To celebrate the release of our Self Made Hero book of M. R. James adaptations – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Vol 1 – we’re going to be counting down to Christmas in true Jamesian style, with a new ghostly image and nugget of info every day.
Day 5: “HAVE SCARECROWS BARE BONY FEET?”
Alisdair Wood was at the very top of our list of artists when it came to adapting M. R. James’ ghostly tales into comic form and I’m sure you can see why. He’d already done a fair bit of MRJ related work (which appeared on the covers of Ghosts & Scholars and on the Podcast to the Curious website) before he turned his hand to The Ash-tree.
The above image is from M. R. James’ Rats:
‘And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you’d see the ragged, mouldy bedclothes a-heaving and a-heaving like seas.’ ‘And a-heaving and a-heaving with what?’ he says. Why, with the rats under ’em.’
But was it with the rats? I ask, because in another case it was not.
Moore & Reppion will be introducing a rare screening of two classic films from the BBC’s Ghost Story For Christmas series – The Signalman & Whistle And I’ll Come To You – at FACT Liverpool on Wednesday the 21st of December at 7pm.
The screening is part of Picturehouse’s nationwide A Warning to the Curious: Ghost Stories at Christmas season.