Candle Game: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: The Ghostly Tales of M.R. James

In Old Japan, people gathered to pass long, dark evenings testing one another's nerve with the game Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai. Taking turns sharing stories of the weird, the ghostly, and the supernatural and snuffing a candle after each tale, they would continue long into the night or until, in the growing darkness, someone reached the end of their nerves and called the game off. Candle Game™ updates this old tradition, providing rules for play as well as classic stories of the weird and ghostly for players to tell. As each candle goes out, the shadows and whatever they hide press nearer...do you dare listen to one more story?

FEARFUL TALES OF THE THINGS THAT WAIT IN THE DARK

The unquiet dead. Restless or malevolent, reaching across the divide between life and whatever waits on the other side, ghosts hold a unique power to chill the spine and instill fear. Near the turn of the twentieth century, scholar and educator M.R. James took the Gothic ghost story and reinvented it for the upcoming millennium with dark, sinister tales of dread and shocking surprise whose quiet subtlety not only influenced horror writers from H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, but even a century after their first publication, still hold the power to transfix, unsettle, and terrify.

Candle Game:™ Ghost Stories of an Antiquary contains complete rules for play and features tales from the legendary M.R. James, including the chilling classics "Casting the Runes," "The Mezzotint," and " 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad' ." Included as part of the game, these eerie stories can also be read on their own, but there's one bit of advice for a lone reader embarking on the ominous paths these disquieting tales lead through: don't read them before bed.