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Last Updated on October 17, 2026 by Stefanie Hutson

Darkness is coming earlier now, and the weather is cooling – which means it's a great time to curl up with something British and spooky. Below, we take a look at 20 excellent candidates for your next evening in. We've done our best to steer clear of gore and overt horror, opting instead of folk horror, creeping dread, and general spookiness (along with a few family-friendly selections, too).

Most of the films below are available with SOME subscription streaming service, but there are a handful that are only available for streaming rental/purchase at the moment.

Blithe Spirit – 2020 – A blocked playwright hires a questionable medium for research and accidentally summons the ghost of his first wife, who has no intention of leaving. This adaptation of Noël Coward's 1941 play is set in 1937 and stars Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as Charles Condomine, with Judi Dench as Madame Arcati, Isla Fisher and Leslie Mann as the living and dead wives, and Emilia Fox (Silent Witness), Julian Rhind-Tutt (Green Wing) and Aimee-Ffion Edwards (Detectorists) in support. Theatre director Edward Hall made it as his first film, with a screenplay by Nick Moorcroft, Meg Leonard and Piers Ashworth. It was filmed around Surrey and London, with the Art Deco house Joldwynds standing in for the Condomine home. Stream it HERE

Rose of Nevada – 2025 – In a Cornish fishing village that never recovered from losing a boat with all hands in 1993, the Rose of Nevada reappears in the harbour one morning, and two men with nowhere else to turn sign on to crew her. George MacKay (1917) and Callum Turner (Masters of the Air) play the new hands, with Mark Jenkin’s usual company of Cornish actors around them, including Mary Woodvine and Edward Rowe. Jenkin wrote, directed, shot and scored it on 16mm, as he did Bait and Enys Men, and it closes that Cornish trilogy (no need to watch them in order – they all stand alone). It premiered at Venice in 2025 and reached UK cinemas in April 2026 to near-unanimous praise. Stream it HERE

The Banishing – 2020 – In the late 1930s a young vicar, his wife and their daughter move into a rectory with an ugly history, and the wife soon begins to see things in its mirrors. Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey) stars with John Heffernan (Dracula), Sean Harris (Southcliffe) and John Lynch (The Fall). Christopher Smith (Severance, Triangle) directed from a script by David Beton, Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines. The story is loosely inspired by Borley Rectory in Essex, which ghost hunter Harry Price made famous as “the most haunted house in England”, and Harris's character is a thinly veiled version of Price. Filming took place in Yorkshire, at Broughton Hall near Skipton and in the cellars of Salts Mill in Saltaire. Stream it HERE

The Little Stranger – 2018 – In 1948, a country doctor is called out to Hundreds Hall, a crumbling Warwickshire estate where a once-grand family is coming apart, and he becomes drawn into both the household and whatever is troubling it. Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina) plays Dr Faraday, with Ruth Wilson (Luther) as Caroline Ayres, Will Poulter (The Bear) as her war-scarred brother and Charlotte Rampling (Broadchurch) as their mother. Lenny Abrahamson (Room) directed from Lucinda Coxon's adaptation of Sarah Waters's Booker-shortlisted 2009 novel. It's an Irish-British-French co-production and as much a drama about class and the end of the gentry as it is a ghost story, with very little in the way of conventional scares. Stream it HERE

A Warning to the Curious – 1972 – An out-of-work clerk with a passion for archaeology arrives at a quiet seaside town to hunt for one of the three legendary buried crowns said to protect the East Anglian coast from invasion, and he finds the crown still has a guardian. Peter Vaughan (Porridge) stars as Paxton, with Clive Swift (Keeping Up Appearances) as Dr Black, a character carried over from the previous year's The Stalls of Barchester. Lawrence Gordon Clark adapted, produced and directed it for BBC1, where it went out on Christmas Eve 1972 as the second of the original A Ghost Story for Christmas films. The story is M.R. James's, set in a disguised Aldeburgh, but the filming was done in north Norfolk at Holkham Beach, Happisburgh and Wells-next-the-Sea. Stream it HERE

Altar (aka The Haunting of Radcliffe House) – 2015 – A restoration specialist moves her artist husband and two children into a derelict house on the Yorkshire Moors that she's been hired to return to its Victorian grandeur, and the work uncovers a sealed attic room and an occult mosaic on the floor. Olivia Williams (The Crown) and Matthew Modine (Stranger Things) play the couple, with Steve Oram (Sightseers) as the local builder. Nick Willing, who made the Alice and Tin Man miniseries, wrote and directed. The house's Victorian owner is said to have killed his wife there during a ritual, and the family begins to suspect they aren't alone. Channel 5 premiered it on 27 December 2014 under the title The Haunting of Radcliffe House, two months before its US release as Altar. Stream it HERE

The Innocents – 1961 – A clergyman's daughter takes her first post as governess to two orphaned children at a remote country estate and becomes convinced that the dead are visiting them. Deborah Kerr (Black Narcissus) stars as Miss Giddens, with Michael Redgrave as the uncle, Megs Jenkins as Mrs Grose and Peter Wyngarde (Department S) as Quint. Jack Clayton directed, and the screenplay is credited to William Archibald and Truman Capote from Henry James's novella, with additional dialogue by John Mortimer. Sheffield Park in East Sussex provided the exteriors for Bly. Stream it on Hulu

Harry Price: Ghost Hunter – 2015 – In 1920s London, a disgraced conman turned psychical researcher is hired to find out whether an MP's wife is being haunted or losing her mind, and he moves into the family's rambling former workhouse to investigate. Rafe Spall (Black Mirror) plays the real-life ghost hunter Harry Price, with Cara Theobold (Downton Abbey) as the maid who becomes his assistant and Tom Ward (Silent Witness) and Zoe Boyle (Downton Abbey) as the Goodwins. Much of the house filming took place at West Horsley Place in Surrey, which fans of Ghosts will know as Button House. Price himself is best remembered for his investigation of Borley Rectory, and the case here is fictional. Stream it HERE

Watcher in the Woods – 2017 – An American family renting an old manor in the Welsh countryside begins experiencing strange events connected to the disappearance of a local girl decades earlier. Tallulah Evans stars as teenager Jan Carstairs, who becomes convinced that the woods surrounding the estate hold the answer, while Anjelica Huston (The Addams Family) plays Mrs. Aylwood, the missing girl’s mother. Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White & Royal Blue) also appears, and Melissa Joan Hart directed this adaptation of Florence Engel Randall’s novel. Stream it HERE

The Haunted Hotel – 2021 – Eight guests across more than 150 years check into the same faded English hotel, and each finds that the building hasn't let go of its past. This anthology was shot at the real Great White Horse Hotel in Ipswich, which has been trading since 1518 and gets a mention in The Pickwick Papers. It came out of a FILM Suffolk initiative that invited local writers to submit scripts, with eight different directors handling the segments, and the cast includes Hugh Fraser (Captain Hastings in Poirot), Paul Moriarty (EastEnders) and Rob Jarvis (Peaky Blinders). Stream it HERE

The House That Dripped Blood – 1971 – A Scotland Yard inspector searching for a missing film star is told the grim fates of the four previous tenants of the country house where the actor was last seen. Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, adapted four of his own short stories for this Amicus anthology, and the cast includes Denholm Elliott, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Jon Pertwee, Ingrid Pitt and Joss Ackland, though Cushing and Lee appear in separate segments and never share a scene. Peter Duffell directed. Despite the title there's no blood on screen. Stream it HERE

Crooked House – 2008 – A teacher digs up an antique door knocker in his garden, and a museum curator tells him the history of Geap Manor, the demolished Tudor house it came from, across three centuries of ghostly trouble. Mark Gatiss (Sherlock) wrote it and plays the curator, with Lee Ingleby (Inspector George Gently), Philip Jackson (Poirot), Jean Marsh (Upstairs, Downstairs), Julian Rhind-Tutt and Andy Nyman in the three stories, which are set in the 1780s, the 1920s and the present day. Gatiss wrote it as a tribute to the BBC's 1970s A Ghost Story for Christmas strand, which he later went on to revive and direct himself. Stream it HERE

The Woman in Black – 2012 – A young widowed solicitor is sent to a remote village to settle the estate of the late Alice Drablow, whose marsh-bound house nobody in the village will talk about. Daniel Radcliffe took the role of Arthur Kipps as his first lead after Harry Potter, with Ciárán Hinds (Rome), Janet McTeer, Liz White (Life on Mars) and Roger Allam (Endeavour). James Watkins directed from Jane Goldman's adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 novel, for the revived Hammer Films. Cotterstock Hall in Northamptonshire served as Eel Marsh House, with the causeway filmed on Osea Island in Essex and the village at Halton Gill in the Yorkshire Dales. It took around 130 million dollars worldwide, making it the highest-grossing British horror film in two decades at the time. Hill's novel was also adapted by Nigel Kneale for ITV in 1989 and as a stage play that ran in the West End from 1989 to 2023. Stream it HERE

Ghost Stories – 2017 – A professor who makes his living exposing fake psychics is handed three unsolved cases by the vanished television debunker he idolised as a boy. Andy Nyman (Unforgotten) plays Professor Goodman, reprising his role from the hit stage play he wrote with Jeremy Dyson of The League of Gentlemen, and the two also co-directed the film. Martin Freeman (Sherlock), Paul Whitehouse (The Fast Show) and Alex Lawther (Black Mirror) are the three witnesses. It was filmed around Leeds, Saltaire and Harrogate in 2016, and the filmmakers invented a fake actor named Leonard Byrne for the credits to disguise the fact that Freeman plays a second, heavily made-up role. Stream it HERE

The Turn of the Screw – 1999 – A parson's daughter takes a post as governess to two orphaned children at a remote country house, on the strict condition that she never troubles their uncle, and she comes to believe the children are being visited by the dead. Jodhi May (The Last of the Mohicans) plays the governess, with Pam Ferris (The Darling Buds of May) as the housekeeper Mrs Grose and Colin Firth in a brief but pivotal turn as the uncle. Nick Dear adapted Henry James's 1898 novella and Ben Bolt directed, with Thame Park in Oxfordshire as Bly. ITV showed it on Boxing Day 1999 and it ran on Masterpiece Theatre in the US two months later. Stream it HERE

Other adaptations:

1974
2009
Netflix adaptation: The Haunting of Bly Manor
2022 – This is not a direct adaptation of the work, but it follows a young woman taking part in a production of The Turn of the Screw

The Prestige – 2006 – Two rival stage magicians in 1890s London turn their professional feud into a decade of sabotage and obsession over the secret of a single trick. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play the magicians, with Michael Caine as the engineer who builds their illusions, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, Andy Serkis, and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla. Christopher Nolan directed and wrote it with his brother Jonathan from Christopher Priest's 1995 novel, and real magicians Ricky Jay and Michael Weber trained the leads for authenticity. It's a British-American co-production that was shot mostly in Los Angeles, with downtown theatres and the Universal backlot standing in for Victorian London. Stream it HERE

The Wicker Man – 1973 – This British horror classic has been referred to as “the Citizen Kane of horror movies”, and it focuses on a police sergeant sent to an isolated island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. He’s horrified to find that locals claim no knowledge of the girl, and they’ve abandoned Christianity for Celtic pagan rituals. The movie was filmed around Scotland (including Plockton, which also served as the location for Hamish Macbeth), and it had a very small budget due to the production company’s precarious financial situation. Stream it HERE

The Lair of the White Worm – 1988 – This supernatural comedy includes Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi among its cast members, and Roger Ebert called it “a respectable B-grade monster movie”. Scottish archaeology student Angus Flint unearths a snake skull tied to the legend of the d'Ampton worm, sparking a sinister chain of events involving Lady Sylvia, an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god. As Lady Sylvia’s true nature and terrifying powers are revealed, Angus and his allies must confront deadly serpentine forces that may have left a lasting mark on him. Stream it HERE

The Awakening – 2012 – In 1921, a professional debunker of fake spiritualists is summoned to a remote boys' boarding school in Cumbria, where a pupil has died and the boys are reporting a child's ghost. Rebecca Hall (Parade's End) stars as Florence Cathcart, with Dominic West (The Wire), Imelda Staunton as the matron and Isaac Hempstead Wright, Bran from Game of Thrones, as the lonely boy who stays on over the holidays. Nick Murphy directed and co-wrote it with Stephen Volk, who wrote the BBC's notorious 1992 Ghostwatch. The school was filmed at Manderston House in Berwickshire and Lyme Park in Cheshire. The opening scene, in which Florence exposes a séance, reflects the real boom in spiritualism after the First World War. Stream it HERE

An American Werewolf in London – 1981 – Two American students backpacking across the Yorkshire moors ignore the regulars at the Slaughtered Lamb and are attacked by something that isn't a dog. David Naughton and Griffin Dunne play the backpackers, with Jenny Agutter (Call the Midwife) as the nurse who takes one of them home, John Woodvine (New Tricks) as her doctor, and Brian Glover and a young Rik Mayall among the pub regulars. John Landis wrote and directed, having first drafted the script in 1969. The moors were filmed in the Black Mountains of Wales, with the village of Crickadarn in Powys as East Proctor, and the London scenes used Piccadilly Circus and London Zoo. Rick Baker's transformation effects won the first competitive Academy Award ever given for makeup. The film is a horror comedy, but the horror half is a bit more graphic than some of the others on the list. Stream it HERE