The radio and the ghost story have a special affinity for each other. Creaking doors, echoing footsteps, the breathless delivery of the narrator. Great opportunities for suggestive details, but enough scope for the imagination to fill in the gaps. In 1926 L.P. Hartley expertly anticipated the long relationship between the radio and supernatural terror with this story of a self-made millionaire returned to London after decades in Australia, drowsing to the sound of the BBC in a hotel lounge while some thing travels through the rain to catch up with him.

The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs, Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad, by M.R. James, The Signalman by Charles Dickens. We all know the stories and we all know at least one film or TV adaptation. But what what about the many, many other ghost stories which give us a similar frisson? The next two episodes will deal with some of these. L.T.C. Rolt's 1948 Bosworth Summit Pound, a tale of a haunted tunnel in a desolate canal is clever, sensuous, and begs for someone to adapt it for film or tv.

Sheridan Le Fanu's 1839 ghost story Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter stands out as a remarkable melding of fiction and biography. Godfried Schalken was a historical character, as was his mentor Gerrit Dou, a former pupil of Rembrandt. The story plunges us into the world of the Dutch masters and expands upon themes of darkness and transactional sexuality hinted at in some of Schalken's later works. In 1979 the story also spawned one of British television's most ambitious and daring dramatizations. I discuss both story and film.