What’s new Doccy Who? We’re coming after you! You’re gonna solve that mystery. I see you Doccy Who; the trail leads back to you. What’s new Doccy Who? Haunted houses have been a staple feature in Doctor Who for decades, an iconic element of the horror genre. Whether in the Regency, the Victorian age, the 1970s or present day Western Drumlins (Blink), haunted houses still scare people senseless and guarantee sleepless nights!

Ghost Light

★★★★★

TX: 04/10/1989 – 18/10/1989

Written by Marc Platt    Directed by Alan Wareing

The Doctor takes Ace to a haunted mansion called Gabriel Chase in 1888, unbeknownst to Ace. Ace burnt the house down in the 1980s with other members of an arsonist gang. The Victorian household is headed by Mr Chase, who has invited a scholar from Oxford for a scientific discussion. My website is genius! People are going to look at this website and think that I went to Oxford! Gabriel Chase is actually the epicentre for a galactic zoological study made by an ancient being called Light. Light’s catalogue of all life in the universe has already led to the creation of husks in the basement, a rabid woman called Control, a neanderthal butler, a resurrected butterfly collection and the arrival of a Victorian police inspector. The Doctor shows to Light that his catalogue can never be completed due to the ever evolving nature of life in the universe, in accordance with Charles Darwin’s recent theory of evolution. Enraged at this revelation, Light leaves Earth in frustration. The Doctor and Ace make amends after the Doctor manipulated Ace about the identity of the Gabriel Chase estate.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Eternity Trap

Night Terrors

★★☆☆☆

TX: 03/09/2011

Written by Mark Gatiss      Directed by Richard Clark

A little boy called George is having nightmares and he wants to be saved from the monsters in his bedroom cupboard. The Eleventh Doctor receives a psychic message from George on his psychic paper asking for help, so the TARDIS lands at the council estate where George lives. Amy, Rory and the Doctor begin asking around the flats to find George. Amy and Rory get trapped in an elevator which transports them to a dolls house where they are menaced by creepy peg dolls. The Doctor meets Alex and finds his son George, who is scared of everything! Alex blames the television, but the Doctor realises that George’s nightmares are real… and so are his monsters. The Doctor decides that they need to open the cupboard in George’s bedroom. However, Alex remembers that his wife Claire is sterile and therefore George’s existence is impossible. The Doctor realises that George is a Tenza child, an empathic alien who took on the form of Alex and Claire’s desired child through a perception filter, and has the ability to literally lock away his fears in the wardrobe. The Doctor and Alex are sucked into the wardrobe by the scared George. In the dolls house, the Doctor and Alex are also menaced by scary peg dolls, and find that Amy has been turned into one! The Doctor, Alex and Rory are surrounded by peg dolls and the Doctor begs George to open the cupboard. George does this and the peg dolls stop. Alex is reunited with his son George that he loves. The Doctor, Amy and Rory leave George to live a happy, normal life with Alex and Claire, free of nightmares!

Hide

★★★☆☆

TX: 20/04/2013

Written by Neil Cross  Directed by Jamie Payne

The Eleventh Doctor and Clara arrive at the haunted Caliburn House in 1974. Psychic Emma Grayling and Professor Alec Palmer have photographic evidence of ghosts in the house. The Doctor takes Clara in the TARDIS to examine their specific location at various points during Earth’s history and repeatedly takes photographs of the same area. From his pictures, the Doctor comes to the conclusion that the “Caliburn Ghast” is actually a pioneer time traveler named Hila Tacorian. Hila is trapped in a pocket universe where time moves more slowly. The Doctor prepares a device to stimulate Emma’s psychic abilities to open a gateway to this pocket universe. The device contains the blue crystal from Metebelis III previously seen in The Green Death and Planet of the Spiders. Once opened, the Doctor will travel across and rescue Hila with a harness anchored in the normal world. However, Hila makes it back to our world but the Doctor is stranded in the pocket universe with the crooked man. The Doctor is afraid and he is chased by the creature. Clara manages to pilot the TARDIS so that she can rescue the Doctor. Back at Caliburn House, Emma and Alec confess their love for each other. The Doctor realises that the crooked man has a mate in the house and that the two are male and female lovers. The Doctor returns to the pocked universe and brings the crooked man back to our universe to reunite him with his partner.

Knock Knock

★★★★★

TX: 06/05/2017

Written by Mike Bartlett   Directed by Bill Anderson

Bill Potts and her university student friends are looking for a new flat to rent together. After having no luck, a mysterious landlord offers them a lease at his large, creepy old house. As the students settle in, the Twelfth Doctor arrives to help Bill move her stuff in too. The Doctor meets the Landlord who he is immediately suspicious of. The Doctor secretly sticks around after dark to investigate the house. One by one, Bill’s friends are sucked into the wooden walls of the house or are devoured by giant woodlice called Dryads (which are sensitive to sound) that scuttle around in formation. The Landlord says that they are providing sustenance for the Dryads to keep his daughter Eliza alive in the forbidden tower. The Doctor and Bill make it to the house tower, where they discover that Eliza is now completely made of wood. The Doctor deduces that the Landlord is actually Eliza’s son, a long forgotten memory. As a boy, the Landlord had brought his terminally-ill mother some dormant Dryads that he found, unaware of their power. When the Dryads heard a high-pitched sound from Eliza’s music box, they awoke and started turning Eliza into wood to counteract her illness. Since then, the Landlord has controlled the Dryads to keep Eliza in good health whilst signing on new tenants to become the Dryads’ source of nourishment. Eliza is able to control the Dryads, so she takes the Landlord into a hug, over his objections, and thanks the Doctor before the Dryads consume them, whilst also reconstituting all of Bill’s friends. The group escapes the house moments before it collapses in on itself. Back at St Luke’s University, Bristol, the Doctor offers to take over watch of the vault from Nardole. Piano music plays from within as the Doctor enters to have dinner with the unknown prisoner inside.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati 

★★★★★

TX: 16/02/2020

Written by Maxine Alderton    Directed by Emma Sullivan

The Doctor takes Graham, Ryan and Yaz to Lake Geneva in 1816 to witness Mary Shelley gain the inspiration to write Frankenstein, though she warns them about revealing this to her. Meanwhile, Mary, her infant William, along with John Polidori, Claire Clairmont and Lord Byron are staying at the Villa Diodati. Mary’s fiancé Percy Bysshe Shelley, is inexplicably missing. Because of the inclement weather, Byron suggests each write a ghost story to scare the others. Later, the Doctor and her companions arrive, only to discover that the expected ghost story sharing has been abandoned, and that Percy is not there, although he should have been. Strange events occur in the villa, such as the repeated rearrangement of its layout, objects moving of their own accord, and skeletal hands crawling around the halls. Byron suggests it is a ghost that haunts the villa but the Doctor suspects something else is occurring; the events are part of a security system designed to hide something. The group sees an apparition which the Doctor recognises as a being moving through time; the apparition resolves into a half-converted Cyberman. Graham, Ryan and Yaz remind the Doctor of Jack Harkness’s warning of the “lone Cyberman” and giving it what it wants but she angrily orders them not to follow her and tells them to protect Mary and the others, before heading off to confront the Cyberman. The Cyberman, named Ashad, was sent back in time to look for the “Cyberium”, a liquid metal with the collective knowledge of the Cybermen. Ashad had tracked it to the villa but then his power had been sapped. As the Doctor tries to lure Ashad away from the villa, he is struck by lightning, recharging his power core and he prepares to attack the villa again. Meanwhile, the Doctor discovers Percy’s room, the walls of which are covered in strange gibberish in his handwriting. The Doctor races to warn the others but instead finds Percy hiding in the cellar with a crazed look. She discovers he is possessed by the Cyberium, having found it a few days prior and the Cyberium had created the supernatural events to prevent discovery. The Doctor loses her temper with her companions and brings Percy to Ashad and to stop Ashad from killing him, tricks the Cyberium into leaving Percy’s body and entering hers. Ashad threatens to destroy the planet, forcing the Doctor to turn the Cyberium over to him, despite Harkness’s warning. The Doctor and her companions depart, making plans to follow Ashad to the future using coordinates from Percy’s Cyberman-based writings.