SOURCE: "The Kirk Spook" (The Stoneground Ghost Tales, 1912)  by E. G. Swain

DESCRIPTION: "Caleb described the man very clearly. He was, he said, a pale, old-fashioned looking man, with something very churchy about him...With that he proceeded to take the stranger by the sleeve, and then it was that he says you might have knocked him down with a feather. His hand went right into the place where the sleeve seemed to be, and Caleb distinctly saw two of the stranger's buttons on the top of his own knuckles." ("The Kirk Spook" by E. G. Swain)

NOTES: The Kirk Spook was a spirit who trapped himself in the church at Stoneground when he declared he'd never pass through any window or door that had an arched point at the top. He preferred the old-fashioned rounded top and he refused to leave by any other way but all the doors and windows had been changed in the church so he was stuck. Six hundred years later the ghost had still not left but the sexton, Caleb Dean, gets rid of him when he realizes the flue on the chimney is square (without an arch). The ghost happily flees that way.

HISTORY: Swain's tale seems more in the line of J. K. Bangs than M. R. James. His ghost is not frightening but humorous. he'd be perfectly happy at Hogwarts too.