We’re deep inside a rainforest somewhere near the border of Mexico and Guatemala, 1972. Simon Corbet, a 42-year-old entomologist with a passion for mantids, has been drawn here. Or is he running away? Running from grief, uncertainty, and a guilt he doesn't understand. Simon is haunted, both figuratively and literally, by the ghost of Penelope, a young woman who tragically died. Michelle Paver's Rainforest was hot off the press right at the end of 2025. We talk about where it lies in her oeuvre.

Michelle Paver's 2019 novel, set in Suffolk fenland, explores medieval superstition and patriarchal religion. To daughter, Maud, struggling for freedom, the fen is about inspiration and release. To father Edmund it is the home of a demon who seeks to punish him for a long-forgotten sin. Woven through the story is local folklore about exorcism and the entrapment of evil. The novel updates a number of themes common to the Edwardian ghost story, breathing new life into the genre.

Running parallel to the dapper, handsome count of stage and screen, this alternative take on the noble vampire -- bald, hunched, rat-toothed -- has haunted cinema history for more than a century, starting with F.W. Murnau's unauthorized 1922 use of Bram Stoker's story. Three Nosferatus cast their folk horror-ish shadows over the vampire genre, Murnau's, Werner Herzog's 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampire, and, most recently, Robert Eggers's 2024 production. How do they relate to each other and, just as interestingly, how do they relate to Stoker's 1897 novel?

The December 1958 to February 1959 tv production of Quatermass and the Pit by Manx author Nigel Kneale remains one of the most ambitious productions ever mounted by the BBC, combining science fiction, folk horror, and supernatural themes, and positing a source for humankind's concept of evil. Filmed and broadcast mainly live with only some exterior pre-taped scenes, this third series in the Quatermass canon remains Kneale's most impressive achievement as a writer of science fiction and cerebral horror.

It's lurid, ghoulish, and impishly provocative, almost body horror in modern parlance. How else is M.R. James's Lost Hearts different from most of his other short ghost stories? Why was he not happy with it? I'm delighted to discuss M.R. James's Lost Hearts with James aficionado , educator and short story performer, John Carpenter. We'll discuss thematic links with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which is also about the corrupting influence of adults on children. Up for debate is the 1973 adaptation written by Robin Chapman, directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, and featuring Joseph O' Conor as the sinister Mr. Abney. The snatches of Hurdy Gurdy music featured in this episode are by Guilhem Desq.

The title The Most Haunted House in England was first coined by Harry Price in his 1940 book on Borley Rectory, and it stuck. Spectral nuns, headless horsemen aside, the number of disturbances, windows breaking, shingles thrown down the stairs, wall writing etc etc... informs our very understanding of what a haunted house actually is. It certainly informed fiction from Shirley Jackson's seminal The Haunting of Hill House to Sarah Waters' more recent masterpiece The Little Stranger. But beneath all the ghostly occurrences lies an amazing series of human dramas. We cover them all. There are many finely written and researched books about Borley Rectory, but here we owe a special debt of gratitude to Sean O'Connor's comprehensive 2022 The Haunting of Borley Rectory: The Story of a Ghost Story published by Simon and Schuster.

How do you film an unfilmable horror? The BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas is a wonderful tradition, but is it possible the productions are just a bit too professional for their own good? Does it need a bit more daring, a bit more abandon, to successfully capture that elusive supernatural frisson?

I'll be talking about M.R. James's A Haunted Dolls' House, and one lesser known but truly terrifying adaptation.

In this second part to the discussion on The Enfield Poltergeist of 1977-1979, I talk with Dr Bernard Wills, Professor of Humanities and Historic Studies about the polarization of contemporary accounts. Where does the Enfield Poltergeist fall within the history of anomalous events?