When does Christmas start for you? In our house these days it gets properly underway on Christmas Eve as we settle down with the first slice of Christmas cake and a glass of sherry to watch the latest ghost story brought to our screens by Mark Gatiss.
Gatiss, most famous for being one of the actors from The League of Gentleman surreal sit com, has been bringing ghostly tales to television screens at Christmas for the past seven years. This year’s offering, which goes out on BBC2 at 10.15pm on Christmas Eve, is called “Woman Of Stone” and is adapted from E Nesbit’s chilling short story “Man-Size in Marble”.
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This time of year lends itself perfectly to the ghost story format. All the atmospherics are already in place: misty evenings, long hours of darkness, mysterious movements in the shadows and families gathered around blazing fires.
Charles Dickens was one of the first authors to work that out, serving up a series of ghosts in his bestselling 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol. No wonder this tale of the redemption of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge has become one of the most frequently adapted literary works for film and television of all time.
Gatiss has hitherto specialised in the very creepy ghost stories of M.R James but has pretty much gone through that author’s catalogue now and hence Edith Nesbit, better known for her children’s stories, is in the spotlight this year. And we are promised something just as spine-chilling.
That moment when the hairs stand up on the back of your neck is an essential ingredient in a good ghost story. Without it, an author cannot be said to have succeeded. Masters of the craft bring great subtlety and imagination to the task of luring readers and viewers into a state of abject terror.
I defy anyone to watch, for instance, the 1968 television adaptation of the M.R. James story “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad” without breaking out in a cold sweat. There are no whizz-bang special effects on show and no resort to over-the-top gore. It all depends on the story-teller’s ability to summon up, oh so gradually, the dark power of a malevolent spirit in an otherwise mundane setting.
This year I had the unfortunate experience of going to the cinema to see the film “Heretic”, starring Hugh Grant in what was billed as his darkest ever role. I was assured by my companion that it wasn’t going to be a slasher movie and given that it had a 15 certificate and good reviews, there were sound reasons to think that.
While the acting was brilliant – especially Grant’s – the gruesome violence came thick and fast once it got going. Not my cup of tea at all.
A good ghost story, by contrast, eschews such shock schlock, goes easy on the ketchup and instead appeals to the emotions. The best movie ghost stories, such as The Others (2001) or The Woman In Black (2012) also offer profoundly affecting plot twists late in the tale that change our whole understanding of the events that have been hitherto depicted.
Interest in all things supernatural is running hot just now, with the Uncanny radio series presented by Danny Robins having made a successful transition to television and just having put out its Christmas specials on Radio 4.
Robins’ play “2.22 A Ghost Story” has also been a deserved smash hit on the London West End stage and goes out on tour to major regional theatres next year. It also deploys to great effect the classic ghost story device of only putting the audience fully in the picture late in the day.
Perhaps my particular preference for ghost stories over conventional Hollywood horror also has something to do with their cultural Britishness. Country churchyards, grand houses that have seen better days and Victorian gentlefolk boarding trains to the middle of nowhere all tend to loom large.
The other day I heard from a restaurant manager in a seaside town about how staff were reluctant to go into the cellar store of her eatery unaccompanied just because of a feeling of someone or something else being there.
It turned out that a woman who had worked in the building when it was a tearoom many decades earlier had her ashes scattered in the old basement kitchen because she loved the place so much.
They are watching us, you know. And on Tuesday night on BBC2, once all the hectic pre-Christmas Day chores have been completed and blissful calm descends, we can return the favour by watching them right back.
