Casting the Runes

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) was an English academic best known for his mediaeval scholarship, holding the position of provost at King’s College, Cambridge and later Eton, and his antiquarian ghost stories. He enjoyed entertaining his friends on Christmas Eve with his contemporary, realistic ghost stories that abandoned previous Gothic clichés. He even inspired a method of story telling known as Jamesian; elements often included in a Jamesian tale are an older scholar as the protagonist and an antique object that summons a supernatural presence.