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Did M.R. James Ever Meet A Ghost?

He did. He saw the puppet ghost in a Punch and Judy set which left a huge impression.

’’What first interested me in ghosts? This I can tell you quite definitely. In my childhood I chanced to see a toy Punch and Judy set, with figures cut out in cardboard. One of these was The Ghost. It was a tall figure habited in white with an unnaturally long and narrow head, also surrounded with white, and a dismal visage. Upon this my conceptions of a ghost were based, and for years it permeated my dreams."
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MRJ's semi-autobiographical short story, “A Vignette”, not published in his lifetime, describes a possibly “real” encounter with something at the garden gate of the Rectory at Livermere in Suffolk, where he grew up. Interestingly, it also describes something akin to part of Jenny Randles' "Oz Factor" experience:

Now, too, was the moment near when the surroundings began to take on a threatening look; that the sunlight lost power and a quality of light replaced it which, though I did not know it at the time my memory years after told me was the lifeless pallor of an eclipse. The effect of all this was to intensify the foreboding that had begun to possess me, and to make me look anxiously about, dreading that in some quarter my fear would take a visible shape.

Otherwise, apart from the Punch and Judy puppet, he admits only (in the introduction to the 1931 “Collected Ghost Stories”) that none of the stories (published by that date) were based on his own experience, "save one, specified in the text, where a dream furnished a suggestion" (this is the bedsheet ghost in “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You”), but makes an attempt to appear noncommittal about the possible existence of ghosts "I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me".
 
lordmongrove said:
The Haunting of M.R. James
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I'm watching this now (thank you!). Not convinced - there seems to be a lot of talk about 'oh, his stories are so convincing and he couldn't have talked about it in real life so he must have been psychic and seeing things...' Which seems to undermine James's ability as a writer, to make things up convincingly, wouldn't you say?
 
catseye said:
I'm watching this now (thank you!). Not convinced - there seems to be a lot of talk about 'oh, his stories are so convincing and he couldn't have talked about it in real life so he must have been psychic and seeing things...' Which seems to undermine James's ability as a writer, to make things up convincingly, wouldn't you say?
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Yes i would, he was the best ghost story writer ever, though the face seen through the gate may have been a real childhood event but that does not mean it was a ghost.
 
lordmongrove said:
Yes i would, he was the best ghost story writer ever, though the face seen through the gate may have been a real childhood event but that does not mean it was a ghost.
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I agree. He was the product of his upbringing, but I was not convinced by the programme into thinking that he was clearly 'psychic' or that he had actually seen the ghosts he wrote about. The narrator seemed to rather labour the point too. I think James was a very very talented writer with a spooky turn of mind, who was straddling two ages; the pre-modern, with its gas lamps and candles and the new modern age, which he didn't seem very keen on - and trying to keep the 'spirit' of his youth alive through stories.
 
It's so reductive to say "X couldn't possibly have written this without having seen it" it totally demeans the human imagination and the skill of writers, people do the same thing with Lovecraft as well.

I've not seen anyone claim that Tolkien actually met an ent but no doubt there's someone somewhere who thinks that.
 
Considering his position/reputation, would James have let the public know if indeed he had ever seen ghosts? Sadly, he would surely have been ridiculed, at least...
 
Steven said:
Considering his position/reputation, would James have let the public know if indeed he had ever seen ghosts? Sadly, he would surely have been ridiculed, at least...
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I'm not sure... surge of interest in spiritualism with WWI?
 
Frideswide said:
I'm not sure... surge of interest in spiritualism with WWI?
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There's this, of course. But spiritualism had been around since the middle of the previous century, and was followed (with varying degrees of devotion) by a significant number of people, and from a diverse spectrum of society.

Theosophy came a little later in the 19th century, but again, attracted a fairly diverse crowd and some influential individuals (although it never had the broad attraction of spiritualism).

The Society for Psychical Research was around from the 1880s. It's genesis, supposedly, came from a conversation between a Professor of Physics and an influential journalist - both had an avowed interest in spiritualism, but clearly, neither were shy about it, nor did it appear to affect their careers or their place in society. Parapsychology may have been a somewhat niche interest, and it certainly attracted some oddballs, but it also attracted eminent names from the worlds of science as well as the arts - the true oddballs were the outliers, rather than the norm.

There's no doubt that some people ridiculed those who had an interest in spiritualism and parapsychology (which might be seen as a scientific offshoot of that earlier more spiritual genesis) but it doesn't seem to have put people off, and an interest in the paranormal did not necessarily mark you out as an outsider, or limit your prospects in life.

I think the 'fear of ridicule' thing is more often than not overplayed. Ghost stories - which may be seen as the informal expression of the more structured elements like spiritualism and parapsychology - are part of the culture of all areas of the British Isles, and I'm just not sure they would be such an integral part of that heritage if we all felt so obligated to keep our mouths shut.

Ogdred Weary said:
It's so reductive to say "X couldn't possibly have written this without having seen it" it totally demeans the human imagination and the skill of writers, people do the same thing with Lovecraft as well.

I've not seen anyone claim that Tolkien actually met an ent but no doubt there's someone somewhere who thinks that.
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Yes, 'reductive' is precisely the word I was looking for. It's clearly utterly ridiculous to claim that an ability to imagine something effectively is an indication that you have not imagined it at all.
 
Ogdred Weary said:
It's so reductive to say "X couldn't possibly have written this without having seen it" it totally demeans the human imagination and the skill of writers, people do the same thing with Lovecraft as well.

I've not seen anyone claim that Tolkien actually met an ent but no doubt there's someone somewhere who thinks that.
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And I think James would have been quite cross to hear that people think he couldn't have come up with the stories from his own imagination. There's an American review for one of my books where the reviewer says that I 'obviously' based it all on people I know, because 'you couldn't make it up!'

Well yes, yes you could and I did. And I found it, as Ogdred says, 'demeaning' for someone to assume otherwise.
 
catseye said:
I'm watching this now (thank you!). Not convinced - there seems to be a lot of talk about 'oh, his stories are so convincing and he couldn't have talked about it in real life so he must have been psychic and seeing things...' Which seems to undermine James's ability as a writer, to make things up convincingly, wouldn't you say?
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A bit like Tolkein hanging around with all them Elves and Hobbits on the outskirts of Birmingham.
 
Found myself watching this last night. Talks about M R James' past, but with emphasis on his scholarly activities - some excellent pictures of the man himself and his background. Him seeing ghosts is not mentioned.

 
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