Watch ho ho horror for the holidays

Gather 'round the electronic hearth on these long nights for 16 spooky stories.

- MARY MCNAMARA CULTURE CRITIC

When the sun vanishes early and the chill of darkness comes on deep and fast, there has always been an instinct to gather around a source of warmth and illumination for tales of fearsome happenings. Especially during the holidays. In Victorian times, the telling, or reading, of ghost stories was a Christmas tradition; the most enduring Yule-time tale — Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," written in 1843 — is first and foremost a ghost story.

Almost 200 years later, the electronic hearth offers plenty of chilling tales with which one can continue the tradition and honor the rattling chain of Jacob Marley's ghost. Here are a few personal favorites, beginning with three from Mike Flanagan, TV's master spinner of spectral tales.

"The Haunting of Bly Manor'

(Netflix) This contemporary retelling of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" is a masterpiece of modern gothic. As in the original story, a young woman, here an American named Dani (Victoria Pedretti), takes a job as governess to two young children, Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Flora (Amelie Bea Smith), who live in a grand and isolated manor with housekeeper Hannah Grose (a terrific T'Nia Miller). The children, as ever, are both charming and odd, and tragedy moves through the echoing corridors of Bly Manor. Tragedy, and many other things, as Flanagan blurs the psychological and the supernatural even more vigorously than James did.

"The Haunting of Hill House'