The Mezzotint

"The Mezzotint" is a ghost story by British writer M. R. James, included in his first collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904).

Mr. Williams, the curator of a university art museum (implied to be Oxford) receives a mezzotint from an art dealer. The very disturbing engraving changes each time Mr. Williams and the colleagues he enlists look at it. In the end, it is suggested that the nighttime engraving depicts a vengeful poacher named Gawdy, returning from the grave to kidnap and murder the infant heir of a Mr. Arthur Francis. Gawdy had been hanged for shooting a gamekeeper while poaching on Francis' land.