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Mr. Newton's A View From A Hill

Decent Essays

It’s Halloween night. Your friends and you are going trick or treating, when you walk by an old, run down house. Did I mention that the sun has already went down? That’s it, we now have a perfect setting for a successful ghost story; however, the most important thing is missing; a ghost. Newton tells us what a great ghost story is in his “Introduction” for the Penguin Book of Ghost Stories. He mentions that a successful ghost story needs something to haunt the haunted. A successful ghost story is more than just the background and the story itself. The ghost story contains a background, story, ghost, and setting. M.R James forgets this in his short story “A View From a Hill.” Although the novel contains a disturbing story of the past, it fails …show more content…

Baxter. One night, Mr. Baxter was mixing a pot(presumably a potion), when all of a sudden the pot falls and spills on his leg. Following the spill, his scream could be heard throughout the neighborhood. His neighbors hurried in to make sure he was okay. As they went to pick up the pot, Mr. Baxter yelled quickly to leave it alone; however, the man had been able to see what was inside; a few old brown bones(James 9). Now, although this is quite scary coupled with the story of Mr. Baxter, there is still no ghost. James tells us that Mr. Baxter had uncovered these bones from their resting place deep beneath the soil in a grave. This sets the mood for a haunting; however, Mr. Baxter himself is not haunted. He does however, make tools with the bones he digs up. One tool is mentioned in this quote by James. “Lawrence went to visit Baxter when Baxter was bedridden. Lawrence was up in the bedroom one day, and picked up a little mask covered with black velvet, and put it on in fun and went to look at himself in the glass. Baxter shouted at him from the bed: “Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a dead man’s eyes(James 9)?” His eyes? So Mr. Baxter is a scary character, but he is not a

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