WHAT better time is there - other than Halloween - to settle down with a good ghost story than on Friday the 13th?

As a big fan of M.R James, and having enjoyed Charles Dickens' The Signalman when I read it in school, I had high expectations of Classic Ghosts at Hereford's Courtyard Theatre.

Classic Ghosts is a production by Middle Ground Theatre Company Ltd, who did very well to capture the horror of these tales as well as injecting certain bits of well-placed humour throughout.

The first piece in the double bill, Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, tells the story of an academic who finds a strange whistle while exploring a Knights Templar cemetery on the East Anglian coast, with the tension expertly built by a talented and minimal cast.

For me there was occasionally a bit too much dialogue, which caused the tension to slacken for me, though others may have found that it did exactly the opposite - what's scary for one isn't always scary for another.

The set was expertly crafted and when it came to creating an atmosphere they simply couldn't have done it better.

The darkness, the eerie sounds, and the horror revealed when the lights came up was an excellent moment which sent a ripple of fear through the audience.

But it was the scenery in the second half of the production which really blew me away. They re-created an isolated signalman's station beside a spooky tunnel fantastically. It looked as though the actors were really outside, and not on a stage, making it really easy to become totally engrossed in the story.

The tale of the signalman was told really effectively and, for me, was better paced than the M.R.James piece, and it rounded off a delightfully eerie evening perfectly.

Middle Ground did a great job and I'd definitely try to catch them again in the future.