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

It’s a creepy time of year from The Archers to Nosferatu to Mark Gatiss’ Woman of Stone

This Christmas, find some pity for Lynda Snell MBE. Fans of the BBC radio soap The Archers know Lynda as the stalwart organiser of every Christmas panto in the fictional village of Ambridge. This year, she found herself tasked with something more arduous: voice-coaching the hard-living Mick, who had volunteered to play Father Christmas at the local pub, only for the landlords to discover that Mick had a performance voice so rasping and gravelly it was guaranteed to terrify the children.

Readers who, like me, are incurable listeners of The Archers will know the solution: Lynda sparkily announced that this year, Ambridge would host a “creepy Christmas” event, allowing Mick to snarl to his heart’s content as Krampus, not Santa, and a range of other Christmas bogeymen. Hilarity, by Ambridge standards, ensued when Lynda found herself scrambling to hide Mick and his demonic horns from the vicar.

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