A Ghost Story for Christmas: "A Warning to the Curious", with Sir Christopher Lee

M. R. James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some consider among the best in the genre. He redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. Because his protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".
A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925). The first hardback collected edition appeared in 1931. Many of the tales were written as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to friends. This idea was used by the BBC in 2000 when they filmed Sir Christopher Lee reading James's stories in a candle-lit room in King's College.

[@lindamaclean7941]

What an awesome rendition of this short story.

[@nicoles5852]

That was very atmospheric. Thanks for this

[@AndriyValdensius-wi8gw]

Very atmospheric. This is better than the dramatised version, because Christopher Lee is reciting the story itself. Seaburgh is Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The beach is shingle. I've been there. I've driven through Suffolk and Norfolk at night on small roads and been caught in a sea mist at one o'clock in the morning. It is terrifying Long wisps of mist going across the road like fingers of a giant ghostly hand. I was a bit lost and stopped to look at a small road sign, in the middle of the night on this lonely unmarked road. I was terrified tbh. It was a relief to finally find the "A" road again. M R James was born in Suffolk. He knew what he was writing about.

[@deborahdarling1799]

Bravo!!!

[@Offshoreorganbuilder]

Thanks for this. What a superb narrator. These never age, from a time when the BBC was more interested in producing quality content than in shoe-horning in ethnic minorities and 'colour-blind' casting.

[@Nai61a]

A bigot round every corner, it seems.

[@AndriyValdensius-wi8gw]

MRJ was brilliant at word painting. His descriptions are so very evocative, and deeply unsettling.