[Ghost image: Vilius Kukanauskas_Pixabay]

NAKED fear is a cruel mistress. Your pulse rate quickens, your head swims, your palms begin to sweat, your pupils dilate and the fight-or-flight mechanism starts to kick in – let’s face it, MR James has got nothing on paying for a round.

But scarier than the annual office do, the festive ghost story has become as much part of our Christmas as Eat Me dates, family rows and Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.

But why? Why do we love to be unsettled at this otherwise joyous time of year? What is it about the festive season and spooks? Is it all down to Dickens? Does it go back further than A Christmas Carol?

And how many question marks can you squeeze into one paragraph?

You’ll doubtless be surprised to learn that I’m no expert, but I reckon it’s something to do with our notion of the fantasy cosy Christmas – think The Holiday with ectoplasm.

Ah, the roaring fire crackling in the grate, the balloon glass of brandy warming in your hand, the peal of church bells punctuating the silence as snow gently coats the box parterre.

St Eanswith’s Church in Brenzett

That is, of course, a load of old rubbish. For most of us Christmas is a mad dash along the middle of Lidl, culminating in the customary punch-up in the car park. But we can dream.

Drawing on my vast knowledge of psychobabble, I think that like roller-coaster rides or the bloodless murders in St Mary Mead, what appeals about spectral tales is the vicarious thrill. Safely far removed from any real danger, the supernatural provides chills without risk.

And one of the most welcome chills at Yuletide is the late-night TV ghost story.

In an age before streaming – indeed before the advent of video cassettes – getting your hands on the Christmas/New Year Radio Times was a seasonal highlight. Indeed, you’d use your seasonal highlighter to remind you to miss Jim’ll Fix It or Rolf’s Cartoon Time.

Alas, now our favourite films and programmes are available on demand we’ve been denied yet another small pleasure. A few years back you’d have to wait half a decade before a film could make its TV debut, Disney never sold their animated films to television – hence Disney Time – and I seem to recall that the first Bond film to be shown on the small screen made News at Ten.

Nowadays, after negotiating the holly- and robin-bedecked “special” episodes of Cull The Midwife (sic) and Mrs Brown’s Boys (even sicker), for many the season’s highlight is now Mark Gatiss’s Ghost Story for Christmas.

The effigies that inspired E Nesbit

This year the Spookmeister General of this parish clocks up his seventh festive tale of terror – Woman of Stone – eschewing Monty James for E Nesbit’s short story, Man-Size in Marble.

Unbelievably, despite their popularity, Gatiss says he has to fight tooth and (coffin) nail for Auntie to release her vice-like grip on her coffers to finance these modestly budgeted treats. Well, I suppose she has to keep Gregg Wallace in shampoo somehow.

From the Stables Market to The World’s End and Black Cap pubs, there’s no shortage of spooky goings-on in our ’hood but for most of us – not least Sherlock Holmes – the countryside is the home of horror.

Set among trees, 7th-century St Eanswith’s Church in Brenzett is one of the smaller churches on Romney Marsh in Kent. The Lady Chapel, however, is home to the impressive tomb of John Fagge and his son, and it’s their effigies that were the inspiration for Edith Nesbit’s tale of terror in which a pair of marble knights are said to rise from their slabs on Christmas Eve.

The BBC’s original Ghost Story for Christmas strand ran from 1971 to 1978. They were the brainchild of documentary film-maker Lawrence Gordon Clark, who would tour the UK from East Anglia to Cornwall in search of atmospheric locations for his grainy 16mm realisations of James’s equally atmospheric tales. For those of us of a certain age, his film version of A Warning to the Curious and The Stalls of Barchester heralded not only the start of the festive season but a few sleepless nights.

Largely devoid of music – a budgetary restriction as much as an artistic decision – they were genuinely unsettling, light years from Hammer Films’ blood-soaked, often heavy-handed, approach to the subject. Much was left to the imagination, the sight of the malign revenant skulking in the shadows kept to a minimum. Leaving you not quite sure what you’d just seen – remember, you couldn’t rewind in those days – they proved that there’s nothing more frightening than your own imagination.

It’s a tough act to follow but I, for one, am grateful to Mr Gatiss for reviving what was a Christmas tradition – even if his efforts only serve to remind us of the demise of the one-off TV drama.

That said, I hope your festive scares are confined to your OLED screen and your New Year bank statements, may the only spirits you encounter be found in your glass of Bailey’s and have yourself a merry little cliché.

• Woman of Stone is on BBC2 at 10.15pm on Christmas Eve.