{"id":5971,"date":"2026-02-16T02:34:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T00:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=5971"},"modified":"2026-04-03T19:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:58:11","slug":"ghost-stories-of-an-antiquary-by-m-r-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/02\/16\/ghost-stories-of-an-antiquary-by-m-r-james\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Ghost Stories of an Antiquary<\/em> by M. R. James"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ghost stories from 1904, quaint, erudite, and not particularly shocking for a modern audience, but well executed and highly entertaining. <a href=\"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/02\/07\/almost-everything-by-thomas-ligotti\/\">Thomas Ligotti<\/a> refers to M.&nbsp;R. James\u2014in the introduction to his own story collection <em>The Nightmare Factory<\/em>\u2014with an example of \u201cforbidden knowledge,\u201d which he calls horror writing\u2019s supreme trope:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We are reading\u2014in a quiet, cozy room, it goes without saying\u2014one of M. R. James\u2019 powerful ghost stories. It is \u201cCount Magnus,\u201d in which a curious scholar gains knowledge he didn\u2019t even know was forbidden and suffers the resultant doom at the hands of the count and his betentacled companion. The story actually ends before we have a chance to witness its fabulous coup de grace, but we know that a sucked-off face is in store for our scholar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The entire collection is fun reading, and I actually like and appreciate all the learned bits, partly true and partly cleverly invented, that provide the backdrop for his stories.<\/p>\n<div class=\"spacer20\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"ruler\"><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"epigraph\">James, M. R. <em>Ghost Stories of an Antiquary<\/em>. <a href=\"https:\/\/gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/8486\" target=\"somethingUnique\">Edward Arnold, 1904<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/02\/16\/ghost-stories-of-an-antiquary-by-m-r-james\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James\"><p>\ud83d\udcda Predating the Mythos Circle, but already with tentacles!<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-archive","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5971"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6381,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions\/6381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}