The Ghosts of Christmases Past

There is a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time in England; around the hearth, in print, on the radio and on T.V.

Our T.V. channels uphold the tradition admirably with stories of murder and mystery throughout the Christmas period. In the 1970s and later in 2005 a series called A Ghost Story for Christmas was broadcast by the BBC. The producer’s remit was to create a television version of a classic ghost story at Christmas.

M.R James

The first five films were adaptations of stories from the four books by M. R. James published between 1904 and 1925. James, an English mediaeval scholar and Provost of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, originally told his stories to friends and selected students at Christmas to entertain them. The sixth film, The Signalman, is an adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens published in his magazine All the Year Round in 1866.

 The origins of this Christmas interest in all things ghoulish started in the second half of the 17th century when there was a profound intellectual debate concerning the existence of ghosts and witches. The idea that cold snowy days were the best for stories designed to frighten goes back Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, written in 1611 when Mamillius says: "A sad tale's best for winter. I have one / of sprites and goblins."

Surprisingly those who did not believe in these supernatural manifestations were denounced as dangerous atheists. Our ancestors, it seems believed whole-heartedly in ghost and ghouls and things that go bump in the night.

William Kent

The 18th century saw the publication of what is to be the first proper ghost story; The Apparition of Mrs. Veal in 1706. The story has been attributed to the writer Daniel Defoe although it published anonymously. Interest in ghostly matters received a boost in 1762 in case of the strange The Knockings at  a house in Cock Lane, not far from St Paul’s Cathedral in London. This story of murder set the imaginations of the London literati alight. The ghost in question was said to be that of Fanny Lynes the mistress of William Kent. Fanny’s ghost confirmed rumours that she had been poisoned by the still living Kent. The case was a sensation, attracting the attention of figures such as Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, and Oliver Goldsmith. It ended in a court case where Kent, an eminent English architect, sued for defamation.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Despite the publication of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein in 1816, the ghost or horror story was on the wane in publishing terms when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. However, writers such as Willkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell breathed new life into it with their books and short stories through the 1840s and 50s and by the turn of the century the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas was firmly established with publishers promoting the new trend.

Disney's adaptation of A Christmas Carol

The best known Christmas ghost story today is probably Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which he wrote in 1843 to highlight the harrowing poverty of so many people in Britain at that time. It's not just a ghost story that one could tell at Christmas, but – with Scrooge sitting in his armchair as his life's story is unfurled before him – it is a story about ghost stories at Christmas, a kind of meta-Christmas ghost story, if you will.

Michelle Dockery in Turn of the Screw, BBC, 2009

In The Turn of the Screw, the US Anglophile Henry James's own take on the Christmas tale, published in 1898, operates in much the same fashion, structured as it is to position its readers by the Yuletide hearth listening to tales of horror. The tale, which relates a series of strange events that befall a young governess, centres on the supposed possession of a boy by the spirit of a hostile figure named Peter Quint.

However, M. R. James is considered the master of the Christmas ghost story by most. James redefined the ghost story for the new century and gave it what is now considered a recognisable  Jamesian structure:

• a characterful setting such as an English village, seaside town or country estate; an ancient town in France, Denmark or Sweden; or a venerable abbey or university [think Mid Somer Murders];

• a nondescript and rather naive gentleman-scholar as protagonist often of a reserved nature (think of Mr. Garrett, an employee of a university library, who becomes involved in the bizarre search for a missing will in the The Tractate Middoth); and

• the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow unlocks, calls down the wrath, or at least attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave (think Spiderwick Chronicles a series of children's books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. On the first night on the Spiderwick Estate the Grace children discover a secret library. Following a clue in the form of a riddle-poem, Jared finds Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You in a secret compartment in a trunk in the attic. The Field Guide is an old hand-written describing types of faeries. The novel ends with a warning that the book is not meant for mortals..)

According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!' His most famous story is perhaps ‘Casting of the Runes’ which has been adapted for film twice; once in 1957 as Night of the Demon (known as Curse of the Demon in the US), starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis. Another, looser adaptation of "Casting the Runes" borrowing elements from the earlier film is Sam Raimi's 2009 film, Drag Me to Hell.

In 2013 Mark Gatiss's adaptation of The Tractate Middoth, an M. R. James, was broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Day followed by a documentary, M. R. James.

This year will see the revival of the BBC’s Jonathan Creek in a 90 minute Christmas special, a Jamesian style psychic detective of all things mysterious. Alan Davies’ sleuth may have slipped off his duffel coat and acquired a wife in the form of Polly Creek (Sarah Alexander) but he remains the master of the locked-room mystery.

Alan Davis and Sheidan Smith in a BBC
Jonathan Creek Christmas Special 2013

Written by David Renwick it features a glittering cast including: Warwick Davis (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Life’s Too Short), Emun Elliott (The Paradise, Game Of Thrones), Ken Bones (Dr Who, Atlantis) and Rosalind March (Calendar Girls, The Evermoor Chronicles).


This year's story finds Creek solving the mystery of the modern day manifestation of a 19th century sorcerer named Jacob Surtees; a man with the ability to call up the powers of Hell to terrorise his victims at his home, a house called Daemons’ Roost.

If you can’t wait until Christmas there will be a free Christmas Ghost story entitled, The Nanny, written by me download on 22nd December at: https://www.facebook.com/juliaherdmanbooks/

 Wishing You A Happy, Spooky Christmas