ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the provenance and intention of the English and American ghost story as it appears in writers such as M. R. James and Henry James. It addresses the kinds of material artefacts and landscapes in which haunting and ghostliness invests itself within. The transition between the landscapes of actuality and, by way of the magical map, to the imaginary landscape of horror, dislocates Humphreys and makes visible the different realms and estates belonging to the phenomenal and the supernatural world. The chapter reviews the relationship between the artefact, story and landscape particularly in relation to English folklore and the kinds of discourses and sensibilities emerging from romanticism and the English Gothic. It examines the work of four writers of some significance for the ghost story: M. R. James, Edith Wharton, Amyas Northcote and Henry James. The voices of the ghosts of the war dead were very present in English culture and religious practice in the aftermath of the war.
