{"id":213282,"date":"2025-12-03T14:11:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/213282\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:11:17","slug":"a-ghost-story-for-christmas-review-genuinely-creepy-and-with-a-surprising-climax-this-is-the-finest-instalment-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/213282\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Ghost Story for Christmas\u2019 review: Genuinely creepy and with a surprising climax, this is the finest instalment in years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">The BBC\u2019s festive ghost story strand is back to its spooky best with this year\u2019s \u2018The Room in the Tower\u2019\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Joanna Lumley as Mrs Stone and Tobias Menzies as Roger in this year\u2019s spooky Christmas tale \u2018The Room in the Tower\u2019. Photo: BBC\/Adorable Media\/Joe Duggan\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/if ghosty.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Joanna Lumley as Mrs Stone and Tobias Menzies as Roger in this year\u2019s spooky Christmas tale \u2018The Room in the Tower\u2019. Photo: BBC\/Adorable Media\/Joe Duggan<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Telling spooky stories over the festive season was already a long-standing tradition before Charles Dickens wrote the most famous Christmas ghost story of all, A Christmas Carol, in 1891, cementing the idea that Santa Claus is far from the only supernatural creature who\u2019s out and about during the supposed season of goodwill to all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The tradition has been kept alive in the modern era by the BBC\u2019s long-running, if intermittent, strand A Ghost Story for Christmas (BBC Two, Christmas Eve), which first enjoyed a successful run in the 1970s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC\u2019s festive ghost story strand is back to its spooky best with this year\u2019s \u2018The Room in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[3412,18,117,19,17,9162],"class_list":{"0":"post-213282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-pat-stacey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115656044754836706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}