So 'Living With Ghosts' is that anthology of paranormal investigation cases compiled by M.R. James? The key 'characters' aren't characters in the traditional novel sense, which is why some folks coming to it expecting a narrative might get thrown. The central figures are really James himself as the collector and presenter, and then the various witnesses whose firsthand accounts he relays. You get these incredibly vivid, ordinary people—clergymen, academics, ladies staying in country houses—suddenly detailing encounters with the inexplicable. Their voices, preserved through James's scholarly lens, are what give the book its chilling power. The ghosts themselves, from the thing under the sheet in 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' to the haunting in 'The Mezzotint', are less characters and more phenomena, which somehow makes them scarier. I reread it last autumn and found myself less frightened by the spectres than by the palpable unease in the witnesses' testimonies; they feel so genuine because they're framed as reportage, not fiction.
It's a book where the key character is arguably the atmosphere itself—a very specific, antiquarian dread that seeps out of old manuscripts and lonely coastal landscapes. James is the guide, but he stays deliberately in the background, letting the stories breathe. If you go in looking for a protagonist's journey, you'll be disappointed, but if you want to feel like you're snooping through a forgotten folio of genuine hauntings, it's unparalleled.