Ghost town Spooks, hauntings and tall tales - the University Offices ...

College. These nine stories recount the
adventures of the ghost-hunting rector of
Stoneground, Reverend Roland Batchel.
The tales are set on the edge of the Fens,
where Swain was vicar for many years.
Jon gifford, owner of Oleander
Press, says he is interested in publishing
any genre of ‘lost’ book that has close
associations with the University and the
local area but is delighted to be able to
bring back these books. “gray has been
unavailable in the UK since 1919 and
Swain since 1912,” he says.
haunted garden
Another recently republished ghost story
is AP Baker’s A College Mystery, a tale of
intra-collegiate rivalry at Christ’s in the
mid-nineteenth century. It was originally
brought out in 1918 and is now available
through Back-in-Print Books.
ALL IMAgES COPYRIgHT OF ISSAM KOURBAJ
Baker was an undergraduate and
lecturer at Christ’s at the turn of the
20th century, and his book purports to
explain the true and grisly story of two
college Fellows – Christopher Round and
Philip Collier. The ghost of the former,
it is said, walks through the garden
every year on 29 May and, on the same
night, unsettling noises echo through
the Fellows’ Building, where Round and
Collier had rooms.
The strength of A College Mystery
lies in its ability to convince the reader
that what passes in its pages is a true
and accurate report of a terrible real-life
incident (Baker’s novella is made up of an
extended confession, excerpts from local
newspapers and first-hand accounts from
contemporary witnesses).
Richard Reynolds, who works at
Heffers on Trinity Street, and was
Ghost town: these
atmospheric images of
Cambridge were taken by
Christ’s artist in residence
Issam Kourbaj using a
camera obscura
instrumental in bringing the story back
into print, says he hears stories of people
who stay in the Fellows’ Building and
suffer a frightening and sleepless night,
only to later find out about the story and
the book.
Whether the gruesome incident at
its heart is true, the Fellows’ Building at
Christ’s, and its garden towards the back
of the college, are certainly two of the
more atmospheric places in collegiate
Cambridge.
Baker’s story is fairly well known across
the University – but it was one of his
academic contemporaries who brought
Cambridge and the supernatural to mass
public attention. That man was MR James
(1862-1936), former Provost of King’s
and Director, from 1893 to 1908, of the
Fitzwilliam Museum.
James wrote more than 30 ghost
stories in total, and his best work still
has the ability to disturb and scare.
While nearly all of his stories are set
outside Cambridge – typically in a small
Continental village, or an overlooked
corner of the Suffolk coast – his
protagonists are often Cambridge men
from a still-recognisable world of colleges
and academia.
readings by the fire
The best way to experience ghost
stories is to hear them read aloud. It
was something that James did himself,
inviting a select audience of friends to
his King’s study every Christmas, where
he would treat them to his latest spinechilling
composition.
It is a tradition that survives. Up
the road from James’s alma mater in St
John’s, Patrick Boyde, Emeritus Professor
of Italian, organises a programme of
events throughout the year for graduate
students and Fellows of the college.
The most popular single event, he says,
are the ghost stories he puts together
in December, read by the fire in the
16th-century Combination Room.
After seven successful years, Professor
Boyde has a good idea of how to transfix
an audience. “get the atmosphere right
– candles and a glowing fire – and have a
good reader,” he says. “A skilled reader can
convey all the necessary psychological
detail in seconds. The listeners will be
kept sitting on the edge of their seats
and the slightest pause may lead them to
think the next sentence will hit them in
the stomach.”
Fans of James – or those looking to
witness the power of his storytelling –
might also consider actor Robert Lloyd
november/deCember 2009 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE NEwSlETTER | 9