Spooky Advent: 5th December

Krampus / Krampusnacht... a traditional figure in Central and Eastern European folklore, Krampus is basically bad santa. This frankly terrifying horned figure accompanies St Nicholas on his visits to children on the night before St Nicholas' Day (6th December). St Nick rewards the good kids with gifts, but Krampus punishes the bad ones by whipping them with birch twigs. In many portrayals he is seem actually carrying off naughty children in a wicker basket on his back... sweet dreams, middle European children!

Spooky Advent: 4th December

Today's offering is Mark Gatiss' sumptuous but genuinely scary portmanteau film Crooked House (or short series depending on where / when you first saw it, if you've seen it). This illustration is taken from the second of the stories, Never the Bride, set at a house party in the 1920s at the Tudor mansion, Geap Manor around which the stories are all set.

Spooky Advent: 3rd December

Today's window is Stigma, one of the two more 'controversial' films in the BBC's original Ghost Story for Christmas strand (along with John Bowen's The Ice House, the following year's offering) in that it has a modern day setting, so has none of the old world spooky charm of an M R James retelling, and its themes are from anything seasonal. Written by Clive Exton, and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, this is one of those 'middle class family moves from the city to a rural cottage and disturbs something ancient and evil' type of stories. It's graphic portrayal of the unfolding of these events, meted out upon the unfortunate wife and mother of the family Katharine (Kate Binchy) goes somewhere towards explaining its 11pm broadcast time on 29th December 1977.