Show Notes
A mediaeval abbot leaves behind a cipher—not in his will, but scratched into the glass of his own church. The treasure it guards has lain undisturbed for centuries. Mr. Somerton, a scholar with a taste for puzzles, believes he can solve what others have missed. The Latin is difficult, the clues are scattered, but gold is gold, and curiosity has its own momentum. What waits beneath the stone was put there deliberately. It has been patient. Some things, once disturbed, do not easily return to silence.
"The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" was first published in 1904 in M.R. James's second collection, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The story has been widely anthologized and was adapted for television by the BBC in 1974.
Montague Rhodes James was a distinguished mediaeval scholar and Provost of King's College, Cambridge, later of Eton College. He is regarded as one of the finest writers of supernatural fiction in the English language, and his ghost stories continue to define the antiquarian tradition of literary horror.
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