| "Casting the Runes" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by M.R. James | |
 | |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Publication | |
| Publication date | 1911 |
"Casting the Runes" is a short story written by the English writer M.R. James. It was first published in 1911 as the fourth story in More Ghost Stories , which was James' second collection of ghost stories.
Mr. Edward Dunning is a researcher for the British Museum. At the beginning of the story he has recently reviewed The Truth of Alchemy by Mr. Karswell, an alchemist and occultist. Afterwards, he begins seeing the name John Harrington displayed wherever he goes. He learns that Harrington also reviewed Karswell's work and died in a freak accident not long after.
Harrington's brother helps Dunning discover that Karswell cursed both men by slipping them a piece of paper with some runes on it. They deduce that the curse, once cast, will cause the bearer to die in three months. They track down Karswell a day before the curse is set to kill Dunning and manage to return the runes to him. Karswell dies the next day, killed by a stone that falls from scaffolding around St. Wulfram's Church in Abbeville. [1]
The 1957 film Night of the Demon (directed by Jacques Tourneur) is an adaption of this story. [2] In this version, the central character is called Dr John Holden (played by Dana Andrews). Holden is an American psychologist who plans to expose occultist Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) as a charlatan, only to discover that Karswell's powers are real and that he has put a curse on Holden.
The story has been adapted twice for British television. The first was in 1968 as an episode of the anthology series Mystery and Imagination (Season 3, episode 1, 1968) with John Fraser as Dunning and Robert Eddison as Karswell. In 1979, the story was adapted again as Casting the Runes , an episode of ITV Playhouse (Season 11, episode 9). In the 1979 version, the central protagonist is a woman, Prudence Dunning (played by Jan Francis), the producer of an investigative television programme which is critical of an occultist named Karswell (played by Iain Cuthbertson), and soon finds that Karswell has a curse put upon her. No complete copies of the 1968 version are known to exist, but the 1979 version has been released on DVD.
"Casting the Runes" has also been adapted several times for radio. The first was in 1947 by CBS for their radio series Escape . CBS produced a second version in 1974 for their CBS Radio Mystery Theater show. In 1981, BBC Radio 4 produced a loose adaptation called "The Hex".
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Casting the Runes is a supernatural television drama produced by ITV in 1979. Running at 50 minutes, it was based on the ghost story Casting the Runes by British writer and academic M. R. James, first published in 1911 as the fourth story in More Ghost Stories, which was James' second collection of ghost stories. Directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark for the series Playhouse, produced by Yorkshire Television, it was first broadcast on ITV on 24 April 1979. Adapted by Clive Exton, it reimagined the events of James's story taking place in a contemporary television studio.
Casting the Runes is a supernatural television drama produced by ABC Television in 1968. Running at 50 minutes, it was first broadcast on 22 March 1968 and was based on the ghost story Casting the Runes by British writer and academic M. R. James, first published in 1911 as the fourth story in More Ghost Stories, which was James' second collection of ghost stories. The first television adaptation of the story, it was produced as an episode of the anthology series Mystery and Imagination with John Fraser as Dunning and Robert Eddison as Karswell.
There have been many adaptations of the works of M. R. James for television, radio, audio and the stage, as well as a 1957 film adaptation of "Casting the Runes" by Jacques Tourneur, titled Night of the Demon.
The full text of Casting the Runes at Wikisource
Casting the Runes public domain audiobook at LibriVox