10 Most Terrifying Ghost Stories For Christmas
8. Schalcken The Painter (1979)
This next entry is based on a story by lesser-known author Sheridan Le Fanu, who brings us the tale of the cowardly painter Schalcken, who's ambitions to surpass his greedy master bring him into the sights of a ghoulish and vampiric stranger. Under the tutelage of Gerrit Dou, a miserly painter and father of the beautiful Rose, Schalcken intends to marry Rose upon making his fortune, yet his plans are thwarted. One night, Dou receives a sinister visitor in the form of Vanderhousen of Rotterdam, a strange and terrifying figure with a proposition.
Vanderhousen demands Rose's hand in marriage, for which he is willing to exchange for a small fortune in gold. Dou cannot resist the money and the contract is signed, leaving Schalcken to powerless to stop the union. Determined to 'buy' her back, Schalcken pursues his ambitions, yet before long Rose is forgotten all together. Years later, Rose appears to Schalcken at Dou's funeral, luring him to a crypt beneath a church, now a willing bride now to Vanderhousen's corpse-like revenant.
This episode brings a nice change of pace to the proceedings, eschewing the wintery English countryside for the canals and wealth of the Netherlands. Narrated by British screen veteran Charles Gray and featuring a mesmerising performance from John Justin as the mysterious Vanderhousen, this is a more paced entry, more akin to European Gothic Horror than James's quintessentially British tales of terror. Weird? Definitely. Scary? Oh yes.