8 Best Ghost Stories For Christmas
1. The Innocents
While much of this list has made reference to the influential ghost writings of Montague Rhodes James, another James also entered the world of the Christmas ghost story: Henry James. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the Portrait of a Lady writer's somewhat wordy, occasionally turgid, prose, what we got was more a full length ghost novella than a simple story. This book, The Turn of the Screw, has been adapted on various occasions in different media, including a relatively recent BBC version broadcast for Christmas 2009 and rather pointlessly updated to the 1920s. However, it is The Innocents, released in cinemas in the build up to Christmas 1961, that stands out as by far the best.
Like The Woman in Black, this film ditches the original's festive framing device, but otherwise feels right at home amongst the other Christmas Chillers. Adapted from the stage play by William Archibald rather than directly from James' novella, The Innocents also had additional material written by Truman Capote for director-producer Jack Clayton, so the eventual product was very much a collaborative effort. Perhaps because of this it is the best example of a ghost movie where the details are left open to the viewers' interpretation. The unreliability of James' governess protagonist as a narrator has led many to conclude the "ghosts" are nothing but the product of her fragile mental state. The film retains this potential interpretation whilst leaving the possibility open of a real ghostly presence. It is genuinely ambiguous in a way that few ghost films are when they get down to their final scenes. Whether you believe in the presence of ghosts or not, Clayton's film has a slow burning sinister quality and its two children, Martin Stephens' Miles and Pamela Franklin's Flora, represent something of a golden age in disturbing movie kids alongside Village of the Damned, released a year earlier. At the height of her fame Deborah Kerr, as governess Miss Giddens, gives a good sense of a woman not sure if she can believe her suspicions or whether she's losing it completely. It's a performance that is clearly a strong influence in Nicole Kidman in The Others in a film that remains influential on almost any haunted house picture since. That is why it's our number one Christmas ghost story. Disagree? Let us know in the comments below.