I just listened to a reading of MR James's Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad and he's quite a sarcastic writer. It starts by pretty much saying things like:

This character only appears briefly in this prologue so I won't bother giving him a name.

It's also got a lot more spookiness than the 1968 #BBC adaptation, and I applaud the 68 adaptation for how they changed the story, but not in any annoying way, just by keeping it simple. They change the main character a bit, making him older and more pompous, and there's an odd eccentricity about him. He's sort of weird but believable weird.

I would like there to have been more spooky though. The #ShortStory has a prolonged encounter with the undead 👻

#Spooky #GhostStoryForChristmas #BBC #TV #Reading

I just watch "Count Magnus" #GhostStoryForChristmas and for some reason Mark Gatiss has been elected as an arbiter of ghostly tales, despite the fact he's not very good at it.

I don't really know what to say about this episode except it is quite bland, quite obvious, and void of the general spooky atmosphere you want from a ghost tale. And it was a bit too comical or comedy-adjacent for it to be a decent ghost tale.

It didn't have any creepy lighting or any misty scenes, and it even missed out on little tricks like making the characters isolated. Some scenes had too many extras.

I'm going to watch the old 'Whistle and I'll come to you' which is genuinely spooky and really quite good.

#BBC #TV

Death is at the heart of Christmas. That’s why we love to tell festive ghost stories

#GhostStoryForChristmas #GhostStory #TraditionalGhostStories #Ghosts #VictorianGhostStories #Book #Books #ShortStories #VictorianLiterature #TSEliot #Krampus #Literature #EdwarianLiteraure #BBCRadio #BBC #JourneyOfTheMagi

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/22/death-is-at-the-heart-of-christmas-thats-why-we-love-to-tell-festive-ghost-stories

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone
#GhostStoryForChristmas #GhostStory #TraditionalGhostStories #Ghosts #VictorianGhostStories #Book #Books #ShortStories #VictorianLiterature #Literature #PerformingArts #EdwarianLiteraure #EdithNesbit #ManSizeInMarble, #BBC #BBC_TV #Television #MarkGatiss

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/dec/21/a-ghost-story-for-christmas-woman-of-stone-far-too-good-to-only-exist-as-festive-tv

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40321

I very much enjoyed listening to this last night. This is my favourite M.R James story, followed closely behind by the 'Mezzotint'. This retelling is very well done and has a wonderful, atmospheric soundscape via Bethan from Eerie Essex. Search your favourite podcast provider for 'Right in the Schoolies'.

#rightintheschoolies #mrjames #whistleandillcometoyou #ohwhistleandillcometoyoumylad #ghoststories #ghoststoryforchristmas #spooky