David Collings

Mrs. Anstruther would like to plant a rose garden; however, the clearing she wishes to use gives people nightmares, and they hear whispers by an old post in the clearing. Soon she and her husband learn the history of the clearing and the injustice that took place there.

M. R. James, famous for his tales of the supernatural, here delivers a haunting Christmas yarn.

Dr. Rant leaves directions that it is to be buried by being 'put, sitting at a table in his ordinary clothes, in a brick room that he'd had made underground in a field near his house. Of course the country people say he's been seen about there in his old black cloak.'

The death of two youths may be connected to a mysterious glass talisman that shows bizarre events.

A shepherd tells of well near which dwell three women and a man, who were 'bad 'uns' when they were alive, now reduced to 'flutterin' rags and whity bones', who 'hadn't much to call faces'.

This vintage book contains Montague Rhodes James's chilling supernatural short story "An Episode of Cathedral History". First published as part of "The collected ghost stories of M.R. James" (1931), it is a hair-raising ghost story highly recommended for all lovers of the genre. Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was an English author who often published under the name M. R. James. He was a seminal medievalist scholar, but today is most famous for...

A mysterious pair of glasses reveal peculiar sights, including a gibbet, with something hanging from it, where none should be.

Mr. Williams, the curator of a university art museum, purchases a mezzotint from an art dealer. The painting changes each time Mr. Williams his colleagues look at it. In the end, it is suggested that the painting depicts a poacher named Gawdy (who had been hanged) kidnapping the heir of a Mr. Arthur Francis, who hanged Gawdy for poaching on his land.

While researching church history in Viborg, Denmark, the narrator's cousin stays in a Danish inn. While staying in Number 12, he notices that his room seems to grow smaller and his furniture sometimes vanishes. After hearing dancing next door, he assumes it comes from Number 13; however, upon discussing the matter with the inn-keep, he learns that there is no Number 13. He asks the inn-keep to visit his room at night. While talking, the protagonist...

The tale tells the story of Stephen, a young orphan boy, who is sent to stay with his much older cousin at a remote country mansion. His cousin is a reclusive alchemist obsessed with making himself immortal. Stephen is repeatedly troubled by visions of a young gypsy girl and a traveling Italian boy, who are missing their hearts.