HAMLET

William Shakespeare The prince is informed by his father’s ghost that his mother and new stepfather (also his uncle) are responsible for his death.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Charles Dickens Miserly Mr Scrooge is visited while abed by prescient Christmas ghosts – will their dire predictions scare the old geezer into righting his wrongs?

THE GREEN MAN

Kingsley Amis A widower takes up residence in an inn named The Green Man, colludes with the evil proprietor’s ghost, but realises its intentions too late.

OWEN WINGRAVE

Henry James A soldier tries to prove his bravery – despite refusing to serve – and win back his fiancée by sleeping in the room where his father died.

THE ASH-TREE

M. R. James A woman is hanged as a witch because of her neighbour’s testimony that she climbs his ash tree every night – will his inexplicable death be the last act of her revenge?

Extract from THE ASH-TREE

I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have sketched are still there – Italian portico, square block of white house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690.

In that year the district in which the hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason – if there was any – which lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of unusual powers of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the mere cruelty of the witchfinders – these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved. And the present narrative gives me pause. I cannot altogether sweep it away as mere invention. The reader must judge for himself.

Castringham contributed a victim to the auto-da-fé. Mrs Mothersole was her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches only in being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.

But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the then proprietor of Castringham Hall – Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full of the moon, gathering sprigs “from the ash-tree near my house”. She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to the garden was a hare running across the park in the direction of the village.

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