Fear is one of the oldest emotions known to humanity. It's based on uncertainty - not knowing what is coming next - and usually relies in some way on our beliefs about what, if anything, follows death. We might accept death as a part of life, live in continual fear of it or look forward to embracing the hereafter. Ghost stories revolve around that fear and what might happen to us when we die. Do we join the spirit world or just decompose and return to the dust from whence we came? These stories reflect on religious or spiritual beliefs concerning death and the afterlife.

Ghost stories are an ancient tradition telling of visits to and from the other side of the grave. The oldest known is The Epic of Gilgamesh, written on cuneiform tablets in the Akkadian language. Possibly the best know is Homer's Odyssey, although other poets such as Ovid and Virgil also contributed to the genre. Perhaps Pliny the Younger might have told one of the first about a haunted house in 100 AD.

Many famous authors have written ghost stories including Shakespeare, Dickens, Henry James, Edgar Allen Poe, M. R. James and today Stephen King carries on that tradition. Stories about hauntings and ghosts, whether true or fiction, are found within most cultures. In classical literature they tend to be primarily fictional as they were typically used to teach a moral lesson. Dickens' A Christmas Carol is the prime example of how leading an immoral life can imprison a person in a selfcreated hell afterlife.

We don't need to believe in ghosts or the afterlife to know about them. The adaptor of The Woman in Black, Stephen Mallatratt, defined a ghost as "the remaining spirit of a person who has existed in this life, but is known to have died. This spirit is usually seen and often recognised, but it may be heard, sensed or even smelt." When discussing his planning for this show Mallatratt made a list of essential ingredients of the classic ghost story: after "a ghost" came "atmosphere". Under that heading he put "weather" and "place".

Let the show begin and allow yourself to be taken on a journey into the unknown.