I find I do not like a crowd after dark. . . . You see—no, you do not see, but I see—such curious faces: and the people to whom they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when you least expect it, and looking close into your face, as if they were searching for someone—who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him. “Where do they come from?” Why, some, I think, out of the water, and some out of the ground. They look like that. But I am sure it is best to take no notice of them, and not to touch them.

Ever since Valancourt starting releasing their excellent Victorian Christmas ghost story anthologies, I’ve made it a point to read stories of this type each December. This year I read the complete ghost stories, of M. R. James, the granddaddy of them all.

Conventional wisdom holds that James’ early ghost story collections are his best, and that the later stories weren’t as good, so I wasn’t really looking forward to these. Holy cow, was I wrong. The stories contained in this anthology are just as good as those in the first but actually start to move into Aickman territory: they are weird, bizarre, hallucinatory, tightly plotted, and really really creepy. I ended up having to read each one twice to get what was happening, but that was a good thing.

So, don’t believe the negative hype. These stories, available in this annotated collection or all over the place online, are highly recommended.