The James Gang: Ghost Story Writers

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) is in my opinion the greatest of all the ghost story writers. The Cambridge don began a tradition of writing a ghost story for Christmas. Drawing from his appreciation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu and his tales, James wrote such classics as “Count Magnus”, “Casting the Runes” and “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’. “Of those who were lucky enough to hear these tales spun out each holiday season (known as “The James Gang”), several went on to write ghost stories of their own. Admittedly, most were not of the same caliber as James, but in all honestly, how many of us are?

All the members of the Gang produced one collection of stories with the exception of H. Russell Wakefield who was certainly the last Jamesian writer of ghost stories. He produced seven volumes in his lifetime, the last of them thanks to August Derleth and Arkham House Press. Wakefield can be credited with actually producing two classics of his own with “The Red Lodge” and “The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster” (both in 1928).

The Footprints in the Snow (1910) by H. F. W. Tatham

E. G. Swain The Stoneground Ghost Tales (1912)

Sir Arthur Gray (1852–1940) Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye (1919)

Amyas Northcote In Ghostly Company (1921)

L. T. C. Rolt  Sleep No More (1928)

Eleanor Scott (pseudonym of Helen M Leys, 1892–1965) Randall’s Round (1929)

D. K. Broster Couching at the Door: Strange and Macabre Tales (1942)

R. H. Malden Nine Ghosts (1943)

A. N. L. Munby, The Alabaster Hand and Other Ghost Stories (1949)

H. Russell Wakefield

They Return at Evening (1928)

Old Man’s Beard: Fifteen Disturbing Tales (1929)

Imagine a Man in a Box (1931)

Ghost Stories (1932)

A Ghostly Company (1935)

The Clock Strikes Twelve: Tales of the Supernatural (1940)

Strayers from Sheol (1961)

The Jamesian ghost story remained popular until the coming of the Pulps. James died in 1936 just as the Pulps were getting going but his followers continued to publish into the 1940s. (E. F. Benson was one of the few to use the Pulps well. His stories appeared in Hutchinson’s Magazine first.) With the exception of Wakefield, none of the James Gang published much after World War II. After the Pulps were gone after the mid 1950s, it was the horror paperbacks of the 1960s that rediscovered these ghost story writers. The original collections were hard to find but the best of the stories could now be found in any number of anthologies.