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The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M R James

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9835 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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. 📚 Buy my paperbacks here: https://books.by/tony-walker-books 🎙️ Buy my ebooks and audiobooks here: payhip.com/TheClassicGhostStoriesPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Everybody dies, don't they?

0:10.5

Everybody come back.

0:12.6

Isn't that so?

0:14.4

You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?

0:17.7

How do the dead come back, mother?

0:20.1

The treasure of Abbott Thomas by M.R. James.

0:25.2

Weremus, in presentem day, much garriunt into se, canonicid,

0:30.7

Epscondico, quodamistius Abartis Tomai, the sorrow,

0:35.6

whom, saipa, quen-quam adhuc in cassum, quaisie verunt Stain Feldencys, Ipsum, eminem, Tomam adhuc, Florida in aitate, existentem, ingentem, Auri mass, circa monasterium, defodice, perhibent. Decoe, many interrogated,

0:57.0

where is it,

0:58.0

with Rissu, responder,

1:00.0

solitus,

1:01.0

Job, Johannes, and Zacharias

1:04.0

or, well posteris,

1:06.0

indicabund.

1:08.0

I also,

1:09.0

aliquand,

1:10.0

adi cere, inventur minima, invis'erum.

1:14.6

Interalia, this Abatis opera,

1:17.6

this memory pre-cipue,

1:20.6

dignum judic of,

1:21.6

as a fenestra magnam in oriental part

...

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