Take Care How You Whistle

I'm in the mood for ghost stories again, it being October, so I read "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" by MR James from 1904. The title comes from a 1793 Robert Burns poem, a poem about potential lovers, as you might guess from the title. This only remains a faint suggestion in the MR James story, which features another of his academic researchers encountering the supernatural. It's quite good, too.

Parkins is a professor introduced with dialogue in a breezy scene, a scene with a much more casual atmosphere than I'm used to from James. We get to know through the gentle teasing of his friends and colleagues that Parkins is a fellow of weak nerves, strong scruples, and a Puritanical distaste for superstition. It's a good recipe for the protagonist of a ghost story and, in fact, serves as the bulk of the tale's soul.

The supernatural elements are breadcrumbs the mind of the reader is invited to make a narrative of on its own. There's a whistle in what appears to be a grave in an archaeological site. There's a figure Parkins spots following him whom he naturally assumes is not supernatural at all and, indeed, might not be. There are sheets that are inexplicably tousled on the spare bed in his hotel room overnight. You can read into the story a subtext about Parkins' sexual repression, or something about a literal attraction of the supernatural to this unlucky young fellow. James crafts shadows of just the right ambiguity to tease the imagination.