Ghost Stories for Christmas - The Definitive Collection (5-DVD set)

Product Information

With only three of the 12 tales previously released on DVD (by the BFI in 2002, and long since deleted), the films in this brilliant series have been high on many film and TV fans’ ‘most wanted’ DVD lists.

It would stop, raise arms, bow itself toward the sand, then run stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and then, rising upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying.

Spectres, Spirits and Haunted Treasure: Adapting MR James (2023, 17 mins): a newly commissioned video essay by Nic Wassell exploring some of the classic BBC adaptations of the work of MR James. The second takes place the following evening when Paxton's room is plunged into darkness and the light from his rolling torch reveals the hunched figure of Ager, who slowly begins to rise to look back at Paxton before the room is once again plunged into blackness, as scary a sequence as I've seen in a made-for-TV ghost story. The impressive remastered HD transfers would be worth getting the set for alone, but not only do you get that, but all of the special features from the DVD editions and excellent new commentary tracks for all four films. The Stalls of Barchester is the first official entry in what was to become the Ghost Stories for Christmas series and was adapted from M. Because this was the first non-James story, the strand's title appears on screen for the first time.

The release of the first two Ghost Stories volumes is timed to mark the 150th anniversary of MR James’ birth on 1 August 1862.All of the special features from those earlier discs have been included here (complete with an apology for the lower image quality), and have been joined by brand new commentary tracks for all four films by acknowledged experts in their field. After a young couple move into a remote country house in the middle of a stone circle workmen disturb an ancient menhir, unleashing a supernatural force.

And despite the object’s symbolic significance in relation to Parkin’s bond to his wife, I can't be the only one who associates gold rings bearing inscriptions more with J. Such conditions can magnify the power of the pieces, adding to their creepiness and helping the tales imbed themselves within impressionable minds.So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. Broadcast in the dying hours of Christmas Eve, the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas series was a fixture of the seasonal schedules throughout the 1970s and spawned a long tradition of chilling tales which terrified yuletide viewers for decades to come.