“Halloa! Below there!” yes, it's the Signal-Man by Charles Dicken, who's spooky credentials are usually referenced in relation to A Christmas Carol but this short story is much darker and spares the reader the sentimentality of his more famous novel. A traveller encounters a railway signal man whose working life is spent in the dank Purgatorial chill of a railway cutting. He tells his visitor he is tortured by visions of a spectre calling and waving to him from the hellish tunnel mouth next to his signal box, and who has foretold disaster twice without giving any chance of averting the tragedies. The horrible irony of the spectre becomes apparent only in the last lines; it’s a thoroughly claustrophobic, oppressive story, leaving you chilled to the bone... An adaptation by Andrew Davies for the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas strand in 1976 stars Denholm Elliott and is directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark.
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