“What first interested me in ghosts? In my childhood I chanced to see a toy Punch and Judy set, with figures cut out in cardboard. One of these was The Ghost. It was a tall figure habited in white with an unnaturally long and narrow head, also surrounded with white, and a dismal visage. Upon this my conceptions of a ghost were based, and for years it permeated my dreams.”

Montague Rhodes James, born 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, studied at Eton College, and then Kings College, Cambridge. A successful man, James progressed from Fellow, to Dean, and then Tutor. James was a prodigious writer, but he is best known for his ghost stories. On Christmas Eve, James would read one of these stories to colleagues and students. A Warning to the Curious was written in 1925, and titled James 5th collection of supernatural tales. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930, and died in 1936.

Further information, & full bibliography here. Or, buy the collected ghost stories from Amazon.co.uk.