Canon Alberic's scrap-book -- The tractate middoth -- The mezzotint -- The treasure of Barchester Cathedral -- The ash-tree -- A warning to the curious -- Casting the runes -- Number 13 -- The uncommon prayer-book -- Count Magnus -- 'Oh whistle, and I'll come to you my lad' -- Mr Humphreys and his interitance.

M. R. James wrote his ghost stories to entertain friends on Christmas Eve, and they went on to both transform and modernise a genre. James harnesses the power of suggestion to move from a recognisable world to one that is indefinably strange, and then unforgettably terrifying. Sheets, pictures, carvings, a dolls house, a lonely beach, a branch tapping on a window - ordinary things take on more than a tinge of dread in the hands of the original master of suspense.