A Thin Ghost and Others

M. R. James gathers five ghost stories in A Thin Ghost and Others, his third supernatural collection. The volume moves through Whitminster, Mr Poynter's diary, cathedral history, a strange disappearance, and a final encounter involving two doctors. These varied premises place disturbing events inside settings shaped by records, old buildings, professional habits, and apparently ordinary social life. James rarely depends on prolonged spectacle. His effects emerge through controlled detail, a carefully placed object, an incomplete account, or the sense that something malign has brushed against the familiar world. That lightness of touch makes each escalation more unsettling, because the reader is asked to recognize danger before it is fully explained. The author's preface presents the tales modestly as entertainments and acknowledges the risks of publishing a third set, yet the arrangement shows an experienced command of pace and implication. Two stories had previously appeared in the Cambridge Review, and the collection brings them into a coherent volume with three companions. A Thin Ghost and Others suits readers who value atmospheric horror, antiquarian mystery, and narratives in which scholarly curiosity or everyday routine opens a door onto consequences that reason cannot comfortably contain.