Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Two men in a smoking room are swapping ghost stories, in particular the "folklore of public schools". One of them recounts a strange experience from his own school days more than 30 years before... The story starts at 00:01:00
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to exclusive content):
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:00 A School Story
00:20:23 Credits, thanks and further listening
This is one of a series of the ghost stories of M. R. James I've narrated for this channel; you can hear the others on this playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi95qAoufCZJNKedIOCTyWlvJTmG0ku2o
Or for a selection of Victorian ghost stories by various authors, including Charles Dickens, Amelia Edwards, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, and many more: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi95qAoufCZISCGdeBUtYxynNFtZCeRrv
About the author: Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medievalist and scholar, and is probably the best known and most celebrated English ghost story writer of the 20th century, although he actually began composing supernatural tales in the late Victorian era, beginning with 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' and 'Lost Hearts' (both 1893). He was born in Kent, but spent most of his childhood in Suffolk, a county which features prominently in many of his stories, including 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'. Several of James's protagonists also reflect his own antiquarian interests, with academics and historians featuring regularly. James published four volumes of ghost stories in his lifetime: 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' (1904), 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' (1911), 'A Thin Ghost and Others' (1919) and 'A Warning to the Curious and Other Stories' (1925).
During a long academic career which encompassed several positions at King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College, M. R. James developed a tradition of reading his ghost stories aloud to a group of friends, most famously on Christmas eve, and the majority of his published stories were first heard in that setting.
'A School Story' first appeared in print in James' 1911 collection 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary'. The exact date of composition is unclear, but it was almost certainly read aloud at a meeting of "the Chit-Chat club" at some point between 1905 and 1910.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2025.
Two men in a smoking room are swapping ghost stories, in particular the "folklore of public schools". One of them recounts a strange experience from his own school days more than 30 years before... The story starts at 00:01:00
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to exclusive content):
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:00 A School Story
00:20:23 Credits, thanks and further listening
This is one of a series of the ghost stories of M. R. James I've narrated for this channel; you can hear the others on this playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi95qAoufCZJNKedIOCTyWlvJTmG0ku2o
Or for a selection of Victorian ghost stories by various authors, including Charles Dickens, Amelia Edwards, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, and many more: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi95qAoufCZISCGdeBUtYxynNFtZCeRrv
About the author: Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medievalist and scholar, and is probably the best known and most celebrated English ghost story writer of the 20th century, although he actually began composing supernatural tales in the late Victorian era, beginning with 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' and 'Lost Hearts' (both 1893). He was born in Kent, but spent most of his childhood in Suffolk, a county which features prominently in many of his stories, including 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'. Several of James's protagonists also reflect his own antiquarian interests, with academics and historians featuring regularly. James published four volumes of ghost stories in his lifetime: 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' (1904), 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' (1911), 'A Thin Ghost and Others' (1919) and 'A Warning to the Curious and Other Stories' (1925).
During a long academic career which encompassed several positions at King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College, M. R. James developed a tradition of reading his ghost stories aloud to a group of friends, most famously on Christmas eve, and the majority of his published stories were first heard in that setting.
'A School Story' first appeared in print in James' 1911 collection 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary'. The exact date of composition is unclear, but it was almost certainly read aloud at a meeting of "the Chit-Chat club" at some point between 1905 and 1910.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2025.
