10 Most Terrifying Ghost Stories For Christmas

The first 'official' entry to the Ghost Story for Christmas series, The Stalls of Barchester, swapped the minimalist scares of Whistle and I'll Come to You (read on... ) and instead opted for a sinister Victorian period drama.

Veteran actor Clive Swift plays the role of a scholar, tasked with cataloguing the history of Barchester Cathedral. One morning, he comes across the journal of Dr. Haynes, an Arch Deacon of some fifty years past, who's death is surrounded in mysterious circumstances. The ambitious vicar becomes the victim of ghostly visitations after his predecessor, a man who simply refused to die, falls down the stairs of the parsonage, breaking his neck, clearly perpetrated by the impatient Haynes.

What follows is a journal account of Haynes increasing unease, alone in the vicarage, haunted by visions of a menacing black cat, ghostly whisperings in the dead of night and the tale of the cursed 'stalls' (ornate carvings) within the cathedral. Fashioned from the wood of a tree used to hang murderers, whomsoever touches the stalls will receive the judgement of 'Austin the Twice Born,' a local man, dead for 200 years but rumoured to have the power of 'second sight.'

Robert Hardy plays the villainous cleric, and his performance conveys the terror of a once "confirmed rationalist" on the verge of losing his mind. "I must be firm," he repeats over and over in his journal. He pays the ultimate price though, as one of the carvings appears in the dead of night to dispense Austin's terrifying judgement.