Christianity-and” thinking—wanting to set the world right through social action—to a more orthodox theological position. His initial distaste for doctrine, including “Justification by grace through faith,” “The resurrection,” “The new birth,” and “Angelology and demonology,” gives way to an acceptance of spiritual reality. The story can be read as a defense of traditional Christian belief against modernist skepticism, with the supernatural events serving as evidence for the reality of the spiritual realm.
The persistence of the past is a theme that unites several stories. In Cannon’s “An Episode of Prep School History,” the tower room is an almost exact reconstruction of Charles Brinley Walling’s original study, suggesting that the dead remain present in their former haunts. The story’s title itself implies that the past is not past but continues to intrude on the present. Similarly, Eckhardt’s “A Tale of a Lonely Island” suggests that historical figures like Susan Winfield continue to act beyond the grave, with Twitchell imagining her “fighting off Indians her whole life, persecuted past the grave.”
The corruption of scholarship is a theme in Eckhardt’s story. Milton Twitchell begins as a diligent researcher but becomes corrupted by his discovery, stealing the Constance Welch letter to establish himself as an authority. His decision to exploit the revelation rather than share it represents the triumph of ambition over integrity. The story suggests that the pursuit of knowledge can become a form of self-destruction, as Twitchell’s theft brings supernatural retribution.
Guilt and retribution are central to Cowles’s “The Thing from the Sea.” Sidney Bailey’s deliberate failure to save his wife is punished thirty years later, suggesting that supernatural justice operates on a different timescale than human law. The story can be read as a moral fable about the inescapability of guilt, with the sea serving as a symbol of the unconscious or the repressed returning to claim its due.
The limitations of rationalism are explored across the publication. The narrator of “God’s Devil” initially embraces a modern, rationalist view of the devil as a symbol, only to encounter supernatural evil directly. Prescott in Cannon’s story attempts to rationalize the evidence of intrusion in the tower room, but the supernatural presence proves undeniable. Twitchell in Eckhardt’s story dismisses the woman at the window as an afterimage, only to be confronted with her supernatural reality. These narratives suggest that rationalism is inadequate to explain or contain the supernatural.
The ambiguity of historical narrative is a theme in Eckhardt’s story. Twitchell’s research initially presents Susan Winfield as a heroic survivor, but the stolen letter reveals her darker nature. The story suggests that historical accounts are always partial and constructed, shaped by the perspectives and interests of those who record them. The wrong Indians were hanged for the attack on the Winfield family, and Mrs. Winfield let them be hanged, suggesting that even victims can be complicit in injustice.
The comfort and discomfort of ghost stories is a theme addressed in the editorial “Invocation.” The editor questions whether the ghost story frightens by invading coziness or whether the spectral visitant reinforces the reader’s snugness by being fictitious. This suggests that the genre’s appeal lies in its ability to create a safe space for confronting fear, with the carefully constructed mood providing aesthetic pleasure rather than genuine terror.
The inadequacy of institutional preservation is a theme in Cannon’s story. Miss Pym argues that the old books do the academy no good and ought to be in a university library, properly stored and accessible to scholars. The trustees’ acceptance of the Walling library as part of an “indissoluble package” with a generous gift of securities represents the compromises institutions make for financial survival. The story suggests that preservation without access is a form of neglect, and that the dead past can become dangerous when it is not properly understood.
The Author’s Conclusions
The publication as a whole concludes with Joshi’s critical essay, which offers a balanced assessment of M. R. James’s achievements and limitations. Joshi acknowledges James’s “unquestioned power and, even, originality” while also expressing frustration that James limited his talents and was out of sympathy with related branches of the weird tale. The essay’s title, “M. R. James and the Limitations of the Ghost Story,” suggests that James’s work, for all its virtues, represents a constrained approach to the genre.
Joshi’s analysis of James’s narrative techniques reveals a writer deeply concerned with the mechanics of storytelling. James’s use of distancing, his specific dating of events, his employment of pseudo-documents, and his tendency to place supernatural events in the mouths of half-educated narrators all represent deliberate choices that shape the reader’s experience. While some of these techniques are effective, others are problematic. The specificity of dates, for example, compels readers to envision precise historical periods, muting familiarity with characters and settings. James’s warning that “it is almost inevitable that the reader of an antique story should fall into the position of the mere spectator” suggests an awareness of this problem, but Joshi argues that James should have been vaguer in his dating.
The essay also identifies moments of clumsiness in James’s work. The abrupt self-intrusion in “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” where the third-person narrative suddenly shifts to “‘Once,’ Dennistoun said to me,” is described as “clumsily abrupt.” The parenthetical aside in “The Mezzotint” about the university authorities indulging in golf is possibly dry wit, but “dry it certainly is.” These moments suggest that James’s craft, while generally polished, was not infallible.
The essay’s conclusion is implicit rather than explicit, but the overall argument suggests that James’s ghost stories, while powerful and original, are limited by their author’s narrow conception of the genre. James paid only “the most frigid respect to Poe,” and his work lacks the philosophical depth of Machen or Lovecraft. The amphibian motif in his ghosts, while repulsive, carries no especial symbolism. His obsession with narrative mechanics sometimes leads to pointlessness and prolixity, as in “The Residence at Whitminster.” The essay implies that the ghost story tradition James represented, while valuable, was ultimately a limited one.
The publication’s final story, Eckhardt’s “A Tale of a Lonely Island,” concludes with Milton Twitchell living in New York and doing something unrelated to history. This ending suggests that the encounter with the supernatural has driven him from his chosen profession, that the pursuit of historical truth has led to personal destruction. The story’s final image of Twitchell crumpled on the rug until the screaming stops and the teapot melts through suggests a complete breakdown of ordinary reality.
The poem “Fear” by Lin Carter, which precedes Joshi’s essay, ends with the speaker regretting having read great-grandfather’s Book and spoken a spell “writ in hell,” concluding with the plea: “God, make it go away…” This ending suggests that the supernatural cannot be controlled or dismissed, only endured or escaped through divine intervention.
The publication as a whole concludes with Joshi’s essay, which offers a critical perspective on the tradition the issue celebrates. The essay’s placement at the end suggests that the reader is meant to reflect on the preceding stories in light of Joshi’s analysis, recognizing both their power and their limitations. The issue thus ends on a note of critical assessment rather than simple celebration, acknowledging the achievements of the Jamesian tradition while also recognizing its boundaries.
Significance
Spectral Tales represents a significant contribution to the ongoing conversation about the ghost story tradition. By combining new fiction, reprinted classics, and scholarly criticism, the publication offers a multifaceted view of the genre’s past, present, and future. The inclusion of Joshi’s critical essay, which takes a balanced view of James’s achievements and limitations, demonstrates a commitment to serious engagement with the tradition rather than mere hagiography.
The publication’s dedication to Rosemary Pardoe and its acknowledgment of Ghosts and Scholars situate it within a community of enthusiasts and scholars who have worked to preserve and extend the Jamesian tradition. The editor’s note that imitation is sincere flattery suggests a self-conscious awareness of the publication’s place within this tradition, as both a tribute to and an extension of the work of earlier practitioners.
The two new stories by Cannon and Eckhardt demonstrate that the antiquarian ghost story remains a viable form for contemporary writers. Cannon’s “An Episode of Prep School History” updates the tradition by setting it in a modern boys’ school while maintaining the classic elements of old books, ancient buildings, and supernatural intrusion. Eckhardt’s “A Tale of a Lonely Island” extends the tradition by incorporating historical research and the corruption of scholarship, suggesting new directions for the genre.
The reprints of Montgomery’s “God’s Devil” and Cowles’s “The Thing from the Sea” make available works that might otherwise be difficult to obtain, preserving the tradition’s history and making it accessible to new readers. The inclusion of Lin Carter’s poem “Fear” adds a lyrical dimension to the publication, demonstrating the genre’s range across different forms.
The publication’s significance also lies in its critical engagement with the tradition. Joshi’s essay, while respectful of James’s achievements, does not hesitate to identify his limitations. This willingness to critique even the most revered figures in the genre suggests a mature approach to the tradition, one that values honest assessment over uncritical celebration. The editor’s note that the essay proves the magazine is not uncritical apologetics indicates a deliberate editorial policy of balanced assessment.
The issue as a whole represents a snapshot of the ghost story tradition in the late 1980s, a moment when the genre was being actively preserved, extended, and critically examined. By bringing together new fiction, reprints, and scholarship, Spectral Tales demonstrates the vitality of the tradition and its continued relevance for contemporary readers. The publication’s focus on the Jamesian tradition, with its emphasis on atmosphere, craft, and the persistence of the past, offers a counterpoint to more visceral forms of horror, suggesting that the pleasures of the ghost story lie in subtlety and suggestion rather than explicit terror. The issue concludes with Joshi’s essay, leaving the reader with a critical perspective that enriches the experience of the preceding stories and invites further reflection on the nature and value of the ghost story tradition.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The Editorial Frame: “Invocation” and the Jamesian Tradition
The June 1988 issue of Spectral Tales, Number One, opens with a dedication to the ghost story tradition established by M. R. James. The table of contents promises a rich mix: an editorial titled “Invocation,” two new stories by Peter H. Cannon and Jason C. Eckhardt, two reprints by John Warwick Montgomery and Frederick Cowles, a poem by Lin Carter, and a critical essay by S. T. Joshi. The editor, Robert M. Price, uses his “Invocation” to explore the strange paradox of telling ghost stories on a cozy Christmas Eve. He asks whether the spectral tale frightens by invading the reader’s snugness, or whether the very fictitiousness of the ghost reinforces the warmth of the hearth. Price argues that the antiquarian ghost story, in the tradition of James and his disciples—E. G. Swain, R. H. Malden, A. N. L. Munby, M. P. Dare, W. C. Dickenson, and Christopher Woodforde—is crafted to be savored for its own sake, a carefully constructed mood piece rather than a simple scare tactic. The issue acknowledges a debt to the English magazine Ghosts and Scholars, with the editor noting that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the whole issue is dedicated to Rosemary Pardoe and her Haunted Library.
The editorial apparatus also clarifies the provenance of the reprinted works. “God’s Devil” by John Warwick Montgomery first appeared as “God’s Devil: A Ghost Story with a Moral” in Chiaroscuro in 1961, later collected in his essay volume Principalities and Powers. Frederick Cowles’s “The Thing from the Sea” is reprinted from his scarce collection The Horror of Abbott’s Grange, with thanks to Richard Dalby and the Cowles estate. The issue concludes with S. T. Joshi’s critical piece on James, and the editor is careful to note that Joshi’s inclusion proves the magazine is not merely uncritical apologetics for the master of the ghost story.
The Clergyman’s Reunion: “God’s Devil” Begins
The first story, “God’s Devil” by John Warwick Montgomery, opens with a clergyman narrator attending a Cornell alumni reunion. He encounters his old college friend, Ross Cavender, who greets him with a mixture of cynicism and genuine interest, calling him a “damned bible-toting clergyman.” They stand before a fireplace bearing a gothic inscription: “AH LIFE! THE MERE LIVING! HOW FIT TO EMPLOY ALL THE HEART AND THE SOUL AND THE MIND FOREVER IN JOY!” The narrator reflects that this is Willard Straight’s aphorism. The narrator accepts the epithet “damned,” noting that a cleric is simul justus et peccator—simultaneously saint and sinner—a Lutheran reference Cavender recognizes. Cavender, now a lawyer and “corporation mouthpiece,” explains his career through the lens of Whyte’s Organization Man, Riesman’s Other-directed American, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He then asks the narrator why he became a minister. The narrator offers two answers: his do-gooder college days led him to seminary, but his intellectual interest in theology developed only in seminary.
The narrator then begins his tale. In seminary, he felt a profound intellectual descent and alienation from the program. He had been a “Christianity-and” man, in the C. S. Lewis sense, wanting to set the world right through practical action. He found the core doctrines distasteful and impractical—justification by grace through faith, the resurrection, the new birth, and especially angelology and demonology. He was planning to quit and study social work. His plans were interrupted by a preaching assignment to St. Paul’s church on the Old Drummer’s road. He explains that such assignments allowed students to lead services at vacant pulpits for ridiculously low fees, helping both the congregations and the broke seminarians. The seminary was located in an older, rural section of the Midwest. After receiving the assignment from the elderly Dean Rylsford, the narrator searched the file of maps, finding nothing under “P,” “S,” or “I” for Indiana. Finally, at the back of the drawer, he found a crumpled, yellowed, scorched, almost illegible old map. The church was 120 miles away, and the service was at 10:30, so he left at 7:00 AM on a stormy February day, the first Sunday in Lent, driving west on highway 37 at exactly forty miles per hour.
His sermon was on the Gospel lesson, a sermon he had delivered successfully a year earlier. He recalled a previous sermon on the passage about Jesus going to Jerusalem, which he had preached naively, beating the drum for fulfilled prophecy and a historical resurrection, moving some people to tears. His current sermon, however, was on the temptation in the wilderness, where Jesus is led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. In this sermon, he argued that the modern mind must give up the idea of a personal devil, treating it as a symbol of how far humanity is from “evolutionary perfection.” He argued that the temptations showed the evils of selfishness, reducing the cosmic struggle to a moral lesson.
The Chapel Tour: “An Episode of Prep School History”
The second story, “An Episode of Prep School History” by Peter Cannon, shifts to a very different setting. Prescott and Miss Pym reach the altar of the school chapel, draped with a cloth bearing the school seal, which they briefly admire. They pass down the nave between high-backed pews. Sunlight illuminates the southern-facing stained-glass windows in rich blues and reds, depicting saints in traditional renderings—except for the last window. This one shows a smug-looking elderly man in vaguely Medieval dress, compactly built, with short-cropped hair and a trim moustache, clutching a book under one arm and holding a staff resembling an oar. Prescott finds it has an almost irreverently modern air, and the fellow appears disconcertingly familiar. Miss Pym observes that the face was modeled closely on the Kalling portrait in the Common Room; the window was installed ten years ago, not without controversy.
At the rear of the chapel by the main door, Miss Pym switches on chandeliers to show the maze set in the marble floor of the narthex, though it is obscured by rows of small wooden chairs. She shows Prescott the head of the maze in the northwest corner by the enclosed spiral staircase leading to the tower room. Before going up, they descend to the crypt to view the steel-barred door beyond which lies the tomb of Charles Brinley Walling in blackness. Miss Pym calls the crypt plain, “a disappointment I should think even for the ghoulishly inclined.” Returning up, they pass ground level to a landing where a brighter light reveals a heavy oak door—the entrance to the tower room. Miss Pym unlocks it, promising Prescott a duplicate key.
Prescott is struck by the homeyness of the high-ceilinged room: a large mahogany desk at center, a long table and chairs, antique lamps, threadbare Kilim rugs, and tall bookcases occupying all wall space, interrupted by lancet windows and a sizeable wardrobe. Except for the wardrobe—containing costumes for the school’s annual Christmas festival—the room is an almost exact reconstruction of Charles Brinley Walling’s original study. A damp, musty smell of old books pervades the place. The bookshelves contain early twentieth-century Modern Library and Everyman editions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors: Dryden, Marvell, Shadwell, Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele, Smollett, Fielding, Boswell, and Samuel Johnson. One old-fashioned glass-doored bookcase holds volumes dating from that period or earlier, many in Latin and Greek.
Miss Pym says the old books do the academy no good; the more valuable ones ought to be in a university library, properly stored and accessible to scholars—they are wasted at a boys’ school. The trustees, including the headmaster, had doubts about accepting the collection, but had little choice: to receive a generous gift of securities from the Walling estate, the school had to accept the Walling library as well—”one indissoluble package.” Aquidneck Academy has a small endowment compared to older preparatory institutions, so they could not refuse the bequest. Miss Pym notes some books are scarcely for teenage boys. She unlocks the glass bookcase with a small key from the middle drawer of the mahogany desk, removing a black folio volume: De Rerum Fabularum by “Fra. Junius Eckhardt,” profusely illustrated with woodcuts of naked bat-winged men, women with beaks and feathers, and other bizarre mythological creatures, often of a pronounced sadistic or erotic cast—stronger stuff than anything in Playboy.
As they leave, Miss Pym remarks that the spiral stairs continue up to a trap door, always locked, leading to the tower roof; boys venture there to meditate or smoke. Prescott should know the stairs are a potential hang-out for rule-breakers. Over the next month, Prescott spends most weekday evenings in the tower room—first supervising a voluntary study hall, then a larger company of boys with unsatisfactory coursework. After study hall ends at 9:20, he corrects themes or examines old books. Though he cannot understand Latin, having never advanced beyond Caesar, he keeps returning to Eckhardt’s De Rerum Fabularum, printed in 1588, in excellent condition, as if handled just enough to keep it supple. Plate XVII disturbs him most: a robust man laughing in the face of a hooded skeleton brandishing a scythe.
One Monday morning in November, Prescott enters the tower room and realizes somebody had been there over the weekend: the special glass bookcase is subtly amiss, volumes not in their customary order. He regrets leaving the key in the unlocked front drawer of the mahogany desk. He notices ashy matter on the rug and detects the scent of tobacco or possibly marijuana. Dr. Hoyt, Miss Pym, and the maintenance people, the “wombats,” also have keys. When he asks Dr. Hoyt whether he brought weekend visitors, the headmaster says no, guessing “Boys with stolen keys into mischief”—advising Prescott to keep a sharp eye out. About two weeks later, Prescott sees a faint light in the tower room’s lancet windows on a clear, nearly full moon night. He leaves Old School, crosses the quadrangle, enters the chapel without turning on lights, and ascends the spiral stairs from memory. He sees a sliver of light under the oaken door. The door is locked from inside; his key makes a clicking sound. The door stops as if against a solid, immovable object—”against the will of somebody determined at all costs.”
Sidney Bailey’s Return: “The Thing from the Sea”
The third narrative, “The Thing from the Sea” by Frederick Cowles, follows Sidney Bailey, who finds himself burdened by an “incubus”—likely his wife Winnie. He purchases an old book on magic and witchcraft from a secondhand shop in Sheerness, reading about historical methods for willing people to die. That night he walks alone along the cliffs toward Minster, concentrating all his willpower on willing Winnie’s death. The next morning they go swimming together. Winnie is caught in a current and swept away screaming for help. Sidney briefly wonders if his half-hearted witchcraft attempts are working, sensing something devilish about it. Though a powerful swimmer with time to save her, he instead thinks of himself as sole owner of Bailey’s, a business, until it becomes too late. He glimpses her head bobbing, her bathing cap fallen off, long hair floating behind. He belatedly swims forward but the current catches him and he struggles to free himself. Winnie’s body is never recovered. The coroner sympathizes with the mourning husband and commends his rescue attempt.
Thirty years later, Sidney Bailey—now stout, prosperous, chairman of his own company and seven subsidiaries—has foolishly returned to Sheppey. The old bungalow is gone; he secures lodgings in a cottage. He wonders what induced him to revisit the “God-forsaken spot.” Walking on the cliffs at night, he remembers his spell-weaving and finds it queer how it seemed to work. A bright moon shines above Minster church; he walks to the village for a drink at the inn. The return journey tires him, reminding him he is over fifty. The night is oppressively hot; he longs for a swim. Back at the cottage he dons bathing costume and wrap, climbs to the beach. He is unreasonably annoyed to see someone else swimming but consoles himself there is enough sea for both. Swimming pleasantly, he decides to see what the other person is doing. Climbing onto a breakwater, he makes out a black head bobbing in the distance. He swims over for company.
The distance proves greater than calculated. He hails the head; no answer. He dives, surfaces close, and sees a yellow, phosphorescent thing with long black hair—flesh eaten from the face, tiny crabs in the eye sockets, a hideous sea-snail where the mouth had been. The hair is recognizable: it is the head of the woman drowned thirty years ago. Horrified, he swims for shore, but the thing pursues him. Something clings to his fingers—hair, twisted tightly—and he drags the horrible head. Something cold presses to his neck; he smells decay; something tightens around his throat. He is choking. The story concludes with an extract from the Leysdown Courier, August 27, 1934: Sidney Bailey’s body was found on the foreshore near Shellness. He had evidently gone for a moonlight bathe and may have suffered cramp. A mass of dark-brown seaweed was wound about his neck, though the doctor says it had nothing to do with his death. By coincidence, Bailey’s wife was drowned at the same spot thirty years ago to the very day.
The Historian’s Obsession: “A Tale of a Lonely Island”
The narrative shifts to Milton Twitchell, an historian researching at the Casco Islands Historical House, a three-story brick building on Brackett Island. From its windows, inhabitants watched Portland grow; once they saw it burn. Twitchell’s interest lies in documents, not scenery. He travels from his Silver Street apartment to the ferry terminal to the Brackett Island dock to the Historical House, barely glancing up. His subject is the Winfield family—father Abraham, mother Susan, sons Isaac and Thomas, daughter Elizabeth—refugees from England and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Susan (Digby) Winfield particularly interests him: tall, cow-boned, plain-spoken, persistent, reminiscent of women Salem would hang for witchcraft. She left Salem in 1641 before the madness. The Winfields declined land on the Neck, settling on the island with the Historical House. Abraham fished, trading with Richmond Island merchants; Susan and children farmed. A 1660 letter from Carrington Tanner describes them as “a good people, but solitary.”
On March 5, 1642, Susan sailed to Falmouth Neck alone, terribly upset, dress bloodied. Abraham’s musket lay in the boat. Indians had attacked; she was the only Winfield left alive. A rescue party landed on the silent island. Abraham lay face-down in snow, gashes in his back, musket-ball in brain. Sons Isaac, a teenager, beheaded, and Thomas, ten, arm nearly severed, still holding a club, died fighting. Elizabeth’s fate is left to imagination—a small bed soaked in blood. Near shore: two dead Indians, a canoe lined with fish. One bore a throat wound; the other’s neck was snapped—apparently by Abraham’s bare hands. The Winfields were buried in the cellar, the ground frozen; the Indians set adrift in their canoe. Susan’s account: she hid in the dirt cellar; two children died before she emerged; she heard her baby killed. She ran to wounded Abraham, got his rifle, shot the first Indian emerging, the throat-wound victim. Knowing she could do no more, she fled to the boat, looking back to see one Indian shoot Abraham in the head. The English found the three murderers by the Presumpscot River; they were hanged near modern-day India and Congress Streets. The Aucocisco tribe was furious until something, the notes suggest, was resolved.
Mr. Twitchell, having been kept awake late by a woman at the window who resembles Susan Winfield, with stiff collar and grey bonnet, initially dismisses her as an afterimage. She raises a calloused hand and taps the window. He rationalizes it as a local woman wondering about the lights. He moves toward the door but realizes something is wrong when the woman disappears. He locks the door with keys Miss Turner had left, but the woman reappears at the window, her face shining distinctly in the dark. Mr. Twitchell, acknowledging he is not a brave man, hides in the deepest, most secure closet in the house. The next morning, Miss Turner arrives angry and shocked, her gray hair tangled by wind. The door is ruined—gashes crisscross it as if from an ax, two panels split through, brass facing torn away, white door frame cut, brick chips on the threshold. Mr. Twitchell claims he fell asleep and doesn’t know what happened, though he has an idea who did it but doesn’t tell her. He answers questions for the island constable, then waits at the dock for the ferry. He imagines Susan Winfield fighting off Indians her whole life, persecuted past the grave. He wonders if he should have let her in, and notes the wrong Indians had been hanged and Mrs. Winfield had let them be hanged.
Several days later, he returns despite fear, driven by book deadlines and the need to resolve three-century-old questions. The Welch/Marsden File has been taken by another scholar. He waits, takes a long lunch, and finally gets the file at two o’clock. He finds a letter from Constance Welch, Mrs. Winfield’s stepdaughter, dated December 17, 1669, to a friend in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It describes caring for her stepmother during illness, and how the older woman raved with fever. The substance frightens Constance but completes Mr. Twitchell’s puzzle. His heroine had “turned harpy in the space of a page.” Rather than being defeated, Mr. Twitchell decides to exploit the revelation to establish himself as an authority. He steals the letter, slipping it into his own file folder when no one watches. He works until closing time, gives the file to Miss Turner with only cursory inspection possible, and leaves with a smug “good-night.” Walking to the dock in rain, he feels pursued. The Abenaki ferry arrives. He reflects on Susan Winfield’s life: fleeing Salem, toil on a wretched island, weak husband, three children, insects, brutal cold, the Puritan God “like a giant in black, half as mad as Susan Winfield herself.” He feels badly for the Indians who probably stopped to trade and walked into “the white man’s Hell”—the three hanged on the mainland had done nothing.
In Portland, he notices radiators making a sound between a thump and a gasp. He studies the letter, rationalizing he’ll return it later. Looking out over Portland’s roofs, he muses that Susan Winfield’s bones might be mixed into the very bricks of his building. Then, arms emerge from the wall—strong, lean, calloused hands with a blackened right thumb nail. A face forms from pits and bumps in the masonry. The eyes that once pleaded now demand. The radiator noises become thumping with a “liquescent quality” and screams. Children scream for their mother. Mr. Twitchell drops the letter into the merciless hands, which withdraw into the wall. He crumples on the rug until the screaming stops and the teapot has melted through. Milton Twitchell now lives in New York and does something unrelated to history.
The Poem and the Critique: “Fear” and Joshi’s Assessment
The issue includes a poem by Lin Carter titled “Fear.” A shadow on the stair follows the speaker with gem-green eyes. Despite a blazing fire, the shadow stands unmoved, breathing dank cold and smelling of graveyard mould. It remains even in daylight. The speaker regrets looking in great-grandfather’s Book, speaking a spell “writ in hell,” and not learning to pray. The poem ends with a desperate plea: “God, make it go away…”
The issue concludes with S. T. Joshi’s critical essay, “M. R. James and the Limitations of the Ghost Story.” Joshi opens by acknowledging that M. R. James (1862-1936) commands universal respect from Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and critics like Julia Briggs and Jack Sullivan. He inspired disciples including A. N. L. Munby, E. G. Swain, and Russell Kirk. James was Provost of Eton College and a mediaeval manuscript scholar. His polished, understated, erudite style differs from Dunsany’s prose-poetry and Machen’s or Lovecraft’s dense texture. However, Joshi takes a dimmer view, frustrated that James limited his talents and was out of sympathy with related branches of the weird tale. James paid only “the most frigid respect to Poe.” Joshi then examines the nature of the James ghost, noting it is remarkably material. Lovecraft observed that “the average James ghost is lean, dwarfish, and hairy—a sluggish, hellish night-abomination midway betwixt beast and man—and usually touched before it is seen.” Joshi quotes the prototype from “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book”: a mass of coarse, matted black hair covering a fearful thin body, muscles standing out like wires, dusky pallor, and long coarse hairs—a creature of physical, tangible horror rather than psychological suggestion.
The Bedsheet Ghost and the Amphibian Motif
The discussion turns to a peculiar apparition in James’s work: a ghost that manifests as a bedsheet, though the author is quick to clarify that the true horror lies not in the sheet itself but in “some invisible monster who can only be seen when embodied behind some material substance like a bedsheet.” Despite the seemingly ludicrous image, the author concedes the “unquestioned power and, even, originality of the conception.” This leads to a broader examination of James’s monstrous creations. In “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” the creature is first glimpsed as “some rounded light-coloured objects . . . which might be bags,” a phrase the author labels a “hideously colloquial description” that paradoxically heightens the unease. When the monster is “more clearly seen,” it takes on a “horrid, grotesque shape — perhaps more like a toad than anything else.” A similar creature appears in “The Haunted Dolls’ House,” described as “a frog — the size of a man.” The author admits he can trace “no especial symbolism behind this amphibian motif, save in its repulsiveness.” The physical horror is amplified by a disturbing intimacy: the Abbot Thomas ghost “put its arms around my neck,” an action the author reads as “a grotesque parody of affection.” This thematic echo is compared to Robert Hichens’s “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” (1900), a story the author believes handles the motif of monstrous, possessive affection with even greater skill.
Narrative Mechanics and Distancing
The author observes that James reveals “a virtual obsession with the mechanics of narrating the ghost story.” His narrators, who are often not the same as the central figures, painstakingly piece together documents, letters, and testimonies, presenting them in “artfully edited form.” This method serves a dual purpose. First, it emphasizes the character’s “fundamental rationality,” a technique shared with Machen’s “Novel of the Black Seal” and Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu,” where the horror is filtered through a mind that desperately tries to make sense of the inexplicable. Second, it distances the narrative “frequently by several stages,” creating a buffer between the reader and the raw event. James placed immense value on this “distancing.” In his introduction to Ghosts and Marvels, he writes: “For the ghost story a slight haze of distance is desirable.” This primarily refers to chronological distance, explaining why so many of his tales are set in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. However, James’s method also requires a modern setting, as he remarks that “setting and personages , I believe to have a bearing on the thread of the story.” This false ignorance, the author asserts, “fools no one,” and serves only to highlight the artificiality of the narrative construction.
Abrupt Self-Intrusion
Despite his preference for distancing, James obtrudes himself into the narrative at odd moments, breaking the spell he has carefully woven. “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” begins in the third person, focusing on Dennistoun, but then suddenly shifts: “‘Once,’ Dennistoun said to me, ‘I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. . . .'” This abrupt intrusion of the authorial “me” is, in the author’s judgment, a clumsily handled first intimation of the supernatural. A similar moment occurs in “The Mezzotint”: “He lighted the candles, for it was now dark, made the tea, and supplied the friend with whom he had been playing golf (for I believe the authorities of the University I write of indulge in that pursuit by way of relaxation).” The author allows that this might be dry wit, but he concludes that “dry it certainly is,” suggesting that the joke falls flat and disrupts the narrative tension rather than enhancing it.
Half-Educated Narrators and Anti-Climax
In his later stories, James adopts a different strategy, placing the supernatural portion of the narrative in the mouth of a “half-educated person” who tells the tale roundabout and colloquially. This technique achieves a kind of authenticity through its very clumsiness, as the narrator’s lack of sophistication makes the events seem more raw and unvarnished. However, the author notes that this approach often leads to anti-climax, as the colloquial telling can deflate the horror it is meant to convey. The narrator’s inability to articulate the full terror of what he witnessed mirrors the reader’s own struggle to grasp the supernatural, but it can also leave the story feeling unresolved. The author suggests that this is a deliberate choice on James’s part, a way of acknowledging the limitations of language in the face of the ineffable, but it is a choice that carries inherent risks. The balance between authenticity and dramatic effect is a delicate one, and James does not always strike it successfully. The author’s overall assessment is that James’s narrative mechanics, while often brilliant, reveal a fundamental tension in his approach to the ghost story: he seeks to create a “slight haze of distance” but his obsession with precise documentation and editorial framing often brings the reader too close to the machinery of the tale, shattering the very illusion he strives to create. The stories work best when the distancing devices are invisible, when the reader is so absorbed in the horror that they forget the layers of narration between them and the event. When James fails, it is because he reminds us that we are reading a story, not experiencing a haunting. The author concludes this section by noting that James’s legacy lies not in the perfection of his method, but in the power of his best conceptions, which transcend the limitations of his craft. The bedsheet ghost, the amphibian toad, the grotesque parody of affection — these images linger in the mind long after the narrative mechanics have been forgotten, testifying to the enduring, if flawed, genius of M. R. James.
