QUOTE : central characters in the tale, lending it a sense of veracity. Even better if one could give a first-hand account of a ghostly apparition. But one must not discount the multitude of stories penned by writers eager to provide readers with suitably eerie fare for the holiday. Along with Dickens, M. R. James, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, became famous for his stories, which he shared with students and eventually published (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was his first collection). Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Wilkie Collins