{"id":174101,"date":"2025-12-04T04:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174101\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T04:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:54:11","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.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174101\/","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.newsbeep.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":174102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,93,61,60,9617],"class_list":["post-174101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bbc","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-pat-stacey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}