M.R. James

Man, I fucking love M.R. James.

The guy was an Oxford professor who wrote ghost stories in his spare time around the turn of the 20th century.

I was re-reading these stories again over the weekend. Damn, just simply fucking AMAZING.

These stories aren't for everyone. It's in a veddy British prose, and the stories are dense with detail. But if you dig Lovecraft... you should be reading James.

I almost have to wonder if Lovecraft read and/or was influenced by James. There are a lot of similarities: the protagonists are almost always tweedy academic types, the horror usually stems from a book or artifact or third-hand story-within-a-story, etc. The only thing James lacks his a central Mythos.

These stories build a slow dread, tightening the noose with layers of weirdness and wrongness.

I have Complete Ghost Stories. But if you wanna get a taste, I'm pretty sure some of his stores are online somewhere.