Next up for Hitchin’s Bancroft Players is a spooky pre-Hallowe’en presentation.

The Haunting will be staged at the Queen Mother Theatre’s studio space from next Wednesday, October 14, through to the Saturday night.

The curtain goes up each night at 7.45pm on the show, an adaptation that blends five short ghost stories by Charles Dickens.

The year is 1867, the setting a library in a bleak ancient manor house. As our storyteller waits for his host, he slips into sleep. Is what follows real, a dream, or a nightmare?

Director Alistair Brown is relishing the chance to design and stage this slice of Victorian spookiness – adapted for the stage by Hugh Janes, and recently toured around the country in a production featuring David Robb, better known as Doctor Clarkson in Downton Abbey – in the frighteningly intimate space of The QMT Studio.

Tickets are £8, and are available on 01462 455166 or online at www. qmt.org.uk.