E G Swain

"If there is anything about which the present generation is bewilderingly well-informed it is the subject of spooks." - "Seraphita"Friends and Spectres is a companion volume to Ghosts of the Chit-Chat (2020), an anthology of ghost stories by authors who had been members of the Cambridge University Chit-Chat Club along with M. R. James. Here the associations with MRJ are less formal, but stronger and more enduring: for it is the bond of genuine friendship that ties these writers to him.The majority of pieces here were originally published under pseudonyms, and over half appeared first in amateur magazines or local newspapers. All deal with the supernatural, and several of the stories are themselves spectres-or more properly "revenants", only now re-emerging into the light after decades of oblivion. There are rediscoveries here of "lost" tales by Arthur Reed Ropes, E. G. Swain, and the enigmatic "B."

The Stoneground Ghost Tales was first published in 1912 by Heffer & Sons of Cambridge. Its author, Edmund Gill Swain (1861-1938), was a cleric, antiquary and colleague of M.R.James. Swain was born in Stockport in Cheshire and was educated at Manchester Grammar School before reading Natural Sciences at Cambridge. After ordination in 1886, he was appointed Chaplain of King's College, Cambridge, and was one of the privileged few to enjoy the original readings of James's famous annual Christmas ghost stories.In 1905, Swain became vicar of Stanground-now a suburb of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire-where he resided until 1916. This erstwhile parish is the thinly-disguised location of "Stoneground", where all of the tales in this volume are set.The central character of The Stoneground Ghost Tales is the Rev. Roland Batchel, vicar of Stoneground. He is a gentle, avuncular protagonist who enjoys a slightly wry sense of humour, as befits an erudite, English minister of the cloth. The style and subject matter of his tales is similar to that of James's own stories. They are mildly unsettling tales, although they lack the malevolence that characterises those of James.