June 12, 1936

Research in a university archive leads to a personal diary kept by the successor to the archdeacon of Barchester Cathedral, who died in 1810, tripping on a stair step. The story about an antiquarian, was written by an antiquarian and author of some renown-- M. R. James (August 1, 1862 to June 12, 1936). What could go wrong with a narrative that appeals to antiquarian, Anglican, academic, and anglophilian interests. Nothing. It's a perfect story: including even "...a cat, whose crouching posture suggests with admirable spirit the suppleness, vigilance, and craft of the redoubted adversary of the genus Mus."

You can read it here, or continue with my writeup first, to make sure your cup of mystery is steeped just right.

The link is to an anthology titled Famous Psychic Stories, (1920) Most introductions clear things up, but this one here seems to reflect cultural assumptions which are opaque, though written less than a century ago. The editor, J. Walker McSpadden is concerned to define the genre the title advertises "psychic stories."

A certain bond exists between this book and "Famous Ghost Stories," [which he edited in 1918]  in that both rest their appeal for recognition upon the general love of the mysterious and supernatural. There is, of course, a distinction and a difference between ghosts and psychic manifestations. In the "Ghost " volume the old-fashioned spook, predominates — the spectral visitant whose principal business seems to be to arouse fear or horror. Your psychic guest is more refined. He usually comes because especially invited....

Let us state frankly, however, that the present collection of tales is not psychic in the literal or scientific sense of the word. Instead, it is almost wholly fiction of avowed type, whose purpose is to entertain. The central thread, nevertheless, is psychic which defined broadly means the connecting cord between the natural and the spiritual worlds....

"The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral," by Montague James, is again different from any of its
mates. It is a tale of malign influence which extends even into the precincts of a church and lays hold impartially of any wrongdoer who may chance to fall under its sinister power....

What interested me in the above is the use of the word 'psychic.' Still don't get his meaning. 

But on to other mysteries: The cat in the story is a cat is carved in wood in a church stall.