Ghost Stories of an Antiquary recap

Eight antiquaries encounter threats embedded in manuscripts, houses, images, monuments, and local traditions. Dennistoun buys Canon Alberic's scrapbook and is attacked by the presence attached to it. Orphan Stephen Elliott discovers that his scholarly guardian has murdered children for an occult experiment, but their ghosts take revenge. A mezzotint changes before its viewers, replaying an old abduction. An ash tree at Castringham Hall conceals the agents of a witch's vengeance. A researcher in Viborg finds an impossible hotel room that exists only at night. A travel writer's study of Count Magnus releases the count and a companion from their tomb. A skeptical professor blows an ancient whistle and summons a figure that pursues him. A clergyman solves Abbot Thomas's coded treasure hunt but abandons the prize after meeting its guardian. Knowledge survives each episode, but curiosity repeatedly opens what earlier generations tried to keep closed.

In Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, the English antiquary Dennistoun examines a church and meets its frightened sacristan. The man sells him a manuscript scrapbook assembled by Canon Alberic from much older materials. Among its treasures is an image showing a monstrous, hairy figure, and the seller's relief at surrendering the volume alarms Dennistoun. Alone with the book, he discovers that the horror represented on the page is not confined to it. He survives a direct encounter with the creature, aided by the arrival of others and by the religious protection the sacristan has pressed on him. The valuable manuscript is preserved, but the disturbing picture is later destroyed. Dennistoun never again treats the sacristan's terror as ignorance or greed.

Dennistoun's purchase of Canon Alberic's scrapbook exposes him to the entity pictured in it, though he survives and the image is destroyed. In the second story, orphaned Stephen Elliott goes to Aswarby Hall under the guardianship of his elderly cousin Mr Abney, a scholar of pagan religion. Stephen sees a pale girl and an injured foreign boy whom the household cannot account for. He learns that two children resembling them disappeared after being welcomed by Abney in earlier years. Abney has killed them and removed their hearts as part of an occult experiment meant to secure supernatural knowledge and protection. He plans to complete the ritual with Stephen. Before he can do so, the ghosts of his earlier victims enter his locked study and inflict on him the wounds he intended for the boy. Stephen survives, and the mystery of the missing children is finally explained.

After the manuscript haunting and the dead children's revenge on Mr Abney, two objects reveal further buried crimes. Museum curator Mr Williams receives a mezzotint of an undistinguished country house. Each time he and his colleagues inspect it, the print has changed: a dark figure crosses the grounds, enters the house, and carries away a child. Research identifies the scene as the disappearance of an heir and connects the intruder with a man wronged by the family. Once the sequence is complete, the image becomes still again, leaving the witnesses with a visual record of the old vengeance. At Castringham Hall, deaths in the Fell family are traced to an ash tree associated with Mrs Mothersole, a woman condemned for witchcraft after an accusation by a Fell ancestor. When the tree is opened and destroyed, it yields evidence of her remains and unnatural venomous creatures. The hereditary curse has worked through the fabric of the estate itself.

The first four tales connect dangerous presences with a manuscript, murdered children, a changing print, and the ash tree at Castringham Hall. In Viborg, the researcher Anderson stays in room 12 of an old inn and discovers that room 13 appears beside it after dark. His own room shrinks when the other exists, and sounds and a dancing shadow suggest an occupant practicing forbidden rites. The landlord and a servant eventually witness the impossible alterations. Historical investigation links the lost space to a disreputable former resident, and after a confrontation the room vanishes again. In Sweden, travel writer Wraxall investigates Count Magnus, a cruel nobleman rumored to have made a sinister pilgrimage. As Wraxall studies the count's papers and tomb, the fastenings on the sealed sarcophagus open one by one. He flees Sweden but is followed by two figures, the count and a hooded companion associated with his punishments. Wraxall is eventually found dead in a locked room, his escape having only delayed them.

Earlier antiquaries have released or witnessed threats preserved in a manuscript, a family crime, a print, a tree, a vanished room, and Count Magnus's tomb. At Burnstow, the skeptical Professor Parkins finds an old metal whistle in coastal ruins and blows it. A distant figure approaches across the shore, and the unused bed in his hotel room begins to form itself into a face and body from its linen. When the creature attacks, Colonel Wilson intervenes and Parkins survives; the whistle is thrown into the sea, and his certainty that ghosts are impossible is broken. In the final story, Mr Somerton deciphers a chain of clues left in religious images and inscriptions by Abbot Thomas. With his servant Brown he locates the abbot's treasure, but its hiding place is guarded by a clinging, inhuman presence. They escape without securing the wealth. Somerton orders the opening sealed and abandons the search, accepting that the puzzle's warnings were designed to protect intruders as well as the treasure.

The collection's eight investigations all confirm that antiquarian evidence can preserve an active danger. Dennistoun survives the thing associated with Canon Alberic's manuscript and destroys its image. Stephen Elliott escapes Mr Abney's intended sacrifice when the ghosts of two earlier victims kill Abney. The changing mezzotint completes its record of an old abduction. At Castringham Hall, the ash tree's deadly inhabitants and the remains linked to Mrs Mothersole expose the source of the Fell deaths. Anderson escapes room 13 after witnesses confirm that the impossible room can alter the inn. Wraxall fails to escape Count Magnus and his companion. Parkins is rescued from the figure summoned by the whistle, which is cast away. Finally, Somerton reaches Abbot Thomas's hiding place but encounters its inhuman guardian; he and Brown retreat and seal the opening rather than attempt another recovery. The treasure remains where its maker intended, and Somerton treats the warning encoded in the clues as settled fact.