'I watched Ghost Stories and it's the scariest thing I've seen on stage'

I'M a fan of spooky theatre. I first saw The Woman in Black as a student and have been hooked to ghost stories played out on stage in an atmosphere where you can hear a pin drop ever since.

- By HELEN DALBY

I've enjoyed several productions of The Woman in Black in both Newcastle and London - it’s always deliciously frightening, no matter how well you know the story.

My son loves all things ghostly too - Susan Hill’s novella that play is based on was the first grown-up book he read - so we were excited to visit the Theatre Royal to watch Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson's Ghost Stories.

Ghost Stories makes The Woman in Black look like Peppa Pig the Musical. It contains the hands-down most viscerally terrifying moment I've ever seen on stage or screen. There are moments that stay with you: "I want to know who I'm looking at" in Scream; that scene with the Sloth victim in Se7en; indeed, the rocking chair in The Woman in Black (if you know, you know).

But oh my, there is a moment in Ghost Stories that I'll say no more about, as the very worst thing one can do when reviewing a ghostly play is spoil it for others.

My son, who is 14 and rather beyond leaping into his mother’s arms, leapt into his mother's arms and did so with such force that his nails almost drew blood through my thin cardie. The concept is simple - a professor of parapsychology, superbly played by Dan Tetsell, introduces to the audience the only three testimonies to have unnerved him and given him pause in a career spent gathering, and ultimately dismissing, ‘ghost’ stories.