The idea of ghosts at Christmas inevitably makes us think of Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, but the story of ghosts at Christmas has a rich past that goes well beyond Dickens, especially in Britain. The tradition of telling “scary ghost stories” – to quote the long-running song “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” – was revived by the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas, which ran annually from 1971 to 1978 and has been renewed periodically since 2005. The films are primarily based on the works of English scholar M.R. James and last between 30 and 50 minutes.
James, who has been called the father of folk horror, came to the attention of Canadian director and scholar Kier-La Janisse, whose epic folk horror documentary The Dark Woods and The Enchanted Days (Shudder and Tooby) included a chapter on James, especially the unofficial first episode of A Ghost Story, Whistle and I'll Come to You (Shudder and YouTube) starring Michael Hordern as the Cambridge a professor who inadvertently summons a ghost when he discovers an ancient whistle buried in the ground. seaside cemetery.
Director Jonathan Miller sums up much of James' modus operandi in the narrator's introduction to the 1968 adaptation of James's story: “It hints at the dangers of intellectual pride and shows how a man's reason can be overthrown when he fails to recognize forces within himself that he simply cannot understand.”
Janissa loved the concept of A Christmas Ghost Story so much that she released a new spin-off version for streaming under the banner of US distribution company Severin Films. Spook Season (Shudder) kicked off last year with To Fire You Come at Last, a horror story written and directed by Britain's Sean Hogan. The action takes place in the 17th century. It tells the story of four men tasked with carrying a corpse for burial across miles of cursed ground. When their secrets are revealed, the curse claims the life of each of the resisting pallbearers.
In the second episode, Janisse makes her narrative film debut in The Roommate, her own adaptation of a short story by author Algernon Blackwood.
The action takes place in a lonely hotel in the French Alps, but filming was primarily done in Mississauga. Don McKellar plays a weary traveler who arrives at the hotel for Christmas and finds the hotel empty. Given the terrible weather, he was allowed to stay in a room rented by a woman who had disappeared in the mountains. During a haunted night, he must face the tragic truth of a woman's disappearance.
The mood is very much that of the classic Whistle and I'll Come Get You – a lonely man experiencing existential angst in a hotel room – but uses a kind of animated collage for the unique centerpiece, not unlike Guy Maddin's playful, gothic animated contributions to The Woodlands Deep.
Both films bring an edgy experimental flavor to more classic British adaptations, partly a result of working on a shoestring budget. But “A Haunted Season” honors its predecessors with a clear understanding of what makes “A Ghost Story” so special, an existential chill rendered with subtlety and elegance.
When it comes to finding episodes of A Christmas Ghost Story on a streaming service, they're all over the place. Shudder is the best source for the nine episodes of the original series, primarily directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. For those new to the series, check out “Whistle and I'll Come to You,” “Lost Hearts” (a child who goes to live with an elderly cousin meets two ghost children who silently warn), and “The Signalman,” based on a story by none other than Charles Dickens.
Many of the new episodes, often directed by Mark Gatiss, are available on Tubi, and although they've updated the scare tactics with more scary ghosts, they're still just as scary.
Particularly recommended: “Mezzotint” (a man buys an engraving that changes every hour, predicting his own grisly fate) and “Martin's Closer”, which tells the story of the trial of an aristocrat for the murder of a simple-minded servant, in which the ghost of the victim provides life-changing evidence.
