Today is a spooky song “The Unquiet Grave” which is an old folk song. Now I’ve a fondness for mysteries and ghost stories, so it made sense to go hunting. Someone somewhere must have written a book by that title.
Well as they say in Space Camp, “whip me, beat me, take away my credit cards” the silly search on Amazon worked and there this description was:
If you find a locked room in a lonely inn, don’t try to open it, even on a bright sunny day. If you find a strange whistle hidden among the stones of an old church, don’t blow it. If a mysterious man gives you a piece of paper with strange writing on it, give it back to him at once. And if you call a dead man from his grave, don’t expect to sleep peacefully ever again. Read these five ghost stories by daylight, and make sure your door is locked.
The author of “The Unquiet Grave” is M.R. James. This just gets better and better. Not only ghost stories, but British ghost stories.
M. R. James (1862-1936) was born in Kent, and became the provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and later of Eton School. He is famous for his ghost stories, which have been popular since the day they were first written.
The four stories in the description are “Number 13” about a satanic pact and a sealed room; “O Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” based on the old superstition of witches having the power to “whistle up the wind”; “Casting the Runes” about a black magician who uses some old-timey Norse magic that backfires; and “Count Magnus”, about another deal with “the Prince of the Air” only the late Count got the better end of the deal. The fifth story isn’t described, but at a guess I’d say it would be “A Warning to the Curious”–which deals with a disturbed barrow where an ancient guardian crown was buried and the fate of the man who dug it up.
The fascinating thing about M. R. James is that he had and continues to have such a huge influence on the literary ghost story genre, but only wrote something like thirty stories over the course of his career. Read aloud, they’re wonderful. Brilliant spooky stuff.
So there you are … The Unquiet Grave a book written in the 1920s and famous enough to still be published today .. now that is really good haunting
Leave a Reply