A Ghost Story for Christmas (1971)

The BBC's annual Christmas ghost story films lean heavily on M.R. James, and the best of them are about what happens when someone disturbs old ground. Start with Stigma from 1977, set at a cottage in Avebury, where moving a standing stone in the garden unleashes ghostly forces, then A Warning to the Curious from 1972, where a man digs up the legendary lost crown of East Anglia, guarded by a local family for generations, on a desolate stretch of coast. Each is a self-contained film, which makes this an easy way to sample the 1970s British tradition one evening at a time. Not every installment is folk horror: some are straightforward period ghost stories, so pick the ones set in the countryside and on the coast.