Episode 14: Ghost Stories for Christmas with Will Dodson, Part 1

My sweet Yuletide angels, here is the other two-part episode I’m shoehorning into this December. I’ll have the second part up later this week (though it will be on my Patreon earlier) so you all have something to listen to when you’re driving to and fro family holiday events this week. I have been absolutely dying to do an episode on the BBC’s original Ghost Stories for Christmas series. I’m grateful it finally happened because this was such a joy and I was thankful to find a cohost insane enough to agree to watch and discuss everything on my list, Will Dodson. Will is an academic focusing on film and media studies and some of you might know him from his special features work on various blu-rays with Ryan Verril (find a complete list of their work here). He’s also edited a number of film books, namely American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper. In this first part, we discuss the precursor film, Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968), as well as the first five official Ghost Stories for Christmas episodes: The Stalls of Barchester (1971), A Warning to the Curious (1972), Lost Hearts (1973), The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974), and The Ash Tree (1975). All of these are adaptations of M.R. James stories, so we talk a lot about him as well — ghost stories and folk horror would not be the same without him. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and I hope Santa brings you a lot of ghost stories this year!