A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Collection

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The BBC's much-loved tradition of providing a supernatural chill alongside the Christmas festivities is celebrated in A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Collection, bringing together eight of Mark Gatiss's atmospheric tales on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time.

Inspired by the classic BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas productions of the 1970s, Gatiss has helped revive the tradition for a new generation, returning repeatedly to the work of M.R. James while also venturing into the supernatural fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Nesbit and E.F. Benson.

Spanning more than a decade, from 2013's The Tractate Middoth through to 2025's The Room in the Tower, the collection gathers eight standalone tales of haunted objects, restless spirits, ancient curses and unfortunate individuals whose curiosity invariably leads them somewhere they would have been much better off avoiding.

• The Tractate Middoth (2013) - A young librarian becomes caught up in a sinister family dispute when he is asked to locate an obscure Hebrew text connected to the will of the very dead - but apparently not entirely departed - Dr Rant. Adapted from the story by M.R. James, Gatiss's film stars Sacha Dhawan, John Castle, Louise Jameson and David Ryall
• The Dead Room (2018) - Simon Callow stars as Aubrey Judd, the veteran presenter of a long-running radio horror programme who laments the passing of the traditional ghost story. Working late in an increasingly unsettling radio studio, Judd discovers that something from his own past may have returned to remind him that some stories refuse to remain safely fictional
• Martin's Close (2019) - Peter Capaldi leads this adaptation of M.R. James's tale, set around the 1684 trial of young squire John Martin. Accused of murdering a young woman, Martin faces the notorious Judge George Jeffreys - but testimony suggesting that his alleged victim has been seen walking after her death makes this far from an ordinary murder trial
• The Mezzotint (2021) - Rory Kinnear plays Edward Williams, a university museum curator who receives an apparently unremarkable engraving depicting a country house. Closer examination reveals something decidedly unusual: the image appears to be changing, with a mysterious figure gradually making its way across the picture towards the house
• Count Magnus (2022) - Jason Watkins stars as Mr Wraxhall, an English travel writer researching the history of an aristocratic Swedish family. His fascination with the notorious Count Magnus leads him to investigate stories surrounding the long-dead nobleman's mysterious journey to the Holy Land - and eventually to a sealed tomb that would have been considerably better left undisturbed
• Lot No. 249 (2023) - Moving away from M.R. James, Gatiss turns to Arthur Conan Doyle for a distinctly physical supernatural threat. Kit Harington and Freddie Fox star in the story of Oxford students whose lives are disrupted following the acquisition of an Ancient Egyptian mummy by the eccentric Edward Bellingham. As a series of disturbing incidents begins around the university, suspicion grows that the ancient occupant of Lot No. 249 may not be quite as dead as it appears
• Woman of Stone (2024) - Adapted from Edith Nesbit's *Man-Size in Marble*, the story follows newlyweds Jack and Laura as they settle into an isolated country cottage. Their housekeeper warns them of a local legend concerning two marble effigies in a nearby church which are said to leave their tombs and walk on a particular night of the year. Naturally, such stories are easily dismissed as superstition - right up until they aren't. Éanna Hardwicke and Phoebe Horn star alongside Celia Imrie and Monica Dolan
• The Room in the Tower (2025) - The most recent story in the collection adapts E.F. Benson's unsettling tale of a recurring nightmare. Tobias Menzies stars as a man haunted for years by the same strangely vivid dream in which he visits a friend's country house and is invariably told that a room has been prepared for him in the tower. When people and places from the nightmare begin appearing in his waking life, the distinction between dream and reality becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Joanna Lumley, Nancy Carroll and Polly Walker also star

Together, the eight productions demonstrate Gatiss's affection for the distinctly British tradition of the Christmas ghost story: tales where ancient houses, dusty libraries, universities and quiet country villages conceal something considerably darker beneath their respectable surfaces.

Rather than relying on elaborate spectacle, the films frequently return to the approach established by the classic BBC adaptations - gradually building unease through suggestion, atmosphere and the uncomfortable realisation that something impossible may have intruded into an otherwise ordinary world.

The collection runs for approximately 243 minutes and is accompanied by supplementary material including **Back to Life: In Conversation with Mark Gatiss**, in which the writer and director discusses bringing the Christmas ghost story tradition back to television. The release also includes a trailer and a booklet featuring production notes by Gatiss.

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Collection is released on Blu-ray and DVD 7th September 2026 by the BBC.