"The Rules of Folklore" in the Ghost Stories of M.R. James

Sometimes, it is said that if one tries to stop up such holes in graves, the stones will get drawn down into the grave overnight and disappear (Kristensen 1897, 241-2). Other things may get dragged in too. One rather grotesque legend concerns the ghost of a Madam Vissing who was partly but not completely laid, so that her head and shoulders remained sticking up out of the ground, "so they set an upturned barrel over her"; years later, when the barrel was beginning to rot, a child jokingly poked a whip into a hole in it, "and then she snatched the whip away from him" (Kristensen 1897, 313-14).

The damage to the music sheet and to the hem of the woman's dress has no exact parallel in either British or Danish lore, as far as I recall, but there is one Danish motif which is fairly similar - namely, that a malevolent ghost demands that a living person should clasp his hand in token of some pledge, but the latter prudently offers a kerchief or apron instead; the ghost rips the end off, and the torn edge is then seen to be blackened and scorched.

As for whistling, particularly at night, the consequences could be quite horrific, according to Jutland beliefs. It could summon up a ghost, who might then chase you; or the will-o-the-wisp; or the Wild Hunt; or a demonic dog; or the Devil himself, especially if you had whistled through the keyhole of a church door (Kristensen 1876, 293; 1883, 288 and 289; 1886, 195 and 290).

And this of course leads us to the most famous story James wrote, which many recall with a particular shudder: "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, my Lad." As ever, the elements are admirably blended. There is the East Anglian setting; the antiquarian mystery of the whistle itself, found in the ruins of a Templar chapel, with its puzzling inscription FUR-FLA-FLE-BIS; the theme of the pursuing ghost; the artful gradations of horror, conveyed in hints and brief perceptions; the touches drawn from folklore, such as the power of candlelight and the taboo on "whistling for the wind" (about which one of the characters comments that "they believe in it all over Denmark and Norway, as well as on the Yorkshire coast"). But the most memorable feature of this particular ghost is the way it invades the unfortunate hero's hotel room and takes possession of the spare bed, so that "the clothes were bundled up and twisted together in the most tortuous confusion"; from these sheets it fashions itself a body of fluttering linen draperies. A child glimpses it by daylight, "waving" at the window; by night, it rises and attacks its victim, revealing "a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen" (James 1970, 148; his emphasis).

It does not take much detective work to relate this climax to James's personal fears - to the face, draped in white, peering through the hole in the gate in "A Vignette," or the sheeted ghost of the Punch and Judy show. Indeed, making a rare personal comment within the text of "Oh Whistle ..." itself, he tells the reader, at the moment when the hero first sees the ghost sit up in an empty bed, that "I have in a dream thirty years back seen the same thing happen"; and in his Preface he confirms that this is the one case when he based a story on his own experience, since "a dream furnished the suggestion" (ibid., vii). Though James does not say so explicitly, it must have been a childhood dream; thirty years previous to the date of publication (1904), he was only twelve.