A Christmas Ghost Story?

I was sitting up late last night, watching the repeat on BBC4 of the 1971 adaptation of M R James' Stalls of Barchester, when it occurred to me that perhaps I should be doing that - coming up with a Christmas ghost story. It could be a new tradition for The Sleaze, just like it was for the BBC back in the 1970s. Of course, I'd have to reinterpret those old M R James stories for our modern, sleazy, age. Take the afore-mentioned Stalls of Barchester, for instance. Nowadays it would probably concern the spectre of some defrocked Catholic priest returning to molest young choir boys. "I felt the hem of my cassock lifted and a chill wind crept between my buttocks. I leapt up from my seat as I felt the ghostly, yet strangely firm, presence of a male member forcing its way up my jacksie..." No doubt some scholar would discover (from an internet search, rather than by consulting some musty old documents found locked in a trunk), that the priest had committed suicide rather than face the shame when his stash of kiddie porn was found stashed under the font. Having committed a mortal sin, he was condemned to haunt the stalls of Barchester Cathedral for all eternity, invisibly fondling small boys' bottoms and balls.

Some of the same author's other stories could be similarly updated. In The View From the Hill, for example, the middle class archaeologist protagonist could, instead of seeing an Abbey where there should be ruins when he looks through the mysterious binoculars, see a fabulous leisure centre. However, when he reaches the spot where he thinks it is, he finds himself confronted by a terrible inner-city slum, populated by prostitutes, pimps and violent thugs. Inevitably, he is mugged by these terrible working class scumbags and left for dead. Number 13, in which a spectral hotel room keeps manifesting itself by night and claiming victims from amongst the establishment's guests, could easily be given a spin in which it is a phantom S&M dungeon which keeps appearing and drawing victims in to be chained up and whipped to their dooms. The hero could no doubt have his sleep disturbed the rattlings of ghostly nipple chains as the demonic dominatrices secure their 'clients'. Ghastly wailings and mumblings could haunt the hotel's corridors as the leather bound and gagged unfortunates are carried off to the bowels of hell. You know, if I wasn't already part way through writing The Sleaze's second (and last) Christmas story for this year, I'd have a crack at a ghost story for Christmas. Maybe next year...