A School Story

Last updated
"A School Story"
Short story by M. R. James
More Ghost Stories - MR James.jpg
Country England
Language English
Genre(s) Horror
Publication
Publication date1911

"A School Story" is a ghost story by British writer M. R. James, included in his 1911 collection More Ghost Stories .

Contents

Plot

Two men are discussing the folklore of the private schools they attended. One tells of a Latin teacher named Mr. Sampson who kept a Byzantine coin that he would show his students. The narrator's friend gives the teacher a strange message in Latin which translates to "remember the well among the four yews", [1] though he doesn't know why he wrote it. Later another paper shows up translating to "If you don't come to me, I'll come to you", [2] and it visibly worries Sampson. Later at night the narrator's friend sees a horribly thin, corpse-like man sitting on Sampson's window-sill, but when he returns with the narrator the figure is gone. Sampson is missing the next day. Years later a body is found - with Sampson's coin - in the death-embrace of a second body, in a well that sits between four trees.

References

  1. ↑ James, M.R. (1993). Collected ghost stories (Repr. ed.). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. p. 100. ISBN   1853260533.
  2. ↑ James, M.R. (1993). Collected ghost stories (Repr. ed.). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. p. 101. ISBN   1853260533.


Horrornovel.png

This article about a horror short story (or stories) published in the 1910s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.