1 Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te: Latin as the Language of the Supernatural in M. R. James’ Ghost Stories 1 Ana González-Rivas Fernández Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ana.gonzalez-rivas@uam.es * This conference paper was delivered at the Symposium “Sequestered Places, Heaving Seas: The Life and Works of M. R. James”, held at the University of Suffolk (Ipswich, UK), on April 30 th , 2024. How to cite this work: González-Rivas Fernández, Ana (2024, April 30 th ). “Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te: Latin as the Language of the Supernatural in M. R. James’ Ghost Stories” [Conference paper]. Symposium “Sequestered Places, Heaving Seas: The Life and Works of M. R. James” (University of Suffolk), Ipswich, United Kingdom. The text has been adapted and summarized from the chapter “M. R. James: el latín o el poder de lo sobrenatural”, published in En los márgenes de Roma. Apropiaciones y reinterpretaciones de la Antigüedad romana en la cultura de masas contemporánea [On the Margins of Rome: Appropriations and Interpretations of Roman Antiquity in Contemporary Popular Culture], edited by Luis Unceta and Carlos Sánchez. Madrid: Catarata/Ediciones UAM, 2019, pp. 263-282. 1.- M. R. James and the classics That M. R. James (1862-1936) (MRJ from now on) lived fascinated by the past is a fact that was evident in the different professions he exercised throughout his life: antiquarian, medievalist, museologist, professor of classical languages and amateur archaeologist; but, above all, MRJ was a bibliophile who devoted his days to deciphering manuscripts and translating languages such as Latin, Greek or ancient Ethiopian. In this presentation I will deal with a very specific aspect of MRJ's literary work: the role played by the quotation written in Latin, a resource that appears frequently in his ghost stories and which has its own tradition within horror literature. MRJ had a careful education from his early years. His father gave him his first lessons in Latin, Greek and French, and he probably also learned some Italian from his mother. After his school days at Temple Grove Elementary School and Eton, he enrolled at King's College in Cambridge University (1882-1887), where he also studied classical languages. James’ literary interests, however, always went beyond 1 This work is part of the projects "Marginalia Classica Hodierna" (FFI2015-66942-P), directed by Luis Unceta Gómez (UAM), and "Diccionario Hispánico de la Tradición Clásica" [Hispanic Dictionary of Classical Tradition] (FFI2017-83894-P), directed by Francisco García Jurado (UCM).