‘There’s always been an affinity between Christmas and ghosts’: Mark Gatiss on the joy of festive frights

The writer and actor puts the ghoul into yule with screen and stage roles reprising haunting classics from Charles Dickens and MR James

Close the curtains. Light the fire. Then prepare to be terrified; it's Christmas. For although the word cosy" may be closely tied to festivities at this time of year, so it seems is the word ghost".

In northern Europe people understandably cope with the shorter days and darker evenings by drawing in around a roaring hearth, metaphorical or otherwise. Light and warmth: it makes sense. But what kind of stories are told while friends and families gather together? The answer, of course, is the spookier, the better.