'Sometimes, you know, you see him, and sometimes you don't. It's just as he pleases. I think: he's there, but he has some power over your eyes...'

M R James first wrote his ghost stories to perform to friends in Kings College Cambridge. Now, 120 years after their first publication, Nunkie Theatre Company have bought two of the eeriest and most entertaining back to life in this gripping, candlelit one-man show.

Lost Hearts was among the first stories the author wrote and it offers one of his most memorable villains, the predatory scholar Mr Abney. It is paired here with perhaps James’s most poignant and personal work: A Warning to the Curious, in which a young archaeologist is haunted and hunted by the guardian of an ancient treasure.

The English seaside has never looked so menacing.