The Christmas season is the time of the spirits, when the veils between reality and the otherworld are thin, the ancients believed. So the perfect moment to take on a spooky challenge.
Before the miracle of the child born to take away the sins of the world and the arrival of Christianity in Britain, celebrations here blazed with Nordic Christmas bonfires symbolizing the return of the sun. In the freezing forests of the Celtic Solstice, the Oak King of Light defeated the Holly King of Darkness.
Beyond that ancient firelight (and beyond our contemporary lit windows and decorations) strange presences move in the shadows. They’re the old souls of Christmas magic, and we’ve always answered them with stories – the scarier the better.
The spirits descend to us through the ghostly visitors of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: they manifest themselves in that cheerful tingle, half terror, half delight that signals the presence of mysteries beyond the world we know.
A nervous Horatio Clare (pictured) attempts a spooky supernatural challenge
And now I wonder if ghosts and wraiths are gathering outside in the frigid darkness as I prepare for a test guaranteed to give goosebumps.
I am about to place myself in the power of a master, the English author and medieval scholar MR James (1862-1936) – a writer who makes a sunny day shudder.
I’ve avoided scary movies, scary stories, and ghost stories since I was a kid. I tend to remain calm in the face of actual dangers, but the supernatural makes me nervous as a cat.
The rules of the MR James Test are simple. You must read one of his ghost stories by the light of a single candle in an abandoned house in an empty room with your back to an open door.
You’ll fail the challenge if you’re so unnerved that you have to turn and look over your shoulder.
And so I begin. The ghosts of our old West Yorkshire home seem to gather around my flickering candle. Outside, among black rocks and cliffs, the night is alive with the murmur and murmur of the nearby creek. Water and rock are the only great powers here, I always thought – or are they?
We live in a wooded valley haunted by owls, criss-crossed by ancient paths and overlooked by the Pennine hills.
My family always found this a simple and friendly old house, but tonight I am alone.
English author and medieval scholar MR James (1862-1936) – a writer who makes a sunny day shudder
The boiler makes a soothing murmur – I turn it off. The house suddenly stands still.
The story I chose is Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad, in which a young academic moves into a haunted East Coast hotel.
James would have liked this old house. The night we moved in I could feel and hear the spirits of the place.
In front of the fire in the drawing room there is a strange pit covered by an old grille. That first night I found myself pouring a splash of wine: an involuntary pagan rite.
The house creaked all night, its mood was clearly disturbed by our arrival, curious and tangible.
Since then we have felt safe here. . . but there was always something to that hearth hole under the grate.
I locked the doors. It’s time to begin. I think of Ouija boards, poltergeists and the mysteries of the night. I feel a slight blush across my shoulders and in my cheeks. Now there is only the quiet ticking of the kitchen clock.
As a child I was afraid of pictures on certain book covers – what I’m picking up now I would never have tolerated. The cover is bright orange and the illustration shows a skull. Collected Ghost Stories by MR James.
I turn to Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad.
There is a sound and my heart is beating! What is it? I’m freezing. There it is again! Just the radiator contracting as it cools? Hopefully.
The story describes Professor Parkins of the fictional St. James’s College, who is “young, orderly, and precise of speech”.
The holidays are upon us and Parkins, disapproving of those who take the supernatural seriously, plans to stay at the haunted Globe Inn in a town called Burnstow.
One of Parkins’ colleagues tells him that there is a ruined grave on the beach nearby. Parkins casually mentions that the only room available at the hotel contains an extra bed.
As the scene switches to the Globe Inn, the reader is ready to jump at the slightest sound. And as I read, there’s the faintest sound – something moving outside behind the old sash window.
is that a cat There is a sound: tiny tapping on the glass. It must be the rain or dead leaves, I tell myself.
I’m struggling not to look behind me. My legs suddenly feel cold as I read on.
While strolling along the beach, Parkins found an old brass whistle engraved with Latin buried in the sand in ruins he learned were left behind by the Knights Templar, the secretive Catholic military order founded in the 12th century.
Walking back to the hotel, whistle in pocket, Parkins has the impression of a distant figure on the beach walking towards him but somehow not getting closer.
Now Parkins is in his room cleaning his pipe. He pours sand out of the window.
“The night was clear and bright. . . and he paused for a moment to look out to sea, and to notice a belated wanderer stationed on the shore in front of the inn.’
How brilliant James is – this “stationed” wanderer; The verb is perfect. We suspect that the walking character and the character in front of Parkin’s room could be one and the same.
A spectral observer has arrived and stationed himself.
I’m right with Parkins now. He blows the whistle!
“As quiet as it was, he felt it should be audible from miles away.”
Suddenly he imagines “a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh breeze, and in the midst of it a lonely figure.”
Parkins whistles again. No, no, I want to tell him!
“What force can the wind bring up in a few minutes! What a mighty gust! There! I knew the window mount was useless! Ah! I thought to myself – both candles out. It’s enough to tear the room apart.”
There is no wind outside while I read. But it’s tingling on the back of my skull.
Parkins tries to sleep. Closing his eyes, he sees a horrified man running down the beach, pursued by a pale and devilish figure that seems to bend and search, as if sniffing him, before darting forward at terrifying speed.
Illustration of Oh whistle and I come to you my boy
Honestly, I could use a whisky, some warm electric lights and the heat back on – but James got me.
The next day, another hotel guest, a retired colonel, advises Parkins to throw the whistle into the sea.
A maid notes that he appears to have slept in both beds in his room, although Parkins is sure he didn’t bother the other.
Returning to the Globe after a day of golf, Parkins and the Colonel encounter a frightened little boy who describes a bizarre figure waving at him through a hotel window – the window of Parkins’ room.
At this point I break down and look behind me. The light is off in our kitchen – but I’m scared.
Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad is just too good and too scary – it would be wrong to tell you what happens next.
When I’m done, I sit back and my gaze wanders to the grille that covers the odd space beneath our stove.
Our boy’s grandmother stayed one night while we were away. She decided to clear out the mysterious hole.
Inside, beneath a layer of ash, she found something as sinister as Parkins’s whistle—a clay figure roughly made, as of a child, its limbs squat and primitive.
It appeared to be what used to be called a fetish, perhaps an amulet or a small household god. I hastily returned it to its resting place and respectfully placed it in its tomb of ashes.
Tonight I certainly failed the MR James test, but by taking it, by giving the Christmas spirits a chance to make themselves felt, I feel like I’ve paid homage to an older, alien world that gathers out there every night, beyond the window pane – and the world’s greatest ghost storyteller.