The Ghost Stories of M.R. James Quiz

Answer: Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come To You, My Lad

The town of Burnstow is a fictional seaside town in Suffolk, and many landmarks James mentioned in his story (like the golf links and the martello tower) are still there to be seen in 2013. It certainly is an excellent setting for a horror tale, as the landscape is rather bleak and windswept.

Answer: Phoebe and Giovanni

Phoebe was a gipsy girl and Giovanni (or Jevanny, as the housekeeper called him) was an Italian boy who earned money playing a hurdy-gurdy in the streets. The evil alchemist Mr Abney kindly took them in and then cut out their hearts for his potion. His third and final victim was meant to be his orphaned cousin Stephen.

Answer: Because a murderer is buried there

In the story, the murderer is brought up in court before one Justice Jeffreys, for killing a local girl 'of weak understanding'. Squire Martin's crime was brought to light partly because the poor young woman did not rest quietly in the pond where he dumped her body. Though the killer was fiction, Judge Jeffreys was very real.

He earned himself the name 'the Hanging Judge' after issuing 144 death sentences over two days in 1685 during the trials of the men taken prisoner during the Monmouth Rebellion.

Answer: Ager

Paxton was in fact the young man who dug up the crown, only to be haunted by the vengeful spirit of William Ager; Henry Long was one of the two men who tried to help him put it back and avert his doom; and Seaburgh was the town in which the final doom fell on poor Paxton.

Answer: The Golden Lion

James did visit Denmark himself in 1899 and 1900, staying in the same town, Viborg, as his hero in the story, and may have got the idea for the name of the hotel from the many lion emblems which still decorate the town today. Unlike the guests in his tale, however, his sleep was probably not disrupted by the caperings of an ancient warlock in a neighbouring room that only exists after dark...

Answer: The Abbot of Lufford

In 1957 this story was filmed as 'Night of the Demon' ('Curse of the Demon' in the United States), starring Niall MacGinnis as Karswell and Dana Andrews as his intended victim. Both this version and the 1979 tv adaptation 'Casting the Runes' made substantial changes to the original, which I think is far creepier - especially Mr Karswell's charming entertainment for the local children, which 'sent the children nearly mad'.

Answer: A haunted doll's house

'The Haunted Doll's House' features a house which is an accurate model of a real property, and in which every night at one a.m. is reenacted a murder and the terrible supernatural revenge which follows. James did use a Punch and Judy puppet theatre to horrific effect in 'The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance', but he never used a doll or teddy bear.

Answer: If you don't come to me, I 'll come to you.

The sender of the message keeps his promise; one of the boys sees a person who is 'beastly thin and ... wet all over' climb in through the man's window late one night, and the teacher is never seen again (except as a corpse in an old well, his bones tangled with those of someone who met their death there many years earlier).

The three wrong answers are all translations of Latin quotes James used in other stories.

Answer: Mrs Mothersole

Mrs Mothersole's final curse was simply 'There will be guests at the hall'. And indeed there were - poisonous guests who not only killed the squire who testified against her, but also his grandson forty years later. The three ladies who are innocent of her crimes were themselves not entirely guilt-free: one was also a witch, one a forger who defrauded children of their inheritance, and the third committed murder from beyond the grave because someone interfered with her gloating celebration of the death of Oliver Cromwell (she was an ardent Royalist).

Answer: Three carved figures from the cathedral

All of the other horrors appeared in various stories, but in this one the ruthlessly ambitious Haynes was haunted by three apparitions that seemed to arise from carved wooden figures in the cathedral - a cat, a demonic horned creature, and a hooded skeleton carrying a hangman's noose.

They were said to have been carved from an ancient tree known as the Hangman's Oak; a rhyme found hidden in one suggested that to awaken their vengeance one had only to touch them with a hand which had shed innocent blood. Unfortunate for the Archdeacon that one of the carvings was part of his chair in the cathedral!