M. R. James "The Whistle"
Â
M. R. James
'Be careful when you use it,’ said Wilson. ‘Or don’t use it - perhaps that's best. Some strange things happened in some of those old churches and graveyards in the past. You don’t want to unite up any ghosts.’ Parkins smiled, hut he said nothing. He wasn’t afraid of an old whistle, or of ghosts and graveyards.
Can an old whistle really wake up old ghosts? Do dead people leave their graves? Perhaps they do. In The Whistle, somebody - or something - is in Mr Parkins’ room at the Globe hotel. There are two beds, but he only slept in one of them. So who - or what - was in the other bed? And why do pictures come into Mr Parkins’ head when he tries to sleep? What do they mean?
Don’t read the story before you go to sleep!
Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862, in the south of England. Later, he studied at Cambridge University, and from 1905 he was the head of King’s College, Cambridge. M. R. James enjoyed ghost stories and detective stories. He read many of his stories to his friends at Cambridge, at Christmas. He died in 1936.
Â
Text Analysis: Unique words: about 600 Total words: about 3,840
Hard words: blanket, blow, curtain, dream, ghost, golf, grave, hill, moon, servant, sheet, stone, whistle
Â
 Â