I hadn’t really heard of this before but apparently there is an old tradition where supernatural tales are told at Christmas. From 1971 to 1978 the BBC had a yearly show called A Ghost Story for Christmas where they adapted a traditional ghost story. Most of the stories where based off of M.R. James short stories although the last couple of shows were based off of someone else’s stories. In the mid 2000’s the BBC tried to revive it with a couple more episodes but stopped after that.
The stories are just standard ghost stories having nothing to do with Christmas but some of them are pretty good. The series was shot on 16 mm film not on video like most of BBC’s 1970’s output but they still have that cheap BBC look to them. The BFI has just released the entire series on DVD including Whistle and I’ll Come to You which predated the series and more or less kicked off the whole show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUuAtf4dUwc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59mt0Dm12YY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5hmlbcpf60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okXnC4-Y63w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7nyQtU9rVc
