While the season is traditionally one of mistletoe, wine, and children's carols, a darker tradition has long haunted the festive television schedules. The annual airing of ghost stories has become as much a part of British Christmas as mulled wine, with the season's long nights and ancient folklore providing the perfect backdrop for tales of the supernatural.
The Enduring Tradition of Festive Frights
This year continues the custom with the BBC's latest Ghost Story for Christmas, a chilling adaptation of E.F. Benson's The Room in the Tower directed by Mark Gatiss and starring Tobias Menzies and Joanna Lumley. But which televised tales have delivered the most potent festive fear over the decades? We've compiled a list of the ten most terrifying Christmas TV spookfests.
Classic BBC Chillers
The BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas strand, beginning in the 1970s, set the gold standard. Among the finest is A Warning to the Curious (1972), featuring Peter Vaughan as an archaeologist who disturbs a Saxon crown and its spectral guardian. Its atmosphere of creeping dread captures the essence of the tradition.
Another landmark is The Signalman (1976), a masterful adaptation of Charles Dickens' story starring Denholm Elliott. It combines steam trains, prophetic doom, and claustrophobic terror in a profoundly unsettling package.
No list is complete without Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968). Jonathan Miller's adaptation of M.R. James's tale, starring Michael Hordern, is a masterpiece of existential unease, featuring one of television's most unforgettable and ambiguous spectres.
Modern Twists on the Tradition
The tradition has evolved with modern series offering their own takes. Inside No. 9: The Devil of Christmas (2016) is a brilliant and deeply disturbing pastiche of 1970s low-budget horror anthologies. Created by and starring Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, its climactic twist remains notoriously shocking.
Similarly, The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special (2000) blended the sitcom's dark humour with festive horror, featuring tales of vampiric German exchange teachers and petrified monkey scrotums in the troubled town of Royston Vasey.
Unforgettable Standalone Hauntings
Several one-off productions have left a permanent mark. ITV's The Woman in Black (1989), adapted from Susan Hill's novel, is a magnificently unsettling period piece whose image of a shrieking Victorian phantom has traumatised a generation.
The Bafta-winning children's series The Box of Delights (1984) remains an enduringly wonderful yet chilling yuletide adventure, weaving pagan mythology and puppetry with Robert Stephens' superb performance as the dastardly occultist Abner Brown.
Even detective shows got in on the act. The Bergerac Christmas special 'Fires in the Fall' (1986) presented John Nettles' Jersey detective with a case involving deranged arsonists and a genuinely frightening graveyard apparition.
Cult Classics and Experimental Horror
Some entries defy easy categorisation. The Stone Tape (1972), written by Nigel Kneale, is a uniquely disconcerting tale of scientists investigating a 'haunted' room. Despite its dated elements, its atmosphere of suffocating dread and eerie sound design retain their power.
Finally, Ghost Stories for Christmas (2000) saw the legendary Christopher Lee reading M.R. James tales by candlelight. The production became as much a mesmerising study of Lee's own vast, sepulchral presence as it was a delivery system for classic ghost stories.
From Victorian phantoms to postmodern pastiches, these ten programmes prove that Christmas in Britain is a time for gathering not just around the tree, but also around the flickering screen, ready to be deliciously terrified by the finest festive chillers ever broadcast.
